The Magic Academy's Physicist-Chapter 200: From Master to Slave (1)

Chapter 200: From Master to Slave (1)

“Apologize.”

Rosemary glowered at Gilach, even forgetting her rank.

“Excuse me?”

“I said apologize for calling sis a street urchin.”

Aether was her favorite person, so how dare he call her that? It couldn’t be more insulting, and Rosemary felt a sudden burst of anger.

It was the same for Akasha. While she didn’t express it directly, she scrunched her brows and fiddled with the mana grass in her pocket.

Aether... had no reaction. She pulled out the hardcover and jotted things down furiously.

“I was only stating facts.”

Gilach shrugged.

“No matter how high her rank is, it doesn’t change her past as a street urchin. Ah, do you not know because you still smell like milk? Well now you do. Hehihihi!”

Rosemary grit her teeth. She wanted to take out her staff and attack, but Jǫrmungandr’s advice came to mind so she couldn’t act on it.

─ When attacking, you need to realize the difference in power between you and the opponent. There were many idiots who recklessly reacted emotionally during the Great War and landed themselves in trouble. This advice comes from this one’s personal experience, so take it to heart.

The ‘idiots’ that Jǫrmungandr had mentioned surely included Gilach. Overly conceited and too much bravado. That would’ve been why Gilach went through the humiliation of losing to the Elementals and sealed in the Lodestone.

[Enter password : 00000000]Snap.

Closing the hardcover, Aether spoke.

“Slandering your colleague as soon as you’ve been released, hm?”

“What, are you angry?”

“It’s aggravating. Stop with your nonsense.”

“I was only saying the facts.”

“You’ve insulted me.”

“So? What are you going to do about it? Huhahaha!”

At Gilach’s feigned ignorance, Aether spoke without a single change in her expression.

“This.”

In the next moment.

A light flashed behind Gilach.

The glass windows around the Demon Castle shattered in unison. Hot air wafted in like a tide through the broken windows.

The temperature shot up. Gilach and Pasmo turned around bewildered. In the far distance, a small mushroom was growing out of the snowy field.

The mushroom grew bigger and bigger using the cold air as nourishment. The tip burned brown as it stretched towards the sky.

Rosemary tasted sweetness in her mouth.

It tasted like lead, and her eyes grew round. The other Great Mechas had a similar reaction.

“W-what is that.”

The great Gilach stuttered.

Pasmo watched the rising cloud with interest, then ripped off a piece of the bandage with his long arm and sent it flying. The worn rag-like bandage fluttered in the wind, traveling all over the castle.

“...Is it your work, Winter?”

There was no answer. Pasmo chuckled, and Gilach glared at Aether in cold sweat.

The other Great Mechas didn’t say anything due to how shocked they were. Rosemary’s mouth dropped open wide, while Wilhelm and Entero froze in their places. Akasha was the only one clapping.

Lastly, Jǫrmungandr....

“How warm.”

...Went to the window and basked in the light. Dragons were cold-blooded creatures, after all.

When it finally fell silent, Aether spoke.

“Come to think of it, Gilach, you were the one who had the most complaints back when the King appointed this one as a Heaven, saying something along the lines of a mongrel like this coming into the noble bloodline of the Golden-Eyed.”

“.......”

“Are you still dissatisfied about that?”

Gilach didn’t answer, and instead held back a noise.

Because if he said yes here, then that magic was definitely going to be fired at him. Gilach might be good at mocking other people, but he wasn’t stupid.

“But it isn’t as strong as I thought.”

Aether flicked her pen as if dissatisfied.

“Although it was dropped past the safe distance, I didn’t use enough initial fuel. Jǫrmungandr, how much can you produce this year?”

“The HEU, you mean? At most, 100 kg.”

“What about plutonium?”

“Around three times that.”

“I can hardly do anything with that.”

She wasn’t satisfied at all. With that amount, she wouldn’t be able to penetrate a concrete bunker, let alone turn the continent into a sea of fire.

It would be no different from an ordinary bomb. Aether wanted a cloud so big that the sun couldn’t be seen from anywhere on the continent.

For that, they needed to blow up gigatons of TNT, at least. This was the force of exploding at least hundreds of Tsar Bombas at the same time.

So she had to complete her Innate Magic ‘Dark Day’, after all. Without that, her desire was never going to be fulfilled.

“That is it for Jǫrmungandr. Listen, you two who’ve just woken up. From now on, this one is going to focus on superconductivity research before winter comes to an end so do not ask me for anything else.”

With that said, Aether left the meeting room. There was no more reason to stay here.

“I’m coming, too, sis!”

“Oh, me, too.”

As Aether made to leave, Rosemary and Akasha followed after her.

Silence fell upon the meeting room, and the remaining three Heavens all looked at each other.

As they were exchanging looks, the Tertius Wilhelm stepped forward and declared.

“Well, adjourned if you want.”

**After returning to the castle, she had been so occupied with organizing research data that she hadn’t been able to change properly. Immediately after welcoming the two Heavens, Aether changed her outerwear into a black trenchcoat.

Brooch into a necktie. Tennis skirt into slacks.

The white muffler–

The muffler.......

“First, there’s something you need to know, sis.”

As soon as she changed, Akasha began her briefing.

“At this rate, it won’t be much longer until the King’s resurrection. We’re actually only one away from being done.”

They were almost done collecting the Lodestones.

There was only one more to go–the ‘Lodestone of Air’ that lay sleeping tangled in the roots of the precious ‘World Tree of Verdure’ of the elves.

The Lodestone of Air was also called the the Lodestone of Wind. This Lodestone was protected and maintained by the elven council and their elders.

“They seem to call those elders ‘parliament members’, lately.”

Aether’s eyes narrowed when she heard that. Parliament members. She heard the words somewhere before, but she couldn’t remember.

“Anyway, this isn’t what’s important.... The main thing is that this is much trickier to acquire than the other Lodestones.”

“So what.”

“What do you mean ‘so what’? This time all of the Four Heavens have to be involved.”

This was what Akasha was saying. The area around the World Tree of Verdure was heavily guarded. There were several Elite Elementals stationed, and most of the elders were skilled. It would be a tough operation to carry out alone even for a Heaven.

Because of that, Akasha’s goal for her trip to elf country had been a ‘preliminary survey’ rather than ‘snatching the Lodestone’. Even that plan had kept getting delayed due to other things overlapping.

“After all, the Demon King can be resurrected right away once we have that one. So I’m saying that we should all go together and just get it over with instead of doing our own thing.”

Certainly, it was the best option from an efficiency perspective.

If they send some half-baked team and get caught, they’d be done for. They could be beaten by a bunch of Great Elementals on the spot. It would be fine if they could make it back somehow, but in most cases they would probably become scrap metal and be disposed of right then and there.

“First, one or two of us will sneak in. The ones who go first will figure out the exact location of the Lodestone and check the details of the surrounding area. Then when it’s a holiday or something, bam...! You know what I’m saying, right?”

Except, this method couldn’t be considered completely safe, either.

Iliad Academy had also been attacked by Octavus. Thanks to that, Kaurelia’s ability to fight against Beasts was better than ever.

“It won’t be easy to get in.”

“So we need to fake our IDs and practice hiding our malice.”

“That won’t be the only problem.”

If they concentrate the whole Demon Army force on Kaurelia, then the Demon Castle was going to be empty. There was Flare and also the White Night that the other Aether had left behind. If things went wrong, then they could be robbed by the Empire.

“We’ll need to be smart with distributing our forces.”

Aether said dispassionately. The Demon King’s resurrection or what not wasn’t her immediate concern. Rather, she wanted to research a technique before the year was over.

An ultra-high temperature, superconducting magnet.

Literally a non-resistant magnet that worked even in very high temperatures.

It wasn’t easy to do, as most magnets lost their magnetism when temperatures rose rather than their resistance becoming zero.

“Why a superconducting magnet? There’s Tesla.”

“There isn’t enough power with the Eightfold Way, and it also requires a lot of mana. I would rather come up with a scroll and move the world’s magnetic field as a whole instead of using that.”

“What, going to manipulate a planetary magnetic field or something?”

Akasha smiled incredulously. It may be her sister, but it was ridiculous.

“I sound absurd, don’t I.”

Face not shifting one bit, Aether opened a book containing the theory of scroll combining.

She wouldn’t.

Rosemary, who had been listening to her two sisters nearby, shivered. It was due to a sense of danger for some reason.

“The principle is simple. First, electrolyze seawater with four White Nights. After shooting that through a planetary magnetic field, Dark Day will be activated.”

“S-sis, then this planet is going to become like the sun, no?”

“So what.”

“Then it’ll also affect me and Rosemary. Um, you’re joking, right?”

Aether didn’t answer, and the two little sisters had to go through a spine-chilling experience.

The two hurriedly left the research lab.

“Sis.... what do we do about big sis? I think she became strange because I stopped her from doing research at Tilette....... I-it’s my fault!”

“No, it’s not. It’s because of those humans who stabbed her in the back. Who said they should betray her that easily, huh? Though I was happy with it.”

Still, the way she was being was too much. It was as if she turned into someone out for blood. Where was the level-headed technical advisor of the Demon Army?

And because of that little performance earlier in the meeting room, it was hard not to take those words seriously.

An ultra-high temperature, superconducting magnet? No way.

......But something told her she would be able to do it.

“We have to make her feel better.”

“But how?”

Akasha and Rosemary brainstormed together.

They got an answer quicker than expected.

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“Oh, yeah.”

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, sis?”

“There was a toy.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

“But what if it stresses her out instead?”

“That won’t ever happen. Anyway, it’s competent, right?”

Having finished their emergency meeting, the two went back to into the lab. Aether had just been about to inject liquid helium into the superconducting phenomenon inducer.

“What.”

Aether’s eyes were pure cold upon seeing Akasha and Rosemary, an expression that didn’t care about anything other than the development of ‘Dark Day’.

“I thought I told you not to bother me while I research.”

Aether said while suppressing her annoyance as best she could. Still, she seemed unable to get angry in the face of them smiling, so she reluctantly closed the valve and came over.

“Just tell me what you want.”

“Sis, do you need an assistant by any chance?”

“......Assistant?”

“We’ll all be going to Iliad Academy once winter is over, right? Then you’ll need to get this research done before then.”

“Researching high-temperature superconductivity is not as easy as you say.”

“So I’m asking if you need an assistant.”

“...Hmm.”

It wasn’t bad. Aether seemed interested.

“...A half-baked person would only get in the way.”

“It’s fine, that won’t happen.”

“Just come with us, okay? You’ll be surprised, too!”

Akasha and Rosemary grinned and pulled Aether by the wrist.