Chapter [NaN] |
Intermission 4 Royal Alchemy Workshop and Souvenir
Editor: Tseirp
“Kenneth! Is Kenneth in~?”
At the entrance of the Royal Alchemy Workshop, a robed magician-looking man was shouting.
After shouting a few times, there was finally a response from inside.
“Uh, yes, yes, just a moment please.”
And the person who came out…wasn’t Kenneth.
Such a vaguely familiar development.
A déjà vu…..
With the Liberation war of the Kingdom of Knightley having come to an end, all its functions finally returned to the Royal Capital just recently.
As if in anticipation of this, a robed, magician-looking man came to visit.
Last time, the man had made it to this entrance unnoticed by the guards.
This time, however….
The man who answered the door was Radden, Baron Kenneth Hayward’s subordinate.
“Huh? Ryo? Long time no see…but wait, we didn’t receive any notification from the guards.”
As Radden was saying this, he noticed a guard running hurriedly from the gate saying something.
“Your Excellency, please wait~”
This time, Ryo had properly shown the guards his ‘Duke of Rondo’ identification plate and entered.
However, instead of waiting to collect the plate back, he just rushed to the entrance using <Water Jet Thruster> straight away.
Thus explaining why the guard rushed after him….
Same as the last time, Ryo was taken to one of the largest rooms in the alchemy workshop, called the ‘Analysis Room’.
There, as before, Baron Kenneth Hayward, the master of the workshop, and the artificial golem of the Union that had been seized….
“The golem is…gone…”
Ryo looked around, his eyes wide open.
Muttering “the golem is gone” over and over again as if in delirium ….
Kenneth looked very uncomfortable.
Ryo’s delirious roaming continued until Radden brought coffee for both of them.
Then, Ryo finally accepted reality.
He got down on his hands and knees and hung his head downward in a pose of despair.
“I’m sorry, Ryo. When we were evacuating from the royal capital, we disposed of…or rather melted it down.”
“Eh…”
“At the direction of His Royal Highness the Crown Prince. I suppose it was to prevent the Empire from seizing it.”
“Oh…from His Royal Highness Cain…”
The royal alchemy workshop had fled the royal capital and escaped to Rune in the south before the fall of the royal capital, at the direction of the then crown prince Cain.
On his deathbed, Cain, anticipating the defeat of the Kingdom army and the fall of the capital, had given that order.
Thanks to this, he was able to prevent Kenneth and other alchemy-related materials of the Kingdom from falling into the hands of the Empire.
Even before his death, Ryo held crown prince Cain in high esteem.
“If His Royal Highness the Crown Prince gave the order, it can’t be helped. In fact, he prevented it from falling into the hands of the Empire.”
Ryo nodded magnanimously, said so, and stood up.
He was back on his feet.
However, he suddenly wondered.
“But did that thing…melt so easily?”
As was the case on the battlefield, although they were punctured by ‘Vaedra’ and were besieged by numerous duchy troops and stopped working, it would not have melted from fire-attribute magic.
Neither did it look like it was going to melt easily when he last saw it in this ‘analysis room’.
Kenneth then smiled a little and answered the question with a question.
“Ryo, do you know what ‘fusion magic’ is?”
“Fusion magic?”
Ryo tilted his head…but he remembered having heard about it.
“I think I once heard about it briefly when I was discussing magic with Lord Ilarion. Something about ‘fusion magic with alchemy’ being announced or something…”
“Yes, that’s it!”
Kenneth replied with a broad, excited nod to what Ryo had recalled from his faint memory.
“Actually, I presented it a year ago…”
Kenneth said, a little embarrassed.
“For real…?”
Ryo was surprised.
It was only natural.
Ilarion had once said.
That, “The theory may well change the future of magic in the Central Nations”.
Of course, Kenneth Hayward is a genius in alchemy, whom Ryo had taken the liberty to call his alchemy master…but it seems he was a genius beyond his imagination….
Nevertheless, neither Ilarion nor Ryo understood the details of ‘fusion magic’ very well.
To begin with, alchemy itself aims to ‘manifest magical phenomena through the use of alchemy tools’.
To add on top of that, fusion magic using alchemy…?
“Well…there are quite a few applications, and the theory is extensive, but the easiest kind of fusion magic is probably the one that allows magic to be layered.”
“Ooh~! ”
Ryo raised his voice in admiration at Kenneth’s explanation.
It was a very straightforward explanation.
“By layering fire-attribute magic on fire-attribute magic, you can raise the attainable temperature.”
“Oh, I see! Making it possible to melt the golem.”
His doubts were finally dispelled.
However, Ryo was shocked by Kenneth’s next words.
“But I don’t think it has anything to do with you though.”
“Huh…”
Ryo was suddenly thrown off balance.
“I mean…I’ve seen your magic before…and you can stack them on top of each other normally, right?”
“Oh…”
Right…in Ryo’s case, layering was a common practice for him….
The fusion magic that Kenneth described was a breakthrough in ‘chant magic’, which is common in the Central Nations.
Ryo, who felt like he had been smacked on the head, caught sight of the tablet on the desk.
Kenneth was operating it when Ryo came into the room.
It looked a bit like the stone tablet that he once saw Michael (pseudonym) holding in the white room when he was reincarnated….
“Kenneth, is that… slab, an alchemy tool?”
He wasn’t quite sure how to describe it, so he compromised and used the word ‘slab’.
“Yes. Though, this is just a control slab. The main unit is in the next room.”
No way, wireless connection!?
Well, considering that the ‘Residual Magic Detector’ used in the investigation of the Great Tidal Bore sent information from inside the dungeon to the tent on the ground, it didn’t seem to be that difficult.
Long live magic!
“Before returning to the royal capital, we were able to exchange information between several cities in the south and the royal capital. Up until now, the adventurers’ guilds in the larger cities have been able to communicate with the royal capital, though it seems to be a ‘communications network’ that was created a long time ago. At the time, I heard that the Lords’ residences and the Royal Castle were also connected, but due to repeated wars, rebellions of the nobles, and vandalism by the populace, they are no longer in use. So, it’s like restoring them… only with newer technology…”
It would seem some kind of network was connected.
“That communications network that was created so long ago…was it by chance, done by the founder, King Richard…?”
“Very astute! His Majesty Richard was even considered to be the greatest alchemist of all time, so we’ve been out of luck in our efforts to restore that technology thus far. So instead of restoring the technology, what I did was integrate with a new technology…”
Kenneth seemed to have done something extraordinary….
It was a level still out of reach to Ryo.
Sure enough, the summit of alchemy was still very far away!
He would have to keep at it!
Kenneth, while explaining, activated the ‘control slab’ and showed Ryo a projection of something.
“These are…the connected cities? Rune, Acre, Kyradea…hm? Even Kona village!”
“Yes. Kona has become famous in recent years for its coffee. So, the royal castle asked me to include Kona village as well.”
Kenneth laughed, somewhere between a smile and a chuckle.
(Nice one, royal castle!)
Ryo praised in his heart.
Then Ryo had a flash of inspiration.
“A souvenir for the Western Forest…this could work.”
Obviously, it wasn’t about connecting them to the communications network or bringing along a control slab.
But something that can be found in Kona village and Kyradea….
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