Chapter 205: Invitation from Woods
Translator: Kris_Liu Editor: Vermillion
“Congratulations, Mr. Evans. You are the only junior-level arcanist I know whose first two papers passed the board’s review,” said Lucy politely.
Lucien had to admit that he was already lucky that this paper could be approved by the board. If he had not attached his experiment report in the end of his paper, the board members might have directly rejected the paper. Now that the paper had passed the review, Lucien needed to find ways to help it get more attention.
This required that other arcanists could discover new elements following the ideas in his paper. Lucien tried to elaborate the ideas as clear as possible. He suggested to use spectrum analysis to study the aluminum-like element and to discover silicon-like element by investigating certain alchemical reaction, and Lucien even included the possible character of some mineral substances.
To have more arcanists who were interested in the paper, and to verify its correctness, Lucien needed to let more arcanists read this paper, and he would also conduct further experiments himself. Lucien was hoping that more sorcerers and arcanists would carefully recheck the ores they had.
Among all the influential journals, the ones which accepted papers of the school of Element were Arcana, Element, Alchemy, Holm Journal, Colette Arcana Theory and Common Arcana. However, among them, only Arcana, Element, Alchemy and Common Arcana accepted individual contribution.
Lucien would not consider other journals since they were not influential enough, and his ideal journal was of course Arcana, although he knew that his chances there were slim to none. Nevertheless, Lucien still wanted to give it a try.
“Thank you, Ms. Lucy.” Lucien nodded and then left the office.
After chatting a bit with Cindy and Dona, Lucien got to know where the headquarter of the journal, Arcana, was. It was on the tenth floor.
Taking the magic elevator, Lucien stood on the silver round platform and smoothly rose up. Staring at the main hall down there, Lucien felt nervous and expectant.
When the elevator reached the ninth floor, Lucien pressed the button covered with yellow and green light. Then the silver platform started absorbing the light.
When the light was gone, the silver platform suddenly shook a bit and then stopped at the tenth floor.
Stepping out of the elevator, Lucien came to the main hall on this floor – the reception hall of the journal, Arcana.
The hall was grand but also quiet. The floor was paved with fine tiles.
Lucien walked to the reception desk, behind which there was a lady and a man. Lucien asked them politely, “Excuse me… I wonder how I can submit my paper here?”
The man stopped talking to the beautiful lady and turned to Lucien. After checking the badges Lucien was wearing, he looked serious, “May I ask if it’s your own paper? Or your friend’s or teacher’s paper?”
Both the man and the lady were wearing two-star arcana badges, their own nameplates, but no magic badge. Here in this place, everything was about arcana.
“Mr. Garvin, it’s my own paper.” Lucien took a glance at his nameplate. The name, Garvin, was even more common than Lucien.
Garvin looked even more serious, and he said cut and dry, “Sorry, sir. We do not accept contribution from junior-rank arcanists.”
“Is that right?” Lucien insisted, “I did not find this rule in the contribution regulation of Arcana.”
Garvin was slightly pissed off. Although the journal did not make this rule explicit, the requirement did exist. In Garvin’s eyes, there was no way that a junior-rank arcanist could compete with other senior-rank arcanists or even grand arcanists.
“We did publish several papers from junior-rank arcanists before, but all these papers, when they were passing through the review of the board, were all rated as of great significance, and then we sent them our contribution invitation letters,” explained the lady beside Garvin. “We never accepted any individual junior-rank arcanist’s contribution.”
“But I’m not breaking the rules, right?” Lucien did not give up easily, “At least Arcana should review my paper first. If my paper was not qualified and thus got rejected, I would be totally fine with it.”
“Then, sir, give me your paper, and since we’re only on the fourth day of the month, you’ll know the result right away,” said Garvin swiftly, as he was already fed up with talking to Lucien.
“Thank you, sir.” Lucien handed his paper to Garvin.
As soon as Garvin got his paper, he walked away and came to a quiet and empty corridor. Then, he started reading Lucien’s paper.
He was going to check Lucien’s paper himself first. If he could not be certain of the actual value of this paper, he would send it to the reviewing department, but otherwise he would directly turn the paper down himself.
At the very beginning, Garvin was reading very carefully, as the periodic table of elements looked very persuasive, but later, he sneered,
“Kidding… the atomic weight of Termirick is wrong? It was already corrected by several senior-rank arcanists several years ago, using different experiment methods. I can’t believe this paper even passed the review of the board…”
Termirick was an special composition element of soul.
Garvin stopped reading and came back to Lucien. As he handed the paper back to Lucien, he said, “The arcanist who reviewed your paper could not see any value in your paper, as the paper is full of problems! He could not even see how the paper passed the review!”
Lucien puckered his mouth a bit and knew that he had tried his best. He had no choice but to go back to the first floor, and there he sent his paper to the headquarter of Element in Rentato.
…
As Garvin said, at the beginning of month, the journals were not very busy. Three days later, Lucien received the letter from Element.
It was on Saturday, and the apprentices were studying in his place. After giving them more exercises to do, Lucien stood in the corner and opened the letter.
“Mr. Lucien Evans X,
“Your paper is worth of further discussion, but since there will be a conference in Rentato at the beginning of next month, our journal is going to publish all the conference papers. Therefore, we are sorry to inform you that we cannot publish your paper.
“Element, Friend of All Elemental and Alchemical Sorcerers,
“Jan. 6th, 817”
It was Lucien’s first rejection letter, and it was quite polite. Lucien knew that the conference was mainly their excuse, or the the journal would offer to publish the paper on the next issue.
Lucien had been through quite some difficulties recently, after the new year, so he carefully checked his Host Star of Destiny, but found it still remained quite blurry.
After assigning the apprentices with more work to do, Lucien headed for the headquarter of the congress and there he submitted his paper to Alchemy.
This time, the reviewing was much slower. Two weeks later, after Lucien’s failed experiments of discovering new elements had cost him two hundred points, he finally received the letter from Alchemy.
However, it was still a rejection letter. The journal even told Lucien not to submit this paper again as Lucien’s argument about atomic weight did not make sense.
Holding the rejection letter, Lucien felt a bit nervous. He was running out of time. If he could not publish the paper soon, Lucien would need to wait for another month.
Then, he visited the headquarter of Common Arcana in Allyn, and, for the third time, directly submitted the paper.
To his surprise, four days after, he received neither a rejection letter, nor an acceptance letter, but an invitation from a level four arcanist named Woods.
…
The headquarter of Common Arcana, in a bright office.
“I’m one of the reviewers of your bat experiment paper, Evans, and it was me who sent that invitation letter to you,” said Woods sitting in the chair, smiling. Woods had light yellow, handlebar mustache.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Woods, for speaking highly of my paper. Otherwise, my paper would never be noticed by a grand arcanist,” said Lucien sincerely.
“Then, that would be the great loss of the whole congress.” Woods nodded kindly, “Mr. Fernando has already come up with the basic model of Thunder Eye, Fernando’s Lightning Smelter and Invisible Crematory. The three spells are amazing and powerful. As the models are still very complicated, Mr. Fernando is right now working on simplifying them.”
Lucien’s success also earned Woods great reputation, so Woods was really fond of Lucien.
“The grand arcanist is surely very intelligent.” Lucien stayed humble, “Mr. Woods… the reason you asked me to come here… is it because of my new paper?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Woods. “I’ve read your paper, and it is worth of further discussion. If it didn’t contain so much of your personal assumptions, the paper would be outstanding.”
Having Lucien’s paper in front of him, Woods politely pointed out the parts that he did not agree on.
“Even though,” Woods continued, “it is still a good paper, and it offers arcanists a new perspective. So Lucien, are you okay with publishing the paper on our next month’s issue? For this month, the papers are all set.”
Apparently, Woods decided to publish this paper because of his appreciation of Lucien. And the reason he asked Lucien to come to his office was because he wanted Lucien to know who was helping him and who he should feel grateful towards. If one day, say, Lucien became the student of Lord of Storm, that would be a successful investment for Woods.
But on next month’s issue? Lucien was a bit hesitant.
