“Rei, you absolute legend!!”
The middle-aged slime nearly threw himself at me before thinking better of it. Lucky. Though I did find myself wondering — if he had, would it have felt like jelly?
I genuinely felt bad. That was a lot of work to dump on him.
“Indeed — as expected of Rei-sama. Thank you for providing such capable monsters.”
“I mean… I underestimated how seriously Primila takes her farming. I can’t do precise work when I split off too many instances — same as Pilukaya — and she just kept right on asking anyway.”
A side of Primila I hadn’t seen before.
Then again, given how she is normally, doing everything to an exacting standard was probably par for the course.
“Growth rate has been considerably faster than usual. Nutrient levels in the soil are being maintained carefully as well. We may be able to mass-produce Mana Fruit.”
She was definitely pleased. Slightly louder than usual, with feeling behind the words.
“And we can make mana recovery potions from the fruit, right? How much would they actually restore?”
“Unfortunately, fully restoring even Pilukaya-sama or Rigma-sama’s mana — let alone my liege’s — would be difficult.”
“I am the Demon Lord.”
“I am a Heavenly King~”
“I am an old man.”
The last one is irrelevant. Though if it didn’t work for Rigma, it wouldn’t work for Primila either.
Then again, unlike Lady Fiona, surely enough bottles would add up.
As long as the per-bottle recovery wasn’t in the single digits.
“Can you put a number to it?”
“A number… you ask difficult things. It’s not easy to know your own mana in exact terms.”
“I think last time I had some of that fruit made into recovery potion — three bottles and I was back to full.”
“So roughly a third of maximum mana per bottle, for everyone except Lady Fiona.”
That would put it around forty, give or take.
Going by Pilukaya as the highest-mana benchmark, anyway.
“…Left out again.”
“You needn’t worry. Around two hundred and fifty bottles ought to fully restore Lady Fiona as well.”
“T-that many?! …But if that’s what it takes to fill one chest…”
“Please don’t. That volume of production isn’t feasible.”
I wasn’t sure where she was about to go, but Primila caught Lady Fiona firmly by the scruff.
This is the Demon Lord. Though in fairness, she does hold herself together when it counts — which is probably good enough.
“Probably best to keep a few bottles on each of the Heavenly Kings. Pilukaya especially.”
“Works for me. I can actually fight without worrying about running dry.”
“Pilukaya… there happens to be a chest right here. Would you like to channel a little mana into it?”
“My liege. Please do not lead your subordinates astray.”
Getting chided for misdeeds — by a Demon Lord. Something philosophically peculiar about that.
…There I go, still thinking with pre-reincarnation assumptions. That’s the same attitude as those reincarnates who tried to kill me just for being a demon. I need to watch that.
“Besides, I don’t think my mana would pull a resurrection elixir anyway~”
“Hmph… I suppose I really must carve my own path.”
The sentiment was fine. The execution was very Lady Fiona.
Primila returned to the farm with an air of resignation, and I ended up consoling Lady Fiona for a while afterward. At least she didn’t get scolded this time — there’s something to be said for that.
◇
“…As expected of Rei-sama.”
“I genuinely didn’t do anything…”
Primila had called me over, and I followed her to the farm where the newly created monsters were stationed.
They weren’t working, though.
Not taking a break, either. Not slacking.
They’d simply run out of things to do.
Because the farm was already full of fruit.
“This is way faster than normal, right?”
“Yes — and I’ve never seen them grow this large.”
“Normally about the size of an apple, yeah~”
“These are closer to watermelons. I’m a little worried about the flavor, though we’re mostly processing them into potion anyway.”
Some kind of abnormal growth had apparently occurred.
Probably the Fairies and Golem going all out.
“The size increase seems to have come with greater mana content as well.”
Lady Fiona added that, but I had no way to verify it myself.
Not something I could check with a status readout — beyond my ability to detect directly.
“Let’s try processing one.”
“Primila can do that too? Is there anything you can’t do?”
“Many things. I failed to protect my liege when it mattered most, and the reconstruction of our base has been entirely in Rei-sama’s hands. I’m simply doing what I can.”
Her list of “what she can do” seemed rather extensive, but Primila clearly had her own feelings about what she hadn’t managed.
Pilukaya was the same way — always finding something to do in Lady Fiona’s name. And Rigma, for all his reluctance, had ended up working harder than anyone at the inn and the farm.
Lady Fiona’s subordinates are devoted to her.
“…If the oversized fruit yields better-than-usual recovery potions, and one day’s output could fill three… no, five… maybe even ten chests…”
…That concern is probably part of why everyone works so hard for her.
Her raw power was in a completely different tier from everyone around her — and yet Lady Fiona proceeded to be magnificently hopeless about it.
“Crushing the fruit with water magic, drawing out the condensed mana into the water — that’s the process.”
“That looks like complete destruction.”
“Because the water is under my control, the mana transfer is total rather than partial — no waste.”
Primila appeared to suddenly go berserk, but since everyone else was watching calmly, this was presumably her way of making medicine.
The ability to manipulate water at will had its practical applications.
“Could Rigma do something similar? Being a slime and all?”
“…You want to drink something that came out of my body? Also, I’m mercury.”
“That would kill you.”
“It probably would.”
I briefly considered the possibility of filling a chest with a small amount of Rigma and using it as a trap.
On reflection — if something like that got out, dungeon traffic would probably drop off entirely.
“Done. Rei-sama, please try it first.”
“Me? Wouldn’t it be clearer with Pilukaya?”
“This was made possible by Rei-sama’s efforts. The first taste belongs to you.”
“I’ll take you up on that.”
Current mana: 5. Maximum mana: 38.
A standard mana recovery potion would restore me to full in one go.
I checked the numbers and drank.
The flavor was unexpectedly good. Nothing like what I’d imagined medicine would taste like — more like plain fruit juice.
“So the mana is—”
Izumi Rei — Mana: 105 / Strength: 16 / Technique: 25 / Fortitude: 24 / Agility: 17
That has to be wrong.
A bug? Had the weird item finally broken something?
“What’s the matter, Rei? You look visibly rattled.”
“Did something happen physically? I’m so sorry — if it was the potion—”
“No, it’s just… the number recovered seems to be past what I actually have.”
A sudden awakening of power pushing me past 100 seemed unlikely.
More plausibly, my mana was still at its base value and the potion had produced a temporary increase beyond the cap.
What would happen if I spent some?
“Create Treasure Chest.”
“Oh — a chest.”
“For Lady Fiona.”
“Ehehe, thank you.”
Mana cost: 5. If my prediction was right, that should leave—
Izumi Rei — Mana: 100 / Strength: 16 / Technique: 25 / Fortitude: 24 / Agility: 17
Confirmed. The potion had pushed me over my maximum.
Spending it brought it down from there. Once it dipped below my actual cap of 38, the display would presumably stabilize at whatever the normal value was.
…This meant I could do a lot of dungeon construction in one sitting.
“What—?! …My chest…”
I turned at Lady Fiona’s cry. The chest I’d just handed her had dissolved into light and vanished.
That was new. I’d never seen that happen before.
Maybe mana spent beyond the cap expired after a set time — making constructions built with it temporary too?
If so, I’d have to walk back my earlier thought. Using this excess mana for dungeon construction probably wouldn’t work reliably.
Could I create corridors or rooms mid-combat to bury an intruder? Maybe, but the trap menu already covered most of that, and it wasn’t worth drinking this potion every time just for that.
I watched Lady Fiona slump.
Then I went ahead and burned through the rest of the excess mana, and gave her another chest.