Alderamin on the Sky

Volume 1 Prologue

There are probably two types of geniuses, Bajin thought as he ran down a poorly-lit stairway, skipping three steps at a time.

There was the hero-type who appears when the world needs him, and then there was the oddball-type who just naturally appears out of nowhere and couldn't care less about what the rest of the world is doing. Neither one was better or worse than the other. But what Bajin could say from personal experience was that when an average person spent time with the latter, his troubles were anything but ordinary.

"Professor! I'm coming in!"

Following a kick which threatened to smash the ill-fitted door, he was greeted by the usual stuffy atmosphere of the underground laboratory. Scribbled-on memo pads, boiling chips for experiments, and other things of that nature were scattered haphazardly across the floor, leaving almost no room to place one's feet.

"Whoa?! Jeez... and to think I just cleaned it up yesterday..." Bajin sighed automatically.

He quickly pulled himself back together and starting walking, though, heedless of the littered objects. What heed did he need to pay? Most of the things in this room would be left as they were, anyway.

"Professor! Please answer me, Professor Anarai!"

When he raised his voice, something moved in the deepest part of the poorly-lit room. A small yet sprightly old man appeared with a lamp in one hand. His white coat fluttered as he came into view, sticky with some kind of paint material.

"Don't shout, Bajin. I almost messed up the finishing touches, you know."

The old man was gripping a brush dipped in pale yellow paint in his right hand. Bajin frowned.

"Finishing touches, you say... Just what on earth were you doing with those painting tools?

"Oho, want to see? They aren't dry yet, though."

When he followed Anarai to the depths of the room, there were four dolls lined up colored red, blue, green, and yellow respectively. Even though you could call them humanoids, they were as tall as Bajin's knee, with large heads and small limbs. In a manner of speaking, their bodies were like deformed figures to the size of two and a half of their heads.

But generally, people would not call these figures humanoids. While these beings had taken on this shape, they were a different existence from humans altogether, having existed alongside the humans as if nothing was more natural. They were the so-called ---.

"-- four great elemental spirits... right?"

"That's right. Made by Anarai Kahn, these are the 'artificial spirit' prototypes."

Urged on by Anarai, who gave a very satisfied snort, Bajin turned and viewed the dolls in order from the right side. To begin, the first one... was the green-painted doll. On its stomach, a round hole imitated from an actual "air tunnel" was opened. There was a breeze flowing from inside.

"This is a wind spirit isn't it? Its power..."

When Bajin bent over and peeped through the hole, first the six propeller blades that created the circulating wind came into his view, and furthermore on the opposite side, he could confirm a small animal running continuously on a hamster wheel connected to the blades. If you listened closely, the animal made a squeaking sound.

"...is that a mouse...?"

"It was in this area, and besides, for creatures that could become a power source, there weren't any other candidates."

"So we're a group that privately entrusts everything to a mouse, necessarily right?"

Bajin retorted, expressing his disappointment to the manufacturer, and turned his attention to the next "artificial spirit."