Chapter 222: Lucien’s Wish
Translator: Kris_Liu Editor: Vermillion
Iristine was wearing a beautiful dress with leaf patterns, however, she looked very cold when she talked to Lucien, "Mr. Evans, are you making any progresses with a.n.a.lyzing Growing Brambles and Harvest Spring? The other groups now are all ahead of us, and they have all started planting real crops. What are we doing now? Come on, you’re the winner of Holm Crown prize, Elemental Order!"
Tyrel and Urine got alert. They were not sure whether the prince and princess would use this as an excuse to leave this research group.
Lucien slightly pushed his wire-rimmed gla.s.ses upwards and answered seriously, "Princess Iristine, the reason why we’re making slow progress is that the imprints of the divine spells provided by you are incomplete. Maybe the druids in other groups are more gifted in arcana, and thus they could draw the imprints better. Do you think that"s the case?"
Lucien was using sarcasm with a serious look.
"...Still, as a winner of Holm Crown prize, you should be better than this!" After being quite speechless for a few seconds, Arcelion insisted.
The last thing Lucien wanted to do now was to completely p.i.s.s them off, so he put back his piles of paper with the mathematic exercises and answered, "Of course I’ve made some progresses, and parts of the principles are now clear to me. For Growing Brambles, the spell stimulates the inner structure of a plant and the divine power turns itself into the several elements that are needed by the plant to grow fast. As for Harvest Spring, although it follows the same principles of Growing Brambles, Harvest Spring makes plants extract too much nutrition from the soil too fast. In other words, Growing Brambles requires more power from your Heart of Nature, while Harvest Spring requires less but it damages the soil. However, again, because the imprints are not complete, I cannot know what these extracted elements are."
"… You’ve learned this much?" Hearing Lucien’s words, Iristine and Arcelion were very surprised. They could not believe that it took this arcanist only three days to make such progress with incomplete imprints.
"I’m the winner of Holm Crown prize." Lucien smiled.
Of course what Lucien just said was not his own research outcome. As his task was just to waste the prince and the princess’ time, Lucien was provided with all the information figured out by other groups. On the second day after the druids arrived, the three grand arcanists and the senior-rank arcanists had already figured out the principles of most of the elementary divine spells, and now they were working on a.n.a.lyzing the so-called mind of nature to see what it was, what it consisted of, why druids could use it and why it brought them divine spells.
This was a tough job. Thus, Malfurion’s request was completely a.s.signed to other senior-rank and middle-rank sorcerers.
According to the provided information, Lucien was certain that ordinary plants in this world still needed nitrogen, phosphorus and pota.s.sium to grow, but the situation with magic plants was for sure more complicated.
"Why you did not tell us earlier, Mr. Evans?" Arcelion did not know how to respond to Lucien’s words, so he hurriedly changed the direction of their conversation.
"I just figured this out last night." Lucien put on a confused look, "I did not have the time to inform you two. Soon we’ll be working in the fields to do some more experiments, trying to see what elements those grains need to absorb in order to grow better."
Lucien took the advantage of the fact that the imprints provided were not complete. Of course, Lucien would not tell them that he actually knew which elements were needed, as conducting real planting experiments was the best way to waste their time.
Now Iristine and Arcelion were less doubtful toward Lucien’s work, so they followed Lucien to the land to the east of the town.
Lucien marked a small piece of land and asked, "Mr. Tyrel and Urine, please measure the amount of elements contained in the soil here."
Since both Tyrel and Urine were sorcerers who were better at fighting, they did not have built-in magic structures in their souls for spells for measurement. So they needed to chant the spell and used refined elements as components to a.s.sist their casting. Thus, it took them almost two hours to record all the element contained in the soil.
"Because so far we’ve only identified sixty-seven kinds of elements, there might be missing ones that are actually required by grains like oats or wheat." Lucien clarified the precondition of the experiment to the prince and the princess, and then he asked the farmers to seed oats following their years of practice.
After the farmers’s job was done, in the cold wind, Lucien said to the two elf druids, "Please cast Harvest Spring to let the oats grow ripe."
A streak of green light came out from Iristine and the light covered the land. Soon, seedlings grew out from the just seeded oats. As the prince and the princess took turns to cast Harvest Spring for two rounds, within ten minutes, the oats on this piece of land had a really good harvest!
For apprentice druids, they needed to cast their apprentice-level spell for at least a month to achieve something like this.
"Mr. Tyrel and Mr. Urine, please measure the amount of elements contained in the soil now," said Lucien. As the leader of the experiment group, Lucien didn"t need to do the work himself.
Watching Tyrel and Urine being busy with measuring the soil, Iristine said in a slightly confused way, "I understand that human beings need to hunt animals to feed themselves, but what I don’t understand is, now that you people know how to grow grains and vegetables, why human beings are still killing animals for their meat? And in many cases human beings are killing animals not to feed, but just for fun, which is such a horrible thing to do."
Seeing that Lucien did not respond, she said to him seriously, "Mr. Evans, you’ve got enough money to buy bread, vegetables and fruits, so why do you still want to eat meat? So many animals could have survived if more people refused to eat meat."
Lucien answered casually, "Firstly, human beings and elves are physically different. We need meat. Secondly, if there are any animals dying out, please tell me, and I’ll try my best to protect the species. Thirdly, most animals we’re eating right now are from farms, not the wild. We raise them in order to eat them."
Iristine was not really following Lucien, but she knew that there was just no chance for her to change this arcanist’s mind.
"You human beings just won’t give up your desires," she said.
Lucien did not fight back, but stared at the good oats in front of him. As so many people in this world were still starving, Lucien believed that surviving and growing was their current priority.
Lucien had a pretty good impression of Malfurion, the druid"s grand elder. In Lucien’s mind, Malfurion’s effort toward increasing the production of crops was definitely admirable, which was just like how the Church overthrew the ancient magic empire which slaved people back in the days.
Even though Lucien was very careful with his every step and always wanted to protect himself first, he still wanted to make a contribution to Malfurion’s great work to save more people in this world.
Moreover, when more undercla.s.s people could benefit from the power of magic, the ruling of the Church would be shaken for sure, which in turn was good for sorcerers themselves as well.
Since Lucien arrived in this world, he experienced all kinds of inconvenience in his life here compared to his original modernized lifestyle. If he was capable, of course Lucien would like to advance the development of human society here.
"Mr. Evans, there is less nitrogen, phosphorus and pota.s.sium in the soil," Tyrel and Urine reported.
Lucien came back to reality from his ambitious wishes and then nodded. "Then, we gather materials which contain those elements for further alchemical product design and the simplification of the magic structures. What we also need to do is to divide this field into sections, so we can look at how those elements make a difference to the crops."
The other groups were doing the same thing now. Lucien wondered who could first figure out the secret of fertilizers.
Making basic fertilizers was simple. Treating phosphorite with sulfuric acid could do the job, and the congress was already capable of producing sulfuric acid in a steady volume with magic circles. However, it was not easy to understand why sulfuric acid plus phosphorite could work here. Without theoretical support, Lucien did not think that they could achieve a significant progress any time soon.
There were still other ways to improve yield in crops, such as irrigation system and cross-breeding. However, the former was already on the Congress’ agenda, while the knowledge involved to produce cross-breedings was still very challenging to Lucien. Furthermore, he was also not sure whether cross-breeding technique worked the same here in this world where magic plants and creatures also existed. Much more work needed to be done in this field.
...
The Bright Hall in Lance, the Holy City.
A knight in a whole set of silvery-white armour was kneeling on one knee, "Your Holiness, the Congress of Magic is right now attempting to intrude on the realms of G.o.d, reaching their filthy hands to the holy truth of the world. So hereby I venture to make the request: we shall start the Second War of Dawn! We shall declare a full-scale war against the Congress of Magic!"