Preparations Before Departure

Chapter 49 Preparations Before Departure

"Master Rorschach, your order of vibrating quartz has arrived," the tower spirit's voice rang out in Rorschach's dormitory.

The alchemical material, oscillating quartz, can be ordered through the merchant guild under the Magic Guild. As a favor, the Tower of Stars enjoys the guild's door-to-door delivery service.

After retrieving it from the mailroom, Rorschach went straight to the alchemy classroom. "What's going on?" For some reason, it seemed that no one was taking alchemy-related courses at the Tower of Stars. The classrooms were always idle, and the last time, the equipment had to be wiped clean of a thick layer of dust before it could be used.

The alchemy classroom has extra protection, making it suitable for verifying the information Rorschach obtained from the leather armor.

The oscillating quartz was entirely grayish-white and was a hexagonal prismatic crystal. From a box of crystals of varying sizes, Rorschach picked out one that was just the right thickness to hold and began to infuse it with magic.

The crystal in my hand started to become clearer from grayish-white, but there were no other changes.

Infusing objects with magic was something Rorschach often did. Usually, the magic would flow smoothly into the object, then reach a limit, and the object would begin to glow. The crystal in his hand was different. Rorschach felt that the process of inputting his magic was extremely sluggish and slow, and he was far from reaching the crystal's limit of magic absorption, as if it were a bottomless pit.

This won't work; we need to change our approach.

Rorschach selected a small crystal pillar that could be completely enclosed in his palm and used [magic power] to guide the ether in the environment to condense into the quartz. Finally, in addition to being slightly transparent, the crystal began to tremble.

Not enough. Rorschach still felt the vibrating quartz was like a bottomless pit, sucking away his magic. When he stopped injecting, the quartz immediately released the magic violently, and then nothing more.

Following this direction, Rorschach saw quartz powder, like grayish-white sand, inside the box, caused by impacts. He tilted a corner of the box, spilling out a handful of powder, and then infused it with magic again.

Finally, it seemed to have reached a breaking point; the sand in his palm trembled and churned as if it were boiling.

This won't do! Rorschach quickly cut off the aether, found a piece of silk from the classroom's cleaning cabinet to cover his mouth and nose, then used [Mage's Hand] to lift the handful of quartz particles and tried again. Simultaneously casting [Magic Drive] was extremely difficult, but fortunately, Rorschach's proficiency was high enough that he could manage it with complete concentration.

Inject, pulsate, "boil," and then explode.

In a corner of the classroom, tiny grains of sand erupted and scattered, accompanied by a powerful surge of magical energy. To Rorschach, it felt like being struck by a silent yet sharp roar, interrupting both [Mage's Hand] and [Magic Drive].

Dizziness and stinging pain swept over him, but Rorschach was still excited because he had succeeded! He patted the quartz fragments off his body, looked at the box of crystals, separated the smaller and smaller pieces, and used the [Decomposition] spell to mass-produce sand.

The scope of the experiment should also be limited, ideally without affecting oneself.

He then found a luminous magic scroll with an energy storage circuit, ensuring it was constantly activated, and operated it again. As the vibrating quartz sand exploded, the scroll indeed went out.

After numerous experiments, Rorschach roughly determined that the area affected by the explosion and the suppression of magical activity was a spherical region with a diameter of about five meters from the center of the explosion.

At this moment, Rorschach sensed something and opened the panel, where a new spell, 【Rorschach's Anti-Magic Scream (White)】, was indeed added.

However, the spell's description is different, consisting of "Magic Condensation" and "Oscillating Quartz Sand," the latter being grayed out and uncopyable and unmovable.

And there's a long-absent comment on the panel: "Using external objects to cast spells is the act of the weak, but it's very effective. Not paying attention to distance can disgust the spellcaster's own magic, but it's very effective."

Say what you will, as long as it works. During the cleaning phase, Luo Xia kept using the [Air Cannon] to blow the floor, gathering the scattered quartz powder together and then cleaning it up.

Oh, one more thing.

Rorschach, having calculated that the time was almost up, took out some stationery and wrote to his parents and teacher, Caroline, to update her on his recent situation.

In his letter to his parents, Rorschach described the situation in Valuvana, the capital of the Holy Kingdom, complained about the soaring price of bread, and mentioned that he was going on a business trip to a very far place. He also talked about His Majesty the King's plan to bestow titles upon archmages, and that his destination was the future fiefdoms of these newly rich. In his letter to his teacher, Caroline, he discussed his achievements in alchemy and his questions about magic.

Upon going outside, Rorschach found it increasingly difficult to catch a taxi.

After he finally got into the carriage, he asked the driver, who replied, "Young master, fewer and fewer people are taking our carriages, so of course fewer and fewer people are driving them. Life is tough these days. Customers who used to ride in our carriages now prefer to walk, while the still wealthy gentlemen all have their own carriages."

The coachman was dressed rather thinly, and he blew his nose halfway through his sentence: "My colleagues have all gone to other provinces to drive freight wagons. I can't bear to leave my young daughter, so I'm just staying here in the capital. Sooner or later I'll have to find something else to do."

Within the Magic Guild, Rorschach was already quite adept at sending letters. As expected of a guild node in the capital, the magic array tables for transmitting letters were divided into eight sections according to their orientation.

After leaving the guild, Rorschach did not return to the magic tower. Instead, he wandered to a commercial street and found an outdoor seat in a teahouse. The building diagonally opposite had a sign that read "Pacharuca Trading Company".

He sat and waited for a while, and then an employee came out of the house across the street.

"Master Rorschach? Did you bring the agreed-upon goods?"

Rorschach tossed out a roll of parchment: "Three [Light Spells]." Each spell was worth about ten silver coins at market price. But Rorschach was there to collect his "wages."

The other party nodded and accepted it, handing over a small packet of gold coins.

One, two only have four gold coins, and they're from the kingdom. "Too few. My asking price is eight."

"That's the price."

Luo Xia secretly used [Mage's Hand] to restrain the employee: "Eight coins, I agreed with your boss." Theoretically, there are still twelve Golden Eagle Coins to send to his adoptive parents' home, and now Luo Xia is a little worried.

Faced with the challenge of magic, the employee remained unfazed: "Sir, this is the price you negotiated with the boss, but we employees still have families to support, and our manager has to maintain the trading company. Please understand the difficulties our subordinates face!"

Rorschach felt a wave of nausea at the well-dressed, slick-haired "subordinate": "Then the deal is off. I'll talk to your bald boss directly when I get back to the Empire."

The man who had openly withheld money finally changed his expression: "Sir, doing this will only put the trading company in a very difficult position! We're all colleagues, why be like this? You see, I really don't have any money on hand. If you need more gold coins, you'll have to ask our manager!"

Luo Xia stopped talking nonsense and didn't take the gold coins. He used [Mage's Hand] to retrieve the scroll and prepared to get up and leave.

"Six! No more than that!" The man gritted his teeth and persuaded the monk to stay.

Luo Xia sat back down, opened his purse, and had the other person take out two gold coins to add to it: "I understand your company's intentions, and I know you have rules. But cutting it in half is still too much, isn't it?"

"My dear young master, you don't understand the market. Sigh, I'm going to get a scolding from the manager."

Rorschach remained unmoved by the performance of the trading company employee, silently watching him return to the company while sipping his tea.

The first two chapters were a bit weak, so I'll add an extra chapter this weekend.

(End of this chapter)