Chapter 198. The First Day of the Project
The Clock Spell Philip had deliberately set up rang, reminding him that it was already very late.
Philip let out a soft sigh. The day’s work had not gone smoothly at all. First of all, so many mages had been stuffed into his project that he had been left with no way to deal with them and could only let them run experints on their own off to the side.
As for the project itself, it had not been progressing very smoothly either. Before starting it, he had already mapped out several possible directions for optimization.
And today, he had tested one of those directions, only for it to end in complete failure.
His idea had been simple: increase the upper power limit of the magical device and snatch the White Star Sand out of the material more quickly.
This was one of the basic lines of thought in alchemy. When you ran into sothing troubleso, the best thod was often to simply increase the power and solve the problem through brute force.
Quite a few classic alchemical products had only seen their yields rise dramatically because enhanced versions of the devices had been used.
But by now, that line of thinking seed to have mostly stopped working. These days, whenever people tried to experint with a particular alchemical product, that approach usually led nowhere.
His current situation, where the device could at least still maintain its original yield, was already considered fairly good.
More often, when people followed this line of thinking, they ended up reducing the yield even further.
Philip did not lose heart. This kind of thing was extrely common in alchemical experints. Anyone who had run even a few experints knew that failure was frequent.
In fact, there were many tis when, after every possible thod had failed, the only choice left was to give up.
Philip shook his head, forcing all those unpleasant thoughts out of his mind. This was only the very first day of the project. There was no point in thinking about the future already.
He tapped the table lightly and said to his apprentice,
“Go call them all over.”
The apprentice, who had been busy all day and still had a thick cable slung over his shoulder, hurried off to summon everyone the mont he heard the order.
After receiving the call, the mages gradually ca over one after another.
Each of them was holding their own magical device. But because none of them were mbers of the Alchemy School, all of those devices had undergone so sort of change.
The most striking example was one mage’s magical device, which was already covered in cracks, making everyone seriously wonder whether it could still be used at all.
Another mage’s device was covered in black scorch marks, making it look as though it had exploded.
Compared to those, the layer of tal Fulan had added did not stand out all that much here. After all, hardly anyone’s magical device still looked the way it originally had.
Philip first looked toward Dylan and took the White Star Sand the Alchemy School mage had refined from his hands.
“A total of 2.9 grams.”
After taking a precise asurent with a asuring spell, Philip announced the result aloud.
That single sentence made the expressions of the surrounding mages turn rather unpleasant. They had not expected another mage’s output to be so high, leaving all of them far behind.
Leo, in particular, felt especially stifled. He had been full of confidence and had put in a great deal of effort, yet in the end he had only managed to refine 1.3 grams of White Star Sand.
Well, he is from the Alchemy School. It is only natural that he would be ahead of us in this matter, Leo thought, trying to console himself.
Then Philip cleared his throat and slowly began to speak.
“I know that none of your yields should be able to compare to that mage from the Alchemy School. After all, unlike the Alchemy School, you did not start handling magical devices while you were still apprentices.”
“But I never expected you to use this magical device perfectly and reach its ideal yield in the first place. I only wanted you to try using the device.”
“Now I am going to teach you how to analyze a magical device you know absolutely nothing about when you encounter one, so that you can obtain the maximum possible yield.”
After that, Philip began explaining all sorts of small tricks for analyzing devices, along with a great deal of knowledge about using ntal Power to control magical devices.
“You must strictly record your operations. The stupidest thod is also the most reliable one—make only slight adjustnts based on your previous attempt, little by little, until you understand the exact situation.”
Just as Philip had said earlier, the reason he had these mages operate the devices themselves was to guide them, not because he genuinely expected them to extract a product at the ideal yield.
That was why he had only looked at the White Star Sand Dylan extracted. He had not even bothered to look at what the other mages had produced before launching straight into his explanation.
The things he was teaching could practically be considered useful techniques for any mage conducting spell-related experints.
Even Fulan quietly morized them, feeling that they would probably be of so use.
After Philip finished that long explanation, he brought up sothing else.
“All right. Put the White Star Sand you extracted here. If any of you still have unrefined Gray Nether Iron left, put that here as well.”
He pointed at the table as he spoke to the gathered mages.
All of these materials had been painstakingly approved and allocated to him from above. Whether it was the Gray Nether Iron or the extracted White Star Sand, all of it represented a substantial amount of money. Naturally, he could not let these mages walk off with his materials.
That wraps things up for today, Philip thought. Later, I’ll go have a glass of fruit wine...
But just as he was thinking about what kind of fruit wine to drink, Fulan ca up to him, holding the magical device that had been coated with an outer layer, along with a large amount of White Star Sand.
“More than fifty grams?”
Philip stared at the bottle of White Star Sand in Fulan’s hand in complete confusion. His first reaction was simple bewildernt. Why is she showing sothing worth ten gold coins?
That much White Star Sand was, after all, a Second-Tier material, so its price was naturally not low. But that led to the question—why was Fulan showing him so much White Star Sand?
Philip stood there in a daze for quite a while, unable to organize his thoughts into words. At that mont, Fulan spoke first.
“ntor Philip, I found a thod that can greatly increase the yield. This is the White Star Sand I extracted.”
That news struck Philip like a bolt from the blue, leaving him montarily dazed.
With a mixture of anticipation and disbelief, as though trying to confirm what he had just heard, he asked,
“With this modified magical device of yours? Can you demonstrate it?”
There was an urgency in his voice, as though he wanted to verify the matter as quickly as possible.
It was not that he disbelieved Fulan’s words. After all, there was no benefit for her in lying to him, and that amount of White Star Sand was simply too shocking.
It was just that, even now, he still could not quite believe it. This magical device looked entirely ordinary.
There had been no major structural modification to it, yet rely coating it with an outer layer had supposedly caused the yield to increase drastically. It sounded almost absurdly fantastical.
Fulan even let Philip operate it himself. She had specially added a latch to the lid of each of these magical devices, so there was no longer any need to hold them down with Telekinetic Hand.
Filled with excitent, Philip poured one hundred grams of Gray Nether Iron into it.
And after he activated the magical device, a different kind of magical fluctuation began to emanate from within it.
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