Sitting with Viktor and his crew, Hiro leaned back in his chair, looking at the trio. Viktor, Levvie, and Cloak man… what was his name? Oh, right. Judeau. Sounds like Judo. Judo chop. While thinking this, Hiro ordered a tankard and began discussions after it arrived, having sat in silence up to this point.

“So, seems you’ve been busy. Or at least I hope so. I invested in you, after all. Or did I buy your services? Oh well, doesn’t matter which, it’s pretty much the same thing at this point. You were in a bind this time, but is there anything else you need or wanna ask? (Hiro)

“Well, a fight like that was certainly fun, but the odds were too far apart for me to enjoy the thrill. We’ve been gathering people from here and there, but it’s getting hard to keep everyone hidden like you asked.” (Viktor)

“Hm. I don’t know your area of expertise, but I can give you funding for a few things. I’ll give you some options on what to do while I’m gone. Gather influence in each town and city. Take control of the slums… probably would be a bit much for mercs, but I feel you could do it anyway. Create an information network spanning as far as you can hold influence. Recruit trustworthy people throughout the land, be they retired and unable to fight, or whatever. Their experiences could still help. No need to restrain yourself by staying in Brigantium. Well? Sound like enough to keep you busy?” (Hiro)

“... Maybe too much. But, heh, where’s the fun when there’s no challenge? Fine. I’ll accept. But the cost is gonna be quite high, and I know you’re good for it.” (Viktor)

“Sure. I’ll give you extra too, since I’ll leave all the details up to you.” (Hiro)

Saves me the trouble. (Hiro)

Like that, they finished off their drinks while talking about the battle and what had happened up to this point, before returning to Viktor’s room for a moment so that Hiro could conjure up a bunch of currency. While gold bars would be more money in a smaller amount, it would be too suspicious to exchange so many of them.

Hiro first made a copy of the gold coin, using magic to probe and identify all of its details, even if he himself didn’t understand it all, and saved it as a blueprint. With that, he formed more coins by pumping magic into the blueprint. In a way, he was just acting as a coin printer thingy… whatever those machines were called. Press? Minter? He didn’t know. Either way, he kept pumping out gold coins into coin purses until Viktor ran out of pouches.

And just as Viktor was about to speak again, Hiro gave a wave, and turned into fog before disappearing, having teleported back to the Drinking Bear Tavern. Or was it a Pavilion? He didn’t have access to the internet anymore, so he couldn’t search for definitions. If he had read it before, he could probably recall it, but as he hadn’t, he was out of luck for that.

Back in his room, Hiro stretched before abruptly deciding on his next course of action. Having developed his mana breathing enough, he could live without eating if he wanted. He also had enough knowledge in hunting to be able to get fresh meat if he wanted to. So what he wanted to do now, was find a nice and quiet place with a good view, and isolate himself there.

Now that his memory was like a computer where he could more easily recall things, why not take advantage of that, and rewatch some anime? Oh, and magic theory. That’s important too. And exercise.

Heading downstairs, it was night time and the customer count was pretty low at the moment. Seeing Syldis at the counter, Hiro walked over and took a seat as he started a conversation.

“Yo, Syldis.” (Hiro)

“Oh, Hiro. Tankard, is it?” (Syldis)

“Nah, not this time. I’ll be leaving now. Going traveling, since things are settling down around here.” (Hiro)

At first, Syldis seemed surprised, before coming to an understanding, and then nodding as she gave him a rough pat on the head. As expected of a friendly bear.

“I see. Then make sure to stop by for a visit now and then, okay? I’ll keep a room free for you.” (Syldis)

“You’ll be losing out on business like that. No idea when I’ll come around, after all.” (Hiro)

“What business? People barely stay the night anyway, besides those too drunk to leave! Hahah! Oh, and if you see that friend of ours, tell him to come by some time as well. Without bringing trouble with him.” (Syldis)

“I’ll be sure to let the bag of bones know. See ya, Syldis.” (Hiro)

“Until next time, Hiro.” (Syldis)

And like that, Hiro stood up and left just as night was falling. Why at night? Because he forgot that it was night time. But, well, it didn’t matter much to him.

Leaving the town by sneaking out as usual, Hiro teleported to the clearing from previously, and did a magic scan of the area, spreading it out. If possible, he wanted a clearing in a forest, close to the ocean. By making use of magic, he began to move at a high pace, scanning as he went, trying to find a good spot.

After several hours, he managed to find a place he liked. The clearing was the size of a living room in a small house. Not big at all, but enough for him. Within a half hour’s walk was the ocean, and there were plenty of fish. The forest also had plenty of bounty to catch if he wished.

Since it was the middle of the night, Hiro stopped here and decided to get some rest. Setting up several barriers, he promptly went to sleep.

The barriers he used were as follows. Concealment to prevent people from seeing within. Recognition Inhibition, so that people would overlook it even if it was right in front of them, as well as to make them avoid it subconsciously. Physical and Magical barriers to prevent people coming in without permission, as well as protection. And lastly, sensory prevention, so that things like sounds and lights won’t extend outside of the barrier.

No doubt, if a normal mage were to know of all of this, they would be spewing blood for various reasons.

…

……

…

From here, life got pretty repetitive for Hiro. While periodically hearing from his Doppels who were now out and about in the world, he kept up the same schedule each day with no interruptions from anywhere whatsoever. Free to live as he wished, how he wished.

After sleeping however long he felt like it, he would wake up and do an hour or two of exercise, using magic to add intensity by making each muscle have to work so much more to do the usual things. Following this was breakfast which was either game he had hunted, non-meaty choices from nature, or fish. After breakfast, he would either go hunting, fishing, foraging, or practice magic. Lunchtime, he would eat from the same selection, and check on the progress of his cores and rings.

After lunch, the task would be to practice his knowledge. Skinning, dismantling, swordsmanship, sciences, languages, everything and anything that took his fancy. He had all the knowledge, but he hadn’t really integrated it into his body yet. It was sort of the difference between streaming anime online, or downloading it to your hard drive. The more he experienced the information ,the quicker he could recall it, and use it subconsciously without need to constantly think about each step.

After this was dinner, which he would tend to do on a roster so that he wouldn’t get bored of eating the same thing over and over. And of course, roast was on the menu. Wild boar, wild goat, wild deer, wild… uhm… whatever that other thing was called… It tasted like beef though, so it added a nice variety. Though he still hadn’t found anything resembling the taste of chicken. The fish… let’s face it, he rarely ate seafood, and sucked at identifying what each thing tasted like. The best he could do was say “this is fish” and “this is octopus”. Or was it squid…?

After dinner, he would continue his magic theories. Letting his mind go wild, sort through everything, every idea he had, and whatever else. Currently, for a month now since he had been in the forest, there was a particular thing he was interested in. Without the common knowledge of this world, he wasn’t sure what existed, and he didn’t ask his doppels about what they discovered either. Otherwise, he may lose his creativity.

What he was researching was manufacturing magic stones and the higher kind, magic crystals, to be used as power sources in place of electricity. It was a common thing in transmigration and reincarnation stories, so there’s nothing wrong with him doing it too… right? Right?

Currently, he had successfully created both of them. Magic stones could be made by mixing impurities such as a rock, and saturating it with mana, condensing the mana into it, until it eventually turns into a mana stone. Though the amount required is about that of a senior mage’s capacity, on top of having to guide the mana, forcing it to compress as if it was under pressure.

The other way to make one was what he expected would happen with monsters with magic stones, and that is to compress mana until it became solid, with the purpose of mana going in and out of it constantly, as if it was an organ, rather than a battery. While he didn’t understand the full structure of it, his idea was close enough that he could make it. Though it cost more mana, of course.

Along the way, he tested out using other things as a battery instead of rocks and pebbles. As a result, he managed to make a field of glowing flowers in his little paradise, as they adapted to absorbing mana from their surroundings like photosynthesis. He wasn’t sure of they had any medicinal or alchemic properties, though.

Oh, and after using a metal sonar in the ground, he pulled out trace amounts of iron, turned it into a stone, and tried to make it a mana stone. Instead, it seemed to have become a false magic metal. He made tableware with this stuff. Knife, fork, spoon, plate, bowl. Of course, his handy dandy cleaning magic would clean them.

When he stopped digressing and got around to doing magic crystals, it seemed they formed from high density of mana in nature, being subjected to pressure, and coalescing until they became a solid crystal. These couldn’t be forced, and had to be made over time. So how did he cheat this? He added another barrier to contain ambient mana on top of his other ones, and let his mana leak out naturally.

Next, he sped up time in a designated area, and also applied a barrier on it which applied pressure to the inside. He also added an extra measure, a mana attraction barrier, to suck in ambient mana. After some time, he had successfully created several mana crystals the size of crystals, and one large one the size of a heart. Surprisingly, they all turned into perfect spheres. He didn’t know if this was caused by the type of mana, the person producing the mana, the area he was in, or what.

They all had differing colors, but all were translucent, seeming somewhat radiant. An earthy brown one, a nature green one, one clear like the wind, another deep blue like the ocean, and even one that was a lighter blue that looked like pure mana. As for his largest one, it was colored an iridescent purple, just like his eyes. The mana stones weren’t much in comparison. They looked impure, jagged, and dull. Their colors followed the same format, though.

While they looked quite decorative, he was still in the process of playing around with their uses.

As a guess, he would say that they absorbed elements, such as wind, earth, water, nature and so on. For the large one? He felt like that was one because it had absorbed so much of his own mana. After all, during its creation, he had increased the time dilation and poured in as much of his own mana as he could into that small space.

For their uses so far… Well, it’s still ongoing. He has taken to increasing the production of them, and using them for lighting in his forest clearing. He managed to figure out that they could be enchanted, as if programming them. So for starters, he tied a single crystal to each barrier he had made, finding that was their capacity for what he had programmed them with, as well as their throughput of mana.

The barrier spell itself, ambient mana absorption to stay powered, signature recognition and differentiation to allow people entry and exit, and mana convergence which would allow it to blend with other barriers without interfering. Similar to radio frequencies, and how it would be distorted if two were using the same frequency.

Hiro wasn’t sure how others used magic, but for his, because he imagined that the barriers may interfere with each other, it was quite likely they might do so. After he had finished putting each barrier to its own mana crystal, he then realized he probably could have simplified it by making an array or formation. Well, that would need some trial and error anyway.

The mana stones were too low in quality for him to use it for much, but he did user them for some low quality golems. Remember those toy robots, or your more ahem… adult figurines? Well, Hiro decided to create those using his memory for the details, and his knowledge on the human body for the internal structure, and then several mana stones to be the cores.

Because these were miniatures and not full body, he didn’t make them completely human-like internally, and stuck to using things like a skeletal frame and joints which are strengthened, and then the actual body shape built on top of that. Thanks to magic, he didn’t end up with obvious joint and moving parts in his golems, and they were smooth enough to look human, if not for the color of it dirt. So he coated it with a thin layer of iron.

For the mana stones to become the cores, he used three in a simple array. One was a battery, another was a generator which gathered ambient mana and stored it in the array, and the third was the controller which he programmed with human movements. If he had to actually type out each thing like a program, he would have given up. But thanks to the magical thing called magic, he transferred the portion of information related to movement and whatnot directly into the controllers.

Like that, he now had cute little anime-looking girls helping out here and there. Cleaning, tidying, moving things and so on. Reminded him of that anime, H*nd M*id M*y. And like this, another two weeks had passed while he played around.

While Hiro sat admiring the dozen or so anime figures adorned with outfits made with magic, and the piles of mana crystals, he looked over the newest addition to his clearing which had become his living space.

In a small spot where he had dug out about a meter deep to act like a bath, an iridescent blue was glowing. He now bathed in liquid mana, which he had made by condensing mana to the brim, as if it were water vapor, and let it coalesce into a liquid. The concentration was enough that it would probably kill anyone who drank it, since a glass of it was about the same quantity as a magus. He had a lot of time on his hands.

Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if people became mana-drunk just by bathing in it. After all, people can get drunk by being in a sauna that’s had alcohol spirits poured over the rocks.

Oh, and the outside of the barrier had become a fog because of the high concentration of mana in the forest with him constantly living there. That also became a thing.

Also, there were beasts with mana in them that had started appearing now and then, which he slaughtered and ate. Their meat was delicious. Monster? Nah, if his hypothesis was correct, monsters were created with mana and miasma. But there was only mana in his surroundings. So these would probably be classified as mana beasts. All their materials infused with traces of mana.

By the way, what is miasma? Hiro still questioned this. Well, he could figure it out another day. He was having fun now.

The peak of excitement, making all these interesting things.

And rewatching anime. Can’t forget about that.

… And also rewatching some hentai. His memory on that was especially stronger.

He’s only human. Still got humanly desires and whatnot, after all.

The peak of his enjoyment in this world so far, with no disturbances thanks to his doppels taking care of things for him.

Truly, the peak.

Because now…

The part of his world, his soul, his being, that had been given to Vila, who he always felt connected to just like all of his doppels…

Has vanished.