Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill: Volume 10 Page 2

  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 u
nderstanding 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 Fir
e 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.