A Little Experiment

The clear sky suddenly darkened. In the time it took to drink a cup of tea, ink seemed to spill across a sheet of blue paper.

A strong wind followed, whooshing through the branches and leaves of the enormous oak in the middle of the village. Ripe acorns pattered to the ground like rain.

The children in the village who were around Frederick's age seemed to think it was a holiday. Laughing and shouting, they happily rushed beneath the tree to pick up the acorns.

Some took off their clothes and piled their spoils on top, while others dropped them straight down their collars and pressed a hand to their stomachs to keep the acorns from falling out.

Ripe acorns were an important supplement to the villagers' diet. Eaten raw, they were bitter with a faint, pleasant fragrance, so people boiled them in water to remove the bitterness or dried and shelled them before grinding the kernels into flour to mix into bread dough.

The oak in the village center stood more than sixty meters tall, its crown nearly eighty meters across, and its trunk took several people to wrap their arms around.

No one knew how old the oak was. The elders only remembered that it had already stood here when they were young.

A legend had been passed down in the village. When their ancestors had fled here, they ran out of food. Everyone was hungry and exhausted when a strong wind blew through and acorns fell, saving them all. So they decided to settle here and built a village around the oak.

The wind grew stronger, carrying a hint of chill.

An orange-red oak leaf spun through the air and fell with the raindrops in front of a pair of small leather shoes.

Frederick sat on the steps in front of the village hall, his right elbow propped on his knee and his chin resting in his hand. He glanced at autumn's messenger.

When he lifted his head, raindrops as big as beans and dull rolls of thunder had taken over the world around him. The children gathering acorns had vanished in the blink of an eye.

A little rain blew onto Frederick's face. It was cold.

The village head wanted to invite the young master inside the village hall to shelter from the rain, but Ah Fu held him back with a hand and silently shook his head.

Everyone in the castle knew that the young master had a habit from childhood: when it rained, he often sat alone and quietly watched the rain, especially at night.

Whenever a downpour came, Frederick couldn't help remembering that night when a rainstorm and a truck had appeared together during his trip to an island nation.

He still remembered how, just as the truck was about to hit someone, another person rushed over and pushed them out of the way, only to be struck instead. Then the truck, as if out of control, came hurtling toward him. The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was, "Damn it, wrong person—and I hit one too many!"

Whenever this happened, he did his best to empty his mind and think of nothing.

Lately, Frederick had been thinking about all sorts of things, and his mind hadn't had a moment's rest. Today, he was giving it a rare break.

The rain grew heavier. Lightning flashed in the sky, and puddles gradually formed on the ground.

The sky darkened quickly. Through the storm, he could faintly smell smoke from cooking fires.

Before long, the smell of dinner drifted out of the village hall, too. The pea and vegetable soup was boiling, while bread made with acorn flour—softened in a steamer atop the pot, though hard enough to serve as armor—was cooking. Blood sausages stuffed with offal, minced meat, and blood roasted by the fire, and a fist-sized pot of cheese melted beside it.

Ah Fu spread a tablecloth over the table by the hearth, set out and lit the candles, and, once dinner was ready, served the pea and vegetable soup. He put the softened bread in a basket, placed the roasted blood sausages on a plate, and poured the melted cheese over them.

After dinner was ready, Ah Fu went outside to invite the young master in to eat.

As soon as Frederick sat down, the village head began strumming an out-of-tune six-string lute and singing beside him.

"In an oak wood, In a green oak wood, There stands a forester's house. Here, every morning, In the fresh, free morning mist, The forester's little daughter runs out, The forester's daughter, full of life, runs out..."

When Count Weissen dined, he used to have a singer perform for him, like other noble lords.

Oak Village had no singers, so the old village head took it upon himself to sing a folk tune.

The pea and vegetable soup was decent that evening, and the acorn-flour bread was edible. The blood sausage had a very distinctive flavor, the cheese was a little sour, and their stand-in singer was somewhat off-key and got some of the words wrong.

Frederick quietly finished dinner and had Ah Fu give the village head one silver Kreuzer.

In the village at night, everyone went to bed early. There wasn't a single light, only the sounds of the wind, the rain, and the oak's swaying branches and leaves.

Frederick sent Ah Fu and the others off to rest. He sat beside the hearth, roasting the acorns the village head had brought over after returning home. With his right hand, he leafed through the plans for the canal on his lap to give his mind a change of pace. His left palm faced upward, with ten small balls of different magical elements circling above it without pause.

After practicing every night before bed for some time, he could now make the elemental balls move simultaneously along different paths like electrons. But when he tried to multitask, they still moved very slowly.

As he studied the plans, an idea suddenly came to Frederick.

Magic was formed by elements moving according to certain patterns. What would happen if the magical elements moved faster?

He decided to give it a try. Setting the heavy parchment plans aside, he sat by the hearth and attempted to condense an ice ball.

Ice was a rather special element. It was actually an intermediate form of fire and water elements. Perhaps fire element ought to be called "heat element."

The structure of the Ice Ball Spell was simple, with few magical circuits, so it was easy to control.

Under the control of his Mental Power, the ice elements inside the ball moved faster and faster. In the blink of an eye, a layer of spherical solid ice formed around the magical circuit.

Frederick tapped the fingertip-sized ice ball with the fire tongs. It seemed quite solid.

He didn't stop. Without increasing the total amount, he kept speeding up the movement of the ice elements inside. After a few breaths, all the ice elements had turned into solid ice.

Then he tossed the ice ball into the teapot over the hearth. If it were an ordinary ice ball, the gently simmering tea would turn into iced tea.

If fire element could have the same effect, it ought to be able to bring frozen tea back to a boil.

The next moment, a wave of cold swept through the entire hall, making Frederick shiver.

The tea in the pot wasn't the only thing affected. The coals in the hearth were snuffed out by the cold as well.

Frederick's mouth twitched in surprise. He immediately lit the fire again to warm himself up.

Flames soon blazed in the hearth, and the chill in the hall quickly disappeared.

Once he had warmed up, another idea came to Frederick.

He thought of particle colliders. What would happen if magical elements collided?

This time, he didn't dare use magical elements with enormous destructive power. Light Element seemed safer.

Frederick held his hands in front of him, cupped but not touching. Two rings as big as ping-pong balls appeared between them, with the Light Element inside each ring spinning in opposite directions.

Once they were spinning fast, the two rings overlapped.

A flash of white light burst out, and the colliding Light Element scattered in all directions, beautiful as fireworks.

He thought it was pretty fun and could show it off to Maria.

So he decided to try again, speeding up the Light Element to make the scattered particles look even more brilliant.

The Light Element inside the two rings kept accelerating until Frederick reached his limit.

Then he overlapped the two rings spinning in opposite directions once more...

A flash of white light, a deafening boom, and the roof of the village hall was gone.

When Frederick came to his senses, he found himself in an oak tree, cold rain slapping him across the face.