Chapter 386: The Deal Pt.22
Being let into the Master Lab by Doul Lake saw that there weren't that many people here currently because it was still kind of early and most of the Masters were probably still resting. He wouldn't be surprised if they arrived while Doul was showing them what they were going to be working on later though if it took a while for the experiment to be explained to him.
After walking around a few other work areas that belonged to some of the other masters Doul pointed at a station that had curtains surrounding it and said. "What I've been working on is in there." Lake had never been to this corner of the lab though it wasn't too far from where he had helped master Nancom. "Why is it blocked off like that?"
"Oh I've been struggling recently and didn't want the others to think I'd lost my skills and tell Lucas my funding should be given to them instead." Lake had kind of known the Alchemist guild had a cut-throat culture going but it was kind of crazy that the Masters had to worry about something like that while they were working in the shared space called the Master Lab.
"If it wasn't for the fact I needed the increased mana environment to help with stability in my work I would have moved to somewhere else months ago for more privacy." Lake was invested enough now that he didn't really want to hear anything else until he was actually looking at whatever Doul was working on so he pointed at the curtain and asked. "Can I just go in or is there something blocking the way?"
If Doul was worried about the other masters he probably had something like a barrier up to block people from going in while he was gone. "Oh, Give me a second I'll let us in so you can see what we're talking about."
After a few seconds that consisted of Doul touching the curtain with his eyes closed, Lake was let inside and saw a station that had hundreds of pipes running in between four cylinders. This meant there were multiple pipes joining each cylinder which Lake didn't understand at a glance but he was sure Doul would explain it to him.
"I'm sure you're wondering what this mess of pipes could possibly accomplish so I'll explain it to you before you start thinking that I'm crazy like the others. Do you know how it seems that once you use an ingredient derived from plants in something, adding more of its powder doesn't really do anything to improve the final product? My goal is to change that but I haven't been able to produce enough control over the ingredients inside to have this happen."
Lake could already tell he probably wasn't qualified for this conversation from how Doul started it so he just nodded whenever Doul looked at him during the explanation. "My best guess on how to do this is to stop the matching effects from forming a stable group by just making a long chain of the same three ingredients in a huge line."
After a while Lake had decided to use Mana Vision to look inside the cylinders and found the pipe he had thought joined the cylinders was actually just one giant pipe that continued in and out over and over again which matched up with what Doul had just said. Figuring he should ask a question to make Doul think he understood what they were talking about Lake asked. "So three of the cylinders hold ingredients and the last one will hold the final product, is that right?"
Getting a nod Lake felt he now knew enough that he would be helpful during the experiment but Doul seemed to think he needed to know more and said. "You'll be moving the chain in the pipe as fast as possible while adding a bit of each ingredient to the end each time it passes through one of the cylinders that hold them. Would you like to see why the machine doesn't work now? It will only take a few minutes."
Lake could understand why seeing a failure could help him when it was his turn so he nodded. "Alright I'll set it up." It took Doul around two minutes to get each cylinder filled with the three ingredients and the catalyst which just seemed to be water. He then activated a heat source under all four of the cylinders and the machine came to life.
Lake had never seen a steam engine in his last life as far as he knew but he was sure they had to look something like this. "As you can see the machine works at the beginning but before too long the amount of liquid in the pipe slows down the cycle to the point that the stuff in the pipe starts to fall apart and the potion or poison fails before it's long enough that the two ends meet."
Lake was watching silently until he heard the last part about the two ends meeting because if that was the end of the process he didn't understand how the the chain was supposed to get itself out of the loop without them taking apart the pipe in someway he guessed there was no need to ask though because he would get to see later when they tried this for real.
"It's about to happen." Hearing what Doul said Lake started paying attention to the machine again and using Mana Vision was able to tell the exact moment the poison chain started to crumble. It didn't turn into sludge right away though as all the ingredients matched closely enough that it just became a more normal poison. It did turn to sludge soon after that though for some reason he didn't understand.
His best guess was the original failure had made the poison that had formed afterwards have a very unstable nature but he didn't know if that was the case because he hadn't been using Poison Control to get a feeling of what had happened. "Well I have to go rest now. I'll see you in a few hours when it's time to get to work."
Lake hadn't expected Doul to leave right after the failure but he guessed it was best if he got going now as well so he nodded and said. "I'll see you then." They had around four hours before the job started which was just enough time for him to read through a large book so he needed to return to the library and use Detector to try and find a better source of information on Akal.
...
Donny didn't know how much time had passed since he had started trying to figure out how to use the looking stone but in this time he had made pretty good progress. In the past three tries he had actually found two things he recognized as enchantments that were used to block off viewing from the other side.
It didn't take a lot to figure out that these enchantments were most likely on whatever it was that he was inside so no one would know they were smuggling a kidnapped person out of the Metal Domain. It didn't really help him get out though so he just kept trying to find something on the bindings that were keeping him from using magic or any of his skills.
Keeping prisoners like this was extremely difficult so he knew whatever it was that was keeping him in such a useless condition was going to be obvious once he found it. He also knew there was a good chance the effect was coming from the shackles themselves so he was keeping his eyes out for anything the looked like metal whenever he looked through the looking stone even though he wasn't able to really see what the shackles were made from because of how dark it was in this room.
The reason he thought this was that if they were using something like a poison or curse to keep him weak the shackles wouldn't be necessary at all because he would be unable to do anything even without being chained up. Of course they might be being overly cautious with him for some unknown reason and he had been cursed already while he was sleeping but there was no point in thinking like that with no way to know if it was true.
...
Lake had had enough of trying to find a book that met his requirements and finally found a way to use Detector to look for a book that he felt could answer his question and that was just to set Detector to look for a book that had the right answer to his question. It was a ridiculous way to find what he was looking for but Detector had passed every hurdle he had ever thrown at it so he didn't think there would be a problem.
After he set Detector to Look for a book that could answer how Akal and the Demon Lord were involved to one another Lake looked around the library expecting a book to start glowing. When it didn't happen, Lake realized what he wanted to know must only have been known to the Insider and the Demon Lord and he would never find all the information here no matter what books he read.
It was still probably a good idea for him to go and have a look around the other libraries in the spire on the off chance this place was just a bad source of information when one wanted to learn history. There were at least three other rooms filled with books that he knew of so giving up before looking around would be stupid.
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