Chapter 95.
Losing points on the first day went smoothly. The civil servant manager who conducted the training evaluation was so nice that I couldn’t do things to make him openly express his anger, so instead, I just made small mistakes during the easy parts.
For example, while moving an empty flask, I pretended my hands slipped and while turning around, I pretended to accidentally hit a precision magic tool with my elbow. Flam was next to the empty flask and barely managed to catch. For the precision magic tool, I made sure to hit it, and at the same time, made sure that the tool was obviously not broken.
It was not difficult for me for I had now mastered strength control. Even if it broke, it didn"t matter because I could fix a magic tool of that level even with my eyes closed and that too with my toes.
If I really ended up not being able to fix it, then well, I could always just pay for it.
As I made a series of mistakes that I usually wouldn’t, Flam looked at me with strange eyes. But since the evaluator was ignorant, he hacked away at my score.
This was my intention, after all, they couldn"t award a good score to those that frequently made small mistakes in places such as a magic tower.
And today, at dawn, after the first day of training, I was sneaking into the Red Magic Tower. There was no particular reason. It was because of the precision magic tool I elbowed in the afternoon.
Hmm, it wouldn’t be broken, right?
I stood in the dark magic tools storage room and looked at the precision magic tool I hit.
No matter how much I had mastered strength control, the precision magic tool could be really delicate and I could have accidentally broken it.
It"s really not that I made a late-night visit because I wanted to rip it apart to view the inside of the precision magic tool.
Of course, of course, I was visiting just in case.
Even if I was acting like this to get a low score, I wouldn"t be causing actual damage.
Huhuhu.
I hummed and carefully disa.s.sembled the body of the magic tool with a precision driver. As far as I knew, this precision magic tool was a tool for checking the genetic makeup before synthesizing a chimera.
Life magic, including chimeras, was not an area I specialized in, so I wasn’t sure. But in terms of chimera compatibility, there were ent.i.ties that merged well or not, even if they were of the same species. In other words, this tool played a role in reducing the probability of failure in chimera creation.
Ohh!
Inside the body was magic formulas that complicatedly entwined mana lines that connected mana.
Notes, notes.
I brought out my pen and notebook from the pocket s.p.a.ce and took notes on the magic formula inside the precision magic tool.
It would have been nice to sketch along the arrangement of the mana lines, but it was too much for my drawing skills. So I just wrote down which parts had mana lines and my conjectures on why it was arranged in this way.
"The mana power is 320MV, the mana quant.i.ty is 500MP, and both are imperial standard. Given the size of the mana stone used, the mana stone is from an upper-middle rank monster. Based on the smell from the mana stone, is it from a Pilagrop? Judging from the faint smell, the mana stone was used for at least three months. Based on the remaining mana, it seems quite efficient."
I mumbled and jotted down the a.n.a.lysis to decipher the formula.
Pilagrop was a two-headed monster with a long neck commonly found in the monster territory and in the outskirts of Olympus.
Personally, I had named it "Doduo," but it looked more like a crawling reptile, rather than a bird, and it wasn"t even that cute.
In fact, it looked rather gross. In short, besides being a common monster and being a commonly captured monster in my hometown for the coming-of-age ceremony, there was not much else about it.
From my pocket s.p.a.ce, I took out an insulating rod, a tool used in alchemy, and carefully moved the mana lines to see where I couldn’t before.
Mmm Mmm, as expected. It"s not broken.
After examining the inside of the magic tool, I rea.s.sembled it. If it was only this much, I think I could make it if I just had the materials.
Of course, making the mana lines would need to be outsourced, but that wasn’t hard.
This accursed dexterity!
Come to think of it, how were the weaponsmiths in the Crow village so dextrous?
Well, considering I could also draw delicate magic formulas without much trouble, I wasn’t in a position to question them. Even the weaponsmiths in the hometown had terrible artistic sense other than in making weapons.
I was trying to leave the magic tool storage room, but then I suddenly thought that this might be an opportunity.
The opportunity to explore every corner of the magic tower...
The magic tower pa.s.s I had was essentially a magic tool to help getting into places and avoid the protective magic surrounding the magic tower. Similar to the pa.s.s was the access cord needed to cross the sword line in the imperial palace.
Compared to the access cord, this pa.s.s was child"s play, and the range of entry was limited in normal cases.
For example, if the magic tower"s defense and protection magic circles were security servers, this pa.s.s was a terminal that could contact the security server. Normally, breaking through a security server and breaking into the magic tower would require three days of preparation even for me. However, if there was a terminal that could contact the magic circle like this, then the story was different.
What shall I do?
I was conflicted as I took out and rubbed the half-white mask thinking about potential unknown situations.
Should I quietly leave or see if there is any secret research nearby in the magic tower?
If it was the usual, I would have searched without hesitation, but the fact that it was the Red Magic Tower’s workshop made me hesitate.
There wouldn’t be any danger in this magic tool storage room as it was accessible to civil servants as well. But the actual research facilities were different.
Since it was a magician’s workshop, it was a basic principle that the inside would be designed to be able to deal with magicians a few levels higher than the owner. The better the skills of the workshop owner, the stronger magician.
I had never seen the Tower Master, but I didn"t think his skills would be better than William’s. However, the owner of a Giant Tower would at least be a great magician, so it would be dangerous to recklessly roam about in a great magician’s workshop.
After thinking about it, I broke into a grin.
Let"s just do it and see what happens.
It wouldn’t be hard to escape with just my body if I try my best. I mean, the worst thing that would happen would be the magic tower being destroyed.
I didn"t think I would be able to get appointed to the magic tower anyways, so it would be a waste to miss this opportunity.
Still, let"s be careful not to cause any damage since it’d be a headache if I get caught.
-o-
Edward did not leave the chimera breeding facility until late at night and checked the chimera’s conditions. He paid particularly more attention to the chimeras requested by the Tower Master. The chimeras did not have a long lifespan, so they all required delicate care.
"Haaa~!"
Edward yawned from exhaustion but did not stop writing in the daily log to record the status of the chimeras.
Then a voice started to spa.r.s.ely come from somewhere.
"Let"s play."
Surprised by the sudden sound of a voice, Edward looked around and soon found the owner of the voice.
"Number 46A-10346. So it was you."
Calming his startled heart, Edward sighed in relief.
"Edward Oppa.”
It was a quite bizarre scene to see a dog-shaped chimera calling Edward, but Edward replied with a very happy face. "Yes, what shall we play?”
Even as he replied, he knew that the chimera didn"t understand him. Furthermore, the gla.s.s-walled breeding facility was soundproofed by all kinds of magic, so the chimera could not even hear anything.
Edward hummed and poured mana into a magic circle like pouring water. The magic circle maintained the entire breeding facility and the habitat of the chimeras.
His mana flowed through the magic circle to a large magic stone in the center. Then it fused with the mana stone’s mana and spread throughout the chimera breeding facility.
"Woah--!"
Edward admired the slightly dark aurora that arose as the magic circle reacted with the mana. The sight of the beautiful scene that always unfolded with magnificent magic was one of the few pleasures for Edward, someone who lived a difficult life as a researcher at the magic tower.
-o-
"Ha~."
When I yawned, Flam looked at me with surprise.
"What is going on that you would be yawning?”
I laughed as I rubbed my eyes that were still a little sleepy.
"What, I’m capable of yawning too, you know."
Having decided to look around the magic tower, I had ended up exploring until late last night. Of course, the opportunity wasn’t just limited to yesterday. There were still six days left for training at the magic tower. However, I thought I would be able to see everything in two days at the most if I searched like last night.
I planned to start searching systematically, from public s.p.a.ce used by the magicians to where the magician’s research results were kept then the Tower Master’s research.
"No, it’s because it’s my first time seeing you yawn. You didn"t even yawn in that boring magic cla.s.s."
The magic cla.s.s at the training center was definitely boring as it was at the basic level, but that didn’t mean there weren’t interesting parts. In fact, during the boring parts, I created an illusory clone of myself in my place and took a nap behind the lecture room. Even then, I had never been caught because of my sensitivity to people’s presence.
"That’s because I am a model student."
If you didn"t get caught sleeping secretly, you"d still be a model student. Since I managed to keep my magic cla.s.s grades from getting poorer, I was booed by Flam for showing off.
"We made the aphrodisiacs together, so how come your grades were higher than mine?”
"Hut, this is the difference in ability."
With that, I stretched to try to wake myself up. I needed to take a nap as soon as I got off work today.
Tuk, chang!
At that moment, I felt something get caught on my hand and I could hear something falling and breaking on the floor. It seemed the arm that I had been stretching had hit the shelf where the empty flask was, causing it to fall off.
"Ah, I made a mistake."
The evaluating civil servant looked at me with eyes that said, “Again?” But this time, it was truly an accident. Really.
The deductions were going as planned, but somehow it felt unfair.
-o-
The Tower Master of the Red Magic Tower knelt reverently before a parchment paper that was neither very luxurious nor clean.
"Oh, Great Ram! This weak one offers my humble grat.i.tude for allowing me to see your knowledge."
Like a fanatic was with the Bible, the Tower Master carefully picked up the parchment he had read over and over, and read it once again.
"I can"t believe there had been such a method!”
He blamed himself for being insignificant before having read the parchment despite already knowing the contents.
The endlessly unsatisfied magician, the Tower Master, read the parchment again and again. He checked and rechecked to see whether he had misread or misinterpreted anything. He read it like so hundreds of times. Then he finally put it down carefully after having gained confidence in what he had read and interpreted.
The Tower Master kowtowed heavily to the parchment in a reverent manner.
"Thank you for teaching my inadequate self, oh, great magician.”
Tonight, the magic experiment of Ram, who the Tower Master followed, would begin.