Life was the same as ever, shut away in the left wing of the palace, but the eyes watching me had definitely multiplied.
Levan’s checking in on me, which had apparently become a habit over the past year, was quietly so annoying I could hardly stand it.
Because of that, it took me a full month after returning to the palace before I could finally venture out into the imperial capital.
““““Welcome back, Dinker.””””
At the distillery I visited, Molly and the three little bear triplets greeted me, and there was only one thing to say in response.
“I’m home. Has anything changed this past year?”
“That’s our line, and sadly, nothing has.”
“We tried to build equipment that could distill multiple times before you got back.”
“But we didn’t have nearly enough time. I mean, we thought it’d take years.”
Renato, with orange fur; Terenti, with yellow-and-white fur; and Erast, with purple fur, took turns complaining.
Apparently, I had returned too quickly and thrown off their plans.
Should I take that as proof my efforts paid off?
“I’m just happy if you’re saying you still need me.”
“Whoa, that doesn’t even sound sarcastic. Since it’s you, Dinker, I can’t deny it at all.”
Renato laughed and openly agreed.
Beside him, Erast shook his head.
“We thought we could do at least a little alchemy too, but we were hopeless.”
“There aren’t any alchemists in the imperial capital as good as you, Dinker.”
As Terenti lamented, Molly also spread both hands at shoulder height.
“Honestly, part of it is that our technique isn’t good enough. But no matter how much we thought and thought, another problem kept coming up, and when we tried doing it with our poor knowledge of alchemy, all we could make were things that were uselessly huge and unstable.”
It seemed they had tried all sorts of things while I was gone.
Of course, in the four years since we started making liquor, we had thought about continuous distillation equipment together in many different ways, and I had left behind my own ideas too.
“So even then it didn’t work? What was the problem? What part got too big?”
To be honest, the moment I heard they had actually made a real prototype, I got excited and leaned forward.
Helkov, who was accompanying me, was sitting where he could see the whole room, though he seemed to be letting the conversation wash over him.
His nephews were technicians, but Helkov wasn’t, after all.
I had spent more time teaching Helkov, but maybe thanks to their enthusiasm, their levels of mastery were about the same now.
Even so, over this past year, it seemed they had learned that they were still lacking as alchemists.
“Ah, you tried to make the cooling apparatus itself with an essence-based synthetic reagent. That’s why the tank and discharge mechanism ended up so big.”
I nodded after they showed me their blueprints and the like.
This was that problem again. They were lacking scientific knowledge again.
Cooling, to them, meant nothing but placing something cold there. Since they didn’t understand the concept of thermal energy, this failure was probably inevitable.
I brought out paper, a pen, and ink from the mixing room and tried to explain.
The principle behind how a refrigerator cools things had come up almost as casual chatter in a general education course at university, so I should probably be able to explain it with that.
In my past life, I still hadn’t been allowed to live alone when I was in university, so to reduce the time I spent at home, I crammed my schedule with random classes that weren’t even required.
Now I wanted to return to my family, and that knowledge was proving useful in a place like this. You really never knew what life would bring.
“I taught you the three states of matter, right? Gas, liquid, and solid. Do you understand that heat is what causes these to change? In other words, whenever a substance’s properties change, heat is always being transferred.”
If you heat room-temperature water, it becomes a gas. If you take heat away and cool it, it becomes a solid.
Then what is heat? It is the motion of matter.
When that motion is intense, heat is produced; when it is at rest, heat is not produced, which is why it becomes cold.
In a refrigerator, a catalyst circulates through pipes inside the unit and affects the surrounding air.
By turning it into a liquid with a compressor, heat is released, and the cooled gas is then sent inside the unit.
That lets it absorb the heat inside the unit, after which the compressor takes it in again, turns it into a liquid, and releases the heat. The cycle repeats.
“Do you understand? By circulating the same substance, you can cut out the waste.”
When I looked up from the diagram I had drawn, everyone’s mouth was hanging open.
Since there was no reaction, I looked at Helkov. Noticing, he bared his fangs in a wry smile.
“You did that, didn’t you? Called it a heat experiment. Putting the theory aside, you showed it to me, so I understood. Why not show these guys too?”
“I just… Do you understand this sense of helplessness, Hely? The answer we spent this whole year agonizing over was just handed to us right now.”
Molly kept talking, not even caring that her white hair had fallen over her face.
“Dinker, you can rest easy. There are no alchemists on your level. Your necessity is guaranteed.”
“Huh? That doesn’t reassure me at all.”
Even if she said it that forcefully…
Alchemy should have been used in constructing the palace and developing the imperial capital too.
Thinking about just how far it had declined made my heart heavy, and I grew worried about infrastructure repairs.
“To begin with, there wasn’t anyone who talked about heat or states of matter like you do, Dinker, was there?”
Terenti tapped the diagram and explanations I had written with his white-furred hand.
When I asked, I learned that with me gone, they had felt stuck and searched for alchemists partly in hopes of increasing their manpower.
The imperial capital had a lot of people, and if they looked, they did find eccentric types who called themselves alchemists, but the results were misses.
“When we went to some guy who only made strange medicines, he had all the tools, but he immediately started producing weird-colored smoke.”
“And the alchemist we heard was passionate only talked about the mysteries of the human body and things like that. Then the topic drifted away from matter and into the spiritual world.”
Erast and Renato also spoke about the hardships they had faced back then.
Apparently, they had found alchemists from the wrong specialties.
Still, the fact that such people existed moved me a little.
(They said the alchemy department at Lukiusaria was in danger too, so I thought there weren’t any independent alchemists left.)
(I wish to converse with a mature alchemist.)
Sephira made an outrageous request.
But honestly, I was interested too.
Come to think of it, Molly had first gathered alchemy tools simply because I asked her to.
In other words, there was still demand for them somewhere.
If I could go to Lukiusaria, I thought I would be able to ask about things related to those tools.
But if that proved impossible, could I, as Dinker, do something like become an apprentice under an alchemist?
“Hey, could you introduce me to an alchemist?”
When I said that, Molly and the triplets looked at me with lukewarm eyes.
Seeing that, Helkov shook his head and stopped me.
“Den—Dinker, I think the only result would probably be breaking their pride clean in half.”
“That much?”
Judging from Molly and the others’ nods, it seemed I was the superior alchemist.
(If they’re making it that clear, then… hmm.)
(If they will not surpass Master, then repeatedly verifying Master’s knowledge would be more useful.)
Sephira seemed to realize she couldn’t expect much either and lost interest.
The triplets shared what they had felt with one another.
“They were probably several levels less knowledgeable than Dinker. I feel like our conversations never lined up.”
“I even felt like we were better at using essence than they were.”
“All they talked about were exactly the sort of things we imagined alchemists would talk about—things you couldn’t tell the use of at all.”
It seemed they were truly no good.
In the end, independent alchemists were probably just the people left behind after the field declined, and they too were groping around without any systematic foundation.
It didn’t seem like I could expect much from apprenticeship either.
As we were talking about that, Molly clapped her hands as though she had remembered something.
“That’s right. We asked you here today to celebrate your triumphant return, Dinker. Come on, that’s enough talk about our lack of progress. Since you came back this quickly, you must have had quite the success, right?”
The public was supposed to think General Wageris was the one who had won the achievement, though?
“So you really don’t think Rock did well.”
From Helkov’s words, I realized Molly knew him too.
“Well, right after I left the army, he got dragged into the same sort of troublesome mess that was doomed to fail from the start, and then came back just like that. When I heard the general’s name, I truly thought Dinker wouldn’t be coming back.”
Apparently, the reason Molly had said something about adopting me was because she knew that General Wageris had a record—or rather, had previously been thoroughly dragged into something similar and failed.
Couldn’t someone have taught him how to avoid it back then?
No, once you got used to him, he was easy to move around, so maybe it was better that General Wageris repeated the same mistake?
“After he came back, that guy stopped hesitating to pick fights with the higher-ups, and his chances of promotion became hopeless. Then this happened, and now he’s made a comeback. You really never know what’s going to happen.”
Helkov said something outrageous.
I hadn’t heard this before, but he was someone the higher-ups had their eyes on?
Maybe Helkov had refrained from saying so out of mercy, wanting me to have at least a slightly better impression of his former colleague.
…Though given that Helkov was the one fighting with General Wageris at the start, I’m not so sure.
“Oh? Dinker’s efforts aren’t being recognized?”
“Rock apparently negotiated with the higher-ups about that too, but it was useless.”
“It’s fine for now. I intend to have General Wageris deal with the noisy adults until everything is settled, so we can call the achievement his payment for that trouble.”
I meant it as a joke, but for some reason, everyone there accepted it.
Regular update
Next: Changes Over a Year 5