Volume 10, Chapter 11 – The Riddle of the Hatching Blade and Pencil Making

This morning, that sacrificer inserted the Hatching Blade into his body, which then produced the black mucus, and in turn, produced demons… wait.

A question mark popped up over Yisi’s head.

Right now, I still don’t know if the Hatching Blade’s function is to summon demons from afar, or to turn a man into a breeding ground for incubating demons. If it’s the latter, it’s very troublesome, both for humanity and for myself.

A human with no real strength could create more than ten large demons and several hundred small demons just by inserting the Hatching Blade into their body. With such an absurd exchange ratio, it wouldn’t take many human sacrifices to create a demon army capable of destroying a city. As for why I said it’s also troublesome for myself, that’s because if the Hatching Blade’s function isn’t ‘summoning’ but ‘creating from nothing’, then I won’t be able to find the Demon Lord Styx’s residence through the Hatching Blade.

Well, as for the specifics, I’ll only know once I try.

Yisi casually waved the Hatching Blade. Edith, who was sitting next to Yisi, frowned and grabbed Yisi’s wrist.

“What are you doing?”

Pepe must have misunderstood, thinking I was going to use my own body for the experiment, Yisi couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

“It’s not what Pepe is thinking. I want to find a few monsters nearby and try stabbing this short blade into their bodies, to see if the monsters will turn into black mucus that can incubate demons, like that man.”

Even if my various resistances are unbelievably high, I would never use my own body as a test subject.

Her expression relaxed a little, and Edith let go of Yisi’s wrist.

“I thought you had been bewitched by a demon.”

“Rather than bewitching me, demons would probably scream and run away the moment they saw me.”

Teasing in a joking tone, Yisi opened the [Omniscient Map]. Her gaze finally settled on a nocturnal bird not far from the carriage. It was a monster called a ‘Demonic Sound Owl’. When hunting prey, it would first use a cry infused with magic to give its prey a splitting headache. After the prey was tortured to the brink of death and had lost its will to resist, it would then dismember and eat it.

The reason this Demonic Sound Owl was lingering near the carriage was probably because it was waiting for the number of night watchmen to drop to just one before attacking. Of course, it’s also possible that it saw Laxy, with her huge wings, and mistook her for a more formidable bird, and was waiting for Laxy to leave. In any case, its motive was annoying. Yisi quietly took out a throwing shuriken from her storage, one she had made incidentally when crafting the scale armor. With speed the Demonic Sound Owl couldn’t react to, she knocked it out of the air. Of course, for the sake of the experiment, Yisi didn’t kill it in one blow, but simply made it lose its ability to fly. Then, she retrieved the Demonic Sound Owl and used healing magic to restore it to its optimal condition.

“My Lord, are you going to use this monster as a test subject?”

“Mhm.”

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“Then let me be the one to grab this Demonic Sound Owl.”

“No, Laxy, you stab it with the short blade for me. I’ll be the one to hold the Demonic Sound Owl.”

If the Hatching Blade successfully turned the Demonic Sound Owl into a pool of black mucus, the person holding it would definitely be contaminated. Without knowing if the black mucus could burn skin, this dangerous task naturally had to be done by her, the one with extremely high resistances.

“I’ll do it.”

Cutting in before Laxy, Edith snatched the Hatching Blade from Yisi’s hand. She then made a downward-swinging motion and, once Yisi was ready, she stabbed it cleanly into the Demonic Sound Owl’s chest. Strangely, even after the Hatching Blade was pulled out of the Demonic Sound Owl’s body, no blood flowed from the wound. With a vampire’s excellent night vision, there were clear scorched marks at the wound site. Because the wound had been sealed shut by high heat, the blood couldn’t flow out.

As for the Demonic Sound Owl, it barely struggled before its HP rapidly dropped to 0.

Clicking her tongue, Edith looked at the short blade in her hand, which was stained with reddish-black blood.

“This short blade is as bizarre as I thought. Normally, it shouldn’t have died so quickly… This aura is similar to that dragon girl who’s infatuated with Yisi. It’s an uncomfortable aura of death.”

“Pepe, you felt it too?”

“Mhm.”

“But no demons appeared, My Lord. Perhaps this short blade only produces demons when used on humans. We should destroy this evil object.”

“If it only produces demons when used on humans, then I’ll leave the task of destroying it to you, Laxy. But before that, I want to try it on a few more monsters.”

After all, there was the possibility that the Demonic Sound Owl simply had too little life force to activate the Hatching Blade.

After that, Yisi captured a large number of monsters of different types and levels from the wilderness, ranging from a hibernating Bone-Gnawing Ground Mouse to a strange flying serpent the size of a wyvern. The results were the same as with the Demonic Sound Owl; not a single monster could summon demons. The only difference was that the smaller monsters died quickly, while the larger monsters died slowly. And to prevent the monsters tainted with the aura of death from turning into undead in the wilderness, Yisi piled up their corpses, intending to burn them to ash.

It’s worth mentioning that Edith proposed the same view as Laxy: perhaps only by using humans as sacrifices could demons be summoned, and slaves or death row inmates would be good choices. For this suggestion, Yisi rejected it without a second thought. First, slavery itself is wrong, and she would not treat slaves like monsters. Second, even death row inmates have inherent human rights. No matter how strong her curiosity, she would never experiment on humans—or rather, in this different world, she should say she wouldn’t experiment on intelligent beings. Of course, experiments like taste-testing new dishes didn’t fall into this category.

“At least dig out the magic cores before you burn the corpses. You, you’re so wasteful.”

Jumping down from the small hill of monster corpses, Edith looked like she was exasperated by Yisi’s inability to learn, while holding a cloth bag full of magic cores of various sizes.

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Yisi’s eyebrow raised at a strange angle.

“Huh? Pepe, you have no right to call me wasteful, do you? You have to change your clothes immediately if they get even a little dirty, and after wearing them just a few times, even if the dress is as good as new, you’ll discard it. It’s a good thing you and I are about the same size, so I can just ask Laxy to alter them a bit and pick them up to wear.”

“Leaving aside the fact that these monsters you caught are more valuable than clothes…” Edith looked Yisi up and down with a disdainful expression. “You are forbidden from picking up clothes like that ever again. My fiancée must wear a brand-new dress every day. The Pescia family feels no burden from this level of gold coins.”

“No, no, the issue is about the wastefulness.”

And there was another point. Although Yisi didn’t want to admit it, every time she wore one of Pepe’s dresses, she felt like she had become a noble lady, that she had become prettier.

“In any case, from now on, I will have Refina place the clothes in front of your door before the next day arrives. If I see you on any day wearing clothes I did not prepare, you just wait and see. Laxy, supervise Yisi for me.”

“If My Lord does not object.”

“Although I’m very touched that Pepe is preparing clothes for me, let me just state for the record that I will absolutely not wear clothing that looks like lingerie.”

As for the problem of waste, she planned to quietly discuss it with Refina and have Refina replace the clothes she brought with clothes Yisi had prepared herself. That way, there would be no problem of waste. As for whether Pepe would notice, as long as the clothes had no stains or wear, Pepe wouldn’t find out. Pepe herself often wore clothes of the exact same style.

“Would I let others see a side of you that only I am allowed to see?” Not wanting to dwell on this topic for too long, Edith yawned and turned to Laxy. “Ahhh~, Laxy, what time is it now?”

“Two in the morning. It is time to rotate the watch.”

“I see. I’m heading back to the carriage first. Yisi, want to come along? Although your watch is the latter half of the night, it’s practically no different from having stood watch for the first half. Just leaving the night watch duty to Laxy wouldn’t be a problem, right?”

“No, I can’t. I have my own considerations.”

It was one thing when they were at the mansion. There was no need for a night watch then, and everyone was safe. Laxy stayed by her bedside even when Yisi arranged a room for her, but that was because Laxy didn’t need to sleep. Camping in the wild, however, was completely different. It would be too cruel to leave Laxy alone outside the carriage on night watch just because she didn’t need to sleep.

“Strange considerations.”

After dropping that sentence, Edith went into the carriage alone and lay down on the upper bunk to sleep.

Shaking her head with a wry smile, Yisi set fire to the mountain of corpses piled far from the carriage, then returned to the campfire by the carriage and handed the Hatching Blade to Laxy.

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“Here. Laxy, you said before that you wanted to destroy it.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

Right then, I can start another experiment.

After covering her hand with a magic blade, Yisi took out the corpse of a Graphite Bee from her storage. Laxy, who had just stored the Hatching Blade in her own storage, widened her eyes in curiosity.

“My Lord, you took out this demon’s corpse for…?”

“I’m not going to do anything bad. I’m just interested in its black mist.”

This morning, when facing the black mist spat out by the Graphite Bee, she had made a grasping motion to try to dispel it, which resulted in her hand being covered in black, charcoal-like marks. That, combined with the word ‘Graphite’ in the Graphite Bee’s name, reminded her of an inconvenience she had always encountered.

This world didn’t have the two kinds of pens that could be bought anywhere on Earth: fountain pens and pencils. When people wrote, they only used three types of pens: quill pens made from processed animal feathers, brush pens made from soft animal hair, and stone styluses cut from talc ¹ Talc is a real-world mineral. Its most important property, and the reason for its name, is that it is the softest known mineral on Earth.

It is a 1 on the Mohs scale of mineral hardness (diamond is a 10).

Because it’s so soft, it feels “soapy” or “greasy” to the touch.

A common, block-form version of talc is soapstone. . Since the last one could only be used for scribbling on rough ground and stone, it wasn’t within Yisi’s scope of discussion. What Yisi wanted was a pen that didn’t need to be constantly dipped in ink and wasn’t easily damaged.

Although the quill pens in this world were already very mature, with people using metal nibs on the tips to increase their lifespan, this still didn’t change the flaw of needing to be dipped in ink from time to time. This flaw was especially obvious when writing the Norta Empire’s language. People couldn’t write fifty words before needing to dip in ink again. For Yisi, who was used to pens that didn’t need ink, this was simply torture. Furthermore, even with a metal tip, the lifespan of a quill pen was very short, and it was only suitable for use on parchment, not papyrus. This caused Yisi considerable trouble.

In the past, Yisi could tolerate it because she rarely needed to write. But ever since her companions started learning the knowledge Yisi was teaching them, this problem urgently needed to be solved. This was especially true for Mary and Tiffany, who had only just started learning to write. Making them use pens that required dipping in ink was a bit too advanced. Children should start with pencils, which are easy to erase. This was Yisi’s obsession.

And after seeing the Graphite Bee this morning, Yisi had the idea that she might be able to use it to make pencils.

Condensing a magic blade on her fingertip, Yisi easily dissected the Graphite Bee lying in her palm. She continued to use the magic blade to cut away the useless parts of the corpse, leaving only a fingernail-sized black pellet in its abdomen. This seemed to be the original form of the black mist the Graphite Bee spat out.

“Could this be graphite? No, even if it’s not graphite, as long as it can write, it will meet my needs.”

Yisi used appraisal magic to examine the black pellet, but the result was a series of question marks. No one had named this thing.

A helpless sigh.

“Haah, I’ll just call it graphite for now—huh?”

Crack.

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Without any warning, as a gust of wind blew past, the graphite pellet in Yisi’s hand dissolved into a puff of charcoal-like dust and quickly disappeared.

“Does it disappear when it encounters wind?”

Taking out another Graphite Bee to dissect, Yisi this time used magic to block the wind from all sides. However, just like the last time, after the graphite pellet was exposed to the air, it exploded into a pile of black powder after just a few seconds.

“So it loses its shape after leaving the Graphite Bee’s body? But this is perfect for a pencil lead.”

As long as she mixed this graphite-like black powder with clay in the right proportions, then shaped it with external force, heated it to dry, baked it at high temperature, and treated it with oil, it would become a qualified pencil lead that could both write and was sufficiently hard. Of course, since it was handmade, she couldn’t be too demanding about the pencil lead’s color depth or hardness. She just needed it to be able to write and to be erasable by the rubber produced by a Rubber Slime.

For raw materials, the graphite was right here. As for clay, she still had some in stock in her storage from when she made magic tools. In terms of production, with the help of the foundry platform, it wouldn’t be too difficult as long as she tried a few times.

She immediately put her idea into action. Yisi took out the ‘[Foundry Platform – Tier 4]’ right in front of Laxy and began the process of making a pencil.

“Ah, right, I can’t just make the lead. Laxy, could you trouble yourself to chop some wood for me?”

“My Lord, you want to…”

“Make the outer casing for the pencil.”

“Pencil? What is that?”

The single question mark turned into even more question marks. Laxy’s face was full of confusion, and Yisi couldn’t help but feel a headache coming on. Without seeing the real thing, Laxy would never be able to understand what she meant, no matter how she explained it. Yisi waved her hand impatiently.

“Once the finished product is done, Laxy, you’ll know.”

“Is that so? My Lord, do you want wood with a harder texture, or a softer type?”

“Bring me a bit of everything.”

“Yes, I understand. Please wait a moment.”

Bowing respectfully to Yisi, Laxy spread her wings and quickly flew towards the distant forest.