NOVEL NEXT Chapter 220: Briefly a scientific research novel again (again)
As spring turned into summer, a large convoy arrived at the Sedaverian Capital. They were from the Hraun Nation, led by Crown Prince Haldor Firestone. Aside from visiting Sedaveria, Prince Haldor and his convoy planned to continue on to Angio and pay a visit to the new Angian Queen.
King Edric hosted a feast to welcome them, while Rian and Ren Xiyang showed Prince Haldor around.
Prince Haldor was a relaxed, friendly and patient person. When he heard that Rian and Ren Xiyang were going to give presentations about their research at the academy, he came along to listen.
This year, rather than a map table, Rian had two map tables.
Last year, Rian’s map table displayed light and temperature levels across the kingdom. The light could be seen as bright and dark patches over the board, while the temperature could be felt if one hovered their hand above the board.
The new map tables were much thicker. Rather than a flat map, the tables had a depth of about a hand-span, packed with dirt, soil, rock, and sand. The broad topology of the land had been recreated, including hills, mountains, lakes, rivers, part of the sea, and major settlements. Water flowed through the rivers and settled in the lakes and sea. Earth spells kept the crafted topology stable.
The map table airspace then extended another half a metre above the table surface. Hundreds of spells controlled lighting, temperature, wind, air pressure, and humidity at different locations across the map table. There were even spells that controlled the formation of clouds and made it rain.
One of the map tables represented the current conditions across Sedaveria, deriving information from a hundred different information-gathering stations. It was a stunning centrepiece, allowing one to see the weather across Sedaveria, including seeing which places were raining and which weren’t. Rian was giving his talk in the morning, on a warm and sunny day, so the map table was brightly illuminated and no clouds could be seen.
“—However, while this map table shows the weather across Sedaveria, it can’t predict what the weather will be like in an hour, or a day, or a week. At most, we can use it to make guesses, such as through visual inspection of cloud movement,” Rian said. “Therefore, to aid prediction, I have made this second map table. It doesn’t show what is currently happening in Sedaveria. Instead, it allows us to test out what could happen. I can set some prevailing winds, temperatures, clouds, humidity levels and so forth, and then run this table such that a ‘day cycle’ takes less than an hour, allowing us to see what could happen.”
Rian did exactly that. For dramatic purposes, he made sharp high and low temperature and pressure gradients, configured strong prevailing winds and heavy miniature rain clouds. Then, he ‘started’ the system. The map board went from daylight to noon, to afternoon, to night, as clouds flew over the landscape and released tiny droplets of rain. Some water was soaked in, but the rest of it filled up the rivers, and flooded the banks.
“—Thus, if we see these sorts of initial conditions, then we can predict heavy rain, with possible flooding. This allows us to warn citizens and be prepared,” Rian said.
The second map table’s weather simulation focus allowed him to skirt around the problem of information record-keeping. Rather than using a lot of past information to predict the future weather, it just needed the current snapshot weather conditions.
Rian wrapped up his talk with his conclusions and future work. The chair of the presentation session opened the floor to questions.
“While the second table appears impressive, how can you be sure that it behaves realistically?” an examiner asked.
“I can configure in the current conditions across Sedaveria on the second table, run it, and then compare to the actual weather that happens over the next 24 hours,” Rian said.
Prince Haldor raised his hand. “The seas and oceans play a major role in the weather. How do you plan to address that?”
“That is an excellent point,” Rian said. “Ideally, these map tables would extend beyond Sedaverian borders and I would have weather-information gathering stations beyond Sedaverian borders, including out at sea. This has logistical problems. However, if the Hraun Nation would like to collaborate, then let’s talk later.”
And indeed, Rian did have a fruitful discussing with Prince Haldor later. Aside from lava mages who monitored the volcanoes on the Hraun Islands, they also had wind mages monitoring for strong winds and storms, and water mages monitoring for any abnormal wave behaviour on the seas. If nothing else, Prince Haldor thought it would be good for the Hraun Nation to have their own map table.
Prince Haldor would be leaving with Prince Pollux and Hadrian to journey to Angio soon, but once Prince Haldor returned, he’ll talk more to Rian about collaborations.
Ren Xiyang’s presentation was on the next day.
His two props were a small, filled potions vial and a potted plant.
He introduced his overall project goal—to develop new magical herbs that would form the basis of new potions to replace certain healing spells. He briefly described his process of systematically modifying the genetic structure of magical herbs to slowly iterate towards the target effect. And then he showed how his newly developed magical fertiliser worked, by pouring the potion on the potted plant and causing the potted plant to grow rapidly and produce flowers in a few minutes. Ultimately, something like this could be used to eliminate hunger in the kingdom.
“A plant fertiliser isn’t a healing spell,” one examiner said.
“No, but by making sure the people are fed, this would improve immune systems and suppress many illnesses,” Ren Xiyang said.
“What are your next plans? Will you actually do something healing related?”
“I have further research that is currently in progress. You may have heard of the clinic I opened at the Capital Hospital, focusing on applications of the reference healing method. I’m currently working with the healer researchers there to formalise applications of the reference healing method into spells. This process is helping to inform my experiments that are developing magical herbs to produce the same outcome. However, the potions are higher risk than the reference method applied properly, so I’ve encountered issues testing what I’ve created,” Ren Xiyang said.
Ren Xiyang had done more work that he didn’t mention here. He had already created magical plants that could produce sex hormones—he simply made them have a similar structure to ovaries and testes. However, they haven’t been tested in humans yet, and sex hormones weren’t magic per-se, and hence wasn’t within his scope of ‘magical herbs to make magical potions’.
After the presentations were done, Rian and Ren Xiyang finished their written reports and submitted them, concluding their second year of ‘classes’ at the academy.
Prince Pollux’s second year at the university also concluded. He, Hadrian, and Prince Haldor’s convoy all travelled to Angio. Hadrian stopped at the Terra fief, to stay with his family and to see the new glass factory that his father had set up. Meanwhile, Prince Pollux and Prince Haldor continued to Angio’s capital.
Pollux felt that Angio had changed again while he was gone. There were more people working out in the fields, greater numbers of merchants on the road, and a lot of lush trees and plants on the grounds of noble manor houses.
During the journey, Pollux had frequently practiced walking, taking on a habit of going for a walk in the morning before breakfast. Prince Haldor was accustomed to waking up early, so he walked with Pollux, and they had many pleasant chats.
Back in Sedaveria, Rian helped Ren Xiyang prepare a report about the maglev trains’ development thus far. Ren Xiyang had also found some craftspeople to build miniature train models from wood, while Rian put in levitation spells to make them float. Ren Xiyang took the report and the miniature train models and met with King Edric by himself.
(No amount of Rian’s puppy-dog eyes was enough for Ren Xiyang to let him come with him. He was starting to wonder if Rian was getting separation anxiety…)
King Edric was restrained at the start of the meeting. He became more enthusiastic again once Ren Xiyang gave him the miniature train models and had them zooming across King Edric’s desk.
King Edric gave him a idea: to make scaled-down prototypes first, before committing a lot of gold and metal and magic to produce life-sized trains. Ren Xiyang agreed that it was a good idea.
They scheduled another meeting in a month’s time, while King Edric’s people and Ren Xiyang’s people were to meet in two weeks to handle logistical and administrative matters.
“Ren Xiyang’s people” were a mixture of Rosewood staff and Rian’s staff. Ren Xiyang gave them some direction, including making a miniature landscape for the miniature trains, and then packed his bags and went on a work trip with Rian to visit the northern fiefs.
The Coral, Dravite and Lavender fiefs were now overseen by the younger generation of the Coral, Dravite and Lavender families. With Imperial eyes upon them, they didn’t (yet) dare to make any bold moves. Regardless of their internal feelings, they had accepted the presence of the Royal Healers’ Association and the Royal Agricultural Development and Food Security Program.
Rian took extra time to talk to the common people and funded some free lunches in various towns and villages.
The people’s impression of Crown Prince Rian became even warmer.
Prince Haldor’s reception at Angio’s Capital was much less fraught than Prince Rian’s reception all those years ago. At least, Prince Haldor didn’t try to provoke any Angio Imperial family member to a duel.
Prince Haldor presented appropriate gifts to everyone who should receive a gift and spent a lot of his time talking to Queen Aurelia about the relationship between their nations.
Meanwhile, not long after arriving, Pollux went to visit his father and brother in prison.
Flanked by guards and his manservant, Pollux slowly walked down the stairs.
The prison wasn’t dark nor dank. During the day, it was brightly lit with magical lights, and the air was cool and relatively fresh.
Prince Marcus’s cell was first.
Prince Marcus was seated at the table in the main area of his cell, reading. He didn’t care to lift his head when Pollux came by, steadfastly ignoring everything.
“Big brother,” Pollux said with a tone of sarcasm.
Marcus’s gaze lifted and then he raised his head and leaned back casually. “Oh, if it isn’t Pollux. I’m surprised Her Majesty has kept you alive, given your role in the coup.”
“Perhaps because I don’t produce as much magical power as you, and thus can’t contribute much to the country as a human magical power generator,” Pollux said.
Marcus snorted. His gaze raked down Pollux’s body. “Tch. If you have nothing interesting to say, I have things to do.”
“I just wanted to see how you were going,” Pollux said. “I see that sister Aurelia is treating you better than you would treat her.”
Marcus rolled his eyes and returned back to his reading.
Pollux continued deeper into the prison.
His father’s cell was bigger than Marcus’s and had many more magical crystals being charged on the energy-extracting array. At the point in time, King Augustus was exercising, doing push-ups at the corner of his cell. Just like Marcus, he ignored the sounds of people walking over.
“Augustus,” Pollux said.
His father ignored him.
However, he knew that his father was listening.
“Father, it’s me, Pollux,” Pollux said. “How are you going? I’ve been attending the university at Sedaveria, so I’ve been too busy to return to Angio, let alone visit you. I see that sister Aurelia has been treating you well. And thanks to Earl Rosewood, I can walk again. Unlike you, Earl Rosewood can heal, make his land prosperous, and win duels.”
Augustus stiffened. He rose to his feet and turned around. He sneered, eyes narrowing. He strolled to the front of his cell. “Earl Rosewood, you say? You, a prince of Angio, let Earl Rosewood of Sedaveria heal you?” Augustus looked down on him. “And what did you have to pay for that, huh? Did he embed tracking spells in you? Have you become his spy? Have you become his slave? Conspiring with Sedaverians, Aurelia should watch out for traitors in her own rank.”
“Jealous of Earl Rosewood?” Pollux curled up his lips and smiled innocently. It was a small trick that he learnt from Prince Alexius and Prince Rian.
And unexpectedly, it was his smile that made anger flash in his father’s eyes.
Pollux smiled more. “I made several friends, including with Prince Rian, Prince Alexius, Lord Hadrian Terra, and Baron Baltasar Cordovan. I live at the Rosewood house in Sedaveria, and I even have a pet cat, named Princess Sasha Lūpiter.”
“Mingling with trash, I see. You would be nothing without me,” Augustus said. He stepped forward, but Pollux didn’t step back. Augustus sneered. “Not scared? Then come in here and let’s talk.”
Pollux shook his head. “No thank you. The world is changing, and you’re being left behind.” Pollux took a step away. “Have a good life, father. I suspect I’ll be too busy to see you again in a while.”
“Did I dismiss you yet?!”
Pollux didn’t turn back. He already had a good, long look at his father.
Maybe it was because his father was in a cell. Maybe it was because Pollux was standing upright now. Maybe it was because Pollux had more practice and experience duelling due to Ayden and Prince Rian and Prince Alexius pulling him in. Maybe it was because Pollux had seen and met so, so many more people now, of all shapes, sizes, and abilities.
Regardless of the reason, his father no longer felt impressive and intimidating. He no longer had any ability to threaten or control Pollux.
Ren Xiyang works with Prince Alexius to produce floating chairs.
Ren Xiyang works with Prince Rian to produce floating carriages.
Ren Xiyang works with King Edric to produce floating trains.
See a pattern? 🤭
Eyram and The_other_Abe requested a bit more about the Coral/Dravite/Lavender fiefs ✅
Thanks to Rejn for mentioning some things needed for weather forecasting, saving me the research 😆
Also, thanks to uwouldntknowthem…that I selected a sub part of your comment and focused on the “Augustus is still paranoid and arrogant” haha
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