Asahi stood on stage, delivering her impassioned lecture.
And watching her every move were her five sisters.
“If magic can be canceled out by magic, then we just have to make use of that! ...Which brings me to this: we actually already have the materials needed to pull that off. Can any of you guess what they are, Big Sisters?”
At that point, Asahi threw the question to her sisters.
The five of them glanced at one another.
“...The most likely answer is burnstone.”
Akane answered for the group.
Burnstone was a mineral with the property of generating heat when pressure was applied to it.
But the principle behind it remained completely unknown.
A great deal of time and many painstaking procedures had revealed the phenomena it produced and some of their characteristics, but that was all.
“As expected of you, Big Sister! Exactly right! We still don’t know whether our AI species can directly produce magical phenomena, but we already possess a lump of absurdity in mineral form: burnstone!”
The next thing Asahi displayed was footage of a flame being applied to some kind of plate.
“This is that <Big Moth> armor from before...”
The <Big Moth> armor was being blasted with a burner. Since it was a biological material, it ought to have been highly vulnerable to heat.
And yet in the footage, the armor showed no sign of deforming and simply continued to endure the flames.
“It’s highly heat-resistant too! If we assume the magic acting on it is the kind that refuses to accept its own destruction, then it follows naturally that it would exhibit high resistance against anything—blunt impact, piercing force, heat, whatever!”
“You’re using ‘follows naturally’ wrong.”
At Akane’s deadpan correction, Asahi shot back a wink.
Apparently she had no intention of amending her wording.
“Now then, moving on.”
The next image showed a cube-shaped mineral clamped in a vise.
That was probably the burnstone they had just been discussing.
“This is a five-centimeter block of burnstone! If you clamp it and squeeze, it makes a nice little stove, but setting that aside...”
A sheet of <Big Moth> armor was placed on top of the cube. Then the words Pressure Applied appeared on screen.
“And now for the surprise! When the heat generated by burnstone comes into contact with magic...”
The <Big Moth> armor that had remained utterly unaffected even under the burner flame—
began gradually changing color from the point where it touched the burnstone.
The discoloration spread visibly by the second, and before long the entire <Big Moth> armor had turned a vivid crimson.
“The burner’s heat caused no protein denaturation. But the heat released by burnstone acts directly on the armor itself like this, reliably inducing thermal denaturation in the structural proteins!”
“...Does that mean this burnstone heat could also disable those magic barriers?”
At Eve’s hopeful question, Asahi shook her head and brought up another set of data.
“Sorry, we’re not that far yet! But the possibility is definitely there! Here’s a more detailed observation set...”
“This is observational data on the heat output produced by burnstone! In theory, burnstone of the same size ought to produce almost the same amount of heat—but somehow, when it’s in contact with <Big Moth> armor, the heat output appears to drop!”
“So the missing heat is being consumed to cancel out the magic that maintains the armor’s structural integrity?”
At Ichigo’s guess, Asahi nodded enthusiastically, beaming.
“Exactly right, Big Sister Ichigo! We also tried using normal <Big Moth> armor—the proper stuff, much stronger than the experimental samples—and with the heat from a small burnstone, no denaturation occurred! But when we used a larger burnstone and applied enough pressure to generate very high heat, we confirmed an effect! In other words, if we can properly bring burnstone heat into contact with a magical effect, it should be possible to attenuate or even nullify it!”
For <The Tree>, ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) this was an enormous discovery.
Until now, they had only managed to saturate magic barriers by smashing them with immense amounts of kinetic energy.
Now there was a chance they might be able to break through them much more easily by using the absurd fantasy mineral known as burnstone.
“If we can produce magical phenomena, then other magical tools besides burnstone might work too... but of the things we currently have secured, burnstone seems like the one with the greatest offensive potential!”
“Well, the others are mostly cooking stoves and measuring devices and stuff like that.”
As for burnstone, they currently had as much of it as they wanted.
After all, it could be mined practically anywhere in the United Kingdom of Aphrasia. It was an absurdly convenient raw material, buried throughout the entire country.
That said, the fact that nobody understood why that was the case on a fundamental level made it terrifying in its own way.
“For the time being, we’ve confirmed that if you grind burnstone into powder and strike it with a hammer, it reacts kind of like gunpowder...”
“Wasn’t there something about the smaller the grains are, the lower the heat output?”
“It seems that as long as the particles are gathered closely enough together at very short range, you can still retain a certain amount of heat generation!”
And apparently Asahi had already begun trying to weaponize burnstone.
Footage appeared of powdered burnstone being compressed into a pellet and then struck with a hammer. The moment the hammer crushed the pellet, it produced a violent flash, a thunderous bang, and a spray of sparks in all directions.
“The burnstone reached ultra-high temperatures, melting the surfaces of both the base and the hammer, while thermal expansion of the air blasted the molten material outward! I think we’re looking at momentary temperatures of around three to four thousand degrees Celsius!”
“Oh... So if we do it right, that means we could potentially turn it into shells or something and slam it into targets?”
“I’d say that possibility is pretty high, Big Sister!”
Powdered burnstone had a lower heat output overall, but it produced explosive thermal reactions.
If they could drive that into a magic barrier, they might be able to saturate it much more efficiently than before.
“At the very least, we managed to thermally denature <Big Moth> armor that had been hardened with magical power! And what we were experimenting on just before this was <Rain Croin>’s body!”
The subject Asahi had used in the experiment was <Rain Croin>’s corpse, which had been stored in Second Fortress Black Iron. It still showed no signs of decay and remained perfectly preserved.
“While heating it with pressed burnstone, we were able to sink an ordinary blade into the flesh. In other words, within the range affected by the heat generated from burnstone, we can nullify hardening caused by magical phenomena! <Rain Croin> is hard all the way to the core of the body, but if we can build a mechanism that bores in and blasts burnstone heat forward along the direction of penetration, we might be able to drive straight through all at once!”
Which meant, in effect, that they might be able to mass-produce pseudo-<Penetration> projectiles using burnstone.
If they could make that practical, then in terms of anti-threat-organism firepower, <The Tree>’s offensive capability would leap forward dramatically.
“The problem is defense against attacks... As things stand, about all we can probably field is composite armor—something like attaching <Big Moth> armor on top of ordinary armor...”
“<Big Moth>, huh... Since it’s a biological material, you can’t really secure it in bulk, can you?”
“Exactly, Big Sister. The amount of material we get is directly tied to the number of individuals, so overhunting is out. And with bodies that huge, livestock raising... or farming, I guess? would probably be difficult too. Well, that’s something we’ll have to think about as well, but for now, I want to finish developing this anti-magic warhead using burnstone powder! What do you think!?”
Asahi practically threw herself at her, face glowing with excitement. Catching her, Eve gave a nod.
“Well done, Asahi. I have no objections to development proceeding. Akane, help her organize the data. Maybe Olive can help with the design?”
“Yes, Big Sister. No problem. I’ve already finished reading in the data.”
“...Leave it to me.”
Akane clenched a fist with a determined little huff, while Olive’s tail wagged furiously with excitement.
And so, at last, <The Tree> faction had seized its first real thread for cracking the magic fantasy that ruled this planet.
