The month following the disappearance of Ghostheart was a chaotic one for Norneau.
Things were a bit awkward in class, but Kir got a good, attack-free week out of Daisy and Bailey’s being awarded recognition by the city - as well as part of the bounty for the mimic, which came out to three small golds a person after factoring for the Watch and Guard.
What made things awkward, however, was Keiya being completely unwilling to look Kir in the eyes after the "Lamb Incident."
On the bright side, Lumin generously enabled everyone to afford the upcoming field trip to Amrita. If the implications of Bailey’s utterances were to be believed, she’d practically mandated it for him.
Naturally, Kir picked Kordia as one of the special students who would supervise the others. His second selection was the catkin student who’d helped out during the garden incident, whose name was Xunter.
With everything laid out in advance, Kir knew he just had to keep his head down and hope that nothing went wrong before the trip...
That lasted all of three weeks. Updates are released by Novᴇl_Fire(.)net
Kordia had taken a particular shine to Kir’s idea for keeping Ghostheart in people’s minds after his "departure." But for that project to be economical, he devised a simple programmable spell for copy-pasting her drawings from the originals to a blank sheet.
The device he imagined was a plate that would take the drawings from one side and create a burn effect on its opposite, allowing new sheets to be placed atop it for a moment to have copies seared in. Timing had to be precise, but using a roller, one could simply roll to new sections of paper and stamp again and again...
But then he had to find a means to get plant paper into large rolls, which was not, at present, a high-demand form for it. The solution Kiryu came up with was to just use a conveyor belt for the standard broadsheets, but it lacked elegance...
"Come off it. You’re reinventing comic books, not the goddamn Bhagavad Gita." Kiryu griped as these thoughts followed Kir out of Enumasam’s shop, where he’d delivered an order for the conveyor belt rollers and picked up the first set of copper plates.
"I’m trying to save us some labor here. This is essentially a three-person operation... Manufacturing aside." Kir was on the way to Moshui to
"Four, asshole. I’m here too."
"A three-body operation then."
"Touche." Kiryu sent Kir a mental eyeroll. "More like a three-body problem..."
Moshui was actually easier to get a hold of now that she was quickly becoming one of the wealthiest women in the city.
She still lived in the same tattoo parlor, but she’d bought out the floor below and the building next door in order to move the adventurer’s bar there. When asked why she didn’t just move somewhere else, she’d replied, "My father and I put too many enchantments into this place. It would probably explode without me."
Kir hoped that was hyperbole.
The moment he opened the door, however, all thoughts of his project went out the window as he heard the sound of mad giggling.
"Hee hee... It’s working! It’s worki~ing!"
The sound wasn’t coming from upstairs, but from behind the bar counter whose surface was covered with bits of metal, ink pots, and tools.
Kir leaned over, peering down on a Moshui who was illuminated by magic-light from the strange, claw-like device on her right forearm. Her left wrist was held inside of a bronze brace with a hole cut into it, and inside that hole she had tattooed a circle... and inside that circle...
"Moshui! What are you doing?" Kir called out.
"Shh~ shh! This is a very delicate procedure Mr. Kir..." instead of stopping she’d only frozen for a moment before resuming.
"That’s programmable magic, Mosh! It could kill you!"
"No-no. I have it under control. Besides, this is the second time I’m doing this!"
"I needed to script the first one by hand so I could make the applicator work, hee hee." She looked up at Kir, her green eyes glittering with delight, like polished gems amidst the darkened, sleepless flesh. "Could you bring me some coffee? I think I had a pot of it in the upstairs kitchen."
Kir watched her or a moment longer as the spindly fingers of the "applicator" etched fine lines of mana-laced ink into the code circle.
It’s safe. She has to be safe... she’s not dead after all. Kir went upstairs and found the teapot she’d used to make coffee. Opening it, however, he discovered that the contents had long since evaporated, mold occupying some parts of the inside.
Using magic, Kir cleaned out the pot, but decided to just make coffee without it. He found her beans in a bag under the sink, and using magic he crushed them mid-air before condensing water around it and boiling it together. He thought about finding cream and sugar but the former was probably rotten, if the smell of the room was any indicator, so instead he cut his losses to look for a vessel.
His search for a cup was an unfortunately moldy endeavor, so with a final sigh, he returned to find Moshui exactly how he’d left her.
"One coffee," Kir said, floating the roughly quarter-liter of brown liquid over and hovering it in front of Moshui’s face.
"Oooh! That’s handy!" she leaned up, slurping the entire ball into one continuous set of gulps until it was all gone. "Bit grainier than usual," she said as she resumed her work.
After a quarter-hour of morbidly unsure witnessing, Kir was startled when Moshui suddenly jumped up onto her feet, shrilly as she declared "I did it!" She pumped her arms in the air, the applicator device extending itself completely, its slightly bloody needles on full display. "Ohhh~ I can’t wait to activate this baby..."
"Don’t!" Kir barked, "Don’t activate anything until you tell me what the hell you’re doing!"
"Isn’t it obvious? I came up with a magic program that lets me have a third hand, then I used that hand to give myself a tattoo with another magic program! Tadaa!" She flared out all three hands.
"Moshui, I have exploded pigs with programs less complicated than that!"
Moshui snorted, "Well, of course that would happen. Pigs don’t generate mana and they don’t eat enough mana-rich foods in a domestic environment. So once the program starts drawing in mana the pig has no way to store it and they explode! But don’t worry! These babies are all internally powered!"
Kir watched in horror as she surged mana into the newly minted tattoo on her left wrist, he tried to dive for her, unsure of if he should instead be seeking shelter before she...
"Ohhh that feels ni~ce..." Moshui sighed out, before noticing that Kir was leaning far over the counter, hovering over her as he held himself up by one arm. "Oh, uh... I’m sorry you’re not really my type."
With an uncomfortable grunt, Kir pushed away. "I’m not- Let me see what you’ve done," Kir got over being flustered as quickly as he felt he needed to. I hope I don’t need to cut off her arm...
"Oof, one second," Moshui unclipped the applicator, withdrawing mana from the code circle. Now with two hands, she put both forearms on the bar to show Kir.
"On my right, this is the code for the applicator. It lets me move it like a hand, but, like, really, really precisely. And now, on my left, this is a code that will slowly increase the rate and volume of mana I can hold!"
"Why would you do that?" Kir asked.
"Are you kidding? Think of all the things I could do if I had a capacity like yours! People rarely grow naturally once they mature. I mean, I played it on the safe side so that’ll probably take me two or three hundred years to get to half your level, but think about it!"
Kir grimaced. Not only had she skipped straight to person-experimentation, but she’d done so on herself twice. "How long have you been at this?"
"Hm? I think... is it Waterday?"
"Waterday was three days ago."
"Hmm... It feels longer than that..."
"You’ve been at this since the start of the month?!"
"Well, yeah. The start of a month’s a great time for new beginnings. And don’t worry, I hired someone to handle all the bus stuff... Besides, didn’t you pick the start of the month to have Eni call me in? So you could show off your disguise."
A recollection hit him like a brick to the head. She’d called him ’Mr. Kir’ earlier... "How long have you known?"
"Hmm... Well, I knew you had an illusion the first time we met," she tapped the back of her neck, where a tattoo just like Kir’s demonic sense booster was located, "but I pretty much figured it out by the second time, after I remembered your name."
"Why didn’t you tell me?"
"And what, get my best customer arrested?" She snorted. "I figured you were testing me or something... and after the bus project, I figured I passed!" She laughed nervously. "I did pass, right? You’re not going to go all demonic and kill me, right?"
Kir reached up and facepalmed himself, drawing his hand down. "I promise I’m not going to kill you or harm you or anything like that." With nothing really stopping him now, he pulled off his glamour ring, showing his true form to Moshui.
"Huh. You’ve gotten taller... or maybe my eyes are just blurry."
Kir’s glowing purple eyes were locked onto the applicator on the counter. This was far from how he thought his day would go.
"Mosh... I need you to come with me."
"Oh-okay..." She took a step closer.
"Wait... Go take a shower first."
An eyebrow rising; Moshui lifted an arm and sniffed herself. "I don’t smell anything."
"Trust me, you need it."
"Alright then... guard the applicator for me? I don’t know how much these new babies are worth but compared to the old tattoos..."
"For some people, Mosh, what you’ve made will be priceless."