The Magic Academy's Physicist-Chapter 129: What Are You Doing, Sis? (9)

Chapter 129: What Are You Doing, Sis? (9)

Today was a little special.

[◆ Progress][Fire Magic : 1049/1049]

[Water Magic : 440/992]

[Earth Magic : 591/1007]

[Air Magic : 174/824]

[Unclassified : 23/149]

[Wow, you managed to finish one Element Magic. That’s rather admirable.]

As I sat in the library having mastered the last Fire Magic, I barely held back my tears.

It was too early to celebrate. There were still three categories of Element Magic and the Unclassified left before I could go home. To finish these, it would at least take another two, three years.

This raised the question: although I learned all the Fire Magic that currently existed, if someone invented a new spell while I was working on something else, would I have to master that as well?

[Even if there’s a new Fire Magic, you don’t have to learn it. The fact that you made it this far is proof that you’re already at the peak, right?]

Thankfully, the Goddess took this into consideration. As if to reassure me, the hardcover removed all the Fire Magic from the list.

So, in other words....

[◆ Progress][Water Magic : 440/992]

[Earth Magic : 591/1007]

[Air Magic : 174/824]

[Unclassified : 23/149]

This was how it appeared.

Now the only things left to study at Tilette were Water and Earth Magic. With Air Magic and the Unclassified, I planned to finish them after moving to Iliad Academy. And if I finished developing the hydrogen bomb, took out the Demon King, and made an appropriate exit by then, it would be perfect.

[You look very excited.]

Of course, my goal that I hadn’t checked in a while made some progress so how could I not be happy?

I hummed at the thought of being able to have chimaek after holding out a little longer. Let’s see, what was left today.......

“Lotte, let’s get going.”

“Mmm....”

I raised Lotte who had been taking a nap on her desk. The schedule for this afternoon was none other than experimenting with Flare’s miniaturization.

After being introduced to a device similar to an AFM by Professor Cai-Lussac, I figured out a breakthrough. Today was the day I was going to verify it.

“But why are you trying to miniaturize it?”

“Because if you make it as small as possible, then you can squeeze more formulas onto the same space.”

“Is it related to the magic that uses pitchblende?”

“Of course it is.”

There was one other important reason for miniaturizing Flare besides exterminating the Beasts that had taken root in the Empire.

“Once we miniaturize Flare, we’ll be able to print other more complicated magic elaborately onto scrolls. The explosive magic using pitchblende stones should be one of them.”

Traditionally, weight reduction was an important aspect of nuclear weapons. If it had the same power, then shouldn’t it be made lighter?

Of course, how to drop the bomb was a different matter; that was something to think about later on. I should just focus on the current research.

Lotte and I had a light meal at the cafeteria and headed to the building where the Fire Magic research facility was located.

I hadn’t been here in a while. When I had been under Professor Hasfeldt, it used to be my primary workplace.

I barely came here after entering the Academy. As such, it felt both familiar and not.

Although it was the Fire Magic research facility, Hasfeldt’s lab wasn’t the only one here. Like an independent college, this building consisted of numerous labs each with their own rooms, and so there were over eighty large labs in here alone. As expected of Tilette, the best Academy in the Empire.

Knock knock.

We first knocked on the door of the management office overseeing the supplies and asked if they had that AFM-like device that Professor Cai-Lussac had talked about.

Long story short, there was one. But it was quite an old one.

“After the new ones came in, it probably hasn’t been used for over a decade.”

“Then does it not work properly?”

“That part I’m not sure. Would you like to take a look?”

Under the manager’s instructions, I brought out the microscope from the supply room. And that was when I realized that this somehow looked more like a STM (scanning tunneling microscope)1 than an AFM.

I wondered if it was a device that tunnelled magic elements instead of electrons to observe the matter’s structure. As I thought that, the manager took something out and tossed it to me.

“Here’s the manual. I don’t know the details so you can use this as reference.”

The microscope was pretty clean once I dusted off the thick, white cotton candy-like dust and wiped it with tissue. Considering how long it had been neglected, the lens and aperture weren’t in bad shape. After doing some calculations including the resolution, I concluded that it was still usable.

Lotte and I immediately set it up according to the manual. As we did, Lotte asked something.

“Isn’t nano-scale operation not possible without an Elemental?”

“That’s what I’m wondering. Why is micrometer possible, but not nanometer?”

“Mm.... because it’s too delicate?”

Well, they do it without Elementals back on Earth... was what I wanted to say but Lotte wouldn’t understand.

“I think it’s simply a matter of technology. If we incorporate other methods, then nano processes should be possible without using an Elemental.”

“Mm, I think so, too.”

Lotte seemed different from usual; she must be preparing for something.

She channeled mana into the microscope. After a bit of adjusting, a translucent screen made of mana appeared.

It was time to start experimenting.

**There was just one thing I wanted to know from the experiment.

─ Is it possible to create a nanometer-scale scroll without the help of an Elemental?

Making a nanometer-scale scroll itself wasn’t impossible; Professor Cai-Lussac was already the leading authority in this field.

But miniaturizing ‘Flare’ with that was another issue. Flare was a highly complicated scroll and even with an Elemental, it wasn’t easy to do.

So I couldn’t determine if it would be a success or fail based on one try. The goal of this experiment wasn’t to make Flare in the first place. As long as I could freely move the magic element I wanted with the probe while observing the paper’s surface under the scope, then that would be enough.

The microscope used here had a probe that scratched the surface of the sample. A thin, long horizontal structure was attached to it, commonly called a cantilever. The probe’s function itself was similar to a STM, but it read the information like an AFM.

When I irradiated Flare with the cantilever and projected it onto the magic element detector, the surface of the magic paper was scanned.

“Wow, so you can use Flare like this.”

Once you removed the parts responsible for the attack power from the Flare scroll, then it became a normal ray of light. This was taking advantage of that.

“This, well, it’s just a laser.”

“Laser?”

“That’s what I’m going to call baby Flare.”

“What do you mean Baby Flare....”

Lotte chuckled.

“You say some weird things at times, Aether.”

“Am I weird?”

“Yeah. Are all geniuses like that?”

This chapt𝒆r is updated by frёewebηovel.cѳm.

“What are you saying.... I’m not a genius.”

That was a label for people like Newton or Einstein. It was too much for me.

“No, you are one. You know it’d be a deception if you say no, right?”

“Hah.”

“I get envious whenever I do something like this with a friend like you. You do things without getting stuck. Frankly, I can’t say I’m not jealous. But....”

“But...?”

“... When I’m with you like this, I feel like I’m being uplifted, too. Like my eyes are being opened to something new, perhaps?”

Then Lotte pulled out a scroll from the bag she brought.

“This is a magic I came up with that’ll etch the tip of the ray into a sharp point. I tried making this using the scroll you built.”

“When did you...?”

“I thought that I couldn’t just rely on you.”

When mana was applied, the tip emitted a sharp light. It wasn’t Flare, but it was similar. I stared at Lotte a bit dumbstruck as I wondered how she achieved this.

Lotte, who was sitting politely on the chair and looking at me with a soft smile.

“You only get paid if you do the work. Here, use it for the experiment. I’m sure there’s a place where it’s needed.”

Okay, yeah. That was what it was.

Lotte was wanting to contribute to this research. She might have been holding onto the fact that I had done most of the work when we made Flare.

With this, I could get closer to to my original goal even faster. I changed the settings and attached the scroll that Lotte gave me.

Like trimming a statue with a carving knife, I carved one path at a time into the paper with the fine probe attached to the microscope.

Lotte’s scroll contributed a lot to the etching process. The group of sharp-tipped rays scratched the paper’s surface lightly.

The task took three hours. A simple circuit with two mana stones in a series was etched into the wire. It was similar to cutting metal wiring in a semiconductor process.

“... It worked.”

“It worked!”

I turned off the machine and took off my gloves. After applying the finishing on the magic paper, I put it carefully inside the container that I brought beforehand.

“The professors are going to appreciate this when they see it.”

“That we made something like this even without Elemental Magic?”

“Yup. If they don’t believe us, then we just need to do it again.”

Even as we left the lab, Lotte kept going.

“Since this worked, we can easily make a bomb with uraninite that’ll instantly eradicate the Beasts. Once we destroy all the Cataclysms and defeat the Demon King, the world will be peaceful, right?”

“... Probably.”

“You know, once we subjugate all of the Great Nine Mechas, how about living together in the same estate?”

I was suddenly struck by significant words that I couldn’t figure out. At Lotte’s unexpected statement, I gave a stiff smile.

“Uh, what...?”

“We’re both going to war after graduating, no? We’ll finish making the uranium bomb before then, and once we’re deployed, we’ll end this long, long war with our own hands. Then nothing bad should happen to either of us, right?”

“R-right.”

“Then afterwards, we’ll go back to our normal lives. We’ll have short cake and tea as we research all kinds of magic. I’m really looking forward to it.”

I got the feeling that she was counting her chickens, but that didn’t sound like such a bad retirement.

“So, what do you say?”

Lotte’s eyes twinkled like a baby cow’s.

I didn’t like lying so I had to express my objection, since I was going to leave this world in a few years at least.

However, it was harder to say than I thought.

I didn’t want to shake my head and make things awkward between us. I was also afraid of our relationship souring if I revealed that I was a monster.

Maybe that was also part of the reason why I was sending Lotte off to Iliad as an exchange student. Becoming the subject of Rosemary’s scrutiny aside, I could cross a river that I couldn’t turn back from some day.

After a few seconds of pondering, I reluctantly nodded in response to Lotte’s expectant gaze.

And I thought to myself.

That I was sorry for lying.

Footnotes

1. "A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) is a type of scanning probe microscope used for imaging surfaces at the atomic level" (Wikipedia)