The Mysterious Baron

"Here is a printed copy of the paper." Carno carefully brought over a battered booklet. Seeing his mentor handle it with such care, and noticing how worn the paper was, Rorschach flipped through it especially cautiously.

"Energy Motion in Magic Fields and Its Principles," by Baron William Van Leipzig.

These days, there were no unified newspapers or journals for publicly publishing papers. Everyone simply printed and distributed their own booklets.

Rorschach first read the abstract. The author believed that when the concentration of magic power in the environment fell below a certain threshold while the density of other energy exceeded another threshold, that energy would tend to convert into magic power.

The author proposed a method of conversion: continuously inputting real-world energy into an extremely small area while constantly consuming or drawing away magic power might make it possible to convert energy into magic power.

"This paper was printed nearly ten years ago, but it never received much attention. After all, we have believed since ancient times that only aether could transform into other elements and forms of energy."

Rorschach focused on the experiment that verified the theory. The author had spent a great deal of money acquiring three grams of high-purity mithril—a metal resistant to high temperatures and sensitive to magic power. One end was inserted into a forge heated to 1,100 degrees, while the other was connected to the circuit of a Light Spell scroll.

In the paper, the author claimed that the scroll had been successfully activated. Rorschach was somewhat doubtful. "Was the experiment successfully replicated?"

"We used a different kind of energy. We continuously struck a silver block with the intermediate spell Chain Lightning, and detected trace amounts of aether as well." Paulina handed him a schematic of the apparatus.

"Only silver, not mithril. But using magic to obtain electricity does seem less than rigorous. It would be best to generate electricity through strictly non-magical means."

"So that brings us to another problem. We need better devices for generating and discharging electricity. The Alchemy Department sent over several prototype blueprints, and we're currently looking for the most efficient one."

They had created a prerequisite project for the original project, and then a prerequisite for that prerequisite project?

Fortunately, both prerequisite projects had considerable practical value.

"This Baron William—we guessed from his name that he was an Imperial citizen, but no such person can be found among Imperial nobles. And this booklet soon stopped circulating. Even Mage Guilds across the continent have collected only three copies." Carno recalled.

Either very few copies of the booklet had been printed to begin with, or the Empire had recognized the paper's value and imposed controls before most mages could realize it.

Perhaps both factors were at work.

Pascal opened a parchment bag filled with mechanical blueprints. "We're mages! Why did the Alchemy Department dump machine-tinkering work on us? Do they take us for dwarves?"

Since when had this old guy become a mage? There was only one apprentice among everyone present, but Rorschach did not say it aloud.

Paulina said, "The Alchemy Department's point is that none of the Steam Engines currently on the market can meet our requirements. If they built trial versions of every prototype, the budget would be exceeded, so they want us to choose ourselves."

"Passing the buck! If the finished machine still fails to meet our needs, they'll say, 'You chose it yourselves.'" Pascal tapped the table.

What exceeded Rorschach's expectations was that dwarves had already tinkered their way to the generator rotor technology tree in the Old Empire. Dwarves regarded ferromagnetic materials as substances with sacred significance, and during rituals honoring the first Dwarf King, they discovered that this stuff could generate electricity.

There was even an illustration in the documents: dwarves circling an apparatus resembling a Tesla tower, singing and dancing amid flashing arcs of electricity. Perhaps the illustrator was not very skilled, because the dwarves looked more like goblins.

These guys... these dwarves were using their lives to perform shamanic dances! Rorschach could not help feeling deeply moved as he read the materials.

As for the many Steam Engine prototype blueprints submitted by the Alchemy Department, Rorschach took them and leafed through them. The Alchemy Department was a somewhat awkward component of the Mage Guild and Magic Towers. It faintly occupied the bottom of the mages' hierarchy of disdain: You study alchemy? Are you really that poor, or are your spellcasting skills that bad?

Yet the Alchemy Department was also indispensable. It maintained magical facilities and mass-produced Alchemical Potions and scrolls. It was an important cash cow for the Mage Guild—they might not be able to turn stone into gold, but they really did make money!

The poor guys in the Alchemy Department who spent their days crafting Magic Devices in darkness suddenly received an assignment from the Chief Professor: build a Steam Engine better than a dwarven Power Furnace, and the funding would depend on the results.

The guys were furious! After angrily staying up for days and nights, the average hair count of Valuans successfully dropped by a few ten-thousandths of a point, in exchange for the blueprints in Rorschach's hands that looked unreliable at first glance.

Why was this boiler such a bizarre shape? Could it even be built? Inscribing a magic array to retain heat was a good idea, though. Rorschach discovered that every guy in the Alchemy Department was a great inventor, but only an "inventor."

"I want to visit the Alchemy Department," Rorschach volunteered. After thinking it over, Carno nodded. "You can, but regarding the plans they have currently provided, absolutely, absolutely do not express an opinion or give them any opening."

The Alchemy Department did not have maniacs everywhere like certain academies, constantly blowing things up or excavating mountains. Of course, the guys there might not be entirely mentally normal either.

The man who received Rorschach looked impossible to place as thirty, forty, or fifty years old. He had a faint, unremarkable presence, and the only memorable thing about him was his heavy dark circles. "Snow, head of the Alchemy Department, second-rank mage."

"Rorschach. A pleasure, a pleasure." Rorschach looked at the man's sparse, dry golden hair drifting in the air, swaying precariously in the gusts from the machines.

"The first through third floors are our Alchemical Potion production lines. Mage Rorschach, you're still young and don't have children, so I suggest you avoid the second floor. The machines on the first floor are our packaging workshop. We put a great deal of effort into ensuring the potions' effectiveness."

"Why produce them here?"

Mage Snow pulled out an exquisite bottle of purple potion. The liquid inside the glass bottle was an oily, slightly viscous fluid. "This is our exclusive product. We keep it right under our noses for secrecy, and it also makes it convenient for us to—"

As he spoke, Snow pulled out the stopper, tipped back his head, and drained it in one gulp. His features seemed to twist into a knot, but when they relaxed again, he was already glowing with vitality. "Use it ourselves. Want some? Energy Potion, all-natural herbal ingredients, and it has that effect Valuan men love most."

"Thanks, but I've had some surplus energy lately." Rorschach still remembered the warning not to go to the second floor. So it had reproductive toxicity? Why could they still advertise that sort of effect?

"Youth is the most precious wealth, Mage Rorschach!" Snow solemnly patted the young man on the shoulder before finally getting to the point.

The Magic Device workshops and blank-scroll production rooms belonging to the Mage Guild were all located along the Seine River, using the current to power their machinery. Once a plan was finalized here, the blueprints could be sent to the workshops for trial production.

"The dwarven boilers and Power Furnaces are both very good. Very good." Snow rubbed his hands together. "But I think our Alchemy Department's designs are not bad either, as long as you settle on one of the twelve plans—"

"Sorry, Mage Snow, but I don't have any decision-making authority." Rorschach followed Snow into the Alchemy Department's design room, where several guys were bent over their desks drawing blueprints and fiddling with slide rules.

More than a hundred parts were spread across the central table. Each one had a tag tied to it, and the air smelled of metal and animal grease, reminding Rorschach of the fitter's workshop during his Metalworking Internship in his previous life.

"The dwarves' Power Furnace cost three thousand gleaming His Majesty the Kings. Shame we can't put it back together once we take it apart." Snow scratched his head. Soon, he might not have any hair left to scratch. Then he drank another bottle of Energy Potion.

The experiment took longer than expected, and I had no chapters saved up recently, so this chapter was posted late. Sorry.