Chapter 42
I know the answer to this question in Chapter 42...
Matthew, your job is to extract the toxins from poison ivy...
Lucian was a chatterbox, and he kept rambling on and on about all the precautions to take in the lab.
Finally, he pointed to the dark door in the hall and warned, "That room is Instructor Silas's private room. You must not go in there, or you know the consequences."
Especially recently, my supervisor's research has hit a bottleneck, and he's become extremely irritable..."
Matthew glanced at the room the other person pointed to, making sure he remembered the precautions Lucian had mentioned.
"Don't worry, senior, I understand."
Lucian nodded in satisfaction. "It will probably take about a month to completely deal with this pile of poison vines. You just need to come to the lab every day. The school's mandatory tasks will be handled by your mentor, Silas."
Having said that, he ignored Matthew's reaction and went straight to the desk in the center of the hall, where he sat down and opened the report, seemingly calculating something.
Lucien quickly got into the zone, his quill pen flying across the paper, his furrowed brow suggesting he was facing some problem.
However, this was none of Matthew's business. He pulled out a chair from the lab table, sat down slowly, and began to treat the poison vines.
Poison Ivy has a tough exterior, so ordinary distillers cannot extract the toxins. Apprentices must use their own magic to extract the toxins, but this method is extremely inefficient!
This is why no one has accepted this task yet.
This magical plant is covered in sharp thorns and is highly poisonous. If you accidentally get cut on your hand, the venom will corrode along the wound. If not treated in time, the toxins will gradually corrode your entire body.
However, given Matthew's constitution, the poison vines couldn't even scratch his skin.
He took out a poisonous vine, cut it into small pieces with a knife, and then began to infuse it with magic to extract the toxins.
"Drip, drip!" The toxins in the poison vine were squeezed out little by little, falling into a glass container and emitting a pungent smell.
He quickly extracted the toxins from a section of the poison vine.
He didn't intend to process all the poison vines in a step-by-step manner; he did it simply to estimate the time it would take him to extract the toxins.
He already didn't have enough time, so he should leave the task of refining toxins to the system.
He picked up a piece of poisonous vine and pretended to infuse it with magic, but in reality he was going through Dult's notes in his mind. He only needed to use the system to extract the toxins every once in a while.
Just then, a hoarse roar suddenly came from the dark door, as if something had gone wrong during the research. "Ah! Damn it! Damn it!"
Matthew glanced at the dark door, then at Lucien, who remained engrossed in his calculations, seemingly oblivious to the roars emanating from inside, as if he were already used to it.
Seeing the other party's attitude, Matthew naturally had no intention of disturbing them, nor did he intend to investigate the situation inside the dark door.
He picked up the poison vine and continued to pretend to extract the toxin, even though no one paid any attention to him.
……
Time passed by little by little, and two weeks went by in the blink of an eye.
These days, Matthew comes to Silas's lab every day, ostensibly to deal with the poison vine, but actually to think about the problems he's encountered and to sift through various documents in his mind.
He controlled the extraction rate of the toxin within a suitable range, extracting roughly the same amount every day, so it went unnoticed.
Lucian's calculations seem to be going poorly lately; he always looks worried and his complexion isn't good.
Meanwhile, the curses and roars coming from inside the dark gate gradually increased every day.
That day, Matthew arrived at Lab 8 on time and knocked on the door, but no one answered.
"What's going on? Is Lucien not here?"
Just as Matthew raised his hand, intending to knock on the door again...
"Click—", the door finally opened.
Lucian opened the door; he looked exceptionally tired today, as if all his strength had been drained.
"Come in?" He stepped aside to make way for Matthew.
The door closed, and the two walked together into the laboratory hall.
Seeing Lucian's increasingly haggard appearance, Matthew couldn't help but ask, "What's wrong?"
Lucian gave a wry smile. "It's nothing, just helping my mentor calculate the shape for a plasticity spell."
"Shaping magic?" Matthew glanced at the manuscript on the desk, where an asymmetrical magic spell was drawn, with multiple curved surfaces, constantly changing curvature, and irregular edges.
This was arguably the most complex form of witchcraft Matthew had ever seen.
Lucien did not deliberately cover the manuscript paper; he was not worried about leaking secrets at all.
Because the manuscript contained nothing but the shape of a spell, and did not involve any core content.
The forms of witchcraft were incredibly complex, even for a high-level apprentice like him, let alone a novice like Matthew.
"For this spell to be released, the magic must be evenly distributed across every node of the spell."
"This requires calculating the entire nature of the witchcraft, but this shape is far too complex..."
As they were talking, Lucien suddenly remembered that Matthew in front of him was just a novice apprentice.
"Why should I say so much to a novice like you?"
"Sigh!" Lucien sighed, waving his hand at Matthew. "You should go back and deal with the poison vines."
Indeed, calculating the entire trait in one go is far beyond the computational ability of a novice apprentice.
but……
He knows the answer to this question!
He recalled the time when he used calculus to calculate all sorts of strange and unusual shapes during his school years.
"Why do we have to calculate the entire shape?" Matthew asked calmly.
"Huh?" Lucian paused, finding it somewhat amusing. "How can you ensure that magic power evenly supports every node without calculating the properties of the magic? Never mind, you wouldn't understand even if I explained it to you."
"What I mean is, instead of calculating the complete shape all at once, you cut the irregular parts of the shape into countless pieces, calculate each piece individually, and then put them back together."
"Cut into countless pieces? Calculate them one by one?" Lucien muttered to himself, lost in thought.
Suddenly, a middle-aged man's voice boomed in his ear, "What...what did you just say?"
The wizard Silas had somehow left the room and appeared behind the two of them.
"Oh no!" Lucian was startled by the voice. He stood up abruptly and turned around, explaining to Silas while giving Matthew a wink, signaling him to quickly get out of the Poison Ivy.
"Mentor, that's Matthew. He's here to deal with the poison vines. He was just saying it casually..."
Silas has been quite irritable lately because of his research into this shaping magic. He doesn't want anything to happen to Matthew, because finding someone willing to deal with the poison vines is extremely difficult.
Silas waved to Lucian, his face showing no anger, but rather looking at Matthew with anticipation.
"Tell me in detail about the method you just mentioned."