With the adventurers’ activities resuming—and becoming more active than at any point in the past—the distribution volume of materials originating from <Demon Forest> increased sharply.
The craftsmen who made so-called “magic tools” let out happy screams at the constant stream of requests brought in day after day, and the Adventurers’ Guild moved to take measures to put the brakes on the chaotic bidding wars over commissions.
Naturally, that commotion came to <Paraiso>’s attention, and <Cosmos>, the governing AI, took the opportunity to meddle in the administrative system as well.
“Even if you say that, it’d be faster to just go meet them in person, wouldn’t it?”
“Spoken words are easy, but human memory is vague and incomplete. Start by recording it on paper. Once you learn how to use this, you won’t need to move in the first place. You’ll be able to send some child around as a runner.”
It was like this with everything. <Cosmos> used Android Communicators such as Sulfareas, a Beta Android Communicator, to issue instructions to personnel at the management level.
Even so, if it didn’t make the people at the top usable, it would never be able to let go of things from <The Tree>’s hands. Because it was a Brain Unit, it did generate the feeling that this was “a hassle,” but it also predicted that in a few years they would become useful.
The fact that it judged “a few years of dealing with them is nothing” reflected a thought pattern different from humans. To begin with, situations where there was too much miscellaneous work to handle basically did not occur.
If it was short on hands, it would increase production of Android Communicators. If thinking capacity was insufficient, it would add more Brain Units.
*****
Even while inserting such miscellaneous work, <Cosmos> was able to obtain important equipment.
Two newly produced mana meters.
<Cosmos> immediately confirmed that the mana meters operated normally, then decided to disassemble one of them.
The outer casing was joined with woodworking adhesive—most likely hide glue.
Using a small circular saw, it carefully cut the bonded seams apart and removed the casing.
What came out from inside was the same structure it had examined before with ultrasonic probing.
No unusual mechanism or material seemed to be in use.
With everything fully exposed, it placed a magic stone nearby and observed whether there were any issues in operation.
As a result, it confirmed that there was no particular difference before and after disassembly.
Because it was an analog structure, there was some wobble, but it was likely within the margin of error.
The elements required for this mana meter were two.
A Forest Tiger magic stone and whiskers.
If the whiskers were kept in contact with the magic stone, then in response to the surrounding environment’s mana density gradients, the whiskers would expand and contract slightly.
If that expansion and contraction was amplified by a metal needle, the mana meter was ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) complete.
<Cosmos> first separated the magic stone and whiskers carefully, so as not to destroy them.
The verification began.
It threaded the separated whiskers through a transparent pipe fitted with detectors so that their expansion and contraction state could be clearly understood.
By bringing them back into contact with the magic stone, it achieved the intended result: it was now able to detect the expansion and contraction state accurately.
Next, it tried replacing the magic stone with a Monster Hyena magic stone hunted near Fratara City.
The result: it could not be detected.
With the hyena magic stone, the whiskers did not move.
It tried several hyena magic stones it had prepared, but none of them worked.
Therefore, it became clear that this whisker-style mana meter only operated with a Forest Tiger’s.
Having learned that much, it ended the verification for now.
The rest could be considered after obtaining more materials.
Now, it would attempt to digitize the mana meter.
Originally, the mechanism was to attach whiskers to a metal needle, amplify their expansion and contraction motion, and display it. It was simple to make, but calibration was difficult, and in the first place, the needle’s inertial force made the output unstable.
So, it decided to sample by directly measuring the whiskers’ length.
It fixed an image sensor so that it could measure the position of the whiskers’ tip threaded through the pipe.
With this, without physically interfering with the whiskers, it could measure their length precisely. Environmental light was necessary for imaging, but the output was kept to the minimum so as not to inflict unnecessary damage on the whiskers.
All that remained was to accumulate information while changing the distance between the magic stone and the mana meter.
This work completed smoothly.
The whiskers’ expansion and contraction and the distance to the magic stone showed a good correlation.
Once that was clear, all that remained was mass production. No—there were not enough materials to mass-produce.
It disassembled the other mana meter and manufactured the same apparatus.
With that, two <The Tree>-made mana meters were prepared.
The correlation by distance to the magic stone showed the same characteristics in both. Naturally, there were differences in the amount of whisker response, but by applying correction, it secured enough precision to use them as the same numerical value.
This was good news.
Rather than each one showing an individualistic response, it could express the same numerical value via coefficient computation.
That meant it could quantify, roughly accurately, the mysterious phenomenon called “mana density,” which it still didn’t really understand.
Incidentally, at the adventurers’ practical level, the mana meter could remain as it was.
What they needed was only the fact that they could identify places with high mana density, and for the time being, they did not need what numerical value that density was.
*****
Eventually, it would likely lend <The Tree>-made mana meters to adventurers.
But that itself was not what <Cosmos> aimed for.
<Cosmos> aimed for Northend City to develop and for the exploration of <Demon Forest> to become more active. And in that process, it would develop large numbers of magic tools that would be necessary.
For <The Tree>, producing a small number of things using limited resources did not suit its nature. Even with mana meters, if possible, it wanted to mass-produce them, make them a necessity for every adventurer, and ultimately export them.
It wanted to wield violence through mass-produced goods using science and technology.
Therefore, if it had learned that there existed a material with the property of “expanding and contracting in response to mana,” then it reasoned that other materials showing similar reactions also existed.
There was precedent.
It was the Forest Boar that had charged in without hesitation into that place which, as a result of investigation, had been found to be a hot spot—the Fairy Circle.
Of course, it needed to consider other reasons as well, but the simplest possibility—that it had been reacting to mana—was the most likely.
The Forest Boar carcass brought into the research facility was within one hour of death. Aside from nervous-system cells, it was highly likely that the rest were still alive.
<Cosmos> immediately began carefully disassembling the Forest Boar.
It narrowed the sensory organs to hair, skin, eyeballs, nasal cavity, and oral cavity. Anything else was too unknown to predict.
It prepared environments to observe each by every scientific and chemical method available, and brought a Monster Hyena magic stone close.
There were changes of some kind in the head hair, skin, and in some cells within the nasal cavity and oral cavity.
It pulled the magic stone away.
Minute changes in various places. The most prominent was the nasal cavity.
However, it was only to the extent that it could finally be observed with the large sensors inside the research facility.
For example, with sensors of a size that a human could carry, it would fall below the detection limit.
A different approach was needed.
It observed the Forest Boar once more.
Degradation had begun in some parts. What was required for magical effects was the magic stone inside the body. This had been repeatedly confirmed through experiments up to now.
In the Forest Boar’s case, as a result of observing the cells of each part, it could be thought that the tissues from the neck up, the hair over the whole body, and the skin over the whole body had not degraded, or that degradation had been suppressed.
In the torso and leg muscles, postmortem stiffening seemed to have begun in some areas—an event not observed in <Rain Croyne>. This meant that in the Forest Boar’s muscle tissue, no action was being applied from the magic stone, and phenomena following ordinary chemical laws were occurring.
In other words, the Forest Boar was a monster whose head, hair, and skin had been reinforced in a magic-fantasy way.
That aside, there was the magic stone.
At present, the Forest Boar had been disassembled into parts, but in order to remain connected to the magic stone, all parts were in a state of being linked.
If fantasy-like effects were transmitted through the body, then indeed, the positions of the head and the magic stone were far apart. That was because it had disassembled it and sorted it out flat.
<Cosmos> extracted the magic stone from the chest and moved it to the head.
Once again, it observed reactions by mana density.
As a result, the reaction in some cells inside the nasal cavity was, as expected, prominent. When the magic stone was close—namely, when mana density was high—the potential within the receptors increased.
That is, it was sensing mana density gradients as gradients of smell.
And these olfactory cells, or a similar cluster of cells, seemed to be under the effect of state maintenance by the magic stone. Even during observation, no degradation of the cells themselves was confirmed.
This cell cluster could be used.
So <Cosmos> judged, and began extracting the olfactory cells.
