Thanks to Ifrit placing a part of his flame in the village of the mages, Babel, I was able to enter Babel without much resistance.

It seemed Ifrit took pity on the humans living in the hot environment, as he absorbed the surrounding heat to lower the temperature a bit.

As a result, I was able to establish a certain rapport with the village chief who manages this town, which is a very positive outcome. This village is extremely exclusive if you are not a mage, so without this level of assistance, I would not have been able to easily approach them.

Even if I disguise myself as a mage, my current goal is not just to become a member of this village, but to be in a position to inspect the magical stones that come into this village.

Ah, I don't need to inspect them directly. I just need to create some kind of magic or tool to inspect the magical stones.

Regardless, I still need to establish a connection with the village chief.

Through some persuasion, I was able to take on the task of inspecting the magical stones that come into the village, with the village chief assigning an additional person to assist me.

The summary of the conversation with the village chief is as follows:

[Thank you for bringing that sacred flame. Thanks to that, the temperature of the village has dropped significantly, making it more livable. But how did you cross that scorching desert?]

[That's a secret. But in return for leaving that flame here, I have a request.]

[What kind of request? If it's within my ability to decide, I'll grant it.]

[I've heard a lot of external magical stones are coming into this village, so I'd like you to entrust me with the task of inspecting those stones.]

[Why do you want to do such a thing? The magical stones are an important raw material for making the magic scrolls, which are a major specialty product of this village...]

[Some of the magical stones contain a dangerous aura, a tiny bit of dark energy. If you use them without paying attention to that, it could cause a big problem.]

[But...]

[If you don't want to, I can't help it. I'll take the sacred flame back then. I brought the flame because I felt sorry for the people in this village, but if you can't even grant this request, I have no choice.]

[I-I'm sorry! Please reconsider! I'll set up a place for you right away!]

Through this appropriate persuasion, I was able to take on the task of inspecting the magical stones brought into the village. Of course, I'm not doing it alone, as the village chief has assigned an additional person to assist me.

"Are you the one who brought that flame?"

"That's right."

The young mage stared intently at my horns.

His gaze clearly conveyed the sentiment of "What kind of human has something like this attached to them?"

"Why are you trying to do something as annoying as inspecting the magical stones?"

"Hmm. Didn't the village chief tell you the story?"

"What story?"

"No, never mind. You'll understand soon enough when you see it."

With this trivial conversation, the young man and I entered the warehouse where the externally brought magical stones were stored.

A few wooden boxes piled in the corner of the small warehouse - that was the amount of magical stones brought in at a time.

"Don't even think about secretly putting a few stones in your pocket or anything. I'll be watching your actions with my own two eyes."

"Don't worry, these stones aren't worth much to me."

The important thing is that some of the stones contain fragments of darkness.

I opened one of the wooden boxes, revealing the magical stones filling it.

Hmm, there are quite a lot. Inspecting them one by one is going to be a hassle.

I could try to find them manually, but the fragments of darkness hidden in the stones are too small, while I'm too big to find them, so it's not going to be an easy task. It's like trying to find a tiny black grain of sand in a desert.

Troublesome and tiring.

In a case like this, I should use a tool.

Let's see. I'll make it a small hand-trowel-like shape that can be held in one hand, and add a precise detection function to it to be able to pick up even the slightest dark energy from the contents. I'll also add a warning sound that goes off when it's detected, and a control function that only activates the detection when the button is pressed.

With this simple magical stone detection tool in the shape of a hand trowel, I scooped out the stones and transferred the empty boxes, without the warning sound going off, even as the young mage watched me with a puzzled gaze.

Beep!

The warning sound went off.

"Huh?! What's that sound?"

"I've finally found it."

I scooped out about half of the magical stones inside the hand trowel and pressed the activation button again, and this time the warning sound did not go off, so I moved the remaining magical stones in the hand trowel to the inspected box.

And after re-inspecting half of the stones I had set aside earlier, with no warning sound, I moved them to the inspected box as well. I repeated the process of halving the stones that triggered the sound and re-inspecting them until:

"I found it."

I was able to find a magical stone the size of a fingernail that had a fragment of darkness embedded in it.

"What's so special about that stone that you had to search for it so carefully?"

"Take a good look."

I took out a black diamond from my pocket and brought it close to the stone, and a tiny fragment of darkness seeped out of the stone and flowed into the black diamond.

"Did something just come out of the stone just now?"

"Yes. You saw it well. Your eyes are good."

I had thought the fragment was so small that he might not have noticed, but fortunately the young man had witnessed it properly.

"But what was that just now..."

"A tiny fragment of darkness. It is present in a very small portion of the magical stones."

In fact, even after going through almost an entire box, this was the only stone it was found in.

The probability must be infinitely low.

"It's like an impurity mixed in with the magical stones. I'm trying to seal away this energy."

"Seal it away..."

The young man seemed doubtful. But what can I do? He had seen me actually doing it.

"I can't just leave this energy alone. Since this village is where most of these magical stones come in, if I leave these fragments of darkness unattended, who knows what might happen. I'll keep it a secret."

"A secret? You're speaking in a very meaningful way, but it's a secret?"

"The certain thing is, it's not a very good thing in this world. If magic scrolls are made using magical stones with these fragments of darkness in them, something bad might happen."

"Something bad... Could it be related to the faulty scrolls as well?"

"Faulty scrolls?"

I asked back, and the young man calmly replied.

"Yes. It's very rare, but sometimes perfectly made scrolls would either not activate properly, activate much stronger than expected, or activate a completely different magic. People have even been injured or killed because of that."

"I see."

Faulty scrolls, huh. I didn't know that was a thing. I thought the occasional magical explosions during scroll-making by mages were just failed attempts.

"I'm not certain, but there's a possibility. Shall we test it out?"

I pointed to the empty boxes that hadn't been inspected yet. If I could find stones with fragments of darkness in those boxes, I could test it.

But the young man shook his head.

"Trying it out directly is a bit... daunting. It could be dangerous for my life."

Well, testing it at the risk of one's life is a bit much.

Then, if I remove all the stones with these fragments of darkness and make scrolls, and no faulty scrolls appear... that might work, right?

"Anyway, if the cause of the faulty scrolls could be these fragments of darkness, I can't just ignore it. Could you possibly prepare more tools to detect the darkness fragments?"

"Hm? More?"

"Yes. I'll pay a sufficient amount. If we can reduce the number of faulty scrolls, I'm willing to use as many as needed."

Hmm. The payment isn't really important. Ah, that's it!

"No need for payment. Instead, I'd like you to gather the stones with the darkness fragments and send them to the Temple of Life."

"The Temple of Life? Are you by any chance related to the Temple of Life?"

"That's... a secret."

I raised my index finger to my lips to emphasize that it's a secret.

It would be more convenient for me to have the stones with the darkness fragments handed over to the Temple of Life, where I can control them, rather than leaving them with the humans.

"If you hand them over to the Temple of Life, I'll come by occasionally to collect them. After all, the stones with the darkness fragments are unusable for you as well... It could even save you the disposal costs, don't you think?"

It's better to have them handled cleanly than risk problems from trying to use them, from the mages' perspective.

"As for that point... I will speak to the village chief about it. But I will likely get his permission. The issue of faulty scrolls has also been a concern for the village chief."

"Un. I appreciate that."

If things proceed as such, it would be very convenient.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

And so I created several trowel-shaped magical stone detection tools and handed them over to the mages. The mages then completed a contract to transfer the magical stones with fragments of darkness to me through the Temple of Life.

Good. It's much more efficient to have others do it rather than doing it myself. As they say, you have to use your head to make your body comfortable. Now I just need to go to the Temple of Life occasionally to collect the fragments of darkness embedded in the magical stones.

While building this system to gradually recover the fragments of Erebus, I suddenly remembered an important fact that I had forgotten.

If it's a monster that can be captured by ordinary humans or subraces, then I can recover the fragments that way.

But what if it's a monster that's too strong for humans to handle?

Should I just wait for humans to become stronger? But I don't know how long that will take.

Lizardmen or giants might be able to beat most monsters, but they are heavily influenced by their environment and can't roam freely... Hmm.

I fell deep in thought.

Wouldn't it be better to create a powerful weapon that is deadly to strong monsters, and use it to absorb the fragments of darkness from their magical stones?

For example, something like a Hero's Sword.