📍 The Ship to Elfior | Morning
The ship was larger than Kiyoshi had expected — fifty rooms, a wide deck, a crew that moved around them with the efficient indifference of people who made this crossing regularly and had stopped finding the sea interesting. The magic core that powered it hummed somewhere below deck, a low vibration you felt in the soles of your feet more than heard.
The wind off the water was cold and clean.
Kiyoshi leaned on the railing and watched the port disappear behind them. The coastline thinned, then vanished. Just open water in every direction and a sky that went on forever.
This is a long way from Tokyo, he thought.
He didn't say it out loud. He'd stopped saying things like that. They didn't help.
Sakura appeared beside him at the railing, looked at the engine housing near the stern, and said: "Do you know how it works?"
"The ship?"
"The engine." She didn't wait for him to answer. "Magic core at the centre. The core is built from magic stones and meteor stones — meteor stones can absorb mana and hold it in a refined state, like a battery. The blacksmiths extract holy magic and demonic magic separately, enchant them, and use the repulsion between the two to generate rotation." She paused. "Holy magic attracts its own kind and repels demonic magic. The force between them turns the propeller. The core recharges what the repulsion spends. A medium core can run a ship this size for about two months."
Kiyoshi looked at the engine housing with new attention.
"Where did you learn that?"
"Books. After our quests, while you were training, I was reading." She said it without any particular emphasis. Just a fact. "There's a lot you can learn about this world if you sit with a book instead of hitting things."
"I learn by hitting things."
"I know."
He let that sit for a moment.
"What else did the books say?"
She looked at him. Something in his expression must have been sufficiently genuine because she turned back to the water and continued — guilds, their structures, how the AMO connected to all of them, alchemy, merchants, the church, the blacksmith networks, dungeons and their cycles, the way rank determined access to almost everything in this world.
She was thorough. She was also fast — the kind of thorough that came from someone who had already organised the information in her own head and was delivering the relevant parts in order.
At some point Kiyoshi held up a hand.
"I have it," he said. "I have all of it. Stop."
She stopped.
He looked at the water. Filed everything she'd said into the part of his mind that kept things sorted and accessible. It was a good system — AMO at the centre, everything else orbiting it. Dungeons as recurring resources. Skills and rank as the currency of survival.
Two years, he thought. Then corrected it — however long it takes. He'd stopped putting a number on it after the maid had moved the target.
"Sakura," he said.
"Hm."
"Are you still afraid to sleep alone?"
She didn't answer immediately. The water moved below them.
"I've never slept alone," she said finally. "Not once, since I was born. My mother, and then—" She didn't finish that sentence. "When I hold my sword it's different. Like something settles. I fight better when I stop thinking about being careful — when I go all in." A pause. "In hunts, I don't worry about getting hurt. I know you're there to heal me."
The wind moved between them.
I want to get stronger, he thought. Whatever it costs, however heavy it gets — I want to be strong enough that she never has to worry about my safety.
He didn't say it. It sat in his chest where those things lived now, quiet and certain.
"Look." Sakura pointed.
Off the port side, twenty meters out — dolphins. Four of them, keeping pace with the ship, their grey backs catching the light as they rose and disappeared and rose again.
"I've heard that's rare," Kiyoshi said. "A lucky omen."
"It might be."
She was leaning forward on the railing now, watching them with her whole attention — the cold wind coming off the water washing her hair back from her face, the morning light finding her, and she was just looking, open and unguarded in the way she almost never was, the way she allowed herself to be sometimes when she forgot someone was watching.
It's not the dolphins, he thought.
He looked away before she turned back.
Not the time. Not the place. Just—
He watched the dolphins instead, and the sea, and the wide empty morning, and kept what he was thinking to himself with the particular care of someone who has learned the difference between feeling something and needing to act on it.
The ship moved south. The dolphins kept pace for a while, then curved away into the open water.
They stood at the railing for a long time after that without needing to say anything.
✦ CODEX — Chapter Ten ✦
World Archive: Entries Relevant to Chapter Ten
ENTRY 040 — THE FIVE GUILDS
The five main guilds of Yavior operate as the organisational backbone of the kingdom's working population. Both awakened and non-awakened individuals may join most of them.
Adventure Guild (AMO) — the central guild. Handles adventurers, quests, rank classification, and dungeon licensing. Acts as the administrative capital for all other guilds. Detailed in earlier entries.
Alchemy Guild — produces healing potions, boost potions, and other consumables. Members train under an alchemy master for several years before taking a qualification test. Certified alchemists can open independent shops, work under gangs, or supply other guilds. Those who develop new techniques earn the title of Alchemy Master.
Merchant Guild — handles all commercial activity: trade, transport, import, export. Members can open shops, move goods between cities, or work in support roles for adventure gangs and other guilds.
Church — primarily for healer and priest-type awakened individuals. Provides healing, curse removal, and holy blessings to the public. Operates independently of the state but cooperates with AMO on large-scale operations.
Blacksmith Guild — for those with crafting and engineering types. Produces weapons, armour, magic cores, and developing technologies. The only guild with the expertise to build and maintain magic cores.
ENTRY 041 — ON DUNGEONS
Dungeons are large enclosed spaces — caves, tombs, old structures — where monsters congregate under the influence of a dungeon core. The core summons monsters continuously and the monsters collect weapons and valuables, storing them within the dungeon. This makes dungeon raids highly profitable.
Each dungeon has a boss. All dungeons have hidden traps, rare monsters, and treasure.
AMO owns all 17 dungeons in Yavior. Gangs with 50 or more C-rank members may rent dungeons from AMO for raids.
When a boss is killed, the dungeon collapses or disappears within days. The core survives and regenerates the dungeon over time — regeneration speed scales with dungeon rank. An E-rank dungeon regenerates in approximately four months and becomes fully populated within a year. Higher-rank dungeons take longer.
Dungeons always reappear in overlooked locations.
ENTRY 042 — ON MAGIC FUNDAMENTALS
All mana in this world is composed of three fundamental types: Holy Magic, Magic of Death (Demonic Magic), and Magic of Nature. Every person and creature carries a unique mixture of these three in a fixed ratio and order. The ratio determines type classification — more Holy magic inclines toward healer or support types, more Magic of Death toward assassin or offensive types.
The order cannot be changed without fatal consequence.
Monsters carry a higher proportion of Demonic Magic. This is why magic stone extraction is viable — their cores are rich in a single dominant type.
Meteor stone: a naturally occurring mineral that absorbs and stores refined mana. Used in magic core construction. Not magically active on its own — requires processing by a blacksmith-type.