Chapter 212: Reevaluation
Translator: Kris_Liu Editor: Vermillion
“I believe that nothing in this world is of periodic pattern for no reason. Why stars follow certain tracks all the time? The answer is gravity. Then what’s the answer for the elements?”
Lucien’s deep and serious voice lingered in the hall, and his question directly hit every arcanist’s heart. Yes, the never-ending pursuit of truth and the endless curiosity of asking why was the major drive of the development of arcana!
Lucien did not go too deep with this topic. Before the arcanists could respond to his question, Lucien put on a gentle, humble smile, “Of course, as a beginner who just started his exploration in arcana and the contemporary magic system, in most cases, I can only ask questions, not having enough knowledge to answer them. I hope that my questions can be helpful to all arcanists who are striving to move forward in this area.”
Any shifts happening in one’s knowledge and understanding of the world should proceed step by step. The last thing Lucien wanted to see at this point was the members of the Will of Elements having their heads exploded in front of him on the conference, simply because his speech was too shocking for them to handle.
Lucien was even a bit amused by the thought that he might be able to beat his future enemies by simply giving them a speech.
Raventi started applauding first, bad-tempered as he often was, this time he said to Lucien nicely, “Very rarely, I see a not stupid question here. Evans, although your speech isn’t long, it’s the most valuable one on today’s conference, and this might turn into a new research direction in the school of Element.”
Following Raventi, all the arcanists present started applauding excitedly, as this conference was totally a surprise to them!
“All right Evans. I have to go now. I’m gonna check my collection of ores, and hopefully I can provide your periodic table of elements with more support,” said Raventi to Lucien, and then he took back his alchemical lab and hurriedly left the hall.
Within five minutes, following Raventi, Gaston, Overee, Timothy, and Larry, almost all the arcanists left the hall to start their experiments, for no one wanted to miss the great opportunity to be remembered by history.
Lazar walked to Lucien and said with emotion, “The major reason why those senior-rank arcanists can have great achievements should be their passion and dedication towards arcana and magic.”
Lucien smiled and nodded, “One doesn’t have to be super smart, but he has to be diligent.”
Some junior-rank sorcerers, including Rebecca, were still here, and were looking at Lucien from afar with curiosity and admiration. However, they did not have the courage to talk to him.
“Congratulations, my friend.” Lazar hugged Lucien sincerely, “I can see a future Holm Crown prize winner standing in front of me.”
Lucien patted Lazar on the shoulder for encouragement, and then he asked, “By the way, Lazar, do you know if there is any lab here?”
“What do you mean…?” asked Lazar confusedly.
“I’m looking for a lab to continue my studies. I’ve bought quite a bit of ores.” Lucien rubbed his chin.
“What a monster… You’re surely like those senior-rank arcanists.” Lazar was a bit speechless, but he still told Lucien where the spare labs were.
When Lucien left, Lazar murmured to himself, “Lucien… I was about to celebrate with him a bit tonight. This kind of guy would never be popular among girls!”
“Hey, Lazar, can you tell us some stories about Mr. Evans?”
Turning around, Lazar found that Rebecca and a couple of pretty girls were standing behind him and waiting for more information about his charming and talented friend, with their faces slightly flushed.
“Oh jerk…” Lazar could not help swearing.
…
When the news arrived to Rogerio, he was pissed off, “What am I doing here?!”
He had spent so much time on watching Lucien but didn’t find a single clue suggesting the possible relationship between him and some important middle-level leader of the Will of Elements, but now, Lucien was definitely under their protection!
More importantly, just by playing with those cards, this young arcanist worked out such an influential paper, and Rogerio had the feeling that this finding would lead to the fast development of the Will of Element.
At this point, Rogerio did not really care whether people would doubt his measurement of Termirick because of Lucien’s finding.
After closing his eyes to calm down for a while, Rogerio opened them again and sighed, “What an arcana genius… But this makes sense, or Professor would not have this young man to be his student.”
Then he turned around, “Adol, you don’t have to follow Evans anymore. He might be soon getting some attention from the grand arcanists from time to time, and if they found you, we’d be in trouble. You know, Hathaway doesn’t like what we’re doing.”
Adol made some noise as if he was giggling, “Glad to hear that. After all, it’s quite boring following a little boy around.”
…
It was still early in the morning when Lucien arrived at the main hall on the second day. He did not get much sleep last night, and neither did many other arcanists who were already in there.
“Any findings, Lucien?” As soon as he showed up, Lazar hurriedly asked.
“Not really…” Lucien shook his head, “I’m not there yet. My power isn’t enough to allow me to do many researches within a night.”
“I’m the same…” Another arcanist joined their conversation.
After a while, Gaston, Overee, Larry and Timothy all arrived, and then the arcanists found their seats and sat down.
Despite the fact that Leandro really did not want to do this, he still added a seat in the second row for Lucien.
After a long wait, the seats belonging to Raventi and Ulysses were still empty.
Many arcanists looked back at the hall gate from time to time, looking a bit irritated.
“Mr. Raventi and Ulysses might have stayed up too late with their experiments last night.” Gaston stood up, trying to comfort the people, “Maybe we can send someone to find them…”
Obviously, no one wanted to go, as the whole hall suddenly quieted down. Some junior-rank arcanists quickly took a step backwards with their back against the wall, as they knew how pissed off Raventi could be if he was disturbed, either with his experiment or sleep.
“Well… Then, Evans, how about introducing to us how you found the periodic law among the elements?” Gaston switched to Lucien, “And we can patiently wait for Mr. Raventi.”
Lucien nodded, but as soon as he reached the rostrum, he heard Raventi’s roaring,
“Evans! I found the silicon-like element predicted in your paper!” Raventi shouted at him at the top of his lungs, followed by Ulysses, “Exactly the same… Atomic weight and features!”
Instantly, as if some strong, bright light lit up the whole conference hall, all the arcanists saw the extremely promising future of the periodic table of elements.
After a short time of silence, thunderous applause took over the hall. All the arcanists present were applauding for this young arcanist, and for this great finding that would be forever remembered by the world of magic!
All of them were so excited to witness this great, historic moment, and the applause did not stop until Gaston tried to calm them down with his gesture for the third time.
Gaston looked around, and he purposefully looked at Leandro for a bit longer. Then he said aloud, “I believe that there’s no reason to doubt the correctness of the periodic table put forward by Lucien anymore! Arcana Review Board’s going to reevaluate his paper, and my comment on Lucien’s paper is ready!”
Then Gaston looked at Lucien, smiling, “Go ahead… Share with us how you did your research, and your story with publishing this paper. I’m sure that everyone’s curious.”
Raventi nodded and quickly went back to his seat with his student, Ulysses. Meanwhile, Igna, the editor of Element, suddenly got very nervous.
Lucien introduced to his audience how he carefully checked the previous papers, raised questions and worked with his cards. In the end, he came to the part when he was having the extremely difficult time with his contribution.
“After my paper passed the review, I wanted to get attention from more arcanists. So I encouraged myself and visited the headquarter of Arcana, but I was turned down, and they commented that they had no idea how the paper passed the review.”
“Idiots!” Raventi was pissed off, “They only carry their brains when they eat!”
Some editors from Arcana were now very embarrassed, but there was nothing they could do when facing Raventi, who was only half a step away from the highest council.
“Then, I turned to Element…” Lucien continued.
All the arcanists from Element suddenly got nervous, especially Igna, whose hands were shaking and face turning pale.
“Element made an offer that they would like to publish my paper, but only on their next month’s issue,” said Lucien.
“Still stupid, but better than Arcana,” Raventi commented in a low voice.
More than a dozen sorcerers present released a long sigh together, and they all, including Ravana, the chief-editor of Element, felt grateful toward Lucien.
“Then, after being turned down by Alchemy, Common Arcana made the same offer that they could publish the paper next month, but I did not agree.” Lucien paused a bit, then he looked at Igna, smiling, “Fortunately, at this time, my friend introduced me to Mr. Igna…”
All the arcanists turned to look at Igna. He was sweating and could not breathe. In his eyes, Lucien’s smile was very meaningful. He could already see the picture where Raventi was scolding him bitterly and crazily.
“… who nicely told me that Element was going to do a special edition this month and accepted my paper.”
“Ah?” Igna was more than surprised. With a long sigh of relief, probably because of the great mood swing, he suddenly passed out.
“Igna… Mr. Igna…!”
“He got too excited… with Mr. Evans’ thankfulness.”
“Yeah… He’s not young anymore…”
When Igna returned to consciousness, he heard Raventi shouting, “Put Evans’ paper at the very beginning of this issue of Element, followed by those papers reporting findings of new elements and correcting the atomic weights!”
…
On monday morning, Eric entered the hall of the Sorcerer Administrative Department in a pretty good mood.
“Morning, Mr. Eric. Here’s the latest issue of Element,” greeted Cindy and Dona.
Eric pressed his top hat a bit and asked confused, “But the conference still has several days to go.”
“We’ve got no idea, Mr. Eric. The journal just arrived.” Cindy handed the latest issue of Element to Eric, and the cover of the journal was a picture of more than sixty different element symbols.
Out of curiosity, Eric opened the journal right in front of the girls, and the smile on his face froze.
“Mr. Eric?” Cindy and Dona called him as they noticed the difference on Mr. Eric’s face, but they got no response from him. When they took a glance at the first paper themselves, their beautiful eyes suddenly opened wide.
The title of the first paper was:
“The Periodic Relation between the Nature of Elements and Prediction of New Elements.
“Author: Lucien Evans X, level one arcanist, first circle sorcerer.”
Between the title and the content of the paper, there was a long inserted comment:
“As for the great meaning of the paper, we, editors from Element, cannot describe it properly, so we directly cited the comments made by Mr. Gaston and Overee, the members of Arcana Review Board:
“This is a great accomplishment in the history of magic. The paper unveils the shocking law existing among elements from countless messy and scattered data, and the law, from now on, will direct every step of our discovery of the world. We can foresee that the periodic table put forward by Mr. Lucien Evans X will become the foundation of future study in the school of Element, and it will lead us to a broader new world of arcana.
“This is a great paper of significant meaning, which is worth a large amount of discussion and means a historic breakthrough. May I show my respect to the author here first. After discussion, the board has decided to award Mr. Lucien Evans X three hundred arcana credits and two thousand arcana points.”
