“That’s only part of it, Diio,” Makarov said. “It’s not like everything’s going smoothly. I’ve heard that since mages have spent their whole lives doing nothing but playing combat support roles, a bunch of them are getting weeded out now that they have to train with the Order of Knights. There are countless stories of mages who got fired because they outright refused to take part in melee combat training.”
“Masher Love is right.” Zweit nodded. “We’re entering an era when mages fight on the front line too. They can’t just sit at the back and act like they’re better than everyone else. Not anymore. I’ve heard the same about the mages removed from positions because they refused to follow orders; they must not realize things are different now. I guess the state’s trying to make an example of them too.”
“His name is Makarov, brother...” Croesus sighed. “Anyway, what happens on the battlefield has nothing to do with me. I’m just a researcher.”
For a moment, Makarov wondered: Are these guys intentionally getting our names wrong or what?! Feels like they’re coming up with wilder and wilder variations every time we talk to them...
But unfortunately, Zweit and Croesus weren’t doing this on purpose.
They were genuinely getting the others’ names wrong, which made it even worse.
Perhaps Diio and Makarov needed to resign themselves to just being happy the guys recognized their faces.
Other members from the Saint-Germain faction approached the carriage to rejoin Croesus and Makarov. From here, the students would split into smaller research groups.
“C’mon, Croesus. Let’s go together!” Yi Ling called out.
“You too, Makarov!” Serina followed up. “And thanks for keeping an eye on Croesus. He didn’t get up to anything too silly, did he?”
“Oh—Yi Ling, Serina,” Makarov greeted. “No, he actually behaved himself. For once.”
“Really? That is rare,” Serina said, surprised. “Hopefully our good luck there doesn’t get balanced out by a cave-in or the like...”
“Is it really that unthinkable for me to go a moment without experimenting, Serina?” Croesus asked. “I’m aware of my reputation, but I’m not always causing mayhem.”
“What?!” the others shot back, clearly skeptical.
It probably went without saying at this point, but Croesus was inevitably at the center of any chaos. He was responsible for about seventy percent of the academy’s worst experiment-related incidents.
Of course nobody would believe him when he said he “wasn’t always causing mayhem.” Far too many times, they’d witnessed his antics—and the resulting casualties—with their very own eyes.
“It’s not nice to lie, okay, Croesus~?” Yi Ling said.
“How the hell are we meant to believe you when you go right from one crazy thing to the next?!” Makarov said.
“Do you remember what happened just the other day?” Serina asked. “You showed an underclassman how to create potions and ended up making one with some ridiculous effect? The poor students who took it started divulging their most embarrassing hobbies and fetishes!”
“O-Oh? Did that happen? I can’t say I recall...” Croesus said, trying his best to gloss over it.
The other three continued glaring at him coldly.
He could never stop himself from throwing in extra ingredients on a whim. That was why his experiments always took a turn for the worse.
When he saw warning labels that said “Don’t mix these substances together,” he read them as “Go ahead! Mix anything you want! See what happens!” instead.
Fortunately, he hadn’t actually gotten anyone killed or critically injured yet, but there was no guarantee his lucky streak would continue.
“Hmm...a potion that makes people spill their secrets unprompted?” Zweit mused. “So...a truth serum? That could be useful...”
“Zweit?!” Diio recoiled.
Zweit, who’d been listening off to the side, seemed very interested in Croesus’s potion. If war ever broke out, Solistia would send spies to other countries, who would do the same in return. And eventually, intelligence agencies were likely to capture some of those foreign spies.
There were various methods for getting intel out of spies, but the most effective method was torture.
Croesus’s potion, however, would make it possible to get information without all the brutality. After all, if interrogation targets just volunteered everything they knew, the nation wouldn’t need torturers—people whose work often made them lose their minds and drift toward crime. Plus, this potion would make it faster to get intel too.
In short, this potion could let Solistia gather intel effectively and cheaply in conflicts between countries—situations where critical information could emerge and change at a moment’s notice. To Zweit, it sounded like the most useful potion any military could ever have.
“So, Croesus...” Zweit asked. “Do you still have the recipe for that potion?”
“Of course I do,” Croesus replied. “Did you honestly think I would fail to document my experiments?”
“Then could you put together all of your files for that recipe and submit them to the academy council? It can wait until we’re back, but that potion of yours sounds like it’d have military applications.”
“What—that thing I made by accident? What would it even be used for? Oh—I won’t be researching it any further, just so you know. I’m a busy man. I have a lot to do. Though...I’ll admit I’m intrigued, at least.”
“I wouldn’t pry too much into how it’ll be used. Let’s just say our intelligence agency might have use for it, and you can probably figure out the rest from there, yeah? The Magical Goods Laboratory will probably handle the development.”
“I see...”
Two main organizations investigated the efficacy, quality, and so on of magic potions in Solistia.
The first was the Solistian Institute for Magical Goods Research, which carried out R&D for commercial products. The second was the Solistian Army Magical Goods Laboratory, which carried out R&D for magic tools, potions, and other items used for military purposes.
If you asked the general public, they’d assume both were just different divisions of the same entity; the Laboratory was rarely mentioned by name. After all, it answered directly to the royal family, while the Institute was run by the Order of Mages.
Though the recent reforms had somewhat stripped the Order of Mages of its power as a whole, it was difficult to lay people off from the Institute, since it was headed up by the Order’s top court mages.
Behind closed doors, power struggles were going on in an attempt to bring the Order of Knights into the Institute as well. But with all these half-implemented reforms, it’d be highly inefficient to try to transfer control of the organization, making it difficult to carelessly dismiss those currently in charge.
For now, the wisest approach was to just keep a close eye on them and see how things went.
You could say the Magic Kingdom of Solistia had entered a period of preparation to completely rework its old structures of power and begin a new era. And in that context, Croesus’s new potion would likely be researched and produced under the Magical Goods Laboratory.
For some reason, though, Croesus looked very regretful to hear that other people would continue the research into his discovery.
“Weren’t you just saying you wouldn’t spend any more time researching it?” Zweit asked. “Why do you look so sad?”
“Oh, it’s just... The thought of some strangers researching a potion I discovered makes me feel...”
“Selfish, much?!”
Croesus had an endless appetite for knowledge—a trait befitting a researcher, perhaps.
As the one who’d created the truth serum, he hated the thought of other researchers taking over the rest of the work. But at the same time, he had so much other research to do, including the trip he was on right now.
He felt frustrated—as he often did—by the fact that he had so many projects to work on, yet there was only one of him.
“Oi! How much longer d’ya plan on standing around?!” a man behind them shouted. “Move already! Yer in the way!”
“Yeah! We wanna hurry up and get inside! C’mon, ya little shits—shove!” another echoed.
“O-Oh...” the students realized together.
The frustrated merchants, in their eagerness to enter Isa Lante and reserve a place to stay, had started hurling abuse at the students.
The students—realizing a fight could break out if they stood here any longer—moved forward in a hurry. About thirty minutes later, they were inspected at the gate and passed into the city.
One way or another, all of the students, Zweit included, had made it safely to Isa Lante.