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Volume 5 Chapter 8.2

Translator: Reflet

「Oh, what even has half my life been……」

Professor Olstar woke up in the morning and got right back to experimenting, the result of which left him groaning in exhaustion. In front of him was a Class Five material made from advanced conversion called melhand.

In the ancient language, this item formally was known as melhi stone, which could occasionally be found in the organs of superior-type bird monsters. The stone was first discovered in the kidneys of a large bird monster called a melhi, hence why people began calling it a melhand. This was one of the materials said to be impossible to make a substitute of with composition or conversion, sitting at the barrier to Class Five.

Professor Olstar was one of the people who had challenged this notion and failed, researching how it might be made possible to overturn this established theory, and before he knew it, repeating experiments in order to prove this theory.

In the process he had crushed many promising youth’s talents, but now it was his turn to be crushed.

「And of all things, what puts an end to it is not having realized such a simple fact……」

Synthesizing melhand was a piece of cake for a professor. What wasn’t a piece of cake was that the materials were a combination of lower rank materials and the type of catalyst used in the process of enchanting. The catalyst was especially important, and messing up on that part made the difficulty skyrocket.

The synthesis and conversion of materials were the basics of alchemy. However, Professor Olstar had only succeeded in doing so with the same rank as the materials or lower. As a result, the professor, who had been experimenting with materials at the same rank as, or higher than something like melhand had not even attempted to synthesize a melhand with a combination of Class Seven materials or catalysts.

To make matters worse, changing the catalyst with the same combination meant you could make several other types of materials. In fact, that method had more uses, and on top of that, the catalyst the professor had used this time was exceedingly minor, and it was doubtful that anyone else had ever tested such a combination.

Then again, while Professor Olstar might find such a process to be easy, the people who used Class Seven materials as their main base could get only a 20% success rate on a good day. There was also the possibility that experimenting without getting successful results meant the combination was simply impossible, of course.

「Why? Why couldn’t they have shown up here 15 years earlier……」

Cursing his inaptitude, Professor Olstar let the complaints drop one by one out of his mouth. By this point he was at the age where he could be a hindrance to society, but he had researched this topic well into old age. Being able to prove that a phenomenon was reproducible meant you could actually construct a decent theory. That was simply frustrating.

Professor Lester was undoubtedly tasting the same sense of defeat. Maybe he did wrong in dragging Professor Lester along into his faction. He felt responsible.

「……But perhaps I am one of the more fortunate ones, only having to taste regret……」

A new theory in which he could get the same result ten times out of ten with his talent. Realizing he had thoroughly succumbed before accomplishing this, Professor Olstar muttered along with a grimace. Not attempting to put up any more of a fight might be a sign that he was still a researcher, and that thought at least was somewhat reassuring.

When the professor thought of the faces of all the authoritarian elders still trying to put up a pitiful struggle, he couldn’t help but think such cynical things. Being a student taking advanced alchemy courses meant it was not out of the realm of possibility to replicate the information in these documents to a certain degree, so flailing aimlessly about in this situation would only cause these elders to lose their footing.

「No point in being hesitant. Guess I’ll go and accept my defeat with honor.」

With preparations and other things involved, the first special lecture would start at second period, which was about to begin very soon. It was at this time that Professor Olstar had made up his mind. Initially he had intended to sneak into the back with several other professors and find fault with the class, but by this point he just didn’t feel it anymore.

A deep feeling of loss and setback had struck Professor Olstar, but now he also felt an equivalent level of exhilaration as he headed toward the headmasters’s office to inquire about his next course of action.

「Welcome, and thank you for coming, Aearis-sama.」

「Thank you for having me today.」

A little earlier in the morning on the same day in Dhaljan Temple, Aearis, the princess priestess of Alfemina, and Sasha, the priestess of Dhaljan, were having a secret meeting.

「So you are sure that Hiroshi-dono hasn’t detected you, right……」

「I came here via the underground transportation circle, so I believe everything is fine.」

Aearis had purposefully arrived here through a convoluted travel route, simply because she wanted to surprise Hiroshi. There wasn’t an opportunity to reveal this earlier, but the underground ruins and Azuma Workshop were connected via transportation circle, which was strictly controlled, but as Aearis was good friends with the People of the Earth, they gave her a free pass like it was nothing.

There was also Rufeus Workshop’s key, which would be another obstacle under normal circumstances but was resolved by having the octogals bring it out via short distance teleportation. Generally speaking, as long as you left out the topic of sexual harassment and confidentiality, the creatures would listen to just about anything you asked them to do, so of course the octogals had no particular reason to refuse this request of moving a short distance and barely using any energy in the process.

And while this process was only a few minutes, Aearis had also made sure to get the queen of Darl’s permission as she passed through the country. Also, while this was an elaborate process, there was another reason for doing this other than simply to surprise Hiroshi.

「Come to think of it, Aearis-sama, this is your first time in Rufeus if memory serves me right. Were you able to quickly figure out the path to this temple?」

「Alfemina-sama told me everything, so that wasn’t an issue.」

「Oh, I see……」

As Sasha had heard before, Aearis truly lived up to the title of squandering power for trivial purposes, and her poker face was beginning to break just a tad bit. Her first thought was “Is this the kind of life you want to live, priestess of Alfemina?” but then she remembered that the majority of the cases where Alfemina spoke, it was a one-way flow of communication. In this case, maybe the one who should be nitpicked was Alfemina herself for being doting and overprotective.

「So was Hiroshi-sama’s class supposed to be from 10 onward?」

「Yes, 10:30 to be exact. It should be the perfect amount of time for a covert inspection.」

Indeed, the reason for Aearis taking an intricate route to Rufeus was to inspect Rufeus Academy.