Chapter 11: Grimoire

「Branch, move!」

The Water Apple’s branches faintly sway as if obeying my words.

「Flame, soar!」

But the next words vanished into the void without so much as rustling a leaf.

「Hmm... O branch of the Water Apple, stretch and give me a single leaf.」

As I spoke, the branch thrust out just so and dropped a leaf into my hand.
I fixed my gaze on the leaf, then, steeling myself, began an incantation.

「...O forbidden Tree of Knowledge that towers from Purgatory, O Darkness Water Apple, now cast off thy yoke and grant unto me thy fruit—」
「What are you saying?」
「Wah!?」

Startled by the voice suddenly calling from behind, I literally jumped.

「N-Nina. You’re up early.」
「The forest was all rustling, so I came to check. What was that just now?」

I’d gone to the trouble of picking pre-dawn so no one would see me!

No—calm down. There’s no way she’d understand the concept of 『chuunibyou』.
Even if she heard me, it shouldn’t be a problem.

「I feel like you were saying something super weird, though.」

This girl’s instincts are way too sharp!!

For the first time, I found myself cursing her extraordinary perceptiveness.

「It’s only natural you’d think it odd. I was testing a groundbreaking way to use magic—one that could boost its power severalfold. That said, to optimize it we need various experiments, and some of them may seem a touch peculiar—」
「Say that thing from before again for me.」
「...Have mercy, please...」

I conceded defeat with good grace.

「Still, it really is easier to use magic while saying it out loud, huh.」
「You noticed?」
「Kind of. I thought it was just me, though.」

Nina stretches out an arm and whispers to the tree, 「Give me a fruit too.」 A branch slips out, moves with a smoothness like a human hand, and places a Water Apple into her palm.

An astounding precision.

「It seems the longer the spell, the greater the effect.」
「Really?」

She apparently hadn’t realized that, and I nodded with pride.

「Also, piling on words unrelated to the effect does nothing.」
「Well, obviously.」

That’s what I get for getting a little carried away.

「Maybe it’s obvious to you, Nina, but it’s precisely those things we need to verify carefully.」
「Hmm.」

Even as I explained, she just bit into the Water Apple, looking uninterested.

「Hey, so, the longer the better, right?」

As if struck by a thought, Nina asked that.

「Yeah. Don’t know the reasoning, though.」

When I nodded, Nina tossed the Water Apple core away and gently closed her eyes.

『O trees, you who sink roots into the earth, who let leaves flourish, who bear flowers, who bring forth fruit.』

It was her Elvish—the first I’d heard in a while.

『Hear my voice in the whisper of winds that sway the groves, in the murmurs of falling leaves, in the sound of water drawn up by roots.』

Her words flowed—sung, woven together.

『Hold them fast with those supple arms. Our sustenance—the four‑legged beasts, the white leapers—bring them to me.』

The very moment that song ended—

—the entire forest roared.

“Rustling” didn’t begin to cover it. The trees shuddered, writhed, stirred, and let out a low bellow. The earth shook, birds burst from the branches, and somewhere a beast’s roar resounded.

「Sensei, are you all right!?」

Startled by the noise, Ai sprang up and, wearing whatever she had on, ran straight to me.
Men peered out from the cave as well, spears in hand.

And then—

Pof.
With a sound that light, a rabbit was tossed down right in front of Nina.

I, Ai, the cave folk—and even the rabbit itself—stared wide‑eyed, not understanding what had just happened. The first to move amid the confusion was the one who’d started it all—Nina.

「Got one!」

She shot out a hand and clamped the rabbit’s long ears in her grasp. It thrashed, trying to bolt—but it was already too late.

「That scared me... I didn’t think it would turn into this.」

Holding the struggling rabbit away from her body, Nina let out a breath of relief.

「I was honestly stunned too.」
「Nina‑san, was that your magic?」

Clinging to my foreleg, Ai’s eyes darted back and forth in confusion.

「I never imagined the incantation would have this much power...」

I resolved, then and there, never to use a fire spell with an incantation.

「Can I do it too?」
「It’s still a little early for you, Ai...」

To compose a spell you need a large vocabulary and the ability to weave words into sentences.
Even Nina couldn’t compose spells in Japanese.
Ai had learned quite a lot of words, but this was still a tall order.

「I see...」

Seeing her droop like that makes me want to do something for her—but this isn’t a problem that can be solved overnight...

And then, mid‑thought, an idea struck me.

「No—maybe not.」

I didn’t know if it would work, but it was worth a try.
If it succeeded, it might solve a host of problems at once.

「All right, let’s try it. Will you help me?」
「Yes!」

The rising morning sun finally caught Ai’s beaming face as she nodded brightly.





「O one who wears white raiment, kin of icicles, snow spirit Jack Frost. Lend us your breath. Wrap it in freezing palms.」

Holding an unglazed jar, Ai fixed her eyes on the wooden board I held up and chanted the spell. A white mist billowed up inside the jar, and I could clearly see with my own eyes that it was cold air driven down below freezing.

Without delay, we covered the mouth of the jar with a large leaf, set the board on top, and sealed it with a stone.
A simple freezer, improvised in the Stone Age.
It wouldn’t last like the real thing, but gut a fish and it should keep two or three days. If we could store the easily obtained fish and shellfish, life would get a lot easier.

「I did it!」
「Yeah. Thanks, Ai. You did great.」

I gently patted the unusually proud Ai on the head with a fingertip.

「No, it’s thanks to you, Sensei. Because you made this.」

Blushing, she modestly pointed at the board I was holding up.
On it was written the spell she had just recited.

You could call it the oldest grimoire in the world.
Though it’s crude—written in charcoal on a wooden board, all in hiragana.

Right—there’s no need to compose a spell yourself. Even one someone else made will function, so long as three elements are firmly in place.

Those three are meaning, will, and intent.

First, you have to understand the meaning of the words in the spell.
I tested this by giving Nina only the English sounds, and as expected, if the caster doesn’t grasp the meaning, the spell fails to be a spell.

Next is will. Even with meaning and intent, without the will to use magic, nothing happens. Mindlessly reciting the words won’t trigger a spell—which is a relief. We’d be in trouble if stray words in daily life kept setting magic off.

And the most important is intent.
The words in a spell need intent—why that word belongs there; in other words, a relationship. Nina called that obvious, but when we looked closely it wasn’t that simple.

Just repeating the same word won’t do.

As Nina had chanted, 『O trees, you who sink roots into the earth, who let leaves flourish, who bear flowers, who bring forth fruit.』 Even though all refer to “trees,” by calling them in different ways you add intent—and by that intent, the magic grows in power.

Conversely, you could say that up to now, when we weren’t using spells, we were working magic with only meaning and will.

「Sensei, may I ask something?」
「What is it?」
「Have you ever seen Jack Frost, Sensei?」

Ai’s simple question left me at a loss.
Jack Frost—the snow and ice spirit from England’s folklore.

I don’t know whether spirits actually exist in this world. I used that form simply because repeated invocations pair well with personification in spells.

「Yeah, I have.」

If she recognized it as a nonexistent being, the spell might lose its efficacy.

With that in mind, I lied to her.
Losing the cold spell’s power right now would be a problem.

And it wasn’t entirely a lie. I had met him—
...in a game.

「I want to meet him too.」
「Maybe so. If you study magic hard, you might meet him someday.」

To Ai’s childlike words, I answered like an adult coaxing a child to believe in Santa Claus.

——I never imagined that the little lie I told then would lead to something outrageous later.