Glan Natural Science Academy

When Ryger reached home, Enid was whispering to Adva. They seemed to have been waiting in the living room for quite some time.

“Ryger, you’re finally back! Hurry and let mother see your Air Bubble!”

He had only entered the room when Enid stood and impatiently urged him.

“Ok!”

Ryger knew what Enid meant, which was most probably to show Adva his own results. As his energy field undulated, he unleashed in his palm one Air Bubble. 

The transparent bubbles floated mid-air and as Ryger exerted his control, floated to in front of Adva.

Looking at the transparent bubble in front of her, Adva made a delighted look while rubbing Enid’s hair. After she observed the bubble for a little more time, she suddenly extended her index finger.

“Careful!” warned Ryger.

But what happened was that Adva’s finger was enveloped by light blue spots of light and –pop– the bubble was punctured. Adva slowly retracted her finger.

The spot of light seemed to be the crypsis of a certain bioluminescent organism.

“Mmn.”

Adva muttered while nodding.

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“The energy degree that it contains is about 3 to 4 degrees and its projectile speed is rather slow. Its advantage is that improvements and evolutions are easier.”

After analysing, Adva looked at Enid and smiled, “But, as Ryger’s basic skill, Air Bubble is a nice choice.”

“Of course! Forget about poison bubbles, once junior brother finds his medium partner and masters level 1 energy field, he should be able to use Air Bubble to fly. Heh. An initiate scholar who can fly. The advantages he’ll have in his graduation test are apparent!”

When Ryger heard her words, his eyes brightened! 

Why didn’t he think of flying in the air by using a large Air Bubble?

Air Bubble’s usage isn’t merely limited to simple direct attacks!

……

 

Night.

When Ryger was having dinner, he told Kubo, Adva and Enid that he was going out to collect specimens. Now, he was tidying up his room and cramming everything he would need for his sojourn into his spacebox. Because the spacebox Satro gave wasn’t a high grade one, its space is limited. Ryger could only arrange it properly so that there would be space left for specimens.

As for the fact he was going out for specimen collection, Kubo and Adva didn’t say much. For scholars, other than time spent in their labs studying and researching, most of the remaining time would be spent travelling. Only, because this was Ryger’s first time going out and he didn’t have any experience, Enid, as his senior sister, gave some advice.

When she knew that Ryger didn’t manage to invite people to go out together with him, and that he planned to go out alone in his first specimen collection, Enid advised him to head to the mercenary association and employ some E-Class mercenaries.

“The lowest class of mercenary squads is D-Class. They all pay a registration fee to the association to guarantee contracts. Only then can they take on the association’s missions. As for E-Class mercenaries, they are all lone mercenaries that don’t have a mercenary squad and can only take on odd jobs, more or less like a farmhand. Normally, they don’t cost much.

“Moreover, to those mercenaries, we scholars are magicians who possess supernatural knowledge and power. If you go and employ some mercenaries, they’ll fight to get employed by you!”

Ryger took Enid’s advice to heart and decided to go to the mercenary association tomorrow and take a look.

Ever since he came to St Glan Castle, Ryger had always been studying and never left the Academy. He had gotten used to being alone in the dark night, studying and learning peacefully; silently dissecting a specimen; recording his observations on a notebook and accumulating knowledge.

 

After some time.

On a tray on Ryger’s testbed, an electric eel (Electrophorus electricus) was being dissected slowly. Soon enough, the eel’s body function secrets of unleashing electricity were recorded by Ryger in his notebook bit by bit.

As a level 0 organism, the electricity unleashed by it was considered to be considerably lethal compared to other level 0 creatures. Its energy degree far surpassed Ryger’s Air Bubble. A normal adult would be able to, on average, endure 10 degrees of energy while the electric eel’s flow of electricity reached 8 – 12 degrees, enough to cause a lethal injury in most adults.

Yet, among proteuses that similarly possessed the power of electricity, such a level of attack was nothing more than child’s play.

However!

For the dissection of the eel this time, understanding its basic physiological structures was secondary.

Using this electric eel, Ryger had, in secret, conducted an experiment regarding the first stage of《Self Control》, the self-control of muscles. But in merely 3 days, this eel died of poison.

Other than that, of the 7 lab rats he used, 5 of them died one after another after getting poisoned, cured, poisoned, and so on. The 2 remaining ones were merely still alive. They were in a state of delirium and could die at any time.

Such fearsome experimental results caused Ryger to perspire cold sweat. More than ever before, he didn’t dare to nilly-willy experiment on himself《Self Control》.

“Sure enough, it’s because of poison.”

Ryger already confirmed thoroughly that the cause of death for the electric eel was precisely because of the drug he injected into it.

Although the antidote worked, as he injected the second dose of poison and antidote, the eel was ultimately unable to completely detoxify the poison and thus died. And this was merely the lowest dose of a weak poison.

“Is it because of the dose? But it’s only 1ml every time! Or are there other problems? What secrets does that old man have that allowed him to fight the side-effects of the remaining poison?”

Ryger suspected that the old man who left《Self Control》most probably created it when he was very strong. Only so can he endure the poisoning and detoxification side-effects of the first stage of 《Self Control》.

Time went on unnoticed.

As Ryger completely finished a basic sketch of the electric eel’s, it was already after midnight.

Black eye circles again. But Ryger was used to this. He stretched his back and his bones made cracking sounds. He then yawned.

After some time, Ryger slowly closed his frostfire bird notebook. While cleaning his testbed, he thought of his dissection results today.

《Self Control》involved knowledge of poison, of which Ryger only had a preliminary understanding of. Since the present experiments showed danger, he could only belay it for now and after returning from specimen collection, go to the Black Widow and learned the corresponding knowledge from Merlin.

As for now, thinking about the future structure of Air Bubble was the most important thing.

“Air Bubble’s future… what is it?”

Ryger lied on the bed. Even though he was absolutely tired and felt as though he could fall asleep the next second, when he thought of his ignorant look and how he was unsure of what to do when faced with that grading mentor’s question, he couldn’t sleep at all.

This was the first time in Ryger’s life that he had insomnia.

“Ahhhh…”

With a sigh, Ryger slowly sat up and walked to the window. Looking at the endless night sky… looking at the sparkling starry sky…. His thoughts floated away without noticing.

What exactly is the universe’s starry sky?

Is it really as the Church proclaimed – the Light Creator-Deity created Heaven and foolish humans fell into the StarVeil world because they opened the Box of Original Sin so that they can receive salvation – that the StarVeil world is a large box?

Or it is as Pioneer Baniwens, who stepped up to the stake without looking back at all, said – the StarVeil world is the same as the countless stars in the sky, that is to say, spherical celestial bodies orbiting the Sun. It is the Sun that is the centre of the universe. The laws and rules of celestial bodies are something that even the Light Creator-Deity cannot change?

 

The fight between the Church’s Canon and the pioneer’s academic theories; the clash between Light theocracy and natural sciences had already reached the point of recognition of the world’s origin. But at the moment, Ryger himself was so puny, so miniscule. He could only try to peek at parts of the True Laws by studying natural specimens that are insignificant in the history of the river of life. He could only try to change his life and get some attention from his mentor.

His thoughts were scrambled and he no longer had any sleepiness. Closing the glass window, he sneaked up to the third floor.

Mentor Kubo and Adva should already be asleep. Ryger climbed the stairs and came to the garden on the rooftop.

Although Adva was a mentor of the Academy, she, like Satro, was responsible for only a small part of affairs. Because of that, she had a lot of free time. And the thing she liked to do the most at home was to tend this rooftop garden. Most of the vegetable salads that Ryger usually ate were sourced from here.

Because of the Church’s curfew, the Academy’s usually restless Scholar’s Street was now quiet. Ryger couldn’t help but feel slightly empty, lonely and lost regarding the future.

Hoot, hoot…

An owl protector of the Academy flew past.

The weather was a bit chilly during this season’s night. After Ryger breathed in quite a bit of fresh, cold air, he shook his head and turned to return to his room but instead noticed that the door of the normally locked astrology hut was now ajar.

He felt puzzled.

Ryger stopped and walked towards the astrology hut. “Mentor?”

“Your mentor already went to rest.” came a voice. It was Cayleigh, who walked out of the wooden hut with a pair of glowing green eyes, starling Ryger. The cat sat in front of Ryger and licked his paws.

“What are you doing, not sleeping at this time and coming up to the roof? To talk to little ole me?”

“Uh… ha ha…” Laughed Ryger awkwardly. He looked curiously at the pitch-black astrology hut and whispered, “What’s inside there? Can I go in and take a look?”

Cayleigh glanced at Ryger. “I’m a cat. I’m in charge of acting high and mighty and eating fish. Not a dog that I would need to look after his house.”

“Ha ha.”

Ryger was amused by Cayleigh.

With Cayleigh’s silent approval, Ryger walked excitedly to the astrology hut and stuck his head in and took a look around.

 How does mentor do his daily astrological research?

But he was disappointed.

The astrology hut wasn’t fitted with complex advanced experimental devices like he thought it would be and was instead fitted with a cheap crystal light. Moonlight entered the hut through the opened rooftop window where a structurally simple telescope extended out.

“This sort of high-magnification telescopes are passed down from the ages of Baniwens. Now, the Church forbids further production of it.”

Cayleigh yawned.

Curious, Ryger walked to the telescope and through it, looked at the boundless starry sky.

“Wow!” he exclaimed irresistibly!

In his current vision, it was as though there were countless things flickering and there was an opaque cloth spread out in the night sky which the flickering things used as a background. At the other end of the cloth appeared to be a boundless, endless world that was even harder to describe.

Could it be that this is the StarVeil’s world’s layer of Starveil that appeared in the Starcore hologram, what the Church proclaims to be the barrier of the Box of Original Sin?

 ~~~~~~

Fixed some terms. 

Star-Veil: Planet where the story takes place
Land of Star-Veil: The region where the story takes place
Starveil: A barrier of some sort enveloping Star-Veil

Title

Huh. Didn’t remember the author foreshadowing things so early on.

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