Chapter 105: A Teacher's Feeling

Deep in the heart of winter, the cold winds blew harsh and biting, the world stripped bare—yet within Lucian's garden villa, flowers still competed in splrant bloom, their fragrance filling the air.

Lucian had his hands tucked into the pockets of his long formal coat. Rather than asking directly about research progress, he inquired about the apprentices' advancement: "I heard from Lazar that you're all quite confident about becoming formal mages, thinking that with just a few more months of spiritual power accumulation, you'll be able to purchase the 'Silver Moon' potion to aid your advancement?"

Annick, Hattie, Reillia, and Katrina exchanged glances, unsure whether Teacher Evans intended to praise them for their rapid improvement in magical ability or criticize them for being too arrogant and complacent. Each of them felt a touch of unease, uncertain how to respond.

Sprint, who had always been brimming with confidence, nodded without hesitation: "Our mathematical and magical analysis abilities, under Teacher Evans's t-tutelage, are already comparable to those of formal mages. So the spiritual power requirements for advancement are relatively lower for us, and with a few more months of accumulation, we can attempt the promotion. Ah, this is a conclusion we reached after speaking with several low-ranked mages."

When he mentioned Lucian's teaching, Sprint couldn't help but shudder involuntarily. Those terrifyingly numerous exam papers with their nightmarish problems still seemed to hover in his mind, impossible to shake off.

Lucian strolled leisurely ahead and said casually: "In the ancient magical empires, out of a hundred magic apprentices, it was difficult to produce even a single formal mage. And after the Council was established, although arcane science has gone through multiple developments and become increasingly refined, with training systems gradually maturing—in the end, from a single advanced apprentice class, only three or four people would ultimately be able to promote to the formal mage rank."

Ah, Teacher Evans is criticizing our arrogance and complacency? Annick and Reillia's faces flushed slightly, and they instinctively wanted to apologize, while Sprint, Hattie, and Katrina looked somewhat aggrieved and were about to speak up in their own defense.

Lucian waved his hand: "But you are different from them. Your natural talents are above average, and you've undergone my rigorous training. Your foundational abilities in mathematics and magic are quite solid—ha, that's the benefit of repeated practice. Moreover, you work at the Atomic Research Institute, which represents the cutting edge of elemental magic. Every day, what you hear, see, learn, and encounter are things that ordinary low-ranked archanists can only read about in journals—if they can even understand them. Under such conditions, if any of you still fail to advance, it would certainly be due to your own mistakes and carelessness, and nothing else. Do you understand?"

"Yes, we understand, Teacher Evans!" Hattie, Katrina, and Sprint answered with beaming smiles and full confidence, while Annick and Reillia shed their worries and unease, their expressions turning to excitement and self-assurance. So Teacher Evans had been encouraging them all along!

Advancing to mage was the first major hurdle on the path of magic. No matter how confident they were, no matter how they claimed their mathematical and magical analysis abilities were on par with formal mages, lingering worry and anxiety still lurked in their hearts. Especially after watching familiar classmates from the first two graduating classes at the magic school fail one by one during their advancement attempts, growing dejected and dispirited—even someone as confidently arrogant as Sprint couldn't escape this.

Yet now, Lucian's words of first holding back then lifting up, his clear analysis of their advantages, swept away the hidden shadows in their hearts. They no longer felt any fear about advancement, only a fierce yearning.

Having finished boosting the apprentices' morale, Lucian felt the cold wind brush past him and said with a slight smile: "Have you made any research discoveries recently, or are you planning to explore any particular direction?"

As usual, it was the most rebellious Sprint who answered. He said with some frustration: "Teacher Evans, you had us research gas discharge phenomena, wanting us to understand the true nature of gas conductivity. But we'd barely discovered cathode rays and electrons before Lord Brook drew his conclusions from lightning clouds—free electrons in the air are the cause of gas conduction. That left us at a loss about what to research next, so we could only go back and continue studying cathode rays and electrons, hoping to achieve results in this entirely new field."

Brook's research method this time was simple but brutal—it would be nearly impossible for anyone other than a legend-class mage of the Grand Archanist caliber to replicate. Even for Brook himself, the slightest carelessness would require using his predetermined resurrection methods to recover. So Rock, Sprint, Hattie, and the others could only watch helplessly as Brook published his paper, utterly unable to conduct this experiment first.

"Cathode rays and electrons relate to the internal structure of atoms. Research on them will help you truly enter the microscopic world. Even if Lord Brook had not determined the cause of air conductivity, I would still have recommended that you delve deeper in this direction. An entirely new field is like a warehouse filled with treasure—you can reach results with a wave of your hand that were unimaginable before," Lucian said with the gravity and solemnity of a true teacher.

Hattie and Sprint nodded, their passion and anticipation renewed. Countless facts had shown that when a new field opened its doors, the first archanists to step inside all obtained rewards that others deeply envied, while the conservative and timid archanists who refused to move forward could only be consumed by regret and jealousy.

"Teacher, can we research cathode rays and electrons on our own, outside of the low-temperature experiments?" Katrina asked a bit anxiously.

In the experiment where charcoal adsorbed air at specific low temperatures, she and Reillia had played significant roles as Jerome's principal assistants. But this was an experimental project arranged by Lucian, so the first author would inevitably be him, and the second author would undoubtedly be Jerome, who had handled the actual experimentation. Magic apprentices like them didn't even qualify to be listed, and could only watch as their two teachers reaped generous citation points and the patent licensing fees that came with it—back then, they weren't even formal archanists yet.

However, in this regard, Lucian had been quite generous. The arcane points that the Council calculated on its own couldn't be shared with them, but the patent for the low-temperature charcoal vacuum technology had been split with them at a certain ratio. Although for a high-ranked archanist like Lucian—who had been "raising" a dragon—this amount wasn't much, it had been enough for Katrina and Reillia to quickly accumulate the funds for the Silver Moon potion, so they no longer lacked materials for their own experiments.

Now financially able, Katrina was filled with enthusiasm for the entirely new field of atoms, hoping to realize her dream in this domain—to earn some supreme honor, just like Teacher Evans or Lady Isabella.

"Apart from your work at the institute, what you research is your own freedom. I support you in having your own research directions, and I allow you to use the institute's magic circles and alchemical arrays," Lucian expressed his approval.

"Wonderful, Teacher Evans! I'm planning to research cathode rays and electrons just like Katrina," Reillia cheered delightedly. "Over the past two or three months, the changes in material properties under low-temperature conditions haven't yielded any substantive breakthroughs—just small accumulations of data. It occasionally feels tedious and disheartening."