Chapter 2: The Sage’s Autobiography

As I pored over the book, I quickly learned that it was an autobiography written by a Japanese man named Kazuki Matsumoto. He’d been brought to this world by the same sort of Hero Summoning ritual that I’d been caught up in.

It happened in 2014, by Earth standards. Kazuki, a college student, had been on his way to his part-time job when a country called the Kingdom of Astafyev summoned him. The similarities didn’t end there—just like me, he wasn’t the only one summoned, though only two other people got pulled along in his case.

The way he described the circumstances of his summoning made it pretty clear that his initial impression of the Kingdom of Astafyev wasn’t exactly great, to say the least. The first people he saw were the king, who was dressed in a gaudy, extravagant outfit that just screamed ‘nouveau riche,’ the queen, who looked as harsh and severe as royalty could get, and several well-dressed old men who were all plainly looking down on him. And then there was the group of armor-clad soldiers who were surrounding the three of them. They were probably the biggest problem.

Kazuki, a light novel fanatic, understood what was going on in an instant. In his own words, his feelings at the time could be best described as:

“ヽ( ﾟ∀ﾟ)/ Summoned to another world!!! Hell!!! Yes!!! ヽ(ﾟ∀ﾟ )ﾉ”

But then the royals started talking and almost instantly ruined it. According to them, Astafyev had been under constant, brutal attack by its neighboring country. Their economy was devastated, their people were suffering from a widespread famine, the kingdom itself was on the verge of collapse, and so on and so forth.

Their self-pitying spiel ended with them begging the “heroes” they’d summoned to fight on their behalf and save them, but Kazuki was less than convinced. On the contrary, he was struck by how none of them seemed anywhere near as grim or concerned as you would expect the rulers of a country “on the verge of collapse” to be.

And what was up with those stupidly fancy outfits? he wrote. Like, seriously, your people are starving and you’re literally wearing half your kingdom’s treasury? Unreal! Were they really that stupid? I was all hyped for some otherworldly adventures, but I’ve read enough light novels to see exactly how this was going to go. How those jerks were gonna use us ‘heroes’ for all we were worth and then toss us to the dogs when we were spent. Oldest twist in the book. Hard pass.

Once again, I was struck by how his circumstances were almost identical to mine. The only real difference was that his kingdom was under attack by a neighboring country instead of demons. I had to agree with him—you’d think a king who actually cared about his people would pawn his fancy clothes to help feed them.

I’m not gonna say a king should go around in rags or anything, but there’s a time and a place for extravagance. Not having a sense for when and where that is means showing the whole world just how arrogant you are. Considering my own experience, I had absolutely no doubt that the Kingdom of Astafyev was a pretty garbage country. Some things never change.

Anyway, Kazuki had no interest in getting used and abused by the nobles and decided to put his extensive light novel knowledge into action. His first move was to check his own status privately before the Astafyev officials had the chance.

His job, shockingly enough, was listed as “Sage.” His skills included Fire magic, Water magic, Wind magic, Earth magic, Ice magic, Lightning magic, Healing magic, Sacred magic, and Holy magic. In other words, he had an aptitude with every form of magic it was physically possible for him to have. He also had a unique skill called “Magical Profundity,” which heightened his comprehension abilities when it came to anything and everything related to magic.

A normal person would have to spend years upon years in intensive study to learn how to use advanced magic, create magic items, or inscribe magic circles, preferably under the tutelage of a skilled master. Thanks to his skill, however, Kazuki could figure it all out in an afternoon’s worth of casual reading. His MP was preposterously high from the outset, as well.

In short, though Kazuki was a Sage rather than a Hero, his skills and MP reserves made it obvious that he was extremely capable in the magic department. He knew for a fact that if the royals found out about his stats, he’d be exploited in the same way a Hero would. His first instinct was to figure out a way to hide his real status screen and display a fake one in its place, and surprisingly enough he pulled it off instantly and effortlessly.

He set his job as “Student from Another World,” hid all his skills, and put his MP at 88, slightly lower than his 96 HP. The other two people who had been summoned with him turned out to both be Heroes, and everyone was too busy raising a fuss over them to notice what he was up to. When they finally got around to checking Kazuki’s stats, the royals’ attitudes immediately shifted. They looked at him with the same sort of expression they’d make when looking at human waste.

The other two were bewildered by the way everyone was suddenly telling them how important and special they were, but they didn’t seem to mind all the attention. Kazuki didn’t feel totally comfortable with leaving them to their fate, but when he balanced his own life against the lives of two total strangers, the decision was an obvious one.

He addressed the king, explaining that since his status made it clear he’d be of no use in a fight, he’d like to live his life in peace and quiet as an ordinary townsperson. The king agreed without protest. Kazuki had been keeping his guard up, half-suspicious that they’d try to murder him on the spot to silence him, but it all turned out surprisingly well.

He would later learn that the fact that Astafyev was capable of hero-summoning had already leaked to the neighboring countries, to some extent. He guessed that the king’s surprisingly cooperative attitude could be attributed to that fact. If it got out that they were killing their Heroes mere moments after they were summoned, it certainly wouldn’t do good things for the kingdom’s reputation.

That said, they weren’t about to turn Kazuki free to go where he pleased. According to the king, “The fact remains that you arrived in this world as a consequence of our actions. Thus, we will send you to a remote region of our kingdom that has yet to be besmirched by the horrors of war. There, you may live your life in peace and comfort.”

Along with a squad of the kingdom’s soldiers, that is. In short: he’d be under constant watch.

Kazuki left the capital in a carriage driven by his military escort, riding farther and farther out into the countryside. Five days after their departure, the long, desolate road that had grown so narrow the carriage could barely fit on it plunged into a forest. They rode a ways into the woods before the soldiers came to a sudden stop and told Kazuki that he was free to go wherever he wanted...assuming he managed to survive the trip. Then they booted him out of the carriage, turned around, and left.

They didn’t try to kill him, but the woods were teeming with monsters. Abandoning him there was effectively the same as telling him to go get eaten. Unbeknownst to them, however, Kazuki couldn’t have asked for a more perfect opportunity. After all, they had no clue that he was a Sage with an especially powerful unique skill.

Thanks to Magical Profundity, Kazuki had managed to teach himself the basics of magic over the course of the five-day carriage ride. The monsters that tried to make a meal out of him served as the perfect test subjects, and he trained his magical abilities further by mowing them down as he traveled. Leaving the forest posed no difficulty whatsoever.

He proceeded to make his way out of Astafyev, earning the money he needed to travel by taking on odd jobs here and there and doing his best not to draw too much attention. Eventually, he reached the next country over, the Kingdom of Slezak, where he registered himself as an adventurer under the name “Kazu.”

Becoming an adventurer meant that Kazuki—or rather, Kazu—was now free and unfettered. He wandered the world, traveling wherever his whims took him. His journey led him to find all sorts of magical techniques and tomes, and his understanding of magic deepened to the point where he could produce his own magic items and inscribe his own magical circles.

About a third of the way through the book, I was interrupted by the irresistible urge to yawn and decided to take a break. I rubbed my eyes and ordered a can of black coffee from my Online Supermarket to stave off my sleepiness. I pulled the tab nice and slowly to make sure the noise wouldn’t wake my familiars, then took a sip.

I couldn’t get over how similar his summoning was to mine, practically down to the last detail. The Kingdom of Astafyev wasn’t around anymore, at least as far as I knew, but Kazuki was brought over here in 2014... How does that make any sense?

I glanced back down at the decrepit tome in my hands. Maybe I could find out when this was written if I appraise it? It seemed worth a shot, at least, so I gave it an appraisal.

【Kazu the Sage’s Autobiography】

The autobiography of a Sage named Kazu. Written approximately six hundred years ago in an otherworldly tongue.

“Wha-mph!” I came really close to shouting out loud but slapped a hand over my mouth at the last second. Fearing the worst, I slowly turned around and peeked out from the covers, but thankfully Fel, Dora-chan, and Sui were all still snoring away, fast asleep. I sighed with relief, then pulled the covers over my head once more.

Six hundred years ago, though? Seriously...?

Kazuki had written that he was summoned in the year 2014. I’d been summoned in 2016, myself, which meant that over the course of those two years in our world, six hundred had passed in this one. Could it be that time moved at a completely different speed in each world?

Hmm... Nope, don’t really get it at all. But, I mean, they’re totally different worlds to begin with, right? Of course it wouldn’t make complete sense. And even if I could make sense of it, there’s nothing I can do about it, so might as well stop worrying and read the next section.

I took another sip of coffee, then turned back to the book.

As Kazu traveled from place to place, he eventually caught word of the land of the demonfolk, a race renowned for their proficiency with the magical arts. That proficiency caught his attention. As a Sage and a bearer of the Magical Profundity skill, he was interested in anything and everything related to magic and decided to make his way to their country.

I assumed he meant the region I’d heard referred to as the demonfolk territories. To my understanding those lands were so politically fractured that they didn’t really have any “countries” to speak of at all, but it seemed that in Kazuki’s day and age they were still holding themselves together, albeit just barely.

He headed for their territory immediately, taking on a job as a merchant’s escort to establish a pretext to make the trip, and soon arrived in a demonfolk country called Andras. When he finally saw his first demonfolk, he was astonished. The merchant he was traveling with had been to their territory before, and had told him that they could hardly look less human, but were still decent folks if you took the time to get to know them. That should’ve prepared Kazuki for their appearance, but in the end, he still couldn’t suppress his surprise.

Some of them were blue-skinned, some had bat-like wings sprouting from their backs, and some looked just like the dark elves he’d read about in fantasy novels. Even the ones that could be described as beastmen were more deserving of the title than any beastman he’d met up until that point—they really did look like feral beasts that just happened to walk upon two legs.

They were all exactly as intelligent and capable of reason as Kazuki and his fellow humans, of course, but some of them even bore a striking resemblance to orcs and goblins. I could really appreciate how much of a shock it must’ve been for him.

A shock, yes—but in Kazuki’s case, not necessarily a bad one. The denizens of the demonfolk territories were as fantasy as fantasy could get, and they made him even more exuberant than ever about learning their ways. Thanks in part to the merchant’s backing, he was able to stay in that first village for quite some time, growing as close to the demonfolk as he could possibly manage.

The locals weren’t sure about him at first, and most of them kept their distance. As time passed by, however, they came to realize that he genuinely didn’t mean to cause any trouble. Soon after, they gradually began to open up to him.

Their village might have been tiny, but its denizens still had plenty to teach him. That village was the first place where he witnessed Barrier magic, as well as spells that could charm, confuse, or otherwise beguile the mind of their target. To his utter astonishment, some of the villagers had even mastered flight magic.

That last spell was the domain of the dark elves, the demonfolk with bat wings, and the ones with blue skin, he quickly gathered. They warned him that it was impossible to use for those not born with the aptitude for it, but he paid those warnings no mind. He was, after all, a Sage. He thought—no, he knew that he could pull it off, and begged them to teach the spell to him.

They weren’t especially happy about the idea and grumbled about how none of them were skilled enough to be worth learning from. According to them, powerful magic-users tended to flock to the larger cities, and he’d have better luck asking one of them to teach him. A spell’s effects, after all, were determined by how much magic power the caster could put into them.

Putting more magic into a barrier spell would create a stronger, sturdier wall. Putting more magic into spells that alter the mind would make them last longer and enhance their effects, while doing the same for flight magic would allow the user to stay in the air for longer. Kazuki could appreciate why they’d belittle their own skills, if the effects of their spells were severely limited compared to the big-city mages.

But all that said, Kazuki had an overflowing abundance of MP and Magical Profundity backing him up. Once he learned the basic technique, everything else was child’s play for him. He didn’t stop there either, and also learned a form of Body Reinforcement from some of the bipedal beastmen.

Their appearances varied wildly—some looking like wolves, others like tigers or lions—but they all had one trait in common: they were incredibly strong and breathtakingly nimble. The strength wasn’t much of a surprise, considering it was a trait that most beastmen shared, but their speed was something else.

Kazuki learned that they used their magic to enhance their own physical abilities, and immediately went to beg them to teach him how to do it. If only it were that easy. They were a bunch of meatheads, in his words, and according to the rather bitter notes he left on the process, not a single one of them was even half-decent at teaching.

The fundamental theory behind the technique was to channel your own magical power throughout your body, using it to aid your muscles in their movements...or something to that effect, anyway. The only way to actually understand it was to practice until you got used to it, from the sound of things. The beastmen of the demonfolk territories all learned to use it at a very early age—none of them had experience teaching the basic theory.

In spite of all those obstacles, though, Kazuki made like the Sage he was and learned how to use the technique almost instantly. He went on to learn magic from the orc-like tribe as well (who turned out to actually be called “orcs,” appropriately enough). The orcs specialized in a form of magic called Body Hardening, a slightly different form of Body Reinforcement, as well as something called Enchantment magic.

Body Hardening involves covering your whole body in a thin layer of concentrated magical power, thus hardening yourself against damage. It makes both magical and physical attacks bounce right off you, essentially. Enchantment operated under a similar principle, but involved extending that barrier of magical power around a weapon or tool, enhancing both its stability and ability to deal damage.

The orc who taught him how to use Enchantment magic stroked the ax he used both at work and in battle as he explained, “A real master with a knack for Fire magic could bathe their weapon in flames, if they wanted to. I can do a bit of Fire magic myself, but I run outta MP in seconds when I use it on my ax. Best I can do’s make it stronger and sharper,” he concluded with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Kazuki found the orc’s abilities a lot more impressive than the orc himself did, though. “What are you talking about?! Enchanting your weapon to be stronger and sharper is incredible! Doubly so if it doesn’t take very much MP to cast—you could make a stick into a lethal weapon if you got good enough at that spell!”

The way he wrote out the conversation word for word made his excitement quite evident. I could understand where he was coming from too. He was highly specialized in magic to the exclusion of all else, so knowing he could use a tiny sum of MP to enable himself to fight effectively with a weapon if worse came to worst was probably really reassuring. From the sound of things, worse did indeed come to worst on a few occasions—he noted that “The magic I learned from the orcs really was a lifesaver...” which certainly suggested it’d gotten him out of some harrowing situations.

The goblin-like demonfolk (who once again were apparently just called “goblins”) had plenty to teach him as well. Specifically, he learned how to brew all sorts of potions from them. They were notably deft-handed as a race, and were responsible for the creation of most of the potions in the demonfolk territories.

Kazuki had already learned to make potions, but it didn’t escape his notice that those the goblins made were substantially more effective than his. He could tell that he had a lot to gain from learning their methods.

As time passed by and Kazuki lived in the village, learning all sorts of things from its inhabitants, he gradually learned more about the demonfolk territories on the whole. The territories were home to three countries, in total: Andras, the country he was staying in, as well as two others named Kimaris and Raum. Occasional minor conflicts and skirmishes aside, the three nations enjoyed generally decent relations with one another.

Furthermore, he learned that those three small countries in that relatively tiny strip of land were the only regions on the continent that the demonfolk could call home. Their overall population was dangerously small.

“Huh, really?”

I muttered to myself in surprise. According to Kazuki’s book, the entirety of the demonfolk territories were squeezed into a single peninsula. He later went on to walk around that entire peninsula’s coastline and made it from one end to the other in just about a month, even though he was moving at a fairly leisurely pace. That tidbit made it easy to imagine just how small their territory must have been.

Not even my summoners, the (now defunct) Kingdom of Reijseger, had very much information about the demonfolk territories, and they’d shared a border with the region. I never would’ve imagined I’d learn so much about it from a book I happened to randomly stumble across, of all things...

As I read on, I learned about how and why the demonfolk had ended up living in that region, as well. A piece of folklore that had been handed down from generation to generation among their people told the story.

According to that tale, a long, long time ago, a boat set sail from the demonfolk’s homeland. They were sailing for an island that was home to a nation of giants, but partway there their ship was caught up in a terrible storm. The damage was extensive, and they were left drifting in the open sea with no way to steer their vessel.

The ship’s crew knew that nobody would be coming to save them. They decided that rather than waiting for their inevitable demise aboard the boat, they would make a last-ditch effort to fly for land. That effort paid off, and the peninsula they arrived at would later become the demonfolk territories. Nobody could say for sure how many demonfolk made it to land back then, but according to the legends, most of the demonfolk living in the area in Kazuki’s time were their descendants.

“Phew...”

I paused for a moment to take a deep breath and look up from the book. It was way more than I’d bargained for—I really didn’t go into this expecting to learn all about the demonfolk.

From what I’d heard, the demonfolk territories didn’t have any diplomatic ties with the countries that bordered them in the modern day. None of that information—that their lands were only the size of a small peninsula, or that their people were the descendants of demonfolk who had come here from another continent—was common knowledge. In fact, it was totally possible that I was the only human who knew it all.

I hesitated for a long moment, then gulped. Okay, calm down. I took a big swig of coffee to steady my nerves, then turned back to the book.

Kazuki spent half a year living in the demonfolk village. Over the course of that period, he could never stop thinking about the story the villagers had told him about their ancestors crossing the ocean. They spoke of another continent, one totally unknown to humanity, and Kazuki was overcome with curiosity.

Where exactly was this mystery continent? What nations existed there? What sort of people lived in them? He couldn’t take his mind off those burning questions, and he desperately wanted to go there and find out for himself, even though he knew he wasn’t capable of it yet. His curiosity about their homeland stoked his curiosity about the demonfolk themselves, and he asked the villagers if it would be possible for him to visit a larger city.

He didn’t get the reaction he was hoping for. In fact, they urged him to reconsider. Although their village tolerated the presence of a select few humans for the purpose of trade, they were very much an exception, and they told him that the level of anti-human sentiment in the larger cities was like nothing he’d experienced before.

The source of their prejudice was clear. There had been a terrible war between a human nation and the demonfolk several hundred years earlier, during which countless demonfolk lost their lives. Lifespans varied slightly between the different tribes of demonfolk, but it wasn’t uncommon for them to live for two to three hundred years or longer, and by their standards that conflict and the tragedy it wrought was still a fresh and raw memory.

There were still plenty of demonfolk around who had fought in that war, or lost family to it. To make matters worse, the larger cities were home to some varieties of demonfolk who were notorious for their aggressive, violent temperaments. If a human like Kazuki were to show up in a city like that, he’d inevitably end up in hot water before he knew it.

Kazuki knew that he couldn’t casually disregard their advice. Reluctant though he was, he finally bade farewell to the demonfolk who had hosted him for so long and returned to human territory. He resumed his life as an adventurer, once again traveling far and wide. But no matter where his adventures took him, part of his mind was always focused on that mystery continent and its country of demonfolk.

Three years after he left the demonfolk village, a quest brought Kazuki to a certain town where he stumbled across a secondhand bookstore. He found something of great interest to him within: the journal of Orvo Maijanen, a magical researcher who had dedicated his life to the study of teleportation circles.

Orvo, the third son of a baron, developed a fascination with teleportation circles at an early age and became a researcher for the express purpose of studying them. He eventually found employment at a research institution sponsored by some nation or another, but teleportation circles are a notoriously incomprehensible art to all but a select few, and his early efforts proved largely fruitless.

As time passed by, it became more and more clear that Orvo would never make anything of himself as a researcher, but his lack of talent was not enough to make him abandon his dream. He spent his whole life with his nose to the grindstone, learning everything he could about teleportation circles and performing every sort of experiment he could think of. He left all his findings behind in a series of seven research logs.

Those “logs” could have been better described as loose collections of parchment, really, but in that day and age books of any form were handwritten by necessity and highly valuable by definition. Orvo’s seven notebooks cost fifteen gold coins in total, but by that point Kazuki was a successful adventurer of no small renown and could buy all of them on the spot.

Reasoning that learning about teleportation circles might come in handy for the sake of visiting the demonfolk country on the other continent, Kazuki pored over Orvo’s notes. It took several read throughs, even with Magical Profundity backing him up, but in the end he reached a definite conclusion: teleporting to a place you’ve never been to is impossible.

After all, a teleportation circle has to be established on both ends in order to function. The distance a circle can teleport you and the accuracy with which it can do so are determined by the quantity and quality of information regarding the destination you can provide it, as well as your ability to channel magical power into it with absolute precision and uniformity. In short: a lack of information regarding a far-off destination would make teleporting there impossible on a fundamental level.

To make matters worse, the writing system used to create teleportation circles was nothing like that used to communicate in the common tongue. Just learning the necessary runes supposedly took most people close to a decade.

Magical circles were created by using runes to inscribe information about your destination into the circle. Those runes would then enable the user to channel their magical power in the right manner to invoke the spell. It went without saying that a farther destination required a larger quantity of information to traverse, thus raising the difficulty level of the circle’s creation. That would explain why so many teleportation circles were only made to carry the user across short distances.

In any case, Kazuki was despondent. Teleportation circles were a dead end. If he wanted to reach the other continent, he would have to cross the ocean the hard way. He’d considered sailing across it, but the ocean was teeming with monsters. Sailing near the shore was possible, albeit dangerous, but the farther you went onto the open sea the more likely you were to be dragged to a watery grave by a sea serpent, kraken, or other S-ranked ocean monster.

Boats, then, were out of the question as well. That left the flight magic he’d learned in the demonfolk village as his most viable option. It seemed a reasonable one, considering that their ancestors had used it to make their way to this continent in the first place, but they’d done so under the most grave and pressing of circumstances.

Attempting to fly to the other continent without actually knowing how far away it was posed undeniable risks. Though Kazuki had grown much more proficient with flight magic since he had left the village and was confident in his skills, if he ran out of MP before reaching the other continent he’d be monster-fish food.

In spite of all his setbacks, Kazuki still wasn’t ready to give up on visiting the demonfolk continent. Finally, an idea struck him: wouldn’t everything work out if he could create a portable teleportation circle?

Teleportation circles large enough to transport people are, generally speaking, rather fragile. If their form is warped or their writing disrupted, the odds of them failing to activate are quite high. That is why they are drawn on flat, level, stone surfaces, as a matter of convention, and why Kazuki never even considered that they could be made portable until that moment.

His plan was simple. First, he would set up one side of a teleportation circle at his current location, and make the other in a portable form he could carry with him. Then he would strike out across the ocean, flying in the direction the other continent was said to lie in. If he grew exhausted before he reached land, he could use the portable teleportation circle to whisk himself back to safety in an instant.

The one flaw in the plan was that the portable circle would be left behind to fall into the sea, but that felt like a worthy price to pay in exchange for his own guaranteed safety. It was the only means he could think of that could take him across the ocean without risking his untimely demise.

And so began Kazuki’s efforts to develop a magic item that could serve as a portable teleportation circle. He split his attention between his teleportation research and leveling up as much as possible to increase his MP reserves and extend the time he could spend in flight.

A full year later, all his trial and error finally bore fruit. Kazuki had successfully miniaturized a teleportation circle and installed it upon a stone tablet. He described the process of creating the tablet, and to be honest, it went completely over my head. Something about mixing together a bunch of expensive magical components into a solution, spending ten hours straight infusing that solution with his magic, and then immersing a stone slab in the resulting magical mystery mixture for a full ten days?

Anyway, the bottom line was that in the end he drew the miniature teleportation circle he’d developed onto the stone tablet he’d created, and successfully produced the portable Teleportation Stone he’d been aiming for. He drew the circle it was connected to within a house he’d purchased when he started his research, and his initial tests all went perfectly. His dearest wish was finally within reach: he could strike out for the demonfolk continent.

The demonfolk in the village he visited had told him that their ancestors came from far to the west, so Kazuki flew from the coast in a straight line in that direction...but his first attempt was doomed to failure. He exhausted his MP reserves in the middle of the ocean, without the slightest scrap of land to be seen in any direction. He was barely able to muster up the last of his power and activate his teleportation stone, sending him back to collapse in the safety of his own home.

The problem was obvious: he just didn’t have enough MP to pull it off. Kazuki redoubled his efforts to level up, and over the course of the next year grew strong and renowned enough to become an S-rank adventurer. Finally, he felt ready to make another attempt to cross the ocean.

After flying for three days and nights straight without pausing a moment for sleep or rest, just as he was beginning to think it might be time to turn back, Kazuki sighted land far off ahead of him. Using every last drop of power he had to spend, he just barely managed to reach solid ground. He’d done it. Finally, he’d reached the land of his dreams—the other continent; the demonfolk homeland.

He passed out the second he made landfall.

Some time later, when he came to, a woman more beautiful than any he’d ever seen stood before him. Her skin was pale and unblemished, like that of an exquisitely crafted bisque doll. Her eyes were a lovely shade of pale violet that matched her long silky hair. The blouse and skirt she wore were hardly fashionable, but they also did nothing to distract from her voluptuous figure. Even the black batlike wings that sprouted from her back looked almost impossibly endearing to him.

Kazuki spoke without thinking: “I love you. Please marry me...”

That woman’s name was Jenna and, some time later, she would become Kazuki’s bride.

A seemingly endless series of pages followed in which a lovestruck Kazuki wrote at excruciating length about everything that was wonderful about Jenna. I’m just gonna breeze past all that stuff—long story short, he fell in love with her at first sight and proceeded to persistently court her until she eventually reciprocated his feelings. He somehow smooth-talked her parents into giving them their blessing, and in the end they finally got hitched.

The two of them went out to earn their living as adventurers, traveling all about the demonfolk continent together. And yeah, sure, it was all super interesting, but when I got to the part where he described his first passionate, romantic night with Jenna as a married couple I came dangerously close to chucking his stupid book into a wall.

I still had a few pages left to go, though, so I resisted the urge. I paused for a minute to take another sip of coffee and calm myself down, then resumed reading, intent on finishing the whole book.

Over the course of their travels, Kazuki and Jenna ended up in a coastal town that was home to a regular ferry service, shuttling people back and forth from an island that was home to a race of giants. Kazuki immediately realized that it could only be the very same island that the demonfolk who wound up on his continent of origin were trying to reach when their ship was caught up in the storm. In the intervening period, the route had become established well enough that travel to and from the island was a matter of course.

It seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up, so the two of them ended up taking a side trip to the isle of the giants. They found a branch of the local Adventurer’s association there—which was apparently what they called Adventurer’s guilds on the demonfolk continent—and happened to hit it off with a local giant named Sandel. The three of them ended up forming a temporary party, and took on all sorts of quests together.

Eventually, Sandel approached Kazuki with an earnest, heartfelt, and shocking request: he wanted Kazuki to marry his little sister. Giant women generally stood at around two meters tall, while the race’s men averaged an astonishing two and a half meters. Sandel’s sister, however, was unusually small for her race, to the extent that none of the local men took any sort of interest in her. She was already twenty years old, and was growing more and more depressed as her prospects for marriage dribbled down the drain.

Kazuki might have been a human, but Sandel knew firsthand how trustworthy he was and thought that he could be a good match for his small-framed sister. Kazuki refused, at first—he was already married to Jenna, after all—but then Jenna herself recommended that he at least take the time to meet Sandel’s sister first. Local values held that it was only natural for a man of Kazuki’s strength to have several wives, apparently.

In the end, Kazuki gave in and agreed to meet with her. Sandel’s sister, Vauwra, was around 180 centimeters tall—small for a giant—and had dark skin, wavy black hair, and the figure of a supermodel. She was stunningly beautiful.

Given her looks, Kazuki assumed that she would be the type to pursue her romantic interests aggressively, but moments after they met, Vauwra hung her head and murmured something to the tune of “I knew it—you’d never be interested in a girl like me, would you?” His expectations were blown out of the water, and Kazuki was charmed in an instant. Soon after, he would welcome Vauwra into his family as his second bride.

Kazuki and Jenna resumed their journey across the demonfolk continent, now with Vauwra to accompany them. Then he wrote about how deeply in love with them he was for pages on end again, so I’ll just skip over those bits.

Like, two wives? Seriously? And they were both beauties, on top of it? I hope this book ends with him getting kicked to death by a horse. I was just pages away from finishing, so I did my best to endure and keep reading.

After exploring the demonfolk continent for some time, Jenna and Vauwra came to Kazuki with a request: they wanted to pay a visit to his home continent, as well. Thankfully, all they had to do to grant that wish was use his teleportation stone. He had designed it well—so long as you could touch it you could use it to teleport, so in spite of its small size it could transport all three of them back to his home continent without issue.

And so, once again, Kazuki and his wives traveled across a new land. Over the course of their adventures they met an elf named Lyudmila who instantly fell for Kazuki and courted him with such passionate intensity, it wasn’t long before she became his third wife.

I had to put the book down for a minute.

A third wife? Are you kidding me?

Pages upon pages of insufferable gushing followed, which I skimmed through as quickly as I could possibly manage. Finally, I reached the final passage.

I know full well how this will end. Someday I will watch over Jenna and Vauwra on their deathbeds, just as Lyudmila will watch over me. Though I came to this world by chance, I can say this with absolute confidence: living with my wives and the children that each of them has blessed me with has made me happier than I ever could have been in my old world.

Oh, right—I almost forgot to write down the most important part! I’ve linked the teleportation stone I hid this book within to three other miniature teleportation stones I created later on. As you can probably guess, I left those three stones in the homelands of my three wives, hidden away quite carefully.

If you are an individual worthy of possessing my stone, I figure there’s no harm in letting you port around with it. As for how to use it, it’s quite simple: just face the teleportation stone and shout one of three phrases.

To teleport to Jenna’s hometown, shout “I love you, Jenna!”

To teleport to Vauwra’s hometown, shout “I love you, Vauwra!”

And to teleport to Lyudmila’s hometown, shout “I love you, Lyudmila!”

That should do the trick! Oh, and you have to shout in Japanese, of course.

I was absolutely gobsmacked.

Gaaaaaahhhhhhhhh! Why the hell should I have to shout about loving your stupid wives?! I had to literally bite my lip to keep myself from screaming on the spot.

Stupid! Jackass! Worst Sage ever!

Okay, okay, calm down. Caaalm down.

Phew.

I finally managed to collect myself, but if Kazuki had been standing in front of me at that precise moment I absolutely would’ve decked the jerkwad. By the way, I skimmed over it earlier, but apparently he (I can’t even bring myself to say his name anymore) found an Elixir in a dungeon on the demonfolk continent, which roughly tripled his natural lifespan. It was buried in the gushing-about-his-wives section, so I didn’t really get the details.

Anyway, according to him, Elixirs can’t actually grant perfect immortality, in spite of what the rumors would have you believe. Depending on their degree of refinement and purity, they can do anything from curing wounds and sicknesses to regenerating lost limbs or extending lifespans, but nothing beyond that. I guess that would explain why Sui’s Special Elixir (lesser version) couldn’t accomplish that last effect.

But anyway, that’s all beside the point. The point right now is that I deeply regret reading this stupid book. What an absolute waste of time I could’ve spent sleeping.

Ugh.