Chapter 11: Awake

「Ugh, seriously! Why are you so crude, you stupid monkey!」

Once again today, Light Blue was cursing as she swatted away flying wooden slips.

「Isn’t Light Blue just being too fussy? Hey, Ruful.」
「Uh, um, I wonder…」
「That’s not true—. Right, Rin‑san, you think so too, don’t you?」
「I think boys are like this. The boy I used to be close with was like that too.」
「Whatever, but can you stop flinging wooden slips at each other!? You two might be fine, but if one hits me it’s fatal!」
「S‑sorry…」

At Tia’s heartfelt outcry, we all bowed our heads together.
That said, pixies are a race that has survived this world overloaded with combat power by relying on their lightness. It’s not so easy to hit one, but I kept that to myself.

「Would you call that… getting along?」
「It counts.」

They feel like they’re always fighting. When I muttered that, Nina nodded without hesitation.

「There are a lot of young elves like that lately—looking down on non‑elves and refusing to deal with them properly.」
「Ah… so that’s it.」

Fighting, conversely, means you’re properly seeing the other as an equal.
Well, I can’t say I don’t understand the feeling.
Elves differ from other long‑lived races. They’re probably the only humanoid species with an unlimited lifespan.
At least, I’ve never heard of an individual who died of old age.
And almost without exception, they use magic more skillfully than other races. No wonder they look down on them.

I mean, six hundred years ago humans were treated about like livestock.
Thanks to Ai and Dalga that view improved a lot… but history repeats, or maybe we’re drifting back toward the old perception.

「Is Light Blue really that young?」

Elf ages are honestly impossible to tell. By looks alone, Nina seems younger than Light Blue.

「She should be just a bit over a hundred.」
「That’s young.」

I blurt that out and realize I’ve changed.
No human has lived to a hundred yet.
And yet here I am thinking a little over a hundred is “young.”
Lately I’ve been in human form so often I haven’t been conscious of it, but I’ve become a dragon through and through.

「She especially adored Violet. I figure she came to prove elven strength by thrashing the Sword Clan—the ones Violet says are stronger than she is.」
「That’s…」

I hesitated over how to answer.

「My condolences… I guess.」
「Honestly, yeah.」

When I said only that, Nina nodded deeply.
Within the Sword Clan, Yutaka is by no means among the strong.
But I don’t mean compared to the Sword Clan across the ages.

He already makes it the twenty‑somethingth generation. There are over a hundred humans of Sword Clan blood, and almost all of them are martial folk.
Among them, Yutaka ranks nearer the bottom.

…However, their art—constantly training, devising, honing the sword—has clearly grown stronger with each generation. It’s progress at a pace elves simply can’t keep up with.
Even Nina can no longer beat a Sword Clan member over twenty.

「Sensei, it’s done!」

Yutaka hoisted a big waterwheel and reported in.
Looking over, everyone was holding waterwheels of whatever size and shape they fancied.

「All right, let’s try them.」

We’d made waterwheels carved with characters and were going to see whose would spin best—that was the idea.

「So, who goes first…?」
「I’ll do it!」

Before I even finished speaking, Tia shot her hand up.

「Um… where’s your waterwheel?」

But she’s palm‑sized. She couldn’t possibly hold something as big as a waterwheel, and her hands were empty.

「This.」

Tia jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

「We made it together, the two of us, sensee.」

What lay beyond was a gigantic waterwheel in Ruful’s hands.
How many meters is this thing…?

「Nina, can I ask you?」
「Mm.」

There was no way to mount a waterwheel larger than me in dragon form on the watermill. Nina immediately grasped my intent and made a big tree grow by the water.
When we slid the axle into a neat hole opened midway through the trunk, the bottom of the wheel dipped into the channel. As expected of Nina—perfect calibration.

「All right then…」
「Oh, right. Let’s use “Awake” as the activation call.」
「Awake?」

I told that to Tia as she approached the wheel, and Nina shot me a sidelong glance.
Her expression didn’t change, but those eyes said, “I’ve never heard that word.”

「It means something like “wake up” or “awaken.” If we say “move,” that itself becomes a spell, right? I wanted a cue that only triggers the written magic.」

We don’t normally use English, so it’s distinguishable from spells. Same logic as not using Japanese for trick commands when training a dog.

「Ah… magic language, then.」

Nina accepted it in some odd way, and even Yutaka and Rin started nodding, “Magic language, huh…”

「Huh? What’s this “magic language”?」

I’ve never heard of it.

「You know those odd‑sounding words you only use when you explain magic? The ones you’d write in katakana. “Energy,” “dragon breath”… and “dragon,” for example.」
「Ah… yeah…」

I hadn’t deliberately avoided loanwords, but come to think of it, in a primitive lifestyle there weren’t many chances to use them. I didn’t realize it had come to that…

「Well, fine then. Tia, go ahead.」

Those katakana words in Japanese mix not just English but all sorts of languages. It’s easier to just call them all “magic language.” It’s not like I know exactly which word came from which language anyway.

「Okaaay. Then… Awake!」

Tia slapped her palm down with gusto and shouted.
But for all that spirit, the waterwheel didn’t budge.

「Hey! Why won’t it move—!」

With Tia’s shrieks raining down from above, I scrutinized the wheel.
The surfaces of the huge paddles were crammed edge to edge with amazingly tiny characters.

I see. On the massive body Ruful assembled, Tia had exploited her size to write an enormous amount of text. It looks rough, but it’s surprisingly well thought out.

…But they were a bit lax in one respect.

「Tia, repeating the same phrase over and over doesn’t do much.」

The wheel only said, “Take the water and turn.” That one line was packed all over it. Repeating the same text has no effect—just like with spoken spells.

Had they varied the phrasing and written this much, it would have moved properly. Looking closely, the wheel was creeping along ever so slowly. A single‑verse line just can’t drive something this massive.

「Then, mine next, please—」

What Light Blue raised was a waterwheel with graceful curves—downright artistic. It looked beautiful, but how would it function as a waterwheel?

「Um, it was “Awake”… right?」

The moment Light Blue spoke the activation word, the wooden wheel writhed.
It changed shape as if alive to catch the water, expelled it, and spun. Amazing… amazing, but what is this motion? It’s nothing like any waterwheel I know.

「Well? How is it?」

Seeing my astonishment, Light Blue puffed her chest out with a smug little “hmph.”

「Yeah… no, it’s impressive.」

Frankly, it looks like some kind of bug—it’s extremely creepy.
Still, it was certainly spinning more nimbly than Tia’s.
The drawback is that the rotation speed isn’t constant.

However, the motion was probably too complex; Light Blue’s wheel soon stopped.

In the end, we already knew we couldn’t make a waterwheel run forever.
Even magic carved into writing fades with time like ordinary magic. Worse, the effect can only reach the inscribed object itself. That’s why, no matter how many times he tried, Yutaka kept launching the wooden slip.

But it isn’t without advantages. You can reuse the spell.

Spoken spells have to be chanted at length each time, but once carved, written ones trigger with just a single activation line. If we could make a wheel that, once started, would keep turning for a few hours, threshing and milling would get much easier.

「Then, please try mine next.」

Yutaka hefted a large wheel and set it into the mill. He must have measured carefully—the size was perfect. The build was the most precise so far, and looked sturdy to boot.

「Awake!」
「Oh…!」

As the wheel picked up speed with Yutaka’s call, I couldn’t help crying out. Perfectly proper, textbook operation. Yes, yes—this is what we want.

However, the momentum didn’t stop; the speed kept rising.

「…Yutaka, what did you write on the wheel?」
「Yes! I wrote this!」

Yutaka drew an arrow symbol on the ground to show me. …I see. As long as the meaning is there, it doesn’t have to be words.

「This isn’t just “move when the water pushes you”—it’s amplifying the force itself, isn’t it?」
「Yes. I thought maybe water alone wouldn’t be enough to turn it.」

At Yutaka’s nod, I grasped the reason for the acceleration.
It was probably continuing to amplify the rotational force itself.

If it has the advantage of being reusable, written magic also has its downsides.
Namely, the outcome can diverge from the intent.

With chanted magic, the output may be too large or too small, but you don’t get results completely unlike what you envisioned. With writing, it can skew. Yutaka didn’t intend it to accelerate this much; it wasn’t just too much output—the very behavior of “keeps accelerating” differed from what he meant.

「Kyaa—!」

The rapidly spinning wheel threw its axle, slid along the channel, and rolled toward Light Blue.
It just happened to be that way, but why is she the one who gets caught up in it every time…?

「Then I guess mine is last.」

Ignoring Light Blue and Yutaka as they started bickering noisily, Rin produced a simple ring about as big around as her waist. No paddles, no axle hole—it didn’t look like a waterwheel at all.

「Sensei, you basically want the waterwheel to turn the millstone, right?」

Saying that, she headed not for the channel but into the watermill.
The wheel isn’t connected, but the milling itself is done inside this shed.

「Awake.」

Rin fitted the ring she held onto the millstone and spoke.
The mill began to turn round and round.

「Then it’s quicker to just move the millstone with magic directly, right?」

Ah! When you put it that way, of course!
I’d been so fixated on the waterwheel that idea had fallen completely out of my head.

「We don’t need water, do we?」

Well, true enough.

And you, a mermaid, are the one saying it?
I couldn’t help thinking that.