“Having a small portal is great but how should we try it out, Yumi?”
“Nn? Well, we could… could… We could… Nn…”

I fell silent after being unable to answer Karen’s question. I was thinking that wouldn’t be so difficult and didn’t give it much thought, but now that she asked me about the how-to, I realised that there were still some problems.

Most of all, the portals had to be connected. I always did that directly, but I wouldn’t be able to do that if we wanted them to be portable. I mean, sure, they were still portable but there wasn’t any point if they still needed me, right? If they needed me, we could just forego the entire tentacle sphere thing and make the portal directly.

Then there was also the question of how to make the portal reappear and so on, but considering how smart the tentacles were, I doubted that would pose any issue.

“How about… we first… list all the… problems… we still… have to… solve…?”
“... Nn, that would be for the best.”

Maybe Karen and Ria noticed some problems I hadn’t thought of spontaneously.

“Then, err, should I begin?”
“Mm…”

They both nodded.

“Okay then… The first problem would be to connect it with another portal. I always do that myself so I don’t know if I can make the tentacles connect without me helping…”
“Ahh… That would… be a problem…”
“Nn. And then, the next thing I can think of would be how to make the portal appear from just the sphere… I think the tentacles can manage that on their own as long as we can tell them when to do so… I don’t know, maybe we could use a password or something…”

Something like shouting “Set up!” or so… Oh sheesh, I immediately regretted imagining that. Fortunately, it wasn’t going to be me who had to say that.

“Those are the two problems I can think of, right now.”
“Mmm… I agree… Those two… are important…”

If we didn’t solve those two, there was no point in making these portals, after all.

“Karen… Do you… have anything…?”
“Me? Well…”

Karen looked at the sphere in my hands for several seconds before speaking up.

“Err, what about people like Lily? Some people can’t stand the tentacles, right? It’s not really important, though…”
“Ahhh…”

Right, Lily couldn’t handle them well. We could probably chase her away with these tentacle spheres.

“Are there others apart from Lily who can’t deal with them?”
“Well… I think most of the mercenaries don’t mind them much but I overheard the women from the families that they weren’t very comfortable looking at them. There were also concerned about the children.”
“Nn…”

That could be a problem… But that was less of an issue with these spheres in particular, but more one about the tentacles in general.

“I don’t think I can really do anything about that, though…”

If I had a choice in the matter, I would have changed their appearance long ago already.

“Mm… I remember… the captain… talking about… that before… as well…”
“Really?”
“Yes… in addition… he was… talking about… the dolls… as well… and that… they scared… some of the… children…”
“Ah, now that you mention it, I remember that.”

He did say that there had been a few complaints about the dolls before, because some people encountered them in the middle of the night or something and got scared. Truth be told, I would be scared as well. Imagine you walk to the toilet in the middle of the night and a bunch of moving dolls walks in front of you. A nightmare.

“Either way, that’s not something I can do about right now…”
“I did say it’s not very important.”
“Nn, that’s fine. We’re just making a list for now anyway.”

It was something to look into… at another point in time.

“Do you have anything else, Sis?”
“I can’t think of anything else right now.”
“Nn, got it. Then, Ria?”

I turned to the person who had suggested this in the first place.

“Mm… The issue… about the… mana flow… is one thing…”
“Nn, the thing you mentioned before, right?”

Though it had been about the weird flow of the small portals, the problem applied here as well. If someone checked for magic tools, they would immediately find them.

“Miss Ria, is it really a problem if they find them? They won’t know what they are for, after all,” asked Karen.
“They won’t… but if they… grow suspicious… they will… refuse entry… And… these spheres… are very… suspicious…”
“Nn, they definitely are.”

If anything, wouldn’t they think these spheres are monsters and try to destroy them? That’s the most likely situation, if you asked me.

“It’s a risk either way… So, yeah…”

Another problem added to the list.

“Was that everything, Ria?”
“One more… thing to add… What surfaces… can be used… to fixate… a portal…”
“Oh, that’s a good question.”

We always used surfaces that were as flat as possible but maybe that wasn’t even necessary?

“Okay, so we have four issues so far… anything else to add?”

I looked at Ria and Karen in turn, but neither of them spoke up to add anything.

“Okay, so four issues for now.”

We might think of other problems later on but for now, we had an idea about what to do.

“We should… start with… Yumi’s problems… first… There is… no point… in solving… the others… if they can’t… use them…””
“Nn, I agree. Should we do the issue about the connection first?”
“No, let’s do… the other one… first…”
“Err, about others using the spheres?”

I was a little surprised that she wanted to do that one first.

“I do not… know what… the problem is… with the… connection… you talk about… I won’t… be able… to help… a lot… with that…”
“I guess…”
“That’s why… the other one… since we… can easily… test it…”

True. I just needed to hand her the sphere and we could try it out.

“Okay. Then, who wants to try it?”

I held up the sphere. In the corner of my eye, I already saw Karen trying to raise her hand… before Ria interrupted.

“I will… do it… Karen wouldn’t… be a good… example…”
“Ehhh?”
“Nn?”

I tilted my head. Why wouldn’t she be a good example, though?

“Karen is… too close… with you… Yumi… The tentacles… will probably… listen to her… just because… you’re close…”
“Oh…”

Karen’s shoulders slumped when she heard Ria’s argument.

“Nn… I understand, but wouldn’t it be better if we find an unrelated person then?”

While I admitted that Karen wasn’t the best example, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ria’s case was similar. She occasionally helped out when it came to testing things and the like, so the tentacles probably knew her.

“Mmm… That is… a good point… Then… we will first… try it… with me… and if… that works… we ask… someone else… to try it…”
“Nn, that sounds okay.”

Though, if we did things like that, we could’ve just let Karen do it… Then again, it might work for her, but not for Ria and then we’d just have to do extra steps… Probably. Maybe… Something like that…

“Anyway, here you go, Ria.”

I handed the small tentacle sphere to Ria.

“Mm… Thank you…”

She received the sphere and then looked at it closely, clearly curious about the wriggly ball.

“Err… Miss Ria, wouldn’t it be better if we first tried out whether it works at all with Yumi?”
“... Mm… It’ll be fine…”
“Ehh…”

Ria immediately dismissed Karen’s argument… even though what she had said made sense. We didn’t even know if this thing worked at all…

Wait… Ria isn’t just trying to sate her curiosity, is she?

Rather than trying to use the sphere, she was looking at it from all angles, squishing it, feeling it up and so on… All things that weren’t exactly relevant right now…

“... Ria?”
“Mm… One moment…”

 I frowned a little when she was still messing around with the sphere.

“Ria, we’re supposed to make them work… Please don’t mess around.”
“Mm… Okay…”

Maybe she noticed that I was a little bit annoyed as she immediately folded and stopped what she was doing.

“So… How should… I use it…?”
“Nn…”

I closed my eyes and calmed down a little, before thinking about her question. I was thinking of using something like a password, so that was probably a good start. Then again, the tentacles knew nothing about a supposed password so that was probably pointless…

“Err… Just try saying something that they should make the portal and… I don’t know… from them at the wall?”

For now, I just hoped the tentacles were smart enough to know on their own what to do.

“Where should… I throw them… though…?”
“Err, one moment. I’ll clear some space.”

I went up to the nearby wall and cleared away the tentacles… Or rather, I made them move aside. It looked a little funny how they were crowding around the edges but it served our purpose for now.

“There you go.”
“Okay… Then… Make a… portal…!”

And with that announcement she threw the sphere at the wall. Despite her appearance, there was a surprising force behind the throw. The sphere hit the wall, deformed from the impact and then… stayed stuck in that position. As if someone had thrown a piece of play dough at the wall and it got stuck.

Only after several seconds did the not-so-spherical-anymore sphere quiver until it finally… fell of the wall.

“That sure worked well.”
“Yumi…”

Hey, a little bit of sarcasm was surely okay, right?

“Wait… It’s still… doing something…”
“Nn?”

I looked at the sphere that had fallen to the ground. Just like Ria said, it was still quivering. I wouldn’t be surprised if something hatched from it now. Alas, nothing hatched… instead, the sphere… melted… kind of. It spread out on the floor where it had landed. In the middle of it was a familiar smooth surface with a cross-shaped indention.

“See, like I said, it worked well… Ouch?!”

Right after my comment, Karen bobbed my head. It was probably only meant to be a light hit, but considering her strength, this ‘light hit’ sure hurt quite a bit. Sheesh, what was she going to do if I turned dumb?

“Mmm… Yumi… Is this… a portal…?”
“Nn?  Ah, let me take a look.”

I rubbed my still hurting head as I headed over to Ria and the former sphere.

“Well… I would say it is…”

At the very least, it certainly looked like one.

“Nn… The easiest way to confirm would be by trying to connect it with another portal, I guess. Should I?”
“Go ahead…”
“Okay.”

I put my hand on the portal and imagined the connection between it and one of the portals on the wall. Seconds later, the smooth surface beneath my hand gave in.

“... Well, I might be repeating myself… but it looks like it works.”
“It does… That’s good…”

Fortunately for us, this hadn’t given us any problems. Now, as long as we got the same result with other people, that’d be great. Somehow, though, I had a feeling this wouldn’t be so easy.

“Nn… Now we only need someone to test it again for us.”

The question was: Who?

“Yumi… make it.. .a sphere aga— No… wait… make a… new one…”
“Err, okay?”

I made a new portal on the wall and shrunk it into a ball, before handing it to Ria. I could vaguely guess what she wanted with it but… did she have someone in mind who can test it?

“Wait a… moment…”
“Nn?”

Ria passed by me and walked to the exit of our wagon. Karen and I followed and peeked out of the wagon, watching her. Ria looked around shortly, then walked up to the nearest mercenary.

“Mh? Miss Ria, how canI—”
“Take this…”
“Huh?”

She put the sphere into his hand. For some inexplicable reason, the mercenary grew pale. Really pale.

“Mi— Miss Ria?! What is this?! It’s not going to explode, is it?! Please don’t let it explode! I have family!”
“Huh…? Why would… it explode…?”

Ria tilted her head. It was clear to me that she was confused by his reaction but… did she really not know?

“Hey, Sis… I feel bad for the guy.”
“Me too…”

The poor guy had absolutely no trust in Ria and was still panicking, looking around. He was probably trying to think of a way to get rid of the pink ball. I had to give it to him, though, that he wasn’t immediately throwing it away.

Either way, I felt really bad for him, so I exited the wagon and walked up to him and Ria.

“It’s not going to explode, don’t worry.”
“Huh?! Oh, Miss Yumi… It isn’t?”
“Nn, it isn’t.”

The man breathed a sigh of relief. Just what the hell did Ria do… No, I mean, I could imagine it but that was probably different from experiencing it directly.

“Is that so… It isn’t going to explode…Now, that I look closer at it… Is this something you made, Miss Yumi?”
“Nn, it is.”
“Ahhh… Thanks to the suns… It won’t explode…”

Oh, was my work so trustworthy that they felt it was safe to work with? Good for them. Maybe I should make it explode on purpose?

“So, err, what should I do with this, Miss Yumi?”
“Nn, we’d like it if you could well… How do I explain this? Err, basically, put it down on some flat surface and tell it to make a portal. It should… hopefully do something then.”
“Yumi… if you are… the one to… explain it… then won’t… the tentacles think… it’s part of… your order…?”
“Ria… I am explaining it because we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere if I didn’t.”

Whose fault was it that I had to do this in the first place, huh?

“Miss Yumi, if I may? I can ask someone in your stead to do it if you want.”
“Nn… If that’s not a bother, that would help us a lot.”

Actually, considering how much importance Korwen had put on this whole thing, he probably wouldn’t mind if I roped in a few others. Well, I wasn’t sure, though. And either way, being polite about it could go a long way.

“Of course not. I wouldn’t suggest it if it was.”
“Then, please do. Oh and if nothing happens, you can try as well. We’re trying to find out who can use them. Oh, oh, oh, and before I forget it. Choose somewhere inconspicuous to do this.”
“Understood, Miss Yumi. It will be done immediately.”

The mercenary saluted to me and then set off to do his new job. That went a lot better than I expected.

Meanwhile, Ria was frowning.

“Why was he… so polite… to you…?”
“Ria…”

I had my doubts that the issue was politeness. He was just plain scared of the thing she handed him. Politeness was definitely the last thing on his mind in that moment.

“Haaa… Anyway, that’ll probably take a bit before we get a result, so how about we get back in? There’s still more to try out.”
“Mmm… Understood…”

With a slightly reluctant Ria in tow, we returned to the wagon and the tentacle room.

“Okay… The next thing would be testing if we can make it connect without me doing anything.”

That might be a little tricky, though…

“Mmm… I am not… sure how… I can help… with that…”
“Nn…”

That was unfortunate but not unexpected… I couldn’t even explain how these things worked myself. And neither did Ria.

“Well, not much we can do about. I’ll see what I can do.”

First would be to make new tentacle spheres with portals… Right, couldn’t I use those portals I made as a test earlier? The ones I tried to make as small as poss—

“Huh?”
“Is something… wrong…?”
“The portals…”

I stared at the wall but no matter how I hard I looked at it… it was blank. There were no portals to be found there.

“... They are… gone…”
“Nn, but how?”
“You didn’t… erase them…?”
“I didn’t.”

I closed my eyes and tried to remember what I did just earlier. Yet, no matter how much I tried to think about it, no memory of me erasing the portals came to me. And that Ria couldn’t remember either only reinforced it. It hadn’t been me.

“Then… did they just remove itself?”

The tentacles did close the portals on their own when they ran low on mana. Maybe this was something similar?

“Hey, Sis…”

I turned around to Karen… or where I thought she was.

“Huh? Sis? Sis? Where are you?”
“Yumi, I found something.”

Relief came over me. It was only a short moment, but being unable to see Karen, right after those disappearing portals, had worried me for a moment.

I walked out of the tentacle room and found Karen holding a small letter.

“What do you have there?”
“I don’t know… It’s a letter I think but I can’t read it.”
“Nn? Let me see…”

A letter? Who would put a letter here? Did this have something to do with those disappearing portals?

It’s not going to be some Great Spirit or a god or something telling me to stop messing with space, is there?

I took the letter from Karen and looked over it. There were… letters on it that were oddly familiar. They weren’t the same as the Lafrian letters that Karen had taught me. But still, I… knew these.

Wait, I definitely knew these. But I couldn’t quite remember from where…

Something I can’t remember well…

There weren’t many possibilities what it could be then, could it?

“Yumi, can you read it?”
“... Nn, I think I can, give me a moment.”

Either way, if it helped me read this, then that was fine by itself.

“Nn… Let’s see… ‘I got rid of those broken portals. With love, your mom (Yumias).’”
“...”
“...”

Wait, what?

“It’s her again?!”

Sure, I absolutely expected it when there was a letter using a weirdly familiar alphabet but… Come on, we were gone for at most three or for minutes? We had been right outside the wagon! Why write a damn letter?!

“Broken portals? Yumi, what does she mean?”
“Nn… Ahh… I guess she probably means those small ones I made? They’re gone.”

Karen’s question pulled me back to reality. Seriously, that woman… No, there was no point in getting upset. That’s how she was, after all. Hell, for all I know, she might’ve been in a hurry.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen her in a while…

There might’ve been a reason… If there really was one, I’d feel a little bad about getting upset…

“Haaa… Really, that one… I have no idea why she only left a letter, though.”
“She might be busy.”
“Nn.”

Seems like Karen reached that conclusion as well.

“Well, anyway, she was the one who told me not to worry about messing things up and now she comes here and fixes things?”

If she had to fix it, that meant something went wrong. It was probably because I forcefully tried to make those portals smaller. Maybe they became unstable or something in the process? The tentacles were the ones who handled it and they couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t ask about explicitly…

“Well, I guess I won’t try to repeat that, at least. Who knows what might happen otherwise.”

Frankly, all those other occasions where I either nearly blew myself up or nearly drained myself dry of mana felt way more dangerous. The mana around those portals felt weird but that’s all. Ria didn’t notice anything off, either. Probably…

“Hey, Ria?”
“Mmm…?”
“Did you notice anything wrong with the portals I tried to make earlier? The ones where I wanted them as small as possible and that are now gone.”

I returned to the tentacle room, to ask Ria about it, just in case.

“Mm…”

Ria looked at the now blank wall before shaking her head.

“I didn’t…”
“I see.”

Well, at least Ria didn’t know either. Considering how much more she knew about magic compared to me, that was oddly relieving.

“Haaa… What a pain…”
“Yumi, how about we go back to testing your things out? It may take off your mind of her.”
“Nn… That’s a good idea.”

No point in dwelling on that. I had no ways of finding out what the issue was anymore. The only thing I knew was that I shouldn’t repeat it. It was probably a bad idea in general to force the tentacles to do something that they clearly struggled with.

“Anyway, you’re right, we should finish up…”

At least, I hoped it’d be over soon. Somehow, that letter managed to drain me of all my energy… I looked over to Karen, then to the tentacle room where Ria was still busy looking around. I had no idea what she was doing there but I didn’t care either. Instead, I pulled on Karen’s sleeve and beckoned her a little away from the room, out of sight of Ria.

“Yumi? Is something the matter?” asked Karen, her voice a little quieter than usual.
“Nn, well… I wouldn’t say that something’s the matter… It’s just… Hey, Sis, can I ask a favour?”
“Of course you can.”
“Then… when we are done with everything here, can you… spoil me alot? Like, a whole… whole lot.”

Karen smiled, hearing my request.

“Hehe, of course. I’ll spoil you as much as you want. But only if you do your job properly.”
“Nn, I will. I definitely will.”

If she was going to spoil me… if I was getting such a great reward, then absolutely would do my best. Now I was motivated again! Screw Yumias and her antics!

“Okay, let’s get this finished.”

With my newly-found motivation, I returned to the tentacle room. Ria was still messing around with the magic tools she had brought in earlier. She had told us that they were used for measurements. Probably about mana or something.

“Oh… You’re back…”
“Nn, sorry about that. We can continue now.”
“Mmm…”

Though I said that, I had all the motivation to finish this as quickly as possible. So, I employed the strategy I learnt just a little bit earlier: Ask the person… the creature itself!

“Okay, tentacles, I have another question,” I started while holding one of the tentacles.
“Can you connect the portals on your own even when I am not around?”

They wriggled. They could!

“This is great news.”

In that case, I would only need to designate a destination portal, right?

“Okay, first let me make a few more spheres.”

About four sounded just right for testing purposes. Actually, wait, I only needed two more. We already had two spheres, though one wasn’t present. The sphere Ria had thrown earlier and the one we gave to the mercenary.

For now, I made two additional spheres. I could always make more later on. I also retrieved the one Ria had thrown. If we needed to connect them to a static portal, we could use one of the portals that were already in this room.

“Okay, now… Nn…”

I could probably connect two of the spheres to each other… but the question was whether I could connect this one and the one that was with the mercenary.

“... Okay, for now… Let’s say this is Sphere #1 and this is Sphere #2. And they’re going to connect their portals with each other when they are used. Err, wriggle if you got that.”

They wriggled. As far as spheres could wriggle.

“Okay… and the third one, connect to the… Nn?”

When I thought about the last tentacle sphere, I had an odd feeling. Like something tugging at the back of my mind.

Is this… because of the portal with the mercenary?

I had no idea whether they succeeded or not but it felt like something was there that I didn’t know about prior. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the feeling and sure enough, there was something. Curious, I tried out if I could similarly sense other portals and tentacles… Much to my surprise, I could. When I thought about the tentacle portals connecting the camp and the fort, I somehow knew where they roughly were and that they were active. There wasn’t much else I could sense but… I never noticed.

It feels a little like when I connect with them through my hair…

At the very least, I hadn’t known or noticed this before. It felt far weaker than when I connected with them directly, though.

“Yumi?”

Karen called out to me, worry in her voice.

“Nn? Ah, sorry… There’s just something a little surprising… Err, I’ll tell you about it later, okay?”
“Haa…”

For now, I should focus on the matter at hand. I wanted to get spoiled by Karen, after all.

“Well… the third sphere… You’re Sphere #3 now… should connect to the sphere with the mercenary… Got that?”

It… didn’t wriggle. Yeah, of course not. It probably had no idea which sphere I meant. But… since I could feel that there was something unfamiliar… maybe I could tell it through that about the sphere?

I tried to convey the rough location to the sphere by imagining it and sending that feeling to the sphere. To my delight, it wriggled a few seconds later, indicating that it understood.

“Great. Then, all that’s left is to test them out.”

And this time, it didn’t matter much if it was Karen or Ria who tested it. So…

“Sis, here you go. Can you take these two and find a spot to make the portals?”
“Leave it to me.”

Karen bumped her chest. She was probably trying to look reliable but, honestly? It was just cute.

“Got it. I’m counting on you.”

I handed her the two spheres, #2 and #3, and watched her leave with them. After that, I made Sphere #1 grow on the blank spot on the wall and form the portal.

And now, I only had to wait.

Well, it’s probably going to take a bit…

I was a little nervous, not knowing whether it would work or not. The tentacles themselves had said it was possible but they might have interpreted my question differently or there might be limitations they couldn’t tell us about. The limited communication was a bit of a problem, too. Still, it was better than no communication at all.

Unfortunately, no matter how nervous I was, time wouldn’t fly faster. I leaned against the opposite wall and instead watched Ria for a while. She kept fiddling with her tools, writing down a few things here and there and then going back to her tools.

And then, after some time spent watching Ria, a change finally came.

“...mi? Yumi?”
”Nn?”

A voice came from right in front of me.

“Yumi? Oh, I can see you! Yumi!”
“Woah, you’re right, there she is! Lil’ Sis! Lil’ Sis! Hello!”
“It really worked…”

Through the portal I had grown earlier, three pairs of eyes peeked through.

It worked. It really worked.

What a relief.