(author note) ※ Sometimes there will be some parts of the spell that can’t be seen with the cell phone and smartphone models.
When I have some free time, there is a possibility that I will change the letters, until then you might just read it by using PC, if it could somewhat be read I would be happy .
「Eeh?!」
Having longed to decipher the grimoire after a long time, I unintentionally raised a shout.
To my sudden shout, Onii-chan and mother turned around in surprise.
「… Sefi?」
「Did something happen, Sefi?」
Although I had heard those two people worried voices, I forgot to even respond to their voices as I was staring at “that” with intense concentration.
N, no ……
But… That is impossible…
That day, mother got me a “piece of charcoal” and “dried skin” that she picked up outside as presents.
As expected, there are some things that cannot be seen just by seeing, I suppose she remembered the time I used a wooden stick to draw letters on the ground. It was because pen and paper were high-cla.s.s items.
These presents seem like cheap drops from an enemy character that came out at the beginning of a story but were mom’s kind sentiments, and in truth those things are really useful.
…… It was more like, those items are way too useful to the point it’s problematic.
After getting the writing tools that I wanted, at that time I opened the grimoire and starting from the first page, wrote down every letter, one at a time.
This world’s language, how many letters did it have? That will be the first step to deciphering that book.
For the alphabets, it had 26 letters. If we were to count the upper case and the lower case letters, it would become 52 letters.
As for j.a.panese, just counting hiragana and katakana the number would easily exceed 100 letters. If kanji were to be counted as well, then it’ll be immensely difficult.
Fortunately, having done a rough look through the Grimoire’s character strings I feel that there were not that many letters. At most, I think it should be around the same number as the alphabet.
Using the pieces of broken charcoal I recorded the letters one by one onto the dried skin.
By the way, Onii-chan who saw me doing this opened his mouth in amazement while mother was so moved she was going nuts, both to the point I was smothered. …… Mother, please stay quiet, okay.
When arrived at page 5, it looks like I had already completely recorded down all of the letters.
Then I continued with searching for any regularities between the words to try to pry out the grammar that book used, riffling through the book pages.
And then.
「…. Fue?」
I unintentionally stopped my hand at certain page.
The characters that were written down at that page, were written in a wholly different way compared to all the letters written previously.
But I only found them on the left pages and when I looked at the right page, they were all those that I have previously noted down.
In other words, the left page, not even one letter looked alike with those on the right page.
Though it was just impression after briefly seeing it, the structure of the grammar seemed completely different.
… this book was written down in “two different languages”?
When I reached that consideration, I remembered the kind of person had owned this book.
The one who had once owned this book was a『magician』.
And this book was a『Grimoire.』
My hands that were flipping the book, and also my arms were getting gooseb.u.mps all over them.
When I checked again, the 90% of the book’s content was composed by the language which had been written down in the few first pages.
As for the other language, it only appeared about once every ten pages.
Perhaps, that book had a content that 『explained with a certain difficult language using their general language』 or something along those lines.
… if I were to say it more straightforwardly, I guess it’s an『explanation of magic spells』?
Before that, it had been just a vague presumption that「this is a book that a magician left, doesn’t that mean this could be a grimoire?」.
But it was only after I arrived at this point I could be certain that this book was a real grimoire.
Suddenly the motivation to decipher it was flaring up and I flipped the book with hands that were shaking due to the excitement.
I opened the page that I thought got a『spell』written down on it.
Actually, there was no meaning in me looking at the explanation page at this stage. After all, I couldn’t read it.
Of course there be incorrect for me to say that I could read the spell either.
Since if I can’t read either, then my first priority could be to scan through the spell.
On the lower part of the spell page, there was a little picture drawn on it.
When looked at carefully, it sort of resembles『fire.』
Different pages had different pictures drawn underneath them; it looked like they were ill.u.s.trations that depicted the effect of the spells.
Before I totally had no idea what that picture was, but when I considered that the reason behind the pictures were to explain the meaning of the spell, they strangely started looking like『fire』 or maybe『water.』
In a sense, when someone who didn’t know what kind of book this was were to read it they wouldn’t understand a thing; they can be said to be superb pictures. ……It could also be that the author who wrote this book had been an artist.
As I delved deeper for the shortest and easiest-looking spell, I stumbled on one which looked like a 『wind』 spell. I thought that this might be wind because the picture depicted something coming out in a 「swoosh~」 from something that looked like a hand. At least it did not look like 「A spell that will make your hand stink like nattou.」 [1]
Immediately I looked over that page.
ฎธๅฬฎธค_ญใฉม€โ╞ข๏ฎค╡╠ใฉธคฎธๅฬฎธคƂฬฎธค฿ฬฎธค-σ₀₀₀Ƃโ€ๅษโธฬฎธคƂ╢[2]
Hmm, I totally couldn’t grasp what was written there.
Ah, but if I carefully saw it, it seemed like there delicate s.p.a.ces between the words.
Were they the smallest unit of words?
For starters I tried to separate each word; maybe I could understand it easier then.
As I picked and rearranged the words carefully, I began transcribe them onto the dried skin.
ฎธๅ ฬฎธค_ญใฉม€โ ╞ ข๏ฎค ╡ ╠ ใฉธค ฎธๅ ฬฎธคƂ ฬฎธค ฿ ฬฎธค – σ₀₀₀Ƃ โ€ๅษโธ ฬฎธคƂ ╢
… I still didn’t understand one bit.
But I now understood that there were some of the same word sequences that came out several times.
Eh? I felt like some of those were words enclosed in a bracket like thing… maybe those were not letters but symbols?
In this scattered spell, I decided to separate the words in brackets and the words without brackets.
ฎธๅ ฬฎธค_ญใฉม€โ ╞ ข๏ฎค ╡
╠ ใฉธค ฎธๅ ฬฎธคƂ ฬฎธค ฿ ฬฎธค – σ₀₀₀Ƃ โ€ๅษโธ ฬฎธคƂ ╢
Mu mu mu. I feel like I could see the entire structure just a little.
Ah, among the words inside the brackets, there was one letter that always appeared after some words!
Was that coincidence? Or else, maybe that something like a punctuation mark symbol?
Now, to separate these some more…
While I was at it, I adjusted the place and the height so that it would be easy to read.
… Eh?
ฎธๅ ฬฎธค_ญใฉม€โ ╞ ข๏ฎค ╡
ฬฎธค ฿ ฬฎธค – σ₀₀₀Ƃ
โ€ๅษโธ ฬฎธคƂ
「… huh?!」
The moment I saw this structure was the moment when I started shouting .
Let alone my arms, I got gooseb.u.mps all over my body .
My throat was drying up, so as I swallowed my saliva, I made a loud「gokuri (gulp)」sound.
「I…」
As I looked at the sentence that I had rearranged, without realizing it, a word came out from my trembling lips.
「… I can read it…!!」
TLC: d.a.m.n all those squiggles! (not from the spell)
[1] ( TL: Nattou: fermented soybean or something like that)
[2] (TL : Hmm~~ I feel I could use wind magic anytime soon) (ED: Hmmm… Where have I seen these kinds of scribbles before? Oh, the one in the hospital, when the doctor gives the receipt to the nurse, it has the same scribbles on it.)