Chapter 230: Secret Conversation
Translator: _Leo_ Editor: Vermillion
“Evans, what’s the experiment about? The artificially synthesized living substance?” Raventi’s white hair was neat. He looked like a gentleman with a pair of sharp eyes, and Lucien could feel the pressure as he was being stared at.
Morris and Gaston were looking at Lucien with relaxed smiles on their faces. They were trying to guess what the man was thinking and they wanted to know if he had come up with some unusual experiments again. Lucien had brought the storm to the areas that were strongly influenced by the church and Allyn, but it was still hard to believe that he just wanted to discuss arcana problems with the senior-rank arcanists.
Lucien knew that these senior-rank arcanists had different thoughts about him, so he tried to stay calm and started explaining deliberately, “Actually, the experiment is not complete, but I have a general idea about the basics and the first experiment was done with several simple magic circles. The result met my expectation, however, the experiment environment that was built with the magic circles had too many flaws, and I don’t think the result is accurate.”
After submitting the paper about carbamide, Lucien borrowed the magic laboratory and completed the experiment once while waiting for Felipe to reveal the decisive evidence.
Raventi interrupted when Lucien was trying to finish the introduction, “Evans, go straight to the point.”
Morris and Gaston smiled at each other as they knew that Raventi was short-tempered, his papers usually put a strong emphasis on the key points, and he hated to listen to the matters that were irrelevant to the main point.
However, they did not expect that Lucien could still talk like he did not feel the pressure from Raventi, “Alright, Mr. Raventi, I’ll go to the key points now. After learning about the knowledge of arcana in Aalto, the magic experiments caught my attention, and that was the reason why I designed so many experiments, however, I’m not strong enough to prepare the high-rank magic circles, there are many experiments that I can’t complete and verify. Things changed after I wandered into an abandoned magic laboratory left by an ancient sorcerer during an exploration, with the help of the magic circles and alchemy circles I found in the laboratory, I finally completed some of the experiments, including the experiment about the artificially synthesized carbamide.”
“That’s not the key point, Evans.” Raventi was almost shouting. He was not concerned about the ruin of the ancient sorcerer unless it was a demiplane or a lost magic lock from the legendary sorcerers.
Lucien cleared his throat and continued, “Personally, I think that a human body can be created with nonliving substances after completing the experiment. A small part of the life force will be able to support their activities and the rest of the life force will be used on the soul. I don’t know the details as I didn’t do a lot of research in this field.”
“Evans, tell me, what exactly is your experiment about?!” Raventi roared, and Morris and Gaston unconsciously backed off slightly.
Lucien did not expect Raventi’s bluster to be so terrifying. The man was imposing. However, Lucien’s goal had been accomplished. He did not want the three to pay too much attention to his past so he mixed the experience with the background of the experiment, only leaving a blurry impression in their mind.
“It’s about an experiment that can overthrow the Life Force Theory even further. No matter if the necromancers accepted it or not, deep in their minds they already know by now that the theory was wrong. However, our biggest enemy is the Church and we can’t let the necromancers recover using the chance. We need to strike them again before they can find a new theory to support them. They’ll take a huge hit if we can make them lose their faith.”
As a sorcerer, Lucien would not miss any chance to weaken the Church. He used some of the popular phrases from the Earth, however, they sounded a bit strange grammatically when they were translated into the universal language.
The war between the Congress of Magic and the Church would be long and complicated. Lucien had already chosen to walk the path of sorcery, so he would side with the Congress of Magic and try his best to fight against the church while increasing his power and exploring the secrets of the world.
Lucien understood that there was no way for him to win the war alone when the enemy was so strong.
Gaston stared at Lucien with his strange yellow eyes. “Again, what’s the experiment? Did you and Felipe come to the agreement after being ambushed?”
One should never sneeze at an arcanist’s wisdom, Gaston recalled the event and reasoned out how it happened after he confirmed that Lucien was the “Professor”.
“Felipe and I are enemies and competitors, but we’re not friends. Felipe wants to strike the extremists in the Hand of Paleness. For me, it’s a revenge and it’s also a chance to weaken the Church. However, if I successfully complete the experiment in a strictly controlled environment, the Church will do whatever they can to retaliate. I can submit my experiment to the Will of Elements but I want you to keep it a secret, also, it’ll be great if you can complete the experiment and publish the result for me.”
Lucien made the request with a serious expression on his face. Felipe had just attracted the haters’ attention and there was no point for Lucien to share it with him.
Raventi’s brow furrowed and he spoke in a loud voice, “I’d never take someone else’s achievement as my own. If your experiment is guaranteed to overthrow the Life Force Theory further, I’ll ask Hathaway to use the Grand Arcanist’s privilege and make the author’s information strictly confidential. We will inform the public that the paper is completed by the important members of the Will of Elements. You can claim the honor when you’re strong enough and when you’re prepared for the possible consequences but I think you’ll already be an important member of the Will of Elements by then.”
“I’ll follow the plan just for Natasha,” Morris smiled. He was happy that he did not need to craft a new Holm Crown Ring.
If Lucien’s experiment could overthrow the Life Force Theory further, it would be very likely that he would share the Holm Crown Prize and the Immortal Throne Award with Felipe. Although the prize and reward were used to honor the sorcerers who made great contributions, the true purpose was to award their research results.
Morris felt much better since it seemed like Lucien would temporarily give up the glory.
“Wise decision, Evans. I suggest that you should spend some time improving your sorcery skills after completing the project and reflect the result of the research on your spells. You won’t be able to complete a lot of exploration experiments without enough power in the world of sorcery.”
Gaston slightly raised his head, staring at Raventi and Morris. “We and Hathaway should be the only four people that know about this. You shall not tell your students, wives, companion pets, or summoned creatures. If someone else finds out about this, it means one of us is a spy of the Church…”
Hathaway was studying the divine spells of nature in a secret location in Sariva town and nodded at Lucien. “Alright, Evans, tell me about your experiment.”
Lucien stopped saying random things and started explaining the experiment design in a serious tone, “There are many tales describing the start of the world in the ancient magic empire. There were descriptions of the bizarre environment, such as the horrifying flood, the nonstop lightning, and the extremely high temperature. Also, the holy code of the church has similar epic records, however, the God of Truth resolved the environmental problem and created the human beings. My experiment aims to simulate such environment while adding different types of gases into it and I want to know what will happen. I saw that a source of life was created after introducing one group of gas into the environment…”
In the Congress of Magic, the necromancers had a deep understanding of the human body. In the living substances that they defined, the protein was considered as the footstone of living beings and the amino acids that constituted the proteins were considered as the sources of life. Lucien avoided the environmental design flaw of the Miller experiment by comparing the different gas groups since no one did any research about the initial environment of the world. He did not design the experiment to study the origin of life, he just wanted to overthrow the Life Force Theory and he did not care how the church would percept it.
The room remained silent for a while and Raventi finally spoke in a low voice, it almost sounded like he was roaring again, “What group of gas are you talking about?!”
No matter how much a society could develop, no matter if there was magic or not, no matter if there was God or not, the same questions would be bothering the intelligent beings for a long time before they had a clear idea of the world’s origin: “Who am I? Where did we come from? If God created everything, where did God come from?”
…
Felipe published his decisive experiment and the brief reports were filled up with the slightly adjusted necromantic sorcery in the next several days. He was trying to prove that the Life Force Theory was wrong using the reverse method on his paper.
The necromancers that were willing to change started rebuilding their perceptual world and the extremists remained silent. They were not saying anything regarding the new discovery anymore.
Felipe had received the second article invitation letter from Arcana journal and he was praised by the important members of the Hand of Paleness, such as Pesor. Also, most of the necromancers thought that it was highly likely that Felipe would become the next legendary archmage.
Felipe was being protected by many archmages and senior-rank sorcerers in Sariva. He received the notification from the Affairs Committee on Friday morning:
“Due to the significant contribution of Lucien Evans to the research project, we have confirmed that there are several alchemical substances that can help plants grow. We will be trying the alchemy substances with the plants in the next step and the divine spells of the druids will no longer be involved. The mission has been completed! Arcanists, please go to the Sariva mansion to claim the proof of completing the mission at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Also, we will be holding a conclusive discussion about the mission there.”
After receiving the notification, the arcanists finally realized that their purpose was to develop a universal food growth increase plan here. They should not be discussing the Life Force Theory and they completely forgot about it in the last five or six days.
The arcanists started cleaning the magic laboratory and they wanted to have some rest in the morning before heading to the Sariva mansion.
…
In the Radiance Church of Holm.
“Nicolay, Walter, are you ready to sacrifice yourselves for God?” Varantine was questioning the two selected night watchers in a serious tone.
