Nocturne of the Sleepless Black Magician

"Well then, we'd like you to dig a hole over that way."

The location the foreman indicated was beside the highway near the town's entrance. Stones were scattered about, and neither grass nor trees grew there. Despite their lengthy deliberations, it felt like they had chosen it arbitrarily, but it wasn't Safi's place to interfere.

"Maybe I shouldn't gouge too deeply. About how deep are those important veins?"

This too, not a single person knew. Though she worried about what would happen if the hole was too deep and blood came spurting out like from a ruptured blood vessel, she also wanted to see it with her own eyes. For now, it was all about momentum.

"Come forth!"

Just as she shouted stylishly, she suddenly realized something. Though small, the sphere was already floating, and everyone was watching it from close range. There was no guarantee some careless person wouldn't try to touch it out of curiosity.

"It's a bit dangerous, so please stay back."

That said, it was almost a bluff. Even when the sphere reached its target, earth clods wouldn't scatter—the target would simply vanish. Like inflating a balloon, Safi put her spirit into it and enlarged the black sphere. The round darkness that seemed to absorb even light trembled minutely. Then, one strike.

A hole about the size of twenty mansions opened up with a cheer erupting from the crowd. It seemed the bleeding situation was also avoided, with no foreign matter protruding from the hole.

"That's an incredible feat..."

All the laborers couldn't hide their amazement. It wasn't a performance but special magic, but setting that aside, from here on it was Safi's show. She levitated the designated piles of rubble and lowered them into the large hole. Though the hole was enormous, it filled with rubble in the blink of an eye. It was a repetitive process.

Safi's hole-opening technique continued smoothly until sunset. Work that had made no progress despite requiring dozens of days until now had advanced significantly in just a few hours.

"Safi-chan, aren't you tired?"

The young wife showed concern. Though the evening meal was still simple as usual, the women were in a lively atmosphere. Besides the lone remaining two-story house, there was one more place that remained as a base and haven of rest.

An underground room discovered at the site of a collapsed house. Though the purpose for which it was built was unknown with the residents absent, it seemed sturdily constructed, having withstood the violent and prolonged earth tremors with household goods intact.

This was where Safi had stayed last night. Seven women in total lived in the underground room, and it had taken on the aspect of being off-limits to men. Unlike the public spaces during the day, the ladies relaxed, letting slip small complaints and chattering about evaluating young men.

"I don't have fatigue like legs becoming like sticks or stiff shoulders. It's magic, after all."

Even after activating sphere magic repeatedly, Safi felt no fatigue. Conversely, here the time to enlarge spheres was short and things progressed briskly. Though it might be related to the veins running under the town, she might simply be getting carried away. It was the first time in her life performing before a large audience of over twenty people.

"The old men are the ones doing heavy labor and seem to be having a hard time."

The black magician's activities didn't leave the laborers with nothing to do. There remained the work of carrying soil to the holes filled with rubble and leveling them. Rubble had many gaps, and no matter how much soil they covered it with, it kept getting absorbed with no end in sight.

Safi tried the work of transporting earth and sand but couldn't do it skillfully. The foreman had proposed using magic to cut down the low hills along the highway and move that soil. It was a clever idea, but cutting and transporting part of a hill proved difficult.

"Just a little bit doesn't go as smoothly as you'd think."

She had trouble separating the target of manipulation. No matter how many times she tried, it became one lump. Safi could easily pull up and lift even considerably heavy things like large trees without difficulty. Weight seemed irrelevant, but she couldn't find a way to handle it.

However, the trial and error wasn't wasted. When she made a small hole at the foot of the hill, water gushed out. Not foul-smelling blood, but blessed water. She had accidentally hit upon a real underground water vein.

"This secures drinking water. It might be more important than clearing rubble."

The women, led by the young wife, rejoiced. She said that multiple wells remaining in the town had dried up, and they couldn't use water satisfactorily for cooking or washing. Safi remembered seeing her carrying a heavy bucketful of water that morning.

"Is drinking water scarce?"

"There's a small stream in a distant place, but just preparing enough for everyone is quite an ordeal. The wells were also broken by those earth tremors. If we can't do something about water problems, even if we want to call many people to help with reconstruction, we have to limit the numbers."

An elderly lady sighed. She said food and water were overwhelmingly insufficient. If they couldn't provide meals, people wouldn't gather. Reconstruction work needed many hands, but they didn't have enough reserves to accommodate them.

"Finding a spring won't solve it..."

"For now, that alone is enough, Safi-chan. Well, for food, we have no choice but to steadily grow it in fields."

Farmland was scattered around the area. Though not caught up in the fighting and all unharmed, essential buyers had disappeared when all the town's residents evacuated at once. Most farmers had either abandoned their fields to work elsewhere or taken this opportunity to go out of business.

When one town perished, the effects spread to the surrounding areas. And losing footholds, reconstruction became extremely difficult.

"My homeland wasn't in a state where it could be restored."

That night, Safi spoke a little about her birthplace. It hadn't been struck by war or ravaged by monsters. It had simply sunk. Slowly, over a long time, it was invaded by water and sank. There was no chance it would suddenly poke its face above ground again on some occasion.

Her homeland lay at the bottom of deep waters and would not rise again.

❁❁❁ From the Author 🪄 ❁❁❁

At the end, I touched a little on Safi's hometown situation.

She has no relatives and no home or village to return to. I'll continue introducing her personal information bit by bit. Bit by bit.

The reconstruction assistance takes a break here, and next time, dark clouds suddenly seem to gather.

(End of Chapter)