Chapter 69: The Second New Alchemical Creation 1

Kent quickly realized that there was no chance of getting an explanation—or compensation—from Keta today.

Far too many dark elves had gathered around the newly evolved Tree Gian.

Even several of the elders were there, surrounding Keta and examining his transformation with obvious excitement.

There was no way Kent could squeeze through that crowd and calmly settle accounts with the old tree.

So, thoroughly annoyed, he had no choice but to return to his alchemy laboratory.

For now...

He decided it would be better to continue studying the strange script carried by the kobolds.

Kent opened the experimental notes he had compiled over the past few days.

The pages were filled with the proportions and ingredients used by the kobold mages when preparing their tattooing solutions.

And the ingredients were, to put it mildly, bizarre.

The fangs of red-legged spiders.

The tails of jumping rats.

The saliva of eight-clawed lizards.

Fluorescent grass.

And a variety of other strange materials.

Odd though they were, almost all of them could still be found somewhere in the Underdark.

That was not what truly puzzled Kent.

What he could not understand was something else.

How had the kobolds managed to preserve this ancient script for so many generations?

Could there be some hidden secret within the kobold territories?

And for that matter...

How had the Underdark itself come into existence?

Kent had originally been studying his experimental records.

But little by little, his thoughts began to wander.

Soon, he was no longer thinking about formulas at all.

Instead, his mind drifted toward the ancient history of the underground world.

Could there be some enormous treasure buried somewhere in the depths?

Or perhaps some shocking secret that had survived from ten thousand years ago?

A secret so dangerous...

That even the gods themselves feared it?

“Forget it.”

Kent shook his head.

“I should worry about what’s in front of me first.”

He forced those increasingly wild thoughts aside and returned his attention to the kobold script.

What he needed to do now was simple in theory.

First, he had to become completely familiar with the symbols.

Then...

He needed to find some way to alter them.

Disguise them.

Transform them into something different enough that no one would immediately recognize their origin.

Otherwise, Kent did not dare use them openly.

After all, this was knowledge forbidden by the gods.

If someone discovered that he was using the ancient script of the Demon Race...

Kent was not at all confident that he would be lucky enough to reincarnate a second time.

The problem was that such a transformation might come to him in a sudden flash of inspiration.

Or...

It might take him the rest of his life.

Kent took out a sheet of beast hide.

On it, he copied one of the symbol combinations used to gather fire-element magical energy.

This time, however, he used an ordinary dye rather than the special activating solution.

He placed the hide in front of himself and stared at the strange sequence of symbols.

How could he modify it?

How could he preserve its function while changing its appearance?

Kent stared until his eyes began to blur.

Still...

Nothing came to him.

The symbols looked like meaningless scribbles drawn by a madman.

Worse still, there seemed to be almost no obvious resemblance between one symbol and another.

The only clearly recognizable feature was that each symbol appeared to have been written in a single continuous stroke.

One line.

No interruption.

No lifting of the hand.

That was all Kent could determine.

After thinking for a long while without making any progress, Kent finally gave up.

At least for the moment.

He turned toward the magic furnace instead.

If the ancient script refused to yield its secrets...

Then he might as well continue working on his second new alchemical creation.

Kent was currently polishing a transparent crystal roughly the size of his palm.

Inside the magic furnace, meanwhile, lay a quantity of Violet Gold.

It was an extraordinarily beautiful metal.

And an extraordinarily expensive one.

On the surface, a single gram of Violet Gold could be exchanged for nearly half a kilogram of ordinary gold.

The transparent crystal Kent was working with was even more valuable.

A palm-sized piece of such quality could be worth roughly ten times its own weight in gold.

And its price was not merely due to appearance.

The crystal possessed excellent toughness.

Excellent hardness.

And, most importantly...

Exceptional conductivity for magical energy.

Kent’s polishing equipment, however, was surprisingly primitive.

A small waterwheel provided the power.

The turning wheel drove a tiny grinding disc.

And Kent stood beside it, carefully pressing the crystal against the rotating surface.

At this moment, he looked less like a mage or alchemist...

And more like an ordinary craftsman working in a workshop.

He polished carefully.

Stopped.

Lifted the crystal toward the light.

Examined the surface.

Then returned it to the grinding wheel.

The original crystal had already been cut into two halves.

Although both pieces were still somewhat rough, their overall shapes had begun to emerge.

They were becoming circular.

Kent set one of the pieces aside and glanced toward the magic furnace.

The temperature was still slightly too low.

He frowned.

Then casually grabbed a handful of powdered fire-element magic crystal and tossed it into the furnace.

Whoosh—

The heat immediately intensified.

Inside the furnace, the Violet Gold slowly began to soften.

Then melt.

Fortunately, fire-element magical beasts were common in the Underdark.

Because of that, low-level fire-element beast cores were not particularly valuable here.

And after the recent extermination of the kobold army, Muan City had accumulated a considerable stockpile of them.

The kobolds themselves had always liked collecting such things.

So Kent had no shortage of cheap fuel.

Seeing that the Violet Gold had finally begun to melt properly, Kent nodded in satisfaction.

Then he turned back to the grinding wheel.

Once again...

He began carefully polishing the crystal in his hands.

After several hours of painstaking grinding and polishing, the two transparent lenses were finally complete.

Both were convex lenses.

And with them, Kent intended to create something that had never before existed in this world—

A night-vision scope.

Among the captured kobold mages was a dark-element mage who had awakened an innate magical ability known as Low-Light Vision.

The spell allowed its user to see through darkness. As long as something lay within the range of his natural sight, he could perceive it even at night.

The kobolds tattooed the different elemental scripts across their bodies in order to absorb magical energy of various affinities.

But what spells they could actually use depended largely upon the innate abilities they awakened.

And this particular kobold had awakened Low-Light Vision.

That gave Kent an idea.

He intended to permanently enchant the spell onto his telescope.

Of course, there would be a price.

The kobold mage would lose some of his vital essence and a portion of his spiritual power during the process.

Kent, however, did not particularly care.

As far as he was concerned, these kobolds were enemies and experimental subjects. He had never truly regarded them as people in the first place.

A permanent enchantment was fundamentally different from an ordinary temporary spell.

The caster had to use spiritual power to guide dark-element magical energy, merging it with a portion of his own spiritual imprint and permanently branding the resulting spell structure onto the object.

And that process required an enchantment magic array.

Fortunately, the laboratory already contained one.

Otherwise, Kent would have been completely helpless.

An enchantment array was not something a beginner could simply draw by copying a pattern.

It required at least an intermediate-grade alchemy laboratory, and normally only a Level-Five Alchemist or higher possessed the skill necessary to inscribe one properly.

The materials were equally demanding.

Mithril.

Dragonbone powder.

And several other rare and expensive substances.

None of them were cheap.

Kent’s original plan had actually been to make something resembling a pair of night-vision spectacles.

But after thinking it through, he abandoned the idea.

Glasses would be inconvenient.

More importantly, crystal lenses mounted in such an exposed frame would be far too easy to break.

A monocular telescope was different.

It was compact.

Easy to protect.

Easy to carry.

And far more durable.

As for whether permanently enchanting Low-Light Vision onto a telescope would actually work...

Kent had no idea.

There was no record of anyone on the continent ever attempting such a thing.

Only experimentation could provide the answer.

That was also one of the things Kent found strange about the alchemists of this world.

Almost all of them pursued one thing—

Power.

Whether they were creating magical weapons or spell scrolls, they obsessed over destructive force.

Larger explosions.

Stronger attacks.

More powerful spells.

Very few bothered creating equipment designed merely to assist someone in battle.

And even when they did, the result was usually some sort of magical accessory that increased spiritual power, magical capacity, or another attribute.

Almost nobody tried to create useful magical tools that ordinary people could operate.

Low-Light Vision was a perfect example.

To a mage, the spell seemed almost unnecessary.

Mages possessed spiritual perception, and within the effective range of their spells, sensing a target was often little different from seeing it directly.

Warriors also developed powerful senses of their own.

So why waste time enchanting something merely to see in darkness?

But Kent viewed the matter differently.

He was not simply enchanting Low-Light Vision onto an ordinary object.

He was combining it with a telescope.

A telescope already allowed its user to see far beyond the range of normal eyesight.

If Low-Light Vision could be added to it...

Then the resulting device would provide long-distance vision even in darkness.

That was an entirely different concept.

At least...

That was Kent’s theory.

Whether it would actually succeed depended entirely on the experiment.

Kent carefully picked up the two polished crystal lenses.

Then, with almost excessive caution, he fitted them into a cylindrical housing made from Violet Gold.

The Violet Gold tube itself was decorated with delicate patterns.

Those designs had no magical purpose whatsoever.

Kent had simply added them because he thought they looked better.

After all, if he was going to make something himself...

There was no reason it had to be ugly.

Thinking about materials reminded Kent just how profitable the battle against the kobolds had been.

Muan City had collected an astonishing quantity of spoils.

Even the ordinary scrap metal alone amounted to nearly fifty thousand kilograms.

And that was merely the least valuable portion.

Among the captured materials were also small quantities of mithril.

Adamantine.

Magic Silver.

And an enormous number of magic beast cores.

The kobolds had apparently been extremely fond of collecting such things.

For Kent, it was practically a treasure hoard.

After securing the crystal lenses inside the Violet Gold tube, Kent carefully placed the completed body of the telescope back into the magic furnace.

Heat gradually surrounded the metal.

Kent watched patiently.

The Violet Gold changed color little by little.

Dark purple.

Crimson.

Then a brilliant glowing red.

Only when the metal had reached the temperature he wanted did Kent finally turn his head.

Beside him stood a kobold mage.

The creature had been trembling nonstop from the moment the experiment began.

Its eyes moved nervously between Kent, the glowing telescope, and the enchantment array.

Kent looked at him.

Then calmly gave a single nod.

It was time to begin.