"Ah, this is a mess."
After exterminating the Grandragons, Jin and the others had arrived at the destroyed greenhouse.
The cubic zirconia panels were shattered into countless shards, and the Devil's Potato fields within had been trampled into a state of total devastation.
"Well, let's fix the greenhouse first. Reiko, help me gather the fragments."
"Yes, Father."
"I'll help too," Lordtoss volunteered.
"Me too!" his younger sister, All-Creation, joined in.
"A-Ah, um, Sion-sama, who exactly is that gentleman...?" the greenhouse manager asked with a look of utter bewilderment.
"Oh, him? He’s... a very talented specialist."
"I-I see."
"Just watch. You'll understand soon enough."
The 'specialist' gathered the fragments into a single pile, muttering something under his breath.
"Hmm... considering the required strength... what should I do? Sion?"
"Yes?"
The greenhouse manager nearly jumped. The 'specialist' had just addressed the Clan Chief’s wife by her name without any honorifics, and the Madam didn't seem to care in the slightest.
"What was the original shape of the greenhouse?" Jin asked.
"Most of them are rectangular with a gable roof. Occasionally we use shed roofs, but they're rare."
"I see. And you were growing Devil's Potatoes here, right? Not fruit trees?"
"Yes, that’s correct."
"Alright."
Having heard what he needed, Jin activated his magi-craft.
"Fusion."
"Whoa!"
"What!?"
"No way!"
The bystanders gaped as the mountain of cubic zirconia shards merged into a single mass in the blink of an eye. Jin, too, felt a surge of surprise.
(That sensation... magic feels much 'lighter' to use than before...)
He wondered for a moment if it was because his body was now entirely composed of magiatoms, but he shook the thought away to focus on the task at hand.
"Purely."
After filtering out the impurities that had mixed in with the shards, he continued.
"Forming."
Jin began to shape the material into a greenhouse.
"A-Ah...!"
The onlookers were left speechless. Jin had constructed a dome with a radius of at least twenty meters in one smooth motion.
(The scale of magic I can handle has definitely increased.)
Back when his brain and parts of his nervous system were still organic, there had been a limit to his processing capacity. Now that his body was one hundred percent magiatoms, that bottleneck seemed to have vanished.
(Well, it's a good thing, so I won't overthink it.)
"Magnificent as always, Father!"
Reiko’s praise finally snapped the others out of their daze.
"Jin, that’s incredible!" Sion cried, impressed.
"Jin-shama, I'm so moved!" All-Creation added, her eyes shining with admiration.
"Hold on a second. Toughening."
Jin reinforced the dome's structure.
"Now I need to secure the base. Dissolute. Joint. Toughening."
He melted the soil at the foundation, fused it to the dome, and hardened the assembly.
"And finally, an entrance. Separation. Forming."
As if it were the simplest thing in the world, Jin fashioned a door.
"Now then..." Jin turned back to Sion. "What else does a greenhouse need? How do you usually handle ventilation?"
"Oh, um... let's see..." Sion started to think, but then realized the expert was standing right there. "What do you think?"
"A-Ah, yes! With a shape like this, if you could provide holes about one meter in diameter at the four cardinal points, we can handle the rest of the fittings ourselves."
"Got it. Reiko, which way is north?"
"That way, Father."
"Alright. Forming."
Following Reiko's precise directions, Jin opened ventilation ports on all four sides.
"Will this do?"
When there was no immediate answer, Sion prompted the manager again. "Is this sufficient?"
"Y-Yes! Absolutely! Thank you! Thank you so much!" The man looked as though he was about to perform a dogeza right then and there.
Jin turned to Sion for final confirmation. "Is this okay, Sion? I can't really help much with the actual farming side of things."
"Oh, yes, it's wonderful. Thank you, Jin."
In terms of total area, the new dome provided even more space than the original field.
"Glad to hear it."
Jin felt a sense of satisfaction. By using his magi-craft to its fullest extent, he now had a much clearer understanding of his current capabilities.
"I have to say, I'm stunned."
Later that afternoon, during tea time after a late lunch at Sion's mansion, the Madam spoke with a voice full of lingering disbelief.
"Jin, hasn't your mana capacity increased?"
"I'm not so sure..."
In truth, a caster's internal mana pool mattered less than their ability to manipulate the free ether in the environment. In that regard, Jin’s control had certainly reached a new level of mastery.
"I think I've just gotten better at controlling free ether," he concluded. It was likely a side effect of his brain cells being replaced by magiatoms. "I still haven't fully grasped everything about this body yet..."
He suspected he now possessed a complete immunity to toxins and diseases, but he wasn't particularly eager to test that theory.
"Though, it's certain I can't get drunk anymore."
Inebriation was essentially a mild toxic state. Alcohol seemed to have zero effect on his system. If Jin had been a heavy drinker, he might have wept, but since he wasn't, he only felt a passing sense of mild disappointment.
"Anyway, Elena should be ready in another two or three days."
When Jin muttered this to himself, Sion leaned in.
"About that... are you really going to stop acting directly?"
"Yeah. Ideally, I shouldn't be operating out in the open."
He believed it would be problematic for a man who officially didn't exist to draw too much attention to himself.
"I see your point. But what about the Magic Federation?"
"That's a difficult one. I have a feeling I'll have to face their leadership eventually... or at least Guillermo Marukitasu."
Laojun still couldn't locate the man even with the Peeping Telescope.
"If I underestimate him, I'll probably regret it," Jin said. "There are still too many mysteries surrounding that man."