At Vandalieu’s sudden request to be alone, Zadiris opened her eyes wide in surprise.
「Alone, you say?」
「Yes, it’s a very important matter.」
As Vandalieu spoke to Zadiris with an unusually firm tone, Zadiris wondered whether he had decided to finish his training and leave the village.
She had heard that he was headed for the country of Orbaume, beyond the mountain range to the east of this Devil’s Nest. However, he had not yet finished learning no-attribute magic, Mana Control or Alchemy. Zadiris wouldn’t tell him to make this village his home, but she wanted him to stay a little longer.
「Very well. Let us speak in my house.」
Thinking that she should persuade him to stay longer somehow, she picked up Vandalieu in her arms and headed for her own home.
「… I can walk myself. I’m going to be two years old soon.」
「You are not two years old yet, boy. Did you not say that a while ago and trip over a stone?」
Vandalieu had thought that he had come closer to adulthood now that he was nearly two years old, but from others’ point of view, he was but an infant who had come just a little closer to becoming a young boy.
They entered Zadiris’s pit dwelling in which Vandalieu normally received his lessons on magic. Inside, there were alchemy-related tools that Zadiris had invented herself, as well as a crystal ball that apparently had some use sitting in a conspicuous spot.
If there were a cauldron, then this might have been the perfect description of the home of a witch straight out of a fairy tale, but such a cauldron was absent.
「Say, boy. If possible, I wish to teach you all of the spells that I know.」
Zadiris spoke with a serious expression as she sat down on the rug. They were not words of gratitude for saving her life or of wanting to repay his contributions to the village, but words expressing her expectations of him.
「Boy, you have no real talent in the normal sense of the word. I am sure that you have noticed yourself that you are learning slowly. However, you possess a lot of insight and sense that compensates for that.」
The insight and sense that Zadiris spoke of were ideas from the fictional works that Vandalieu had read and seen on Earth, the information that he had obtained from spirits in Origin and the power of imagination that was derived from those. Vandalieu, being aware of this, didn’t think that it was insight or sense or anything worthy of praise.
「Most importantly, you possess that outlandish amount of Mana. If you were to devote yourself to study, it would not even take you a hundred years to become a great mage that I could not even compare to.」
Simply possessing a lot of Mana didn’t make one a powerful mage, but the size of one’s Mana pool was still a component that couldn’t be ignored. In this world, the level of a skill increased the more one used it. Therefore, a large Mana pool was essential to support the repeated casting of magic necessary to increase the level of one’s skill.
For humans, the bonuses to skills they received from magic-related Jobs were important, but even those Jobs required certain skills to be at certain levels to obtain the Jobs in the first place.
And so, for both humans and monsters that wished to become mages, the first step was to learn basic magic and do everything they could to increase their Mana pools. In the case of monsters, it was common to give up without being able to put in the effort required or die before becoming a mage, so a lot of it depended on their talent for magic.
In that regard, Vandalieu was very fortunate. He didn’t need to go through lessons to frantically increase the size of his Mana pool. No, one’s Mana pool naturally expanded even without lessons. At any rate, he was not even two years old yet and his Mana pool exceeded a hundred million. As he grew older, it would increase by tens of millions more… or perhaps even increase by another hundred million.
And so even if he learned somewhat slowly, Vandalieu had enough talent for such concerns to not be a problem.
Those were the expectations that Zadiris had for him. He wouldn’t be just her successor, but something far greater.
「That is why I wish for more time. I am aware that you are on a journey with a purpose, but will you not give me a little more time?」
「Yes, please leave it to me.」
Vandalieu gave an immediate reply.
「Oh, so you have come to see my side of things!」
Though Zadiris found the way Vandalieu had worded it a little strange, she was happy with his response. However, as he continued speaking, she realized that there had been some kind of misunderstanding.
「Well then, I’m going to begin treating you right away, so please lie down and make yourself comfortable.」
「T-treating?」
「Yes. Please leave it to me.」
On one hand, Vandalieu looked full of motivation. Since he had an aptitude for death-attribute magic, he could see… the shadow of death on Zadiris’s face, the presence of death around her. That was why he had decided to extend her lifespan.
Vandalieu had thought that the greatest obstacle to doing this would be Zadiris’s own wishes.
Zadiris had been saying things like「I do not have long to live」and「I already have a successor ready」; she hadn’t seemed particularly fixated on staying alive. Vandalieu had been worried that she might reject the idea of having her life extended by magic.
However, she was now saying,「Give me more time.」
If she had said,「I will let things run their course」, or「It is best for me to pass naturally」, or doubted Vandalieu when he told her that her death was close, he wouldn’t have known what to do. But to think that Zadiris would be aware of her own impending death and even put enough trust in Vandalieu to ask him to extend her life. Vandalieu was moved.
Realizing what a happy thing it was to be trusted by someone else, he felt like crying.
However, it was just a misunderstanding.
「This is necessary for you to learn more magic from me, is it?」
「Yes. There is no other way.」
Zadiris’s age was at a point where she might last as little as a few days, or a month at most. The only way to continue learning magic from her was to extend her lifespan.
「Alright. But what are you doing?」
Zadiris laid down, face up. This reminded Vandalieu of the first time he met her. Just like now, he was trying to save her life back then.
「I’m going to make you a little younger.」
「Eh?! Make me younger? There is no way such a thing is possible…!」
With a bizarre sensation, Zadiris watched as Vandalieu’s hands and arms sank into her stomach, all the way up to his forearms.
「Kah…! Haah?!」
Zadiris opened her eyes wide in surprise and was rendered breathless by the foreign sensation of having her internal organs being stroked by a pair of cold hands.
「Right now, I have used【Spirit Form Transformation】on my hands to directly examine your body’s situation. I know it is a little painful, but please bear with it.」
Cold sweat formed on Zadiris’s face as she looked up at Vandalieu to complain to him with her eyes, but he didn’t notice as he was focused on what he was doing. It was actually his first time examining someone else’s body using【Spirit Form Transformation】, so he didn’t know just how painful it would be for the subject.
However, he had a good understanding of how to do it correctly. Like a veteran surgeon.
When he was being toyed around with by the researchers of Origin, they had forced him to use【Spirit Form Transformation】to examine various things. This included other living subjects like himself and lead containers of nuclear waste. The Mana produced by Vandalieu had been used to create Magic Items that allowed the use of【Spirit Form Transformation】and greatly advanced medicine and science in Origin.
Putting that aside, he was examining Zadiris’s body right now. The【Spirit Form Transformation】had taken Vandalieu’s arms out of physical existence and they were now plunged into her abdomen. He imagined his arms dissolving into a liquid-like state and getting carried away by Zadiris’s circulatory system, flowing into every corner of her body.
And then Vandalieu’s arms melted smoothly, just as he had imagined. His Spirit Form was directly linked to his mind, so this kind of thing was possible when using【Spirit Form Transformation.】
『… I feel like it’s easier than it was in Origin; is that because my mental strength has increased? Or is it because doing this of my own will is different from being forced to do it?』
Vandalieu was surprised that it was so simple, but this wasn’t the time to lose himself in his thoughts.
「Guh, agh… Haah… Haah…」
He had noticed the agony that Zadiris was in. He cut unnecessary thoughts from his mind in order to get the treatment finished as quickly as possible.
Blood, blood vessels, brain, heart, nerves, stomach, liver, kidneys, pancreas, small intestine, large intestine, ovaries, uterus, bones, muscles, lymph, skin. Their locations and shapes were mostly identical to humans. The only difference Vandalieu could see in Zadiris’s body was that there were glands that produced the paralyzing venom that was secreted from her claws.
Other than the fact that the function of her organs were weakened, her condition was satisfactory. In short, there were no loose blood vessels, aneurysms, cancer or anything like that that might be a cause of death, and no sign of any viral of fungal infection.
It seemed that the cause of her impending death was old age after all.
Since the cause was old age, the methods of dealing with it were difficult but simple to understand. First, Vandalieu had to choose from one of three methods. The first was using death-attribute magic to halt the breakdown of Zadiris’s cells while having another mage use life-attribute magic to revitalize her organs to restore their declining function. This technique had been used in Origin, but there were no life-attribute mages available, so this method was impossible.
Since Vandalieu could only use death-attribute magic, he was only capable of speeding up or slowing down cell death. Unlike life-attribute magic that controlled life itself, he couldn’t grant vitality to another.
『If it were a wound, I would stop cell death while applying a Potion, but surely even Potions aren’t powerful enough to cure old age. Well then, on to the second method.』
The second method was to take measures to support her life – using a spell to directly preventing her from getting closer to death. That was a simple, sure method that would work. At the very least, as long as Vandalieu cast the spell on her regularly, Zadiris could continue living in her current state.
『But I reject that method.』
Looking at it another way, that method would only maintain her current situation. If he was treating a hemorrhage or an allergic reaction, he could postpone her death and let her body’s natural recovery mechanisms get her through it, but in the case of dealing with old age, it was simply delaying the inevitable. Zadiris would never recover and forever be in her weakened state.
And since Vandalieu would need to cast the spell regularly, Zadiris would die soon after he left the village.
There would be no point in such a treatment option. Such a method would allow Vandalieu to continue learning magic from her, but leaving aside what he stood to gain from this, he didn’t want Zadiris to die.
That left one option. The most difficult method, something that researchers on Origin had failed to accomplish, the「reversal of age」that mankind always dreamed of.
It was a technique that removed the『age』from the cells and caused『restoration of youth.』In the experiments in Origin, restoring the youth of individual parts of the body such as the skin, blood vessels and bones had succeeded, but there had never been a successful experiment that reversed the aging of the entire body.
But those had been experiments conducted by someone else controlling Vandalieu’s body and mind. And though his ability with magic had decreased since dying in Origin and being reincarnated in Lambda, his Mana pool had grown.
『Let’s try with the usual forceful approach.』
First, he let his transformed Spirit Form arms diffuse throughout Zadiris’s entire body.
「Ugh…!」
Conscious of Zadiris’s moaning, he tried to be as careful as possible as he let his Spirit Form diffuse into her capillaries, her skin cells and the ends of her nerves.
「…【Youth Transformation.】」
And then he began to pull the『death』from her body.
「Ah…?」
Masters of the fire attribute controlled not flames, but heat directly. They are able to freely increase heat to melt a steel bar, or decrease heat and freeze the surface of an ocean.
In the same way, as a user of death-attribute magic, Vandalieu controlled death directly and theoretically should be able to freely control whether a creature lived or died.
「Kuh… fuh…!」
Like gently scooping up dirt that had gathered over time, Vandalieu steadily removed the death caused by old age from Zadiris’s cells.
And slowly but surely, Zadiris’s age began to reverse. The energy returned to her cells and her organs began to work vigorously once more.
「This takes a lot more Mana that I’d thought it would.」
The Mana cost of every other spell that Vandalieu had cast up until now was incomparable to the amount of Mana he was spending on this process. It was costing him ten million Mana for each year of Zadiris’s age that he reversed.
「B-boy, w-wha… What are you… kuh!」
Fortunately, Zadiris seemed to not be in the discomfort that she was in before, but in pleasure. Since Vandalieu had to reverse the aging on her whole body evenly, he had to patiently and calmly maintain the spell properly, which was easier to do knowing that Zadiris wasn’t suffering.
「For now, I’ve made you a little younger.」
「Made me younger?! Such a thing is not… ah, uhyii, aaah!」
「To be more accurate, I’ve simply removed the aging from your body, so you won’t turn back into a child or anything like that.」
It wasn’t as if he had reversed time; even though he had reversed her age, there was no way she would turn into a fetus or anything of the sort. Removing one’s aging was simply the opposite of moving one closer to death.
If Vandalieu did the same to an aged human, the process would likely stop in the mid-teenage years. Though if he studied harder and came up with different methods, he might even be able to turn a human back into a zygote.
「Kuaaaaaaah!」
Unable to contain herself, Zadiris let out a high-pitched voice.
The pleasant feeling of one’s stiff muscles and pain being relieved spread throughout her entire body, not only in her limbs and torso, but even inside her head. She couldn’t keep her mouth closed against this intense pleasure that was greater than being treated by an expert masseuse. And as she let out all the breath from her lungs, that pleasure suddenly stopped.
「Haah… haah… haah… Boy?」
As Zadiris regained control over her breathing and looked over at Vandalieu, he was lying on his back. The arms that had been in Spirit Form inside Zadiris’s abdomen were now back to their normal, physical state.
「… It’s been a while since I used my Mana to its limit. I’ll sleep a little.」
Vandalieu’s Mana pool was completely exhausted from reversing Zadiris’s age by ten years, so he had quickly returned his arms to their physical state and collapsed, and now he was making the noises of a sleeping person.
「… It would not have killed you to explain yourself a little more.」
Zadiris whispered these words as she felt her own eyelids grow heavy as well. The fatigue that she had felt the past few days had disappeared, but a feeling of exhaustion, as if she had just finished some heavy exercise, lingered in her body.
It was a very strange sensation.
The aging of all the cells of her entire body had been reversed, and this exhaustion was the side effect of her body undergoing such a large change in such a short period of time. However, as Ghouls stopped physically aging at the time of their first pregnancy, the process didn’t affect her physical appearance. If Zadiris had been a human, she would have likely passed out on the spot.
「Well, it is fine. It seems that you have done something that benefits me, and I am sure that nothing bad will happen. Now, let me sleep a little as well.」
Cuddling closely to Vandalieu who was already asleep, Zadiris fell asleep on the rug.
And a young Ghoul warrior by the name of Banad who had spotted the chief of the village and the guest who was being treated like a full member of the community disappear in the middle of the feast was standing outside Zadiris’s house, swallowing his saliva.
He had seen Zadiris and Vandalieu entering her pit dwelling. And when he had put his ear against the wall, he had heard Zadiris’s moans and screams of pleasure.
「Who would have thought that the chief and Vandalieu would… To be able to do it at that age, Dhampirs are amazing.」
Banad whispered to himself with an expression of awe on his lion-shaped face. He should stop the others from treating Vandalieu as a child. Vandalieu was already a fully-fledged adult… no, a king.
The next day, as Zadiris ate with a large appetite, she showed amazement at what death-attribute magic could do when Vandalieu explained what he had done, but also scolded him for not explaining what he was doing first.
「However, that makes little difference to the fact that you have saved my life twice now. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I am grateful enough that if you were a tamer, I would gladly be tamed by you and become your servant. Now then, how shall I return the favor?」
The races that Vida had spawned that had originated from monsters could be tamed. The chances of being tamed successfully were low, as they possessed human-level intelligence and they had originated from a goddess. However, if the individual desired to be tamed, it was a different story.
More than just wanting to repay Vandalieu for saving her life by giving him her own, Zadiris said those words because she had become interested by the idea of following him wherever he went.
Though her heart throbbed in a way unfitting for her age, she couldn’t decide this easily because of her social position.
「I’d be happy if you came with me, Zadiris-san, but wouldn’t the village have problems if you did that?」
As Vandalieu pointed that out, Zadiris came out from her fantasies and back to reality.
「Well, you are right. The village would do well without me, but there is not yet a mage to replace me, so that is a source of concern.」
She did think that the village would be fine without her, but now that her life had been extended, she had new desires. She wanted to teach her skills to other young women as well as Vandalieu, and she was worried about whether her youngest daughter Basdia would be able to have a child.
「And I still haven’t learned No-Attribute Magic or Mana Control yet, so I’ll be in your care a little longer.」
「Oh, I see. I am relieved to hear that. Well then, let us hurry and begin our lesson.」
「… My Mana hasn’t recovered completely yet, so please wait a little longer.」
After that, they ate Gobu-gobu for breakfast and then began another lesson.
However, from today onwards, their lessons would end in another session of age-reversal treatment for Zadiris.
One’s Mana pool increased as one’s level increased, but like other attribute values and skills, it also increased with use.
However, since Vandalieu’s Mana pool was so vast, this method of increasing his Mana pool had been mostly impossible for him. Vandalieu’s Mana exceeded one hundred million. To use up all of that Mana, a spell that cost ten thousand Mana would need to be cast ten thousand times.
Assuming that each cast took ten seconds, ten thousand casts would take a hundred thousand seconds. That would be twenty-seven hours. It would take over a whole day.
However, casting【Youth Transformation】on Zadiris took only ten minutes, even if he cast it until he used up all his Mana and fainted.
And so he had no-attribute magic and Mana Control lessons in the morning, and in the afternoon, he made walnut sauce and acorn powder. After that, he took an afternoon nap like an infant should. In the evening, he had a continuation of the lessons from the morning, and before going to bed, he performed the【Youth Transformation】on Zadiris at her house until he fainted. And then he would sleep. He began to spend every day living this cycle.
It was quite the hard schedule, but it wasn’t so difficult after he came up with the idea to create Stone Golems out of a mortar and pestle. He broke the acorns into smaller pieces, washed them, dried them and then simply added the pieces to the mortar and ordered the pestle to spin, and it would automatically crush them into powder. It was even more ecologically friendly than the electric-powered mortars and pestles on Earth.
And of course, they decided to keep the【Youth Transformation】spell a secret. It wasn’t that they didn’t trust the other Ghouls of the village, and as Ghouls had long lifespans, they wouldn’t have much desire to become younger. After all, monsters often died fighting, not of old age. Individuals like Zadiris who lived out to the end of their lifespans were really rare.
However, the thought of adventurers capturing a Ghoul alive, interrogating them and finding out about the【Youth Transformation】was terrifying. An enormous bounty would be placed on Vandalieu’s head, and countless adventurers and mercenaries would hunt Vandalieu down relentlessly. And if Vandalieu was caught, his freedom would be taken away in a variety of ways, and he would live the rest of his life as a pet that lived only to extend the lifespans of noblemen and royalty.
Neither Vandalieu nor the Ghouls, whose village would likely be destroyed by such events, would want this. That was why they had decided to keep it a secret.
「How is the expansion of your Mana pool?」
「It increases by less than one percent a day. I suppose it’s something like, even dust can pile up to form a mountain*, and perseverance results in improvement*.」
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