The project had been launched on a sudden decision, but for now, I had to gather team members.
Until now, I’d more or less made it on my own while getting advice from various people, but if I wanted to spread golems even further, there would need to be more people developing them as well.
Even if engineers and pilots could be trained through my territory and the Academy, development and design were another matter entirely.
Since golems themselves were drawing plenty of attention, I figured that if I said I was starting something, there would be people who would come just to see what it was about.
Still, nothing would move forward if I just sat around, so I had to get moving and gather people myself.
“…So you’re asking the Alchemy Department to help you?”
“When I thought of people who know magic, know tools, can be worked cheaply, and are intellectuals who’ll follow along without complaint as long as they’re fed on time, this was the place that satisfied all the conditions.”
“What do you take us for!”
In the Alchemy Department classroom, filled with exhaustion and hunger, Professor Rodelini got angry at me as I openly recruited people from in front of the podium, but her voice was quiet.
After all, traces of steamed potatoes remained on one side of the shelf where lecture materials were normally placed.
There were even potato peels piled high in the trash can, as if they had once steamed and eaten them together while she was absent.
The source was, of course, my fields.
Because of that, Professor Rodelini’s resistance was a little weaker, but she was still a professor in name and Vespia’s greatest alchemist.
She wasn’t about to meekly allow herself and her students to be used as labor.
“Right now, both my students and I are spending all our time researching alloys because you tempted us into it! It’s my fault for falling for it, but isn’t it too much for all of us to be hanging on something you want?”
“To know what level that alloy needs to reach, you’d naturally have to understand golems well, wouldn’t you? From Cyclops to the new machine being produced this time. If you participate, you’ll be able to learn a great deal about my golems.”
“…Are you serious?”
Professor Rodelini spoke as if she found that somewhat puzzling.
Well, what I’d just said must have sounded like I was going to reveal all my cards.
Perhaps because of that, Professor Rodelini’s face was serious.
“Any alchemist would always welcome the acquisition of new knowledge or techniques. But, child. You’re not going to tell me you don’t know what it means to reveal knowledge and techniques carelessly, are you?”
“You mean my value will drop without limit, right?”
Professor Rodelini nodded.
“The more you scatter your knowledge, the less reason there is to cling to you. Let me put it in extreme terms. If I absorb all your knowledge, I could even take the value of golems for myself.”
As Professor Rodelini said, the moment someone else grasped everything about golems, the balance of power would flip.
Especially if it was Professor Rodelini, she could quickly stuff it all into her head, produce something even more improved, and claim she was the foremost authority on golems.
On top of that, Professor Rodelini still had a little more social credibility than I did, so it wasn’t an entirely impossible story.
“What you’re doing is practically the same as burying yourself. Shall I mock it as a foolish burial?”
“I’ll say thank you for worrying about me.”
If she normally had no interest, she wouldn’t say something like that.
For a professor of her caliber, it would be more beneficial to just play along, steal the technology, and make something new herself.
Even so, the fact that she went out of her way to tell me meant Professor Rodelini was showing me tremendous consideration and concern.
But if I were going to back down, I wouldn’t have started in the first place.
“Shall we look at it from another perspective?”
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t thought that far.
When I moved without thinking, the professor stepped back, and I ended up standing at the center of the lectern.
Thud.
I struck the teacher’s desk once just because I wanted to, then looked around at everyone.
…Everyone already looked half-won over after being tempted by the earlier mention of food, but since I’d gone and hit the desk, I might as well keep talking.
“Certainly, as the professor said, if you look only at me as an individual, it’s an extremely foolish act. Golems—more precisely, piloted golems—have only just overcome their first hurdle and are gradually being deployed in actual combat. Unless some enormous problem occurs, they’ll continue to establish themselves as one component of the Vespia Kingdom’s military power.”
“Child. Aren’t you looking down on Abatus too much?”
“If you truly thought that side was superior, Professor, you would have used them as an example from the very beginning, not just now.”
Back when I kept talking about golems, she could have immediately struck me down by saying there were chimeras too.
But the fact that she was saying it now might have been because it was an appropriate time, yet at the same time, it was something she could only say because she inwardly acknowledged that chimeras were inferior to golems.
It meant she had shoved them into some corner of her mind, to the point that they didn’t immediately come to mind as a counterexample.
Professor Rodelini seemed to have been hit where it hurt too, because she couldn’t say anything more.
“In that situation, I bring a large number of people other than myself and especially trustworthy personnel into the golem development site and proceed with development together. Well, this time, in practice, I’ll be the one moving, and the rest will be like assistants, but it’s perfect for stealing technology, isn’t it? It’s an opportunity to learn about golems. My value will definitely drop somewhat. I may not know them, but people with greater knowledge and minds than mine exist, and there may be some right here in this room, so perhaps I’ll be replaced in no time.”
“No, I wasn’t trying to tear you down, Baron…”
While Professor Rodelini was slightly flustered, I continued speaking.
“But what can I do? That’s the whole point.”
“What?”
“What do you mean?”
One student asked back in confusion.
I spread out my hand and opened my mouth.
“I mean, if people greater than me join golem development too, that’s exactly what I want.”
The classroom fell quiet.
Professor Rodelini also watched with her arms crossed.
I continued speaking.
“If the work I’ve been doing alone is carried out by two, three… by many people. If someone else attempts what I had to put aside for a while due to time and money problems, and if someone else sees what I couldn’t.”
With everyone’s gazes gathered on me, I smiled and answered.
“Wouldn’t that mean rapidly advancing piloted golem technology and raising its level of completion?”
A way might appear to overcome breakthroughs I could not cross or find alone.
“Is the development of golem technology more important to you than wealth and glory?”
“Yes.”
It was an obvious question, so the answer was quick and short.
Professor Rodelini looked at me for a moment, then let out a deep sigh.
“Is it because you’ve already earned enough… No. You’re just, well, a little insane.”
Professor Rodelini looked somewhat fed up.
But you see.
The eyes on that face were already filled with desire.
“An arena of invention where countless scholars compete and vie with one another…”
She was the very person who had said I was insane and that it would lose its rarity.
But right now, in that head of hers, she had probably already begun researching ways to solve the problems she had seen.
The quiet Alchemy Department students were the same.
Among them, some would realize that the path I walked was not their own and lose interest.
But there would definitely be those who would want to walk the path I walked themselves and try to beat me at it.
“Unfortunately, I’ll only be accepting applications until tomorrow. I’m a little busy.”
If I pushed any harder now, I’d only make them resist, so I should withdraw to an appropriate degree.
And this much was enough.
—“…With this opportunity, maybe…”
—“If golems spread even more widely than they have now, acquiring that knowledge now will be helpful.”
—“Wait, depending on how it goes, golems could become the domain of alchemists, so employment opportunities would…!”
Everyone seemed to think it was worth a try.
That was only natural, since the technologies alchemists had worked so hard to create had been rotting away without any proper applications, and golems had created a use for them in an instant.
The domain of alchemy, which created new things by combining all sorts of things, and golems, which were born from combining all sorts of things, were also rather similar fields.
A word suddenly came to mind, so I grinned and spoke.
“Technicians who handle both alchemy and golems. Perhaps we could call them magic engineers.”
If you dug into it, it honestly seemed closer to the domain of magic.
But if it was a field that used both magic and machines, that was frankly the only term I could think of.
Should I make use of it on this occasion?
“Now then, anyone want to pioneer the path of magic engineering with me?”
Was it a mistake to think I’d caught the flow?
Everyone was quiet.
And Rodelini held her head as she spoke.
“…But even so, this is the Alchemy Department. How can you suddenly make a new department out of nowhere?”
“It just sounded like a cool phrase, so I couldn’t help myself.”
“And putting aside pioneering or whatever, when our stomachs are hungry right now, going down a different path from what we were doing… well, it might be similar, but still, it’s a bit much.”
Had I provoked Professor Rodelini too much?
A failure, then.
Since I had ruined the mood, I felt I had to take responsibility.
‘Then how should I make up for it?’
The most effective way to persuade and draw people in.
And what came to mind was the face of my financial backer.
“Oh, right. My territory needs teachers for its education policy, and I think I can provide salaries, meals, residences, and a partial supply of mid-to-low-grade mana metal.”
“…Salaries? Meals? Residences?”
Was that weak?
They wouldn’t come over for that amount.
Then…
“I also have the rare metals Prince Golden Sun left behind and funds equivalent to ten times Cyclops’s market price, so I intend to experiment without holding back this time.”
“What.”
How much money had that been again?
“Mina said that even if I leave about half and divide the rest into ten portions, each portion might be enough to buy a house with a garden in Vespia’s capital.”
“I can run for candidacy, right? Right?”
Starting with the hungry Professor Rodelini, the impoverished Alchemy Department people began rushing in.
—“I’ve been interested for a long time.”
—“Golems are the best! Golems are the best!”
—“Th-that thing about salary, meals, and a residence is true, right…?”
The Alchemy Department people, having taken the bait, signed one after another.
And I smiled and shouted loudly.
“The investment funds have already been received. I have quite a bit saved too. Don’t worry about money, and even if we have to grind everything in the Academy into research materials, let’s give it a try, everyone!”
“Everything in the Academy…!”
As if some kind of mind control had been cast on them, a hint of madness began to settle in the eyes of the Alchemy Department people.
Watching them overflow with morale, I smiled.
—“Usually, when something can’t be solved with money, it means there isn’t enough money.”
My financial backer’s words were never wrong.