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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 6
Chapter Title: Modern Civilization Tour - 3
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"The world being made up of elements is just common sense, right...?"
It was the reaction of a great mage who had lived her entire life in a medieval fantasy world.
"Hey, that doesn't make any sense. If the smallest building blocks of everything aren't elements... then what about elemental magic? Fireballs and ice spears? Why can some mages handle fire magic like pros but couldn't touch earth magic if their lives depended on it?"
My answer to that was, naturally, "I don't know."
Magic was a concept that only existed in the imagination back on Earth.
Unless I'd been a physics PhD before, there was no way an ordinary office drone like me could use modern science to uncover the fundamental principles of magic—neither then nor anytime in the future.
The Illusion Tower Lord stared at me with the look of someone who'd just been told the world was actually made of chocolate. She countered softly.
"And besides, if the world is different, the laws of physics could be different too. Even the spirit realm operates on completely different rules from the continent. Couldn't our world be the same?"
That was a sharp point.
"Flying in my universe." Famous line, right?
Various "common senses" from Earth might not apply in this other world. After all, magic existed here.
Gods and demons seemed to exist for real, and there were priests and demon summoners who received power directly from them.
Unlike Earth, maybe the land was flat, or the universe wasn't some ridiculously vast expanse but a small, cozy planetary system.
I figured it was possible, so I didn't jump to any hasty conclusions.
That's why I'd run some experiments. To see how much of Earth's scientific common knowledge applied in this world.
"Almost all of it checked out."
"Really?!"
"Of course, I'm not really a researcher or anything... I only tried the simple stuff I could manage."
The classic experiments from science textbooks. Like using a stick's shadow to figure out if the planet was round. Detecting cosmic background radiation. Making crystals form on a stick.
A few were a pain to gather materials for, but the funding pouring into the tower was invincible and divine.
Excluding things infused with magic like mithril, Earth's scientific principles won every round.
I even confirmed the continent was on a round planet.
"So the continent isn't flat after all...!!"
"Rough calculations put the planet's radius at about 7,500 km, but it was just for kicks, so not super precise."
"There aren't cliffs and infinite voids at the ocean's edge...?"
I'd heard those kinds of stories too, back in my early days after reincarnating into this world, when I was farming potatoes with my parents in the countryside.
The local priest would share bread with us while spinning tales like that.
The God of Darkness and the God of Light dividing up the creation of humanity, and so on.
Somewhere in the middle of those stories: the land was flat, so if you sailed out to sea, you'd plummet into the void.
The Illusion Tower Lord clutched her head and groaned, lost in thought. Her common sense had been directly contradicted, and she looked distressed.
I felt a temptation to flood that little head with modern knowledge and turn her into a science convert, but I held back. I'm an illusion mage who loves TRPGs, not a scientist.
Truth be told, whether Earth was flat or round wasn't the important part.
We needed to focus on a slightly different angle.
"Nothing's certain—maybe I'm the one who's wrong. But isn't it fun anyway?"
"...Huh?"
Here in this world, there's illusion magic that summons butterflies.
The illusion created by a kid who's never seen a real butterfly is worlds apart from one made by an adult who's raised them for decades. The adult's wins, hands down.
The power of an illusion scales with how detailed it is and how strongly you believe in it.
Even with a simple knight illusion.
A generic "knight guarding the gate" gets wrecked by one with a backstory like: "Gatekeeper knight, longtime childhood friend from his hometown, currently flirting with the miller's daughter, but his childhood friend just moved next door after heading to the capital, and now it's awkward."
In short, settings are key.
"Couldn't you use this for illusion magic?"
"Ooooh..."
The more thought you put into it, the stronger the illusion. My pioneering of uncharted illusion spells might come from how this knowledge lets me build expansive settings.
The whole world is material for stories.
You can pull TRPG fodder from raindrops trickling down a window.
A single knock from the neighbor sparks every genre, from thrillers to romances.
Sure, I wanted that "You don't know? Well, let me explain..." high from dropping modern knowledge.
But more than that, I wanted to give the Illusion Tower Lord some fun storytelling fodder.
"So instead of making that headache face, why not think of it as scoring some cool new material?"
"S-Still, the universe being that huge is kinda scary... Doesn't it make life feel kinda meaningless...?"
"It means humanity has an insanely vast playground to explore—doesn't that get you excited? Come on, next up: the biology corner. I've got tons to say about this one."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
This godforsaken medieval world's biggest problem was its filth.
They didn't know about germs, so people only washed occasionally and scarfed down food haphazardly...
My medieval family used to rag on me endlessly for being excessive when I'd go to the stream every day to wash up.
But now was the time for my counterattack.
Time to unleash the poison called "hygiene management" on this medieval fantasy.
"This is a microscope. It lets you see tiny things up close and big."
"...And?"
"And this is the Illusion Tower Lord's underwear. How often do you use Clean magic on it?"
The Illusion Tower Lord looked like she was debating whether to rip this insolent illusion—and the world with it—to shreds. But when I doubled down shamelessly, she seemed to think there must be a reason.
She answered with a face that was embarrassed but unsure why.
"...O-Once a week, for starters."
I smacked my forehead at that. Then I set her panties on a microscope slide and urged her to behold her own sins.
The Tower Lord tilted her head to the eyepiece... and jolted back like a cat spotting a cucumber out of nowhere.
"E-Ew... Gross! What are these creepy wriggling slime blobs...?"
"Ah, you don't know, huh—those are."
"Speak properly."
She gathered terrifying power in her fingertip, and I turned polite real quick.
"Those are microorganisms. 'Micro' as in tiny, 'organism' as in living thing."
"...Y-You're not messing with me, right? These are real out in the world too?"
"Yep. Colds, itchy skin, runny noses, fevers—anything wrong with your body that isn't a curse is down to germs. The nasty ones among the microbes."
"Germs..."
"These guys breed in dirty spots. On unwashed skin, unlaundered fabrics, unclean labs..."
"...!!!!"
The Tower Lord startled like she'd been shocked, frantically brushing at her clothes as if bugs were crawling on them.
But invisible things weren't going anywhere.
"Sounds like you cast Clean on your clothes right when they start smelling. By then, they're probably swarming. Swarming."
"Don't use that word...!!"
"That's why you need to wash once a day. And hands often too. It's not me overreacting—you guys are the dirty ones—"
"I get it, I said!"
The Illusion Tower Lord made a genuinely disgusted face. She kept fidgeting.
Like how you get hyper-aware of breathing until you forget about it again.
Now that she knew about the little critters crawling on her skin, it was clearly driving her nuts.
I was certain: the tower's clean-freak squad just gained a new member.
"B-Better if I hadn't known."
"You'd have been dirtier."
"Don't call a lady dirty!"
"Next up, war weapons?"
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I hooked up a computer to a movie theater screen and showed some video footage.
A gun.
"...Something even non-mages can use? Feels like it'd make commoners fight all the time..."
"Doesn't it feel threatening? Like if every peasant in a territory armed up and revolted."
"One shot of the Golden Magic Tower's Metal Distortion would turn them all to scrap metal...?"
Yeah, guns apparently didn't feel that intimidating.
In a world where human effort could turn you into a walking tank, that tracked.
What about missiles, then?
"Mages garrisoned could defend, but if you mass-produce them on purpose..."
Nukes.
"...Was your home world full of, uh, crazy mages who wanted to drag the whole world to ruin?"
"Um..."
"Common sense-wise, a weapon that could accidentally turn everything to ash? That's on the level of a dark mage trying to revive an evil god, right?"
"Pretty much."
"But... if the neighbors might revive an evil god, better safe than sorry, so we prep our own evil god revival... something like that?"
"Y-Yeah...?"
"Was your home world full of crazy mages who wanted to drag the whole world to ruin?"
I mulled it over... and couldn't deny it.
Was humanity's madness so bad that even otherworlders went, "Are all your mages insane?"
"If science advancing leads to stuff like this, maybe it's better for everyone to stay ignorant..."
The Tower Lord muttered, looking like she'd spotted a massive, terrifying squid.
Before plebeian policies started bubbling up in that great mage's head, I guided her to the next segment.
"Finally, let's head to where I used to live."
"Where you lived?"
"Yeah. The last part's probably gonna be my backstory—wanna hear it?"
The Tower Lord nodded.
Just to be sure, I double-checked.
"Can skip if it sounds boring."
She conjured an illusionary ladle and bonked me on the head.
Felt like "Spill it all, no holding back." So I laughed.