What Are You Doing, Sis? (9)
What Are You Doing, Sis? (9)
Today was a slightly special day.
[◆ Progress]
[Fire Magic: 1049/1049]
[Water Magic: 440/992]
[Earth Magic: 591/1007]
[Air Magic: 174/824]
[Unclassified: 23/149]
[Wow, still, you managed to master one elemental magic to the end. That is worthy of respect.]
Having mastered the last Fire Magic in the library, I forced back the tears that tried to escape.
It was too early to rejoice. To return home, the three remaining elemental magic fields and the unclassified magic still remained. Finishing them would require at least another two or three years.
A question occurred to me. I had understood all existing Fire Magic, but if someone developed new Fire Magic while I was doing other things, would I have to master that as well?
[You won't need to master any new Fire Magic that appears in the future. After all, isn't the fact that you've achieved this much already proof that you've reached the peak?]
Fortunately, the Goddess had taken that into consideration. As if to reassure me, the Hardcover Book removed all the Fire Magic entries from the list.
In other words...
[◆ Progress]
[Water Magic: 440/992]
[Earth Magic: 591/1007]
[Air Magic: 174/824]
[Unclassified: 23/149]
It meant that this was all that would be displayed.
Now only Water Magic and Earth Magic remained to study at Tillet. I planned to finish Air Magic and Unclassified Magic after transferring to Iliad Academy. If I could complete the hydrogen bomb development by then, defeat the Demon King, and then suitably exit this place, it would be perfect beyond words.
[You look very excited.]
Naturally. How could I not have been happy when a long-awaited goal had made progress?
I hummed a tune, thinking that if I endured just a little longer, I could have fried chicken and beer. I checked the remaining schedule for today.......
"Rote, let's go now."
"Mm...."
I roused Rote, who had fallen asleep slumped over the desk. The afternoon schedule was none other than the Flare miniaturization experiment.
Not long ago, Professor Kai Ruisak had introduced me to equipment similar to an AFM, and I had thought of a breakthrough. Today was the day to verify it.
"But why are you trying to miniaturize it?"
"Because if we can make it as small as possible, we can fit more magical formulas into the same area."
"Does that have to do with magic using pitchblende?"
"Of course it does."
Aside from the goal of exterminating the magic beasts that had spread roots in the Empire, there was another important reason to miniaturize Flare.
"Once we miniaturize Flare, we'll be able to precisely produce even more complex magic as scrolls. Explosive-type magic that utilizes pitchblende magic stones will be one of them."
For nuclear weapons, light weight has always been important. If the power is the same, shouldn't they be made as light as possible?
Of course, how to deliver the completed bomb was a separate issue. Thinking about that could wait until later. For now, I decided to focus on the ongoing research.
After grabbing a quick bite at the cafeteria, Rote and I headed to the building that housed the Fire Magic research lab.
It was a place I hadn't visited in a long time. Back when I was under Professor Haspelt, this had been my main workplace.
Since enrolling at the academy, I had hardly ever come here. As a result, it felt both familiar and unfamiliar.
Though it was called the Fire Magic Research Institute, it didn't contain only Haspelt's laboratory. The building was structured like an independent college, with various labs occupying individual rooms. There were over eighty large-scale laboratories alone. As expected of Tillet, the greatest academy in the Empire.
-Knock knock
We first knocked on the door of the supply office. There, I asked whether they had the pseudo-AFM that Professor Kai Ruisak had mentioned.
To cut to the chase, they had one. But it was a fairly old model.
"It hasn't been used for over ten years, ever since the new one arrived."
"Does it not work properly anymore?"
"I don't know about that. Would you like to take a look?"
Following the manager's guidance, we retrieved the microscope from the storage room. And at that point, I realized it. It was a device that observed material structures by tunneling Mana Particles instead of electrons.
While I was thinking that, the manager casually pulled out something and tossed it to me.
"Here's the manual. I don't know the details either, so just use it for reference while operating."
After brushing off the dust as fluffy as cotton candy and wiping it with a tissue, the microscope became fairly clean. Considering how long it had been left unused, the lenses and aperture were in decent shape. After calculating various things including the resolution, I judged it to be usable enough.
Rote and I immediately set up the equipment according to the manual. While we were doing so, Rote asked a question.
"Isn't it impossible to manipulate things at the nanometer scale without the help of spirits?"
"That's what's questionable. If micrometer scale is possible, why isn't nanometer scale?"
"Mm... because it's too delicate?"
I wanted to say that on Earth, we did it without spirits, but there was no way Rote would understand.
"I think it's simply a matter of technological capability. If we use other methods, we can achieve nanofabrication without the help of spirits."
"Yeah. I think so too."
Rote was in a different mood than usual. It seemed she had something prepared.
She infused mana into the microscope. After a bit of adjustment, a translucent window made of mana appeared.
It was about time to begin the experiment.
**
There was only one thing I wanted to find out from the experiment.
- Whether we could make a scroll at the nanometer scale without the help of spirits.
Making a nanometer-scale scroll wasn't impossible. Professor Kai Ruisak was already an authority in this field.
However, miniaturizing 'Flare' with it was a different matter. Flare was an extremely complex scroll, and even with the help of spirits, it wasn't something easily done.
So I couldn't conclude success or failure in one go. From the start, the goal of this experiment wasn't to make Flare. I planned to be satisfied if I could freely move desired Mana Particles using the probe while observing the surface of the Magic Paper under the microscope.
The microscope we used had a probe that traced the sample surface. Attached to it was a long, slender cantilever. The probe functioned much like the tip of an STM, while its method of reading data resembled an AFM.
When we irradiated Flare onto this cantilever and projected it onto the Mana Particle detector, the surface of the Magic Paper was scanned.
"Wow, so Flare can be used like this."
If you removed the part responsible for attack power from a Flare scroll, it became an ordinary beam of light. I had taken advantage of that.
"This is just a laser, basically."
"Laser?"
"I decided to call baby Flare that."
"Baby Flare...."
Rote giggled.
"Aether, you say odd things sometimes."
"I'm odd?"
"Yeah. Is that what all geniuses are like?"
"Genius... I'm not a genius."
That kind of title is for people like Newton or Einstein. I thought it was far removed from me.
"No, you are a genius. You know that denying it is just patronizing, right?"
"Huh."
"Whenever I do something like this with a friend like you, I envy you. You never hit a wall. Honestly, it's not that I don't get jealous. But...."
"But...?"
"...When I'm doing this with you, I feel like I get elevated too. Like I've opened my eyes to something new?"
Then Rote took out a scroll from the bag she had brought.
"This is a magic I devised to sharply etch the end of the light beam. I made it by applying the scroll you created."
"When did you...?"
"I thought I shouldn't just keep clinging to you."
When I actually channeled mana through it, an extremely sharp-tipped light leaked out. It wasn't Flare, but it resembled Flare. Wondering how she did it, I stared at Rote with a blank expression.
Rote sat demurely in her chair and gave a gentle smile.
"You have to get paid for the work you do. Now, use it for the experiment. I'm sure you'll need it somewhere."
Ah, so that was it.
Rote wanted to contribute to this research. She might have kept in mind that I did most of the work when creating Flare.
With this, we could get closer to our original goal even faster. I changed the settings and attached the scroll Rote gave me.
Like carving a stone statue with a chisel, I used the fine probe on the microscope to inscribe paths onto the Magic Paper one by one.
Rote's scroll contributed greatly during the etching process. A group of beams with sharply honed tips scratched the surface of the Magic Paper with a sizzling sound.
The work proceeded for three hours. I engraved a simple circuit with two magic stones connected in series to a conducting wire. It was similar to laying metal wiring in a semiconductor process.
"...Done."
"It's done!"
I turned off the equipment and took off my gloves. After finishing the completed Magic Paper, I carefully placed it in the box I had brought.
"If we show this to the professors, they'll like it."
"You mean that we made this without spirit magic?"
"Yeah. If they don't believe it, we can just do it again."
Even as we left the lab, Rote kept talking.
"Now that this works, we can easily make a bomb that can cut down magic beasts with our uranium. After we defeat all the extinction-class beasts and even take down the Demon King, a peaceful world will come, right?"
"...Probably."
"Hey, after we've subjugated all the Great Machines of the Nine Heavens, how about we live together in one territory?"
Suddenly, a meaningful remark with an unknowable intent flew at me like a dagger. At Rote's unexpected statement, I forced a bitter smile.
"Uh, yeah...?"
"Anyway, after we graduate, we'll both go to the battlefield, right? By then we'll have made the uranium bomb in advance, and once it's deployed in real combat, we'll bring this long war to an end with our own hands. Then neither of us will have any reason for anything terrible to happen, right?"
"R-right."
"And then after that, we'll return to our daily lives like now. We'll bring out some shortcake and black tea, drink it while doing various magic research. I'm really looking forward to it."
It seemed like she was counting her chickens before they hatched, but it wasn't a bad retirement life.
"So, what's your answer?"
Rote's eyes sparkled like a baby calf's.
As someone who disliked lying, I had to express my refusal. I was planning to leave this world within a few years at the latest.
But bringing myself to say it was harder than I thought.
I didn't want to awkwardly shake my head and make things uncomfortable with Rote. I was also afraid that if she learned I was a monster, our close relationship would fall apart.
Perhaps that was also part of the reason for sending Rote to Iliad as an exchange student. Apart from incurring Rosemary's displeasure, it was because someday I might cross a river of no return.
After hesitating for a few seconds, I reluctantly nodded under Rote's waiting gaze.
And inwardly I repeated to myself: I'm sorry for lying.