Gluttony Demon King with the Swampman ~A Man with No Magic Power Who Dreamed of Magic, Wielding Knowledge from His Past Life Through Steady Research and Hard Work to Become the Most Vicious Final Boss~

Chapter 39: The Thing Called Magic Eyes

After finishing the doll’s dissection, I contacted the guild right away.

The message was about finding a person.

I sent a letter-bird to the guild asking if anyone knew a guy who had the exact same lizard tattoo in the exact same spot on his shoulder as the one on the doll.

The guild’s reply came back almost immediately.

A lowlife thug named Milrow apparently had a lizard tattooed on his shoulder.

That made things simple.
To visit anyone connected to this Milrow, I got into a carriage.

“Haro, are you really sure you don’t need us?”

“Yeah, that’s right. We can push back anything on our schedule as much as we want, so if it’s dangerous, it’d be better if the four of us went together…”

As overprotective as ever, I sent Zaria and Egiy on to the blacksmith.

They had their own plans.

The magic sword Zaria had ordered was finally finished, and they were scheduled for the final check.

“Noiche! I’m leaving Haro in your hands, okay!”

“Got it. He’s in my care.”

Zaria reluctantly backed down, and Noiche had apparently been entrusted with something.
It’s not like it mattered.

So once again, today it was just Noiche and me traveling together.

Inside the carriage, while I was rereading the dissection notes from the dolls I’d just finished, Noiche, sitting across from me, suddenly spoke up.

“Haro, just what exactly are you seeing? Who is this Milrow?”

“As the guild just told us, he’s a thug with a lizard tattoo on his shoulder. Apparently he used to work as something like a debt collector.”

“…So that Milrow is connected to the doll?”

I nodded at the suspicious look on Noiche’s face.

“Connected? I think he is the doll itself.”

“…Huh?”

In other words, a human had been turned into a doll.

Noiche’s mouth hung open in shock, but to me, that was the most natural conclusion.

“W-what do you mean?”

“That doll was strange, right? If it only needed to reproduce bones and muscles, fine, but organs and blood vessels? A doll doesn’t need those… More importantly, even if you perfectly copy human anatomy, that doesn’t make a doll move like a human.”

That structure isn’t optimal for a doll.

Rather, the correct way to put it is that an extremely inefficient design is being forcibly moved by magic.

So I figured it’s more natural to assume the doll wasn’t built aiming for the best possible doll shape from the start.
Instead, it ended up that way as an unexpected result.

Yes, as a “result.”

If a human had been transformed into a doll, then that appearance makes perfect sense.

That’s why the dolls were wearing clothes, and why only one of them still had a tattoo.

“But… is it even possible for a human to turn into a doll?”

“Who knows. I’ve never heard of it, but I did find a similar case.”

“…A similar case?”

I nodded.

I put the dissection notes aside for a moment and had Noiche take out the book I’d bought yesterday from my pouch.

It was a used book, an entertaining collection of exaggerated monster legends from various regions.

I’d already finished reading it yesterday, but it was the kind of book you want to read over and over.

Holding that book, I opened to a certain page.

It contained records about monsters like the “basilisk” or “cockatrice”—creatures that looked like a mix of snake and chicken—or about demonkin with snakes for hair.

These monsters all shared one common ability.

“It’s what people call magic eyes. The classic power is ‘turning whatever they look at into stone,’ but when you think about it, that’s an insane ability.”

It turns living flesh and blood into stone.

In my previous life that would have been unthinkable, but this world actually has real alchemy that turns lead into gold, so it’s too late to be surprised now.

Anyway, it’s possible.

If flesh can turn to stone, and lead can turn to gold—

Then skin can become wooden boards.

Muscle fibers can become wires.

Bones can become iron frames.

Internal organs can become leather bags.

Eyeballs can become glass marbles.

There’s no reason a magic that turns a human into a doll couldn’t exist.

“…The dollmaker. That woman, right?”

“She was covering her eyes.”

Magic eyes sometimes appear in humans too.

And people with magic eyes often behave exactly like that.

They cover their eyes to keep their own power under control.

Was that woman really blind?

…Well, anyway, that’s why I decided to go visit the people connected to the thug named Milrow.
Since the man himself has become a silent doll, the only choice is to investigate the people around him.

After I finished explaining, I went back to rereading the dissection notes.
Noiche looked at me like I was insane.

“…Haro, you’re amazing. How are you staying so calm?”

“You’re pretty calm yourself.”

“I just don’t show it on my face. I’m actually terrified.”

Yeah, right.

“It’s my first time meeting someone with magic eyes. Most of them get killed by the people around them before anyone ever meets them.”

…Apparently that’s how it is.

Magic eyes are like independent living things; unlike normal magic, they’re said to be extremely hard to control.

That’s why, even if someone with magic eyes is born among ordinary people, almost all of them are killed while still children.

There’s even a common superstition that people with magic eyes have monster blood in their veins, so they’re easy targets for persecution.

“…By the way, if you already know what the doll really is, why are you still looking at the notes?”

“Oh, I’m curious how the doll actually moves.”

I already know it moves using magic power.

But how is that magic power conducted? Where are the movement commands written? How is the magic power sustained?

When I dig deeper into those questions, all sorts of fascinating mechanisms start to appear.

“…Do you think you can figure it out?”

“I’m still at the hypothesis stage.”

“Even so, that’s way too fast. You literally just finished dissecting it…?”

Noiche was now looking at me like I was some kind of monster.

Still, it’s not a big deal.

You can come up with as many hypotheses as you want.

The real issue is whether you can prove them with experiments later.

“Those dolls have probably mechanized even the natural trait living creatures have of ‘generating magic power.’”

“…What does that mean?”

“It means the doll generates its own magic power and moves all by itself using that power.”

When I explained it that way, Noiche’s eyes went wide.

“…That’s even allowed?”

“I think it’s less weird than astrology.”

Predicting the future makes no sense to me.

This feels way more realistic by comparison.

The only question left is which organ—or whether the whole body—houses the magic-power generation function…

But proving that should be easy.

From now on, if I capture dolls that are still moving and test them while dismantling—“it moves when this part is there, it stops when this part is gone”—I’ll figure it out.

“Now then, I wonder how many more incidents the dollmaker will give us.”

“…Haro, stop looking forward to something so ominous.”

Of course I’m not seriously hoping for that.

More dolls means one more human disappears from the world.

I’m not tasteless enough to genuinely wish for that.

I just use what’s in front of me.

That’s all.

While we were having that conversation, the carriage finally reached our destination.

It was the headquarters of the biggest moneylender in town—the place where Milrow had worked while he was still alive.