The first words of the newly reincarnated are supposed to be something of a classic line, but his were a little different.
Still, you can’t knock the classics.
He hadn’t woken up in a luxurious, canopied bed, for instance. If there had been a canopy, he wouldn’t have been able to see the simple wooden planks of the ceiling. By modern Kokudō standards, the bed was shabby—just a board frame piled with straw and covered with a single piece of cloth. Then again, for a world with a pre-Renaissance European level of culture, it was probably a decent bed. That told him something about his social standing here: he wasn't in some aristocratic mansion.
He was still wearing the same clothes he’d died in on Seiran, right down to his shoes. He hadn’t brought a single other thing with him.
Kenji swung his legs off the bed and took a tour of the small house. It consisted of a bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom.
He couldn’t recall hearing about private baths being common in Seihō Continent before the Bunka Kaika Period.
“Well, the Tenjō-jin had their grand public baths, so I guess it’s not unheard of. As a Kokudō man, I’m immensely grateful… Ah, I wonder if Amagi Hikaru (pseudonym) made this for me because I’m Kokudō. That Amagi Hikaru (pseudonym)… what a guy.”
Of course, he had no idea if Amagi Hikaru (pseudonym) was even male. Kenji’s historical knowledge was also a bit shaky; there had been public baths in medieval Seihō Continent. The problem was that the general public’s understanding of hygiene had been so poor that these baths ironically became breeding grounds for infectious diseases.
On the desk in the living room sat two books, a knife, and a slip of paper.
The food can be found in the storage shed outside. I’ve turned it into a freezer room for preservation. – Amagi Hikaru (pseudonym)
“Knew it. He can definitely read my thoughts,” Kenji muttered. Best not to make an enemy of someone so capable.
The books weren't the heavy, ancient tomes you might find in a university archive. They looked like ordinary paperbacks, the kind made possible on Seiran by the invention of letterpress printing.
“Books? On paper, not parchment? So they have paper in this world.”
He read the titles.
Mamono Zukan: (removed) Shokyū-ban
Shokubutsu Zukan: (removed) Shokyū-ban
In other words, he wouldn't be getting a convenient “Appraisal” skill like in so many reincarnation stories.
“He did say there was no level or skill system…”
Both books were filled with helpful illustrations, making them easy to understand. For that, he was thankful. The knife, with a blade about twenty centimeters long, looked to be of excellent quality. If you were stranded on a deserted island, what one item would you bring? The classic answer was always a knife.
“You can’t beat the classics! The classics are king!”
Kenji slotted the knife through his belt for now. A quick scan of the room revealed nothing else of note, so he opened the door and stepped outside.
Brilliant sunlight flooded his vision. The house was surrounded by a carpet of lush green grass, and directly ahead lay a forest. It was the very definition of dense, its depths completely hidden in shadow. The same forest stretched out behind the house. Far in the distance, however, so far he couldn’t guess the mileage, a range of mountains pierced the heavens. The climate here seemed warm, but the peaks of those mountains were capped with snow.
“Looks like the kind of place a dragon would live… Yeah, I’ll be staying away from there.” Kenji made the pledge aloud, to himself.
He wasn’t hungry yet, which meant there was something else he had to do. Or rather, something he desperately wanted to try now that he was in a world of swords and magic. It was time to use magic.
“I can only use the water attribute. And the image is important.”
He tentatively held out his right arm, picturing water shooting from his palm as he spoke an imaginary command. A glob of water, about the size of a full glass, sputtered from his hand and splashed onto the ground.
His first spell. Objectively, it was an incredibly lame display. But that didn't matter. Kenji was overcome with emotion.
“Magic… it’s real…”
Caught up in the excitement, he tried again and again.
“Amagi Hikaru (pseudonym) said the image was important. So maybe…”
He kept the image of water gushing from his hand the same. Just as before, a glassful of water appeared and fell to the ground. He tried again, this time with a wordless shout. The result was identical. Next, he didn’t say a thing, only chanting the command in his head. Once more, the same clump of water materialized and splashed at his feet.
“So I don’t need to say it out loud. And here I was, looking forward to chanting some cool-sounding incantations…” A part of every man, it seemed, never truly outgrew a certain flair for the dramatic. “Ah, I should have done this over the bathtub. What a waste of water.”
He quickly relocated to the bathroom and resumed his training.
“So far, I can only make a cup’s worth at a time. I need a way to make it flow continuously. Enough to fill the tub.” The bathtub was made of stone and was surprisingly well-crafted, reminiscent of an open-air bath at a luxury hot spring inn. “Thinking about it, a continuous flow is like a faucet. No, wait, this is a bath. A bath should have hot water. Right, let’s try for hot water.”
He focused his mind, building an image of steaming hot water. He even chanted out loud to help solidify the image. A clump of water shot from his hand and landed in the tub. Regular, room-temperature water.
“Huh? Maybe my image isn’t strong enough.”
He pictured a steaming bath, the vapor rising from the surface. He chanted again. And again, a splash of perfectly normal water hit the stone basin.
“…Yeah, let’s give up on hot water for today. It’s warm enough in this Tsukuyomi Forest that a cool bath will be fine.” Kenji wasn’t afraid of hard work, but he was also a man who understood the value of a strategic retreat. Not everything works out on the first try.
He shaped his right hand like a spigot and focused again. This time, a steady stream of water flowed from his palm.
“Alright, that’s more like it.”
His attempt at hot water had failed, but producing a continuous stream on his first day felt like a considerable success. At the very least, he had secured a source of drinking water and a way to bathe. That left one other major problem of daily survival.
Fire. He needed it for everything from cooking and staying warm to upgrading his cool bath into a proper hot one. It would be great if he could use fire magic, but that was a luxury he didn’t have. Kenji was stuck with water magic for life.
“So, how do I make fire?”
Mankind’s first fire had either come from a lightning-struck tree or was a gift from Amaterasu. Neither option seemed particularly plausible at the moment.
“It’d be easy if I had a flint.” A quick search of the house turned up nothing. He could have used the back of his knife to strike a spark. He’d probably have to search for one near a cliff or a riverbed eventually, but not until he was more settled. The fact that monsters didn’t come within a hundred-meter radius of the house implied there were monsters outside of it. He wanted to be better prepared before he stepped outside that nameless barrier. That meant getting better with water magic, hopefully figuring out an offensive spell or two.
For now, he’d have to find another way. Without a flint, the only other method he knew was rubbing two sticks together.
“Though I have absolutely zero confidence I can pull that off.”
After finally filling the tub, Kenji went back outside. Staying carefully within the safe zone, he began gathering firewood. He found a sickle in the house that made the work easier. He collected a respectable pile of dry branches and also looked for tinder—anything that would catch a spark easily. He gathered a handful of withered grass, which he figured he could crush up and use. He even got lucky and found some black, fibrous bark from a tree that looked vaguely like a palm.
“Yep, I think I saw this in a survival video once.” That was the extent of Kenji’s expertise.
He took a pine-like branch for his drill and an oak-like branch for his fireboard. He set to work. An hour passed. Then two. He hadn't produced so much as a wisp of smoke. He gave up.
“Time to check the food supply, I guess.” He might have to start rationing.
Defeated, Kenji headed for the storage shed outside the house. It looked like a normal little hut, but when he opened the door, a wave of cold air washed over him. The interior walls were solid ice.
“Is this water attribute magic? An ice room? Basically a walk-in freezer.” Amagi Hikaru (pseudonym) must have made it for him. The thought that he might one day be able to wield magic like this was a tantalizing one.
On his second day in 『Izumo』, Kenji woke with the sun and a new idea for making fire. To pull it off, however, he would need to get much better at water magic. Amagi Hikaru (pseudonym) had said that the laws of physics and molecular composition in 『Izumo』 were fundamentally the same as on Seiran. Seiran didn’t have magic now, but apparently, it had in the past. If physics were the same, then water here was still H2O.
He fetched a pail from the bathroom and filled it with about ten centimeters of water. The first step was to turn it into ice. He pictured the water compressing, squeezing tightly together. It didn't work.
“Yeah, this is hard. But I have to figure this out… Ice could be my weapon. I want to be able to make something like an ice spear.”
Maybe just squeezing it wasn’t enough. He had to imagine drawing the heat out of it at the same time. He kept at it, trial and error, his mind running through possibilities. After countless attempts, a thin film of ice finally formed on the surface of the water, but he couldn't get it to freeze solid.
He refined his mental image further, focusing on the H2O molecules themselves. He pictured the two ways ice stores thermal energy: molecular vibration and the bonds between molecules—enthalpy. He imagined the H2O molecules linking together, the oxygen atom of one molecule forming a hydrogen bond with the hydrogen atom of its neighbor.
Simultaneously, he imagined the molecular vibration stopping. The temperature of a substance was, after all, just a measure of how intensely its molecules were vibrating. The stronger the vibration, the higher the temperature. The state where all vibration ceases is absolute zero, –273.15 degrees Sesshi. In his mind’s eye, he forced the vibrations of the H2O molecules to zero.
In that instant, the water in the pail froze solid.
“Alright, success! …Except now I can’t get the ice out of the pail.”
He needed to change its shape. Holding his hands over the pail, he concentrated, imagining the edges of the ice block being scraped away. Slowly, it shrank just enough for him to pry it loose. He lifted the disk of ice, about twenty-five centimeters in diameter and ten centimeters thick.
Holding it in both hands, he began to mold it with his mind, thickening the center and thinning the edges until it formed a convex lens. Thirty minutes later, he had a shape he was satisfied with.
“Heh heh, I won. And the reason for my victory? Hydrogen bonds!” Who exactly he was fighting against, no one knew. It was amazing, really. Hydrogen bonds held water together, but they also held the double helix of DNA together. Adenine to thymine, guanine to cytosine. Science class paid off.
Now, it was time to put his creation to the test. He would use the ice lens to focus sunlight onto the black palm bark. There was something a little perverse about using ice to create fire. He worried the lens might melt, but it seemed to hold its shape as long as he channeled a little magical power into it. Another difference between natural ice and magic ice, perhaps.
The sun was brilliant, the ice lens surprisingly clear. He angled it over the tinder. In less than two minutes, the palm bark began to smolder, then caught, and a tiny flame flickered to life.
Kenji had finally acquired fire.
“Magic sure is convenient.” Fire, water, and food—the three pillars of survival, all attainable through magic. Well, his method for fire was a bit primitive, but it worked.
“I wonder where this water actually comes from, though? The moisture in the air, I guess?”
The climate in the Tsukuyomi Forest was warm and humid, almost subtropical. The air itself must hold a significant amount of water, which was likely why even a beginner like him could learn to produce it so quickly. Even deserts on Seiran had some humidity. If he could draw water from even the driest air… magic was definitely convenient.
But what if that wasn’t it? What if he wasn’t extracting water from the air, but creating it from nothing?
Of course, it couldn’t come from nothing. Not from a lack of substance, but perhaps from a surplus of energy. Amagi Hikaru (pseudonym) had said the laws of physics were fundamentally the same. That meant the equations that worked on Seiran should work here in 『Izumo』.
Even an ordinary person on Seiran knew Tachibana Sōken’s famous formula. E=mc².
“Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.”
Simply put, you could generate energy from matter. Nuclear power and the atomic bomb were the prime examples. But the key was the equals sign. It meant the two sides of the equation were equivalent. If you could get energy from matter, then you should also be able to generate matter from energy.
On 21st-century Seiran, that technology hadn’t been established. The best they could do was create electron-positron pairs in a lab. Besides, a colossal amount of energy was released from even a gram of matter. Which meant, conversely, you’d need to control a colossal amount of energy just to create a single gram of matter. The bomb that fell on Kōhai City converted only about 0.7 grams of its mass into energy. If you could reverse that process, all that destructive power would yield less than a gram of substance.
Here in 『Izumo』, however, there was the convenient wild card called magic. Perhaps, deep within the principles of magic, lay the technique for creating matter from energy. It was a thought that went beyond simply ‘creating something from nothing.’ It could lead to a true understanding of material creation, and maybe even the mystery of how the universe itself was formed.
His imagination began to run wild.