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As I helped with chores for the Zelk house, I also ended up fighting the monsters plaguing the surrounding areas, giving me plenty of combat experience, and letting me use basic spells without any chants. I still haven’t been able to master middle level spells, but Leontina told me that some people simply are better suited to chaining various basic spells, rather than using higher level ones.

Because of that, lately I’ve been spending time deconstructing spells to see how they could help me in battle.

Right now I’m focusing on magic storage spaces¹.

It’s a type of magic that creates an alternate dimension to store items. The spell itself is very easy to cast, but its capacity isn’t the best. Even a handbag would store more. At first I thought I was just bad, but then Leontina explained that it’s the same for everyone, and that expanding its capacity requires a lot of practice.

Then again, that’s not really what interests me about it. I’m more curious about that type of magic’s ability to control dimensions.

Using it for storage is just one possible application of it.

So wanting to know more, I went to the Zelk house’s library to find literature about it. While the storage spell is simple, there’s surprisingly little information about it, so instead I found other spells of that line to figure out how it’s arranged, and slowly reverse engineer it.

I carefully split it apart, finding the part that shapes the alternate dimension, the part that makes the opening into it, and so on. Then I tried to use them to build a different spell, slowly working on it through trial and error. A few days passed like that.

“Hey, Itski, are you awake?”
“Hm? Leontina? Wait, it’s already morning?”

I hear Leontina call to me so I raise my face, only to notice that the window that was dark a moment ago is full of light now.

“Morning? We’re way past that, it’s already noon.”
“Seriously..?”

Looking at the window more closely, I realize it’s not the light of early dawn, but the full light of the sun. Lately I’ve been staying awake until sunrise, but I guess my lack of sleep finally caught up to me.

“So, have you been able to make something viable?”
“No, it refuses to work. No matter what I do, it keeps demanding too much mana and lengthy rituals. I can’t start to experiment, or even consider it viable like this.”

Leontina picks up the papers with my research and attempts, narrowing her eyes as she reads through them.

“I see, this would certainly be complicated.”
“Right?”
“I still think it’s worth a try though.”

She adds that, smiling a little.

“Huh, you’ll do it then?”
“No, not me. A friend of mine has investments in a certain company, the owner of which has a thing for such experiments. I’ll introduce you to him, and I’m sure he’ll want to help.”

She’s grinning, her canine teeth exposed as she says that.
It’s somewhat scary, but pretty.
But well, I guess I’ll have to introduce myself then.
I’m not against the idea, but could I get some sleep first?

I take a nap after that, not even two hours later I get woken up, dressed, and taken to the mansion’s guest room.

At first I hoped it was nothing serious, but then I see Leontina and a man conversing earnestly there. Leontina notices I’ve arrived, so she beckons me to sit next to her. There I see that the papers on the table are my research on dimensional magic, which Leontina picked up from my room.

By now I can already tell what’s going on, even though I had asked her to do this tomorrow.

“Dominic, he’s the man behind the design of this spell.”
“Ohh, I didn’t imagine him to be so young…”

The man in front of me looks at me, his narrowed eyes moving up and down like he’s sizing me up. Actually, I guess that’s exactly what he’s doing. From what I can see, he appears to be in his early thirties, and his eyes are long and sharp, and give a cold impression.

“Itski, this is Dominic, the president of the Platiboros Company².”
“Nice to meet you, Itski. As she just said, I’m Dominic Ru Galliene.”
“I’m Itski Honjo, it’s my pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

We both introduce ourselves politely, and then the actual conversation starts.
Dominic is mostly interested in one page, which he keeps looking at with a smile.

“According to your theory, the magic storage spell can be repurposed to open a gate from one place to another across large distances. Did I get that right?”

Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to accomplish this time. A way to open a passage through a magic dimension to connect two separate locations. Or in other words, basically an Anywhere Door.

According to the theory, opening two entrances into the same magic dimension should be possible, even if they’re far away.

“So tell me, what benefit would this spell provide?”

I feel like he’s trying to test me.

Even a common person should be able to see its use, not to mention someone like the president of a large company. Maybe he already has some uses in mind, and wants to know if I’ve thought of something he didn’t, or if he’d be able to use it better than me.

Then again, if he actually couldn’t think of a benefit, then maybe I shouldn’t trust him with helping my research.

“According to this research, the space between the two entrances should be near zero. Meaning that it would make it possible to transport people and items across vast distances with little effort.”

Carrying merchandise from one place to another usually takes a lot of time, work, and money. And the time factor is very difficult to change even with plenty of resources.

Merchandise isn’t the only thing that has to be transported though, information is also important. There’s been countless times in history when just a single letter could determine the outcome of a conflict.

The current spell might cost too much, but if I keep refining it, it should eventually become easy enough to get a return on my efforts.

“Hmm, not too bad.”

Once I finish explaining, Dominic says that.

“Does this mean..?”
“Well, I’ll finance your research, though we’ll still have to discuss the particulars.”
“You did it, Itski!”

Leontina sounds really happy hearing that, almost like she’s celebrating my share too.

After that they tell me to start calculating the amount of mana and catalysts I’ll need, sending me back to researching immediately. Could I get a little sleep at least though?

A week passes and after revising the spell a bit more, I calculate the necessary mana and provide the details to Dominic. Then a month passees, and today we’re finally going to conduct the first practical test.

Somehow I feel like going from theory to practice in just a month is rather fast though.

“That’s quite a sight to behold.”

Leontina is standing next to me, and she’s not exaggerating. There’s twenty five sorcerers in front of us, standing around a magic circle drawn on the ground, and chanting in unison.

The spell ended up requiring the combined mana from around twenty average sorcerers, which is why they’re all here.

Oh, the numbers don’t match?

Well, the number of twenty sorcerers is just a simple cumulative amount, but it doesn’t mean that just twenty sorcerers would be enough. When multiple people work together to launch a single spell, there’s always some mana lost between them, due to the differences between people and the degree at which they’re synchronized. With just a handful of people it wouldn’t be much of an issue, but it becomes noticeable at this scale. So we gathered twenty five sorcerers to make up for that.

All of them are also employees of the company, who are talented sorcerers and who have practiced storage magic a lot, so they’re basically professional storage magic users. They’re pretty important to transporting things for the company.

There’s many other higher ups from the company present too though, it seems this is more important than I thought.

Regardless of that, they’re done chanting now, and the portal is starting to take form. The space above the magic circle tears apart and forms a black hole, the size of a person.

Then we get a signal from fifty meters away where the rest of the audience is gathered. That must mean the other portal also opened, so it was a success.

One of the company higher ups carefully steps into the magic circle.

Sometimes when a spell is unstable, mana can spark erratically and attack those nearby, similar to power surges in malfunctioning machinery. For now I’m glad that the higher up hasn’t been burned to a crisp instantly.

He nervously throws an engraved crystal into the portal. After a few seconds, we get another signal from the other side. The crystal appeared there. Another moment passes and a crystal pops out of our portal. The higherup picks it up and verifies that it’s the same with the engraving.

The experiment was a success.

But then the portal starts to waver, before vanishing together with the glow of the magic circle. Barely a moment later one of the sorcerers falls on his knees, before being followed by another one.

“Leontina!”
“I know!”

Before I can finish calling her name, Leontina is already rushing forward with the medical team to check on the fallen sorcerers.

“It’s just mana anemia, their lives aren’t in danger.”

Leontina checks on all of the sorcerers and announces that.

The medics give the sorcerers mana recovery potions, and those who are too weak to drink them are carried away on stretchers.

“There was a small incident in the end, but it was a success. Congratulations.”
“Yes, thank you. But this success isn’t enough to move on to the next step. We have to keep testing to ensure stability.”

Leontina is congratulating me, but I don’t feel reassured just yet. There’s nothing that guarantees this wasn’t a lucky first try, and it won’t fail next time.

“After we’re sure objects can pass through, we’ll move on to animal tests. And once that is stabilized we’ll move to humans.”

Even if objects make it through, there’s no guarantee living beings will be okay. We still need to go through animal and human trials.

“We can just use prisoners or slaves when testing people, right?”
“I don’t care as long as any accidental deaths don’t cause issues. You can discuss that with Dominic later.”

I’ll let those two decide that later. For now I’ll just analyze the data I got today³.

1. Robinxen: I feel like this adds more credence to my theory but it’s hard to judge.
2. Robinxen: Hmmm… is this actually an event in the past? We’ve already seen transportation magic like this used by the company…
3. Robinxen: This is… surprisingly heartless from a recently isekaid person… product of soul damage?