Third Outer World Story Series: Pumpkin Sorcerer - Chapter 8
Translator: MadHatter Editor: MadHatter
The time passed so swiftly…
By the time he registered it, the summer season with its lush green foliage had drifted away, and autumn, the season of shades of red and yellow, was just around the corner.
“To be honest, I don’t even have a clue how many days have passed since I landed in this world.”
After completing his morning routine of radio calisthenics, he mused about what he would do today.
Over the past few weeks, he had been training to renovate his base, manipulate phosphorescence, and raise the amount of phosphorescence.
Well, I have been working on other things, too.
“At any rate, the base is now somewhat presentable.”
Consequently, thanks to the level of his physical strengthening, he was able to process most of the trees in this forest with his bare hands, and his base had shifted from something that might collapse if the wind howled, to a decent-looking structure like a box made of logs.
Well, the Japanese carpentering technique was astounding. I only realized this when I dug it with my own hands. Having known that such a technique existed, it took me a little trial and error and practice to get this far, but it was really laborious.
Also, the first base of operations collapsed on a day of heavy rain about two weeks ago. For some reason he had a bad premonition about what might happen that day, so he took shelter in the forest, which didn’t pose any problems.
So, while he personally would like to add various facilities to the base, he didn’t possess the knowledge, skills, or even the necessity to do so, so the expansion of the base was on hold.
Even if a fence were to be erected now, it would only serve as a hindrance.
“As for hunting… the only thing I’d like to hunt is boar, but I haven’t finished tanning some of the hides yet.”
The next step was the tanning of the hides, which, through trial and error, were gradually becoming better and better than the first ones.
Well, if it gets wet even once, it can harden up stiffly, so there is still a lot of trial and error to be done, but for now, it is good enough to be used as a curtain inside the base or hung over the entrance.
The problem with those boars was that whenever he encountered one, he had no choice but to kill it, leaving him with an ever-increasing amount of skins and tusks as spoils of war. Although he has been hunting one boar every few days, the number of boars has not been decreasing.
However, if the meat and fat were scraped off and dried at least, there would be no problem, so for today, it would be good to leave it alone.
Incidentally, there were deer, raccoon dogs, wolves, and other animals in this forest besides boars, but that was beside the point. There would be no sense in talking about it now.
“Then today is another day of training and research.”
Therefore, after deciding on what to do today, he quickly performed [Gust Blow] by circulating light throughout his body, and also researched and practiced [Overburst]… a technique of injecting a large amount of light into an object that was emitting phosphorescent light and causing it to explode.
At present, [Gust Blow] can now fire 20 to 30 shots a day without a break, and its power has increased to the degree that it can take down a bird or a mouse by itself.
Furthermore, it was discovered that [Overburst] can be used more efficiently to detonate large objects than small ones, and that larger objects were more powerful when detonated given their larger capacity.
“However, I haven’t been able to create any more magic-like phenomena yet…”
The light that he poured into the boar’s tusks was just barely strong enough to keep it from exploding, but it didn’t make the tusks as sharp as they had been when the boar was alive.
And once the light had ceased to stay, the green phosphorescence would simply flow out of the tusks at a brisk pace, and no further events would take place.
“Yeah. Maybe it’s the color or something?”
From his memory, he recalled that red phosphorescence was leaking from the boar’s tusks, not the green phosphorescence that he was emitting.
If the difference in color was the reason for the ineffectiveness, then a means of shifting the color of the light being poured in would have to be considered when dealing with animal-based materials.
“But then that would also explain why plant-based materials don’t explode as if they were… hmm!”
When he pulled out some suitable grass that was growing nearby and emitting green phosphorescence, he poured as much light as he could into it.
However, the grass simply reverted back to its original state after releasing the phosphorescence that was injected into it, seemingly unaffected by the amount of light injected into it, which would surely explode if it were made of animal material.
“Gununu… should I regard this as a lack of my training? Am I doing something fundamentally wrong… well, I’m not going to give up though.”
Once he placed the grass in the area where he was collecting materials in his base, he tried to see if he could somehow change the color of the phosphorescent light emitted from his body.
More specifically, he gathered the phosphorescent light by striking strange poses, singing a little while drawing in the phosphorescence, directing the phosphorescence to places where he would not normally gather it, or chanting, “Let the color change!”
“Fuufuu… okay!”
And as a result, by making a few consecutive movements and remembering to change the light to a specific color, he succeeded in turning the green light to yellow-green, albeit in a very small amount.
“Then, I’ll get right to it…”
He then poured the yellowish-green mixture of light into the grass again, but…
“I failed huh.”
After all, it was no good. Well, I guess the amount of light was not enough. It was fortuitous that I could change the color of the grass this time.
From now on, I should add how to change colors to my morning radio calisthenics in my training.
Anyway, I wish I had more knowledge now. To be able to use something magical!
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