The Magic Academy's Physicist-Chapter 45: Your Paper’s Kind Of Awesome (4)

April came and brought spring fatigue into the classrooms.

The gifted class was no exception. Those who didn’t care buried their heads into the desk and slept soundly.

And that included Aether. She sat at the very front because of Lotte’s suggestion but whenever it was time for Fire Magic, she would become one with the desk and head off to dreamland without regard for the teacher.

She can’t be helped, I suppose.

Lotte tried waking her up several times but to no avail. Though to be fair, Aether’s marks were better than hers so she didn’t think it really necessary to wake her.

She does well on her own, so.

Then when the period bell rang, Professor Hasfeldt asked Lotte to take the teaching materials to the faculty office. When she came out of the supply room after lightly organizing it, Professor Hasfeldt addressed her.

“Miss Saliere, do you know anything about a magic called Flare?”

The question came out of nowhere, but the word contained within it was enough to stop Lotte in her tracks.

“Flare?”

“Yes, you should have heard of it considering your proclivity for Fire Magic.”

“I’ve heard it was a supreme Fire Magic that your family has been researching whenever they could.”

Professor Hasfeldt hadn’t come up with Flare’s general theory alone. Flare was the magic that had been in development like an earnest prayer by the Hasfeldt family since before she was born.

“You are well-informed. It’s well-known that Flare is still at an incomplete stage.”

“Um... if you don’t mind, may I ask why you’re mentioning this?”

“If I may be direct... Would you be interested in developing Flare, Miss Saliere?”

“Pardon?”

Lotte couldn’t believe her ears.

“I’m saying this because it’s you, Lotte. The Saliere family are also quite renowned for Fire Magic, aren’t they?”

“.......”

“You’d also be paid well. Flare is a spell that should be treated with such regard in our current society.”

“Thank you for the offer, however....”

Her words trailed off. She was already cooperating with someone else.

As if noticing her hesitation, Professor Hasfeldt quickly continued.

“I am not asking that you work on it until the end. But I’d like for you to spare some time this weekend, at least. There’s a test that is difficult to conduct by myself.”

Lotte knew exactly what she meant.

Of course, because she had been the one to supply mana on a large scale to the Flare generator that Aether had made. During that time, she had shown the dangerous signs of mana-deficiency even with using several sticks of mana grass. So Lotte was aware of how substantial the mana that went into Flare.

But even if it weren’t for that, there was another reason why Lotte couldn’t accept Professor Hasfeldt’s request.

“I’m sorry, Miss. I have a prior engagement with someone else at that time.”

“... Then it can’t be helped. We can talk after midterms.”

Lotte bowed and exited the office.

What timing.

Two people were working on Flare and both of them needed her. Lotte felt fulfilled by the fact that another was acknowledging her talents.

I should also help Miss Hasfeldt after midterms.

Noblesse oblige. A person of power must carry responsibilities befitting of that position. The meaning of these words wasn’t established only between nobles and commoners.

Noble and noble, as well as nobles and their country. Flare’s development was the destruction of beasts and would bring victory to the war. And victory would then lead to the stability of public welfare.

From studying for midterms to helping other people, there were many things she needed to do. Lotte hummed as headed back to the dorms.

**

A few days later.

“Ready?”

“Should we do this?”

A large magic paper was spread out in the clubroom with a toroidal-shape drawing on it. It was a magic circle called a ‘warp circle’.

Updated from freewёbnoνel.com.

We put the Flare generator and a few other equipment on top of it. And there was still enough room that five people could fit.

Vermel was the one who prepared this warp circle.

“Our destination is the northernmost peak of Elankaya. Prepare yourselves.”

It was common sense that temperatures dropped at higher latitude. As such, we were already in winter clothes even before we got there.

“It’s hoooooot!!”

Flash!

As Freyr said that, the scenery changed.

An endless snowy tundra stretched out before them. The rocks rising over it were flattened on one side. They were nunataks formed from weathering all kinds of storms for over hundreds of millions of years.

The sight of those rocks signified that this was the northernmost part of the Elankaya Cordillera. The area beyond here wouldn’t scientifically be considered ‘land’.

“It’s cooooold!!”

Snow came whipping from all directions but it wasn’t that intense, thankfully. That is, relative to the average climate of northern Elankaya at least.

Uh.... it wasn’t as cold as anticipated, but.

“I knew it.”

If Vermel hadn’t surrounded the firing device with Air Magic, then the testing equipment would have freezed up by now. We needed to test it as fast as possible and get back.

“Can we test it here?”

“The device is already good to go. We just have to make sure not to lose the reference material and data sheets when we proceed with it.”

“Hurry up and get it ready! We came to where all the Calamities are on purpose!”

The first thing to do was reset the warp circle that would take us back to Tilette, which didn’t even take a minute with Vermel’s skills. With that, we secured our escape route.

Next was readying the camera. It was brought for the purpose of providing physical documentation for a possible presentation at a conference.

After setting up the equipment immediately, I spoke to Lotte and Freyr.

Or I was about to.

“Hey! There’s one coming!”

Freyr, who had been on the lookout, shouted urgently.

The ground’s shaking intensified. It was hard to stay balanced due to the trembling terrain. We could feel that something was approaching but it was hard to pinpoint where it was coming from.

“You idiots! It’s below us!”

With a resounding Crash, something enormous burst through the ground. It looked like a lobster and both its claws were a scorching red.

As with all Magic Beasts, this one was also covered in armor. Parts of it were glowing blue as if LED lamps were hanging from it, but it was gray overall. Its two eyes were like the color emitted by filament bulbs.

No, fuck this kind of description.

It was huge. If I were to estimate, one claw looked to be about three meters big, and the body was easily the size of an apartment. The sheer difference raised all the hairs on my body.

“Shit!”

“Let’s hurry. There’s no time!”

The thing didn’t screech. And that made it even more dangerous. Its claw rose up and swung down in the first attack.

Bam it went, sending the snow flying everywhere.

“How long until Flare collimates?”

“A minute... No, just hang on for thirty seconds!”

Over the past few days, the equipment which produced Flare had been further refined and was lightened to a certain degree. As it was now, it worked like turning a laser pointer on and off.

However, it still needed some time to warm up. We had to wait a bit after feeding it mana, and then to get a proper hit was even harder.

We shouldn’t need to worry about accuracy since it’d hit wherever we shot it.

“Freyr! Buy us some time!”

“How would I do that with all this snow! I’m an Earth Mage!”

“You dumbass brat! There’s rock underneath the snow! Use that!!”

“Ack.”

Ah, she’s hopeless.

Still, Freyr responded immediately. A chunk of rock broke through the pile of snow and blocked the lobster’s claw.

The transmutation kept going. It was for a short while but because that metallic lobster kept swinging its claws, the time it was taking to ready Flare seemed much longer.

“I was wondering what it was; it’s a ‘Homarus’...! This guy is a Calamity!”

“What, then aren’t we in trouble?”

As prestigious as Tilette was, it was near impossible for a first-year of the Academy to go up against a Calamity-level beast. Even now, Freyr was barely holding up against the claws.

It might have been possible for Vermel as a transmigrator but, well. The elf was currently busy protecting the warp circle so couldn’t focus on attacking. And it wasn’t as if I could handle it myself either.

“No, it’s good that it’s a Calamity.”

I couldn’t forget the original goal. The success or failure of this test depended on whether a Calamity could be subdued at once with Flare.

“It’s done!”

The collimating was finished. Freyr deployed one last barrier then immediately popped a candy into her mouth. It was mana candy, a mana supplement product pricier than the grass.

Since mana grass couldn’t be lit in a minus twenty-degree blizzard, they had brought a different stimulant with a lot of condensed mana. As soon as Freyr’s barrier shattered, Lotte and I aimed the scroll in the Homarus’ direction.

The Homarus’ eyes aligned with the scroll containing Flare. A ray that was redder than the beast’s claws discharged along with the sound of the focusing beam.

In the next moment, the blizzard stopped.