Alloy

"What exactly were you two up to?" Lucia looked at Donald, then at Wesley. What Wesley had said earlier that day had made her a little uneasy. "Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"You're too late. There's nothing to see now. Remember to come earlier next time." Wesley deliberately kept his words vague, his expression as lecherous as ever.

"Don't listen to him. We were discussing cultivation." Donald was afraid Lucia might really misunderstand. If word got out that he and Wesley were doing something shady, he'd have a real headache on his hands.

"Hmph! I don't believe a word he says. Donald, did you sign up for the Martial Magic Tournament?"

"Me? The Martial Magic Tournament? No." Donald had no idea you had to sign up for it.

"But I saw your name on the list our year submitted."

"Don't ask. It was definitely that idiot Carl pulling strings again!" Wesley rolled his eyes. "He doesn't dare come after you openly, so now he's playing these little tricks."

"Then I'll go see if the Academy can take your name off the list."

"Forget it. It's too much trouble. Let them sign me up. I just won't take the stage when the time comes. They can't do anything about it."

"You should just beat that kid Carl to a pulp. Look at me—I beat him up once, and he's behaved ever since." Unlike Donald, Wesley wasn't afraid of trouble at all.

"Wesley, stop stirring things up!" Lucia didn't know Donald was already a Magic Apprentice. In her eyes, Donald had only just enrolled and probably hadn't condensed a Divine Element yet. Before leaving, she repeatedly reminded him to be careful.

"I told you she liked you. In light of your Meditation Method, I'll graciously bow out!" Wesley put on an exaggeratedly magnanimous expression.

"Wesley, I'm not planning to make this Meditation Method public..." Donald didn't want to keep arguing about it. He knew Wesley could go on forever whenever girls came up.

"Of course you can't make it public. The more people who know, the more likely it'll eventually reach that idiot Carl." Wesley was serious. "Don't worry. Unless you agree, I won't tell anyone. By the way, you're not even going to tell Lucia?"

Donald wasn't without his own reasons. Compared to the crucial secrets of Runes, the new Meditation Method was nothing, but even so, it wouldn't be good for too many people to know about it.

"Let's leave it at that for now. Maybe I'll change my mind someday. Let's talk about Magic Models."

Compared to Wesley, Donald had been a low-rank Mage Apprentice for far too little time. Their abilities to construct Magic Models were on completely different levels. That was something he could only make up for with time; there were no shortcuts.

"Remember! The Six-element Attack Model and the Twelve-element Defense Model are the foundations of many high-level Magic Models. You can never spend too much time on them." Wesley had a dean for a father and a professor for an uncle, so he knew far more than the average student.

After that, Donald took his advice and focused his efforts on the Six-element Attack Model. He also began trying to construct the Twelve-element Defense Model, a regular hexagon nested inside another.

Ever since learning that all six-element basic attack and defense models were exactly the same, Donald had tried Ice Spear, Flying Leaf, Stone Spike, and Wind Blade. Sure enough, these spells had the same structure as Fireball. As a result, the total number of Six-Element Attack Magic spells he could use jumped from a little over thirty to more than one hundred and fifty. It was a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately, the new Meditation Method only allowed him to cultivate two types of Divine Element at once. After weighing his options, Donald decided to give up the other three and focus on water and fire.

The late-March break soon arrived, and the twin sisters, Ailimanda and Ailimiya, finally saw Donald.

As soon as Donald knocked on the Laboratory door, the elder sister, Ailimanda (Donald didn't know which one was older), pulled him over to a long but low rack that looked like a giant shoe rack. Ailimanda pointed at the densely packed metal ingots on it. "Look, look! Every metal we could find is here!"

"Yep, yep! We found every one we could, seven hundred and sixty-two kinds in all!" That was the younger sister, Ailimiya.

"Seven hundred and sixty-two kinds? That many?" Donald guessed that many were probably variants of the same metal. Even so, the Gnomes and Dwarves had worked at an astonishing pace. Only ten days had passed.

"Pick out the lightest ones and the hardest ones."

"Haha, we thought of that ages ago." Their two adorable little faces were full of pride.

"The light ones are on top, the heavy ones on the bottom, the hard ones on the left, and the soft ones on the right."

Donald picked up the lightest materials one by one and examined them. He and Victor had never used most of them in their experiments. Some of the lightweight metals looked a lot like aluminum, and one looked a lot like pure titanium, but they all seemed slightly different. He didn't dare be certain. The heaviest and hardest ones were metals Donald had never seen on Earth, something he had expected.

"I don't know how the experiment we're about to do will turn out either, but if it works, it should be very useful. There's a lot of work involved, so you should be prepared." Donald lowered his head and looked solemnly at the twins. When he saw them both nod seriously, he continued. "All right. Which of these lightweight metals is the most common and cheapest?"

The two identical, pretty little girls both pointed at the metal labeled "Light Iron."

"The others are much more expensive?"

The twins nodded in unison.

"Good. Use Light Iron as the base. Heat it until it melts, then add another metal. Don't bother testing anything too expensive; just use the cheaper ones. Add only one metal at a time, in ten different proportions, from one percent to ten percent. Mix them thoroughly, let them cool, and record the strength each time. Work on this for the next ten days. Can you do that?" When Donald finished, he looked at the two delicate girls, who barely came up to his thighs, and suddenly felt like a scoundrel exploiting child labor.

"Understood!"

"What about after we finish?"

Two pairs of big, watery eyes stared at him, as if they thought he hadn't assigned them enough work.

"Then take whichever alloy has the highest hardness and keep testing around that percentage until you find the best value."

"And then?"

"Yes, what then?"

The twins' dedication to their work exceeded Donald's expectations.

"Then test different cooling speeds. You can use water or oil at different temperatures to help cool the alloys. Stop asking questions. This is more than enough to keep you busy for ten days!"

The two sisters happily began their preparations, apparently singing something like, "We are happy engineers..."

After assigning the work, Donald said goodbye to Adarua the Dwarf and went to the Knight Academy.