The Magic Academy's Physicist-Chapter 69: The Truth Hurts Sometimes

If you understand your foe and yourself, then you will always prevail1.

To win the war, you needed to have knowledge of both your enemy as well as yourself.

There weren’t many things I knew about Magic Beasts. The system that categorized them into Calamity or Cataclysm was about it, nothing about the extent of a Cataclysm’s abilities.

It would be the same for other people. Vermel was currently the only person who had a bit more information about Cataclysms, probably.

To get back to Earth... no, even to stop the world from ruin, the transmigrator was necessary.

Especially since I had people to protect unlike the beginning of the semester. My friend and mentor, as well as many others who were in this together for mutual benefit.

They were the ones who were to go with me until I left this world. For them to suddenly die one day wasn’t an option. After getting a wake-up call through this plague incident, I racked my brain desperately before school resumed.

All this reasoning started with the Black Death.

A single Cataclysm drove the entire Empire into a state of terror. Yeah, just one entity.

I didn’t know how many of them there were. Maybe nine? If I read the ‘nine heavens’ part of The Great Nine Mechas of the Heavens in an ambiguous way, chances were that that was the case.

Then this brought up a question.

Why weren’t these guys full-on invading the Empire if they had that much power?

To find the answer, I searched up the countries that were recorded to have been destroyed by the beasts. I also referenced history books and looked at the world map.

There was nothing in common between the countries that were destroyed or deteriorated–geographical location, GDP, military power, politics, social culture, religion, nothing.

In other words, having nothing in common was the similarity.

This revealed to me that despite having the power to devastate the Empire, they weren’t doing it.

The beasts weren’t stupid. They’d used a feint strategy2 at the entrance ceremony, and when they were losing on the northern front, they’d caused a nationwide epidemic to break down the country from within.

These guys were up to something.

I didn’t know what that something was, but there was loads of evidence that their plan involved me somehow.

The mysterious Cataclysm that had appeared to me the day of the ceremony using the Iron Drake.

The beast with the beak mask that had immediately pulled out of the state upon seeing me without even fighting.

Both of them knew me and refrained from attacking me directly.

─ We’ve heard and are well-aware that you were the one who made Flare.

This was dangerous.

The beasts had their eyes on me.

They could even be monitoring, to overstate it a bit. Based on their tendency to meticulously plan things and catch humans off guard, they were likely watching me in a way that I couldn’t even imagine.

Let’s say that there was a Cataclysm-level entity with enhanced vision. Then no matter how big we planned for preventing world destruction, it would be no use.

They were probably also watching Vermel after the incident in the sewers. If I met with him and tried to start something, then they could notice and launch a preemptive attack.

On top of that, no one died from the plague at the Academy. There was no reason for them not to monitor us considering all this.

“What to do.”

I collected everything that had occurred until now and wrote them down on scrap paper to organize the information. It was the process of checking the causal relationships between figures on the diagram I’d come up with.

Then I was suddenly struck with a question.

Why was I the only Golden-Eyed in the state?

I dug into this part on the basis of what the beast at the ceremony and the plague doctor had said.

Then I hypothesized that the Golden-Eyed were somehow related to the beasts. It was a reasonable suspicion.

─ You do seem immune to the Black Death. Would you be able to come to our hospital later to take blood tests for research?

I should’ve been infected with the Black Disease when I was taking care of Lotte. But I didn’t, and breezed through this situation with only mild exhaustion. This made no sense considering how the Black Death also transmitted through droplets.

That wasn’t all. I’d never bled since I came into this body. Really, not a single drop!

Yeah, blood collection Let’s try drawing blood.

I set aside a day and ate more than usual for lunch. After returning to the dorms, I used the excuse of indigestion and searched for a needle to prick my finger3.

“What the.”

The needle didn’t go in. The skin was soft, but it felt like the dermis was made of something hard. Even when I applied more pressure, it deflected instead of going in.

What the fuck.

Alright, then change of plans.

“Please clean up after yourself when you finish experimenting. Undergrads aren’t normally permitted to use this lab but we’re allowing you because you developed Flare.”

“I understand, thank you.”

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I sat down on one side of the Fire Magic research lab and took a drag of mana grass, Flare fixed in place. Made me wonder if it was worth giving up my weekend to draw blood like this.

The pretext wasn’t anything big–just making improvements to Flare.

The real reason was to do stupid shit. I activated Flare a few times as if to test the force, then at some point, I brought a finger to the output unit.

“Ah! Aghh! Aaargh!!”

It hurts like a motherfucker!! Like getting fraxel treatment without anaesthesia!!!

There was a shallow laceration on my right pointer. Okay, maybe not shallow.

Anyway, blood began dripping from the beam-induced injury.

I dropped some of it into the plastic vial I brought while binding my finger.

Uh, this definitely isn’t human blood.

I grew a bit faint at the thought of having shown this to the doctors. Of course, there was first the question of whether the syringe needle would’ve even gone in.

Blood was generally red in color. It was fine up to here, but then I could see some clots.

When I carefully removed those clots and dried them for a day, they turned into something like a squishy bead. Why the hell is this kind of thing in my body?

“We’ll be doing the lab tours that have been on hold starting this week, so everyone go find the lab that interests you and watch how the teachers work.”

“Do you have a lab in mind, Aether?”

‘Of course, I already checked it out.”

I went to the professor studying transmutation and watched the experiments in person. As I was observing the alchemy demonstration with bright eyes like a pup, they recognized me and asked if I was interested in this lab.

I lied that I was and heard a more detailed explanation about alchemy lessons.

Alchemy. In essence, it was the chemistry of this world. Even on Earth, the two disciplines had close historical relations.

They kept experimenting with this and mixing together that. After the work was done, we arrived at the chemical disposal site. The others who came to tour this lab watched the whole process with fascinated eyes.

When the opportunity arose, I held out the vial with my blood to the professor.

“I’d like to know what this is.”

The students joked about it being the philosopher’s stone but I paid no mind. When the professor who was a major saw the red crystal inside the plastic test tube, they said the exact thing that I had been thinking.

“Mm, this is cinnabar.”

Ah, geez, fuck.

“You’ve been carrying this dangerous thing with you? Well, no matter since you’ve stored it properly. Now, I’ll show you something interesting so change into a lab coat and follow me.”

My blood was not only crushed into powder but also burned immediately. Some of it turned into vapor, another portion had oxygen stick to them and they flew off somewhere. The professor whipped out their hand and caught the rest, then instructed a grad student to bring a freezing scroll.

After placing the freezing scroll in a box with the vapor and waiting for a bit, something recognizable appeared.

It was a liquid substance with a silvery sheen. Due to large surface tension, the metallic liquid bead with the tendency to stick together wobbled.

“And this is how you can extract mercury from cinnabar.”

Fuck, so why the fuck was this inside me!

If the doctors had taken my blood and analyzed it, my life would’ve been over. My head spun at the thought that I could’ve had nowhere to go with the church and country coming after me questioning who the hell I was.

“So, isn’t it fascinating?”

“Yes, it is.”

“How about interning in our department?”

“I’d like to think about it some more.”

I couldn’t tell this to anyone.

This partially explained why the beasts were keeping an eye on me. It was the next day that I asked Vermel if there was a beast with enhanced vision.

To which I received an affirmative. I had almost ruined everything.

[So in summary, you’ve been cosplaying as a normal student for the past month because the beasts were watching you from somewhere?]

I explained most of this process to the hardcover step-by-step.

Yeah, most of it. Not everything.

[Wait, but that doesn’t add up.]

Having heard this, the hardcover flapped its pages as if clicking its tongue and picked out the flaw in my logical explanation.

[Let’s say that there really is a beast capable of magnifying their vision. So why did you ask the transmigrator in writing when they would’ve been watching you? This just tells them that you realized their presence!]

How accurate. I responded to that with silence.

The hardcover let out a displeased noise at that. I grabbed the book that was floating around, shut it, then stuffed it into my desk drawer.

[Excuse me. What are you doing...?]

Click.

[... Master?]

“I’m going to the end-of-class party so wait here nicely.”

[Are you for real? Do you even want to go back to your original world! Hey! Aren’t you going to research?!]

What is it saying? Of course I’m thinking about research.

Yeah, absolutely.

1. 지피지기 (know you, know me) 백전백승 (100 battles, 100 victories) - a famous idiom derived from the original Chinese idiom 지피지기 백전불태. The latter means that you will not falter throughout a hundred battles (found in The Art of War by Sun Tzu)2. 성동격서 - to make noise in the east and attack the west3. Pricking the finger and drawing bad blood when suffering indigestion is a folk remedy to alleviate it