"What are you doing?"
Ruben felt his body suddenly become several times heavier, and he toppled stiffly toward the floor. But Mayuna had prepared in advance. "Cloud Magic: White Cushion." A soft cloud abruptly appeared on the floor, catching Ruben's body and keeping him from getting hurt.
"This isn't scientific! How can clouds be soft?!"
Lying atop the cloud, Ruben cried out in shock and disbelief.
"You're focusing on the wrong thing!"
Mayuna nearly fell over. Instead of questioning her or being amazed by magic, he was paying attention to the cloud.
"I wanted to ask this earlier. Why don't you have any magic power? Everyone in this world has magic power. And these suspicious tools of yours completely overturn everything I know about this world. Just who are you?"
Mayuna sat on the sofa and looked down at Ruben, who was lying on the cloud. She was not some simple-minded girl. Her teacher was Yura, known as the queen of petty theft. She had spent her life doing every kind of misdeed imaginable. What? Your family had a precious magic book? Now it was hers. What? His family had a huge pile of magic crystals? They were already in her spatial ring.
In short, before becoming a Mage Saint, she had spent every day being chased down and beaten up, without a single peaceful day. As for afterward, once she became a Mage Saint, no one could beat her anymore. (LOL)
"It's simple. I'm not from this world. These are all scientific creations I made. I'm a scientist."
Ruben was not angry that Mayuna had repaid his kindness with hostility. He honestly revealed his secret, though it was not really much of a secret.
"Then tell me, why could you cure my illness? Even His Holiness the Pope couldn't cure it."
People from other worlds were not enough to surprise Mayuna. This world was not isolated. Legend said the great God of Light lived in the Heavenly Realm, and angels from the church occasionally appeared here as well.
"Obviously. You primitives only know how to use magic to treat illnesses. What is healing magic? Activation sped up healing. It was certainly effective for external injuries, but what about viruses inside the body? They would love for you to replenish their nutrients and help them multiply faster. The more you use that lousy magic, the faster you die."
"...Oh."
Mayuna answered softly. She barely understood the scientist's explanation. She had probably only understood that he came from another world.
"We're complete strangers. Why did you save me? Weren't you afraid I was a bad person?"
Mayuna continued questioning him. This was what confused her the most. Before, she had followed Ruben's every instruction and let him give her medicine and feed her, not because she was naïve and sweet. She had known she was about to die, so it did not matter how much he fussed over her. But he had actually cured her. Now that she was healed, she had to ask why he had trusted another person so much.
"I will never stand by and watch someone die in front of me! As long as I can save them, I will. Until I bring you back to life, I won't care what kind of person you are."
"You guessed wrong. I am a bad person. Now I'm going to take all your things and sell them for a good price."
Mayuna did not know why Ruben had suddenly become so serious. Maybe fools were just like this. She could not help wanting to scare him and let him understand how dangerous the world could be.
"Things can be made again once they're gone. But can the tears you shed ever go back? If you're a bad person, why were you crying so sadly in front of this cabin?"
"You saw that...?"
Mayuna did not know what expression to make as she faced Ruben. She waved her hand and stopped supplying magic power, and the spell dissipated with it.
"You said you came from another world? The Demon Realm, or the Heavenly Realm?"
After steadying her emotions, Mayuna continued asking. People from other worlds were not uncommon here, especially people from the Demon Realm. You could see them in any moderately large city.
"Neither. I'm from Earth. Its development is completely different from here. There's no magic there, only science."
Ruben could finally move freely again. He sat down beside Mayuna without the slightest hesitation, while the girl awkwardly shifted a little farther away.
"Are those strange tools of yours from there? I'd really like to go and see it."
Mayuna picked up the alarm clock on the table. The second hand endlessly circling around fascinated her. If all it took to go to Earth was a "door," she could open one herself.
"It's not like the Demon Realm, where you can just open a door and go there. Besides... it's already been destroyed."
"Destroyed? Why?"
"Nuclear war. In terms you can understand, countless mages cast forbidden spells together and destroyed the entire planet's ecosystem. Plants could no longer grow from the land, people and animals could no longer be born, and all the fresh water was contaminated. That place had already become a hell."
"Wait, then how did you get here?"
Mayuna imagined that kind of battle. It really would leave wounds on the land that could never be repaired. But the important question now was how Ruben had arrived here. The world called Earth should not have been reachable by opening a door, or else no one could have remained unaware of it until now.
"Some man sent me here, as the last survivor of that world."
"Eh? How old are you now?"
Mayuna tactfully did not ask who that person was. She was not the type to dig into everything, nor did she think Ruben would tell such things to someone he had only just met.
"By this world's reckoning, probably twenty."
"Probably?"
"Yeah. When I was sent here, my body turned into that of a child around five years old. He adjusted my physical condition to its healthiest period, but then he just left without caring whether I lived or died..."
A faint trace of resentment appeared on Ruben's face. That man had truly been irresponsible. He did not expect riches or glory, but could he at least have been given something to eat? The man had whimsically done nothing more than change the location of his grave.
"Just like me... How did you survive?"
"There are lots of things on this Mountain. For example, gathering firewood. Mages can make fire themselves, but places like restaurants sometimes need extra hands, so there was still some demand for it. The fruit that grows on the trees could be sold too. I got through the hardest times by relying on this Mountain."
"So that was possible. I really was an idiot."
Judging by the timeline, Ruben should have arrived in this world not long after her teacher took her away. Although Ruben could not really be called a child when he arrived, he had quickly found a way to survive with a child's body. Compared with her, who had done nothing but cry in a corner, he was far better.
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