The Magic Academy's Physicist-Chapter 174: [Research] Start: Atomic Bomb Development (3)

Chapter 174: [Research] Start: Atomic Bomb Development (3)

My expression went slack when I saw the mana water in front of the door.

“Ten, twenty, thiry...... A hundred?”

Holy crap, why were there so many?

“What’s happening?”

Lotte asked as she approached a moment later, but there was nothing I could say in response.

Let’s think.

Given the circumstances, there were only two people who would do this.

Vermel and Rosemary.

It wasn’t Rosemary, first of all. She was currently occupied with tiptoeing around the Elementals, so there was no time for her to pull out Scope.

Mana water wasn’t an item that was easy to obtain, even; you needed permission from the elf country to get even one bottle of it. Rosemary’s personality wouldn’t have let her bow before an Elemental.

But then obtaining it via illegal means? There was no need to even mention how strict the mutual surveillance between the Empire and Kaurelia was.

“Hm.”

Then that left only one possibility.......

“I’m gonna go visit the infirmary.”

That was what I told Lotte and Freyr and headed for the welfare center. When I opened the infirmary door and went in, I saw Vermel was sleeping, still wrapped up in bandages like a mummy.

He woke up to the sound of me opening and closing the door.

“...Uh, now what.”

“Were you the one who put the mana water in front of our club?”

“...The hell are you talking about?”

Vermel grumbled while pointing to his bandaged-up arm.

“It’s only been two days since I got beaten up. What would I have done, huh?”

That was true, come to think of it.

“And did you just say mana water?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s something even I have a hard time acquiring. You have to be a public figure recognized by the elf country in order to purchase mana water. But do you think that’s possible for me right now?”

Now that he mentioned it, that made sense. I had no logical argument against it.

Then it was weird. If it was neither Vermel nor Rosemary, then who the heck was it?”

I returned to the club without having found a proper clue. Lotte and Freyr, who took out the mana water and were looking it over, asked with wonder.

“So? Do you think it’s the genuine article?”

“It’s real, the real thing!”

A sacred energy was coming from the water contained in the round flask.

[Mana Water][A sacred water blessed by all the Four Elementals. Upon drinking, all magic systems can be used without a scroll.]I pulled out the hardcover and checked just in case, and it turned out to be the real thing.

“It’s my first time seeing actual mana water!”

“Who would have put this here?”

“It’s gotta be super expensive!”

“How much?”

“About a thousand gold pieces for a bottle? I don’t know exactly!”

One needed to take Freyr’s words with a grain of salt as she was clueless about everything besides Earth Magic. It was to the point that even I would think that she had no sense of money whenever we went to the cafeteria.

Anyway, one thing for sure was that it was very expensive.

Wealth, honor, and trust. There weren’t many public figures in the Empire who met all three conditions to buy mana water.

Who was it really...?

“Look over here! There’s a memo at the very bottom.”

“Really?”

I took the note Freyr handed over and read it.

[For the students of the Transmutation Club.]There was nothing else written besides just this.

Judging from the neat handwriting, it was a gift from someone quite learned for sure.

“...Are we allowed to use it however, then?”

“It seems like it!”

I lit a stick of mana grass and drank the mana water as well. As I did, it felt like my body was on a ski lift.

[The limit on magic that can be used without scrolls is gone.]

[Duration : 6 hours]

“How’s the taste?”

“It tastes like vinegar put into lemon water.”

Simply put, it was incredibly sour.

“Euegh. I’m not drinking it.”

Freyr shook her head vigorously and went back to her spot.

She didn’t need to anyway, since the mana water had been needed to allow usage of the transmutation skill even if one wasn’t an Earth Mage.

Lotte followed my lead and also drank mana water. She scrunched her face and let out a bitter ‘ugh’.

“It’s really sour.”

“Let’s get to work now.”

There wasn’t much time.

Six hours per bottle?

If we work eighteen hours, that was six bottles a day.

In order to master the Ultimate Earth Magic ‘Free Transmutation’, then I had to keep transmuting like I was going to die doing it. Because unlike Fire Magic, Earth Magic only determined whether you learned something or not based on proficiency. Looking at it this way, a hundred bottles of mana water wasn’t that much.

“So what do we make first?”

“There’s lead and radon samples in the supply room, right? Could you bring those?”

First, we had to make a high-energy particle with a positive charge. The plan was to hit the target with this high-energy particle and obtain neutrons.

“Here they are.”

“Good.”

I came up with the blueprint of what I was going to make with the gathered materials. It wasn’t easy even with the mind of a Golden-Eyed.

Still, wouldn’t it work eventually if we kept trying, was what I was thinking when–

“Ah, that’s not how you do that.”

Freyr started advising while clicking her tongue.

“You can’t try to chisel the details first. If you start with that, it’ll make things difficult.”

“Then how are you supposed to do it?”

Freyr put her hands on her waist.

“Transmutation is like drawing a picture! You first take things like cubes, cylinders, or spheres and analyze the structure of the object you’re trying to build! It’s important to interpret the object like that, like you’re chiseling away at it.”

It was a vague explanation. So what were we supposed to do?

“Here, I’ll give you an example so watch carefully.”

Freyr picked up a large piece of lead with both hands. The way she struggled was rather cute.

“Huuup! Okay, pay attention now!”

Freyr infused the uneven lead sample with mana and like a lie, all the parts were cut away to reveal a cuboid-shaped crystal.

“You can do this much, right?”

Lotte and I nodded at the same time.

Since anyone could picture a cube in their minds.

“Now from here you chisel away at it bit by bit.”

Freyr handled the chunk of lead like she was cutting it with a knife. The lead that was cut into a cube slowly chipped away like a sculpture was sculpting it.

And soon, Freyr molded the lead into the shape of a crane.

“Wow.”

It was no ordinary level of sophistication.

There was a reason she had slept through Earth Magic period.

“This isn’t the end of freeform transmutation. If you can sculpt, then you should also know how to mold in reverse.”

This time, she stuck the cut-off pieces of lead back onto the crane and made a cube. There wasn’t a single crack like a broken plate had been put back together seamlessly.

“Sculpting and molding–these two things are the fundamentals of transmutation.”

I see, I understood it now.

When we actually learned transmutation, the professor didn’t teach it like Freyr.

As a branch of Earth Magic, transmutation was a study of memorization that involved complicated theories and formulas, applied by memorizing the formulas repeatedly in one’s head. Or at least, that was what I had thought.

I had never heard of it as an intuitive analogy like a picture before.

Of course, because who would think of magic as art?

“So basically you have to have excellent spatial sense.”

“That’s why I said you just need to transmute a lot.”

She had it right. If you wanted to be good at drawing, then you first had to draw a lot.

At this rate, we were going to run out of mana water. We were also limited on time so no matter what I had to achieve what was planned before the midterm season was over.

It couldn’t be helped.

“Lotte.”

“Y-yes?”

“We’re gonna have to grind for the next while.”

What to do when you weren’t satisfied with the result of your transmutation.

Just practice like crazy.

Just as Freyr said

**Twelve hours went by like that.

In that time, the number of failures we made reached a thousand.

Smoke mana grass and transmute objects after drinking mana water. If it seemed like it wasn’t working, mold it and dismantle it again. If the material broke down to the point of being unusable, then switch to something else.

Too much mana was going in and out of my body. My stomach hurt like I had repeatedly eaten and thrown up.

Still, we did it.

“Hoooh.......”

“W-we finally got it.......”

It took a whole day to complete a cavity made of lead.

We were fucked. We had to make things like explosive lenses later on, too.

When were we ever going to finish at this rate?

Either way, we were now able to do basic sculpting and molding. As proof, when we put radon into the lead cavity and got the right angle, we were able to get a good amount of alpha particles.

“So now we just need to have this collide with the sample and obtain that neutron particle or whatever is, right?”

Lotte asked excitedly.

I shook my head.

“It sucks but we can’t just do it.”

“Why?”

“The energy needs to be high enough for neutrons to be made.”

Alpha particles...... We did manage to make a device that could somehow store helium nuclei. Now it was a matter of how to accelerate these particles.

Simple. Just use an accelerator.

[Eightfold Way ─ Third Form]

[Tesla]

The helium nucleus was a positively charged particle. It could be sufficiently accelerated with an electromagnetic field.

The question was how to control this accelerated particle.

Follow curr𝒆nt nov𝒆ls on fɾeeweɓnѳveɭ.com.

“I think we’ll have to make a synchrotron.”

I quickly drew the blueprint and showed Lotte.

If I could, I wanted to ask Freyr to do it, but Lotte and I needed to practice transmutation to get better at it.

Most of all.

“Huwaaaah.......”

The fox kid was on the verge of collapsing from twelve whole hours of intense work.

Sorry, Freyr. I’ll treat you to something good later.

“But according to this blueprint here, won’t we need tons of minerals and mana stones?”

“Isn’t there a lot in the supply room?”

“We’re almost finished.”

I guess we used up most of the stock practicing transmutation.

Shoot, did I need to ask the chairman again?

**But the next day.

“Fuck, the hell is it, seriously.”

This time, there was an enormous amount of iron ores and several mana stones in front of the door, so much so that it was blocking the way into the club room.

I got goosebumps down my spine.

Once might be a coincidence, but from the second time it was inevitable.

[May this be useful to you.]The same person’s writing.

I knew it. Someone was watching our research.

Did they have Rosemary’s Scope ability or something? Or was there something else?

I didn’t think long.

If you didn’t know, then just find out.

“I need polystyrene.”

I said whatever for now and then waited until night fell.

My prediction was correct. In the dark of night, someone’s presence came around the Transmutation Club’s room.

It wasn’t just one person. Having gotten permission from Lotte to stay late at the club, I watched the three shadows while holding my breath. Judging from their stature, it wasn’t Rosemary or Vermel.

“I’m glad that today’s order is light.”

“Seriously, I don’t know why the Master cares so much about a Golden-Eyed child.”

“Leave it. He said he wants to recruit her no matter... Gaaak!”

Baaang!

My body shot forth like a cannonball.

“Kyaaaa!”

“Auck!”

“Khaack...!”