Glan Natural Science Academy

Second day, noon.

The Salt Sea’s sun rays were very horrifying, to the point where it’d be apt to describe it as diabolic.

Ryger and the others’ exposed skins all grew red spots. Uncle Logic’s situation was better off while Ryger was already feeling some discomfort because of it. But the worst off was Lulu,having lived on a snowy mountain for the most part of her life. The girl’s delicate, white skin was peeling at many places.

Ryger knew that this was caysed by sunburn and an oversensitivity towards ultraviolet rays, and mixed some plant pulps with soil before applying it on their skin. Although this helped slightly, it was without question that this place wasn’t suitable for them to stay a long time. 

As they walked along the shoreline for a long time, Ryger, forefront, found something.

“There’s a rocky land in front. Probably reefs formed from volcanic lava a long time ago. Let’s go take a look?”

Looking over, there were large, dark rocks separating the beach. Very abrupt indeed.

“Okay,” Lulu replied while Uncle Logic simply wiped the sweat on his forehead, looked at where Ryger pointed, then walked over silently.

Even though it was time spent on making haste, Ryger had no intention of wasting it.

As he walked, he took out a magnifying glass and concentrated sunlight on the coconut he was holding with his other hand, observing closely the results. Compared to the total light emitted by the Sun towards cosmic space, the sunlight concentrated by a convex lens with a diameter of only ten centimetres was truly an insignificant bit of the immense power. Yet, even though Ryger was only borrowing such an infinitesimal amount of the True Law’s power among cosmic space, it was more than enough to easily immolate the coconut shell.

Sweat flowed down Ryger’s forehead to his nose then dripped.

Peeking at the grand through the diminutive!

At this moment, it was as though Ryger had seen from this insignificant natural phenomenon the fearsome scene of him using Air Bubble to create convex lenses of hundreds, thousands, several ten thousands of times bigger, having managed to peek at a whit of the power of the universe’s True Law.

“The universe…” murmured Ryger, his heart full of desire and longing. After he took a deep breath in, he put away the magnifying glass and tossed the coconut shell away.

Shortly after they reached the rocky area, Lulu shouted out of oddness.

“Huh? What’s this?”

A blue octopus with black stripes was hiding under a coconut shell by the seaside. When Ryger walked over and took a look, his expression shifted.

“Careful!”

Ryger was pretty much shrieking then, surprising Lulu who was about to approach the octopus.

As though was facing a great enemy, he took out a glass beaker and pretty much held his breath. With a pop, Ryger nimbly covered this blue octopus with the beaker and only after he completely kept away this biological specimen did Ryger only relax.

Carefully, Ryger sealed the beaker.

“This is a phantomrot octopus. It’s able to release a terrifying corrosive poison. Those infected by this poison and are unable to receive treatment will have their body melting into liquid slowly and die miserably.

Lulu covered her mouth and stared wide-eyed, evidently shocked by Ryger’s words, thinking of the image of her melted by the poison slowly.

Ryger, meanwhile, made a delighted face after observing the octopus for a short while. A phantomrot octopus wasn’t considered rare and was only a spirited creature, ineligible to be turned in for honour roll points. But for studying poison and experimental observations, it was a specimen that was as good as they came.

With a little interruption, the three of them continued on after Ryger was done with his specimen.

Because of the seawater’s constant erosion, the black reefs were as sharp as blades and there were some algal organisms in the gaps between the rocks. Occasionally, Ryger would bend down and collect some of algae specimens using cotton balls and put them into glass bottles. 

Such a spectacle made Lulu and Logic even more confused about the profession of magician. After all, in most mercenaries’ eyes, those magicians were nobles that fiddled with bizarre specimens or alchemical ingredients. Which among them was like Ryger, raising his butt and crawling into rock crevices.

Though, this was because Ryger was a first-year student, and this was his time out on a journey. Higher-level specimens were too difficult for him to procure and what he lacked the most now was basic knowledge in evolutionary secrets. And so, he needed a large quantity of basic biological specimens to provide knowledge of basic biological evolutions to him.

 

After about four hours.

In that period of time, Ryger collected some basic biological specimens but now, the trio was attracted by a dull drumming that sounded like the loud version of a toad’s croaking not far away.

“What is that!”

Lulu was already able to see that weird creature even from far away.

Ryger, too, noticed the creature. It had a large black turtle-shell that was about 1 metre long. What was strange about the creature was that its stretched-out head was like a toad with a pair of antlers. As it croaked, its white chin moved up and down

Ryger frowned. The Starcore gave no prompts and he himself had never seen such a creature before in the books he read.

After noticing Ryger and Co approaching it, this unknown creature seemed to have instinctively detected a threat and was trying to crawl back into the sea. But its movements were horrendously slow.

Woof, woof, woof!

Kyubey determined with his instincts that this creature didn’t have the scent of threat that proteuses specially have, and pounced at it, treating the creature as food.

“Careful!” shouted Ryger.

The slow turtle-shelled creature turned its head and suddenly opened its mouth. A water jet blasted out from it.

“Bang!”

Though Kyubey was able to evade the water bullet, the black reefs under his feet had an additional hole the size of a bowl mouth.

“Proteus!?” 

Lulu gasped and even Kyubey was surprised, sensing a great threat with his instincts and retreating to Lulu’s side. Logic and Ryger too, upon seeing it, stepped back a step, shocked and wary.

To be able to carve out such a large hole in the reef, the attack’s power must be higher than 10 degrees Gauss!

Yet the creature seemed to be even more fearful after shooting the water jet of tremendous might and resumed crawling towards the sea.

“No. There’s no energy fluctuations!”

Ryger observed the creature carefully. There were many bumps on the black turtle-shell and he was able to faintly see there were many odd holes at the tip of the bumps. He suddenly thought of something…

“Air Bubble!”

Transparent bubbles floated towards the creature, not receiving any counter fire of water jets as previously thought, and exploded at the top of the creature’s head. Because the bubbles’ offensive capabilities were limited, they were only able to cause the creature to shake its head. It continued crawling towards the sea.

Meanwhile, Lulu’s eyes sparkled when Ryger used Air Bubble, finally having the chance to lay eyes on this mysterious magician casting the magic of legends. She was full of anticipation of what was to come but she was met by such a display. Her mouth were left agape and she looked at Ryger with incredulity.

Ryger was a commoner and so, didn’t feel ashamed or anything because he subverted Lulu’s high expectations. Instead, he kept a straight face and said, “Catch it, it can’t shoot those water jets anymore!”

With a sceptical attitude, Logic and Lulu moved towards the creature slowly. Indeed, when they saw the creature not retaliate or do anything, and was instead floundering and panicking even more, the two grew confident.

 

After some time.

Just as the creature was about to escape back into the sea, the three of them worked together and carried this big fellow back.

“Ahha, so it can only do magic one time!” Lulu looked at this big fellow, grinning.

The turtle-shelled creature croaked out of fear and Uncle Logic couldn’t help but kick it’s turtle shell. Lulu looked at Ryger and was unable to resist her curiosity. “How did you know that this big fella was only able to unleash magic one time?”

Ryger moved closer and observed the mutated creature, eyes lighting up as though he was already seeing the image of the creature being subjected to his scalpel and becoming an eternal collection of his. He explained, “That water jet just now wasn’t magic casted using energy cores. It’s something formed by this big guy after absorbing water from the sea and compressing it using the physiological structures in its body. There’s a critical difference between it and a proteus’ power.”

Simply put, if this creature were a proteus, meaning there’s a crystal core within it, the creature would be able to use the crystal core’s energy and shoot water jets at Ryger and the others repeatedly, instead of having to return to the sea and rely on its turtle shell to absorb and compress water after shooting only just one time.

In other words, if they had let this creature back into the sea, the turtle shell would have enough water to replenish its ammo and what Ryger and the others would have to face then was pretty much a proteus without a crystal core.

Smiling, Ryger continued, “Once, in a tropical rainforest of a small principality called Slodek, there lived a creature called a gunfish. This creature’s most unique characteristic is that it is able to shoot a high-pressure water jet and strike down creatures on tree branches above and feed on them.

Ryger caressed the big fellow’s turtle shell with his head. As he was explaining to Lulu and Logic, he was observing this specimen of his, hitherto the largest he had obtained on his own.

“The gunfishes went extinct completely and now exist in the form of pictures and specimens. When I saw this big fellow shooting a water jet just now, I also almost thought it was a proteus. But in the end, I was unable to detect any energy fluctuations, which meant that it does not have a crystal core. And so, I thought of the gunfishes.”

Lulu and Logic looked at Ryger’s hand that trembled while touching the creature’s turtle-shell and eyes that spoke of extreme excitement – at this point, he might as well be drooling.  This was not someone looking at a turtle shell, rather someone caressing a beautiful maiden’s flawless skin!

Such a spectacle made the two of them, who had felt admiration for Ryger just a few moments ago, feel a chill. They truly found it difficult to understand a magician’s weird kinks. Even the previously lively Kyubey couldn’t help but show fear in his gaze towards Ryger, and ran to Lulu’s sides with his tails behind his legs, fearing Ryger fondling him as he would to the large turtle shell.

It’s no wonder why Ryger was acting so.

The moment he confirmed that this creature wasn’t a proteus, Ryger thought of his Air Bubble. If he was able to transfer the creature’s ability of compression and water jet formation to his own Air Bubble, wouldn’t it immediately cause Air Bubble’s offensive capability to grow several times stronger?

Completely submerged in joy, Ryger couldn’t care less about this creature’s pleas and dragged it straight to the shade of a coconut tree not far away.

Seeing this, Lulu and Logic couldn’t but sympathise with the innocent big fellow.

Seemingly because of his desire for knowledge, Ryger didn’t feel any exhaustion dragging the near 50kg big fellow alone, even with his scrawny physique.

“Though, the high-pressure water jet that this fellow condensed is far stronger than the gunfish recorded in that book. For it to be able do this much as a level 0 organism… truly an unexpected discovery. I really want to see what secrets of biological evolution it has. Hahaha!”