Morgan's words made Touko freeze in surprise. A moment later, she let out a knowing smile, her voice carrying a hint of genuine respect.
"How arrogant… but only someone like you could make that arrogance feel so perfectly justified."
Shiomi, meanwhile, pushed himself up with a slight groan, rubbing his head as if he had a headache.
"You two… are you seriously holding an impromptu symposium called 'Magecraft or Magic' right now?" he muttered, half-asleep as he complained about the direction of their conversation.
"No, we're just saying whatever comes to mind," Touko replied casually, leaning against the table. "We're going to be together for a long time from here on out, whether as companions or as people close to you. It's only natural to understand each other a bit better. Besides, the things Magus talk about are always the same old topics anyway, aren't they?"
Shiomi nodded vaguely, then flopped back down again.
"This is pointless. Typical genius Magus thinking. I really can't keep up with you two."
"You say that, yet you're a Magus from the Age of Gods that even I can't reach, and you still claim you're not interested in Magecraft," Touko shot back without mercy. "Tenkei, you're surprisingly arrogant yourself."
"That kind of 'arrogance' isn't strange at all," Morgan said, looking quietly proud. "As the disciple who spent the longest time at Scáthach's side, and the only one who learned all of her skills, if my husband didn't have even a shred of pride in his own abilities, I'd be disappointed long before his master ever was."
As she spoke, Morgan felt the Shiomi in her arms go completely slack, deflating like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
"Even if you praise me that much, there's no reward," Shiomi said with a wry smile. "So when you asked Morgan earlier about how it felt to use magic, Touko, was that because when you lost to your sister back then, her answer to you was 'I don't understand it at all'?"
"Yes," Touko said, nodding to herself.
The one she had truly wanted revenge against had never been Aoko, but the Magus Family that had twisted both her and her sister—the Aozaki family that gave birth to them.
Yet when Touko was defeated and finally asked Aoko what she felt, that baffling answer became the trigger that allowed Touko to let go of her obsession.
After she stopped clinging so fiercely to Magecraft and magic, she went on to meet someone in Tokyo who was innately connected to the Root. Looking back, it felt like an absurd, almost laughable twist of fate.
"Whether it's a Magician who inherited magic, or a one-time Magician," Touko concluded, "they end up sharing some strangely similar traits."
"Is that so?" Morgan said, unconcerned.
It was said that the First Magic was the result, while the remaining four were merely means to reach a goal. But when Morgan recreated the Third Magic just that once, it was entirely for a single outcome. She felt no sense of kinship with the Magicians of Proper Human History.
Whether they were similar or not was nothing more than someone else's subjective judgment. It wasn't something she needed to care about.
"Ah, never mind," Shiomi said, shifting slightly to adjust how his head rested on Morgan's thigh. "I was getting sleepy earlier, but listening to you talk woke me right up. I was planning to bring this up tomorrow, but I'll say a bit now…"
Hearing the hint of seriousness beneath his relaxed tone, both women nodded and waited for him to continue.
"Because of the rumors about these hot springs granting wishes, I originally wondered whether it was all just a story," he said. "But when I was soaking in them, I could definitely feel the influence of the ley lines here."
"We know that much," Touko replied. "The power is very weak, but it might genuinely be capable of fulfilling specific wishes."
"More precisely, it would only work for those five types," she continued. "Healing the body through the land's ley lines, or bestowing blessings on bathers who meet certain conditions—things like that."
"It's likely a special belief that's been passed down for several centuries, finally putting its intended function to work."
"No, what I mean is—" Shiomi shook his head. "The land's ley lines have clearly shifted. They're no longer converging around this hot spring inn."
"Oh?" Morgan's expression turned intrigued.
If they weren't deliberately investigating, changes in the land's ley lines wouldn't be obvious.
But Shiomi was different. As his control and understanding of Authority deepened, and as he steeled himself to become a new god, he could pick up on things that others might not notice even if they went looking for them.
"It's like someone's taken control of the land around here," Shiomi continued, "and made the land restructure its fundamental operation with that person at the center."
Morgan narrowed her eyes.
"You mean like in the Mesopotamian Singularity, when Quetzalcoatl altered the southern lands around Ur and Eridu?"
"Correct." Shiomi folded his arms. "This isn't just someone taking the ley lines and then adjusting them through Magecraft—"
Touko broke into a slight cold sweat.
"It's a rewrite of the rules…"
A god could dominate a land and rewrite it into a land suited to that god.
If a god from a radically different civilization descended, they could even reshape the landscape entirely.
In a sense, that kind of Authority was a cheating power on par with magic.
"But when you went to the Hell Hall during the day, you also set foot in the mountains," Morgan said. "The land here hasn't changed to that extent, and the ley lines haven't completely transformed, which is why we couldn't sense it."
"But Shiomi already had the qualifications to become a god. Once he made up his mind to ascend to the seat of the gods, he could perceive this kind of change far more clearly."
"So who is it?" Touko offered a hypothesis. "Could it be the local earth deity?"
Since this was a Singularity, and something like divine power was acting on the land, they had to consider that possibility.
"The scale of the Singularity itself is very small," Morgan said, rubbing her chin. "Small enough that we could ignore it. If it's being caused by an abnormality in an earth deity, that does make a certain amount of sense."
Shiomi stared at the ceiling, thinking as he explained slowly.
"But it's still only a hypothesis… and even if it's just a local earth deity, a god with the boost that comes from faith and recognition is probably the kind of opponent you don't want to take lightly. If you do, it'll become a real headache."
"Tomorrow, we'll start by investigating the entire inn. Then we'll try sending familiars deep into the undeveloped mountain forest to explore."
"So you mean we set up a summoning system and call Servants to help?" Morgan asked.
"No." With his eyes still closed, Shiomi raised a finger with a smug little look. "Since we're all Rune Magus, let's investigate in a more rune-like way."