I Pioneered Scientific Magic -
Chapter 81: Unexpected News
Well, I feel like I've become Galileo...
Just as Lynn was silently complaining in his heart, a voice sounded behind him.
"How do you feel, Professor Lynn? Are you satisfied?" It was Tik, the alchemist from the Wizard City, smugly stroking his beard.
After Lynn had slipped away under the guise of being drunk last night, the professors had convened to discuss how to commemorate the stunning experiment from this morning with a sculpture.
It was one of the highest honors in the entire academy!
This meant that every student who entered the Iyeta Academy from now on would be able to admire each other's achievements upon entering the academy's gates.
Tik had offered some suggestions regarding the external representation of this sculpture, along with the magic of several professors and the tireless efforts of the fairies day and night, the sculpture was completed in just half a day.
"It looks... impressive," Lynn reluctantly said, though he found the artistic quality of the sculpture to be rather ordinary.
Tik, on the other hand, was quite satisfied with the work. He didn't sense the insincerity in Lynn's words and, on the way to the mathematical science classroom, explained how to express a wizard's inner thoughts through sculpture.
Lynn maintained a polite smile on his face until he entered the classroom, where he adopted a more solemn expression.
After the reshuffling, the elite class had fewer students, now down to forty-six.
No, from today, it would probably be forty-seven.
Because there was a new addition: Lydia!
The halfling girl sat at the very front of the classroom, her size requiring a specially made desk and chair, making her look quite out of place. Lynn's attention immediately shifted to her upon entering the room.
Facing Lynn's gaze, Lydia didn't tremble as the other students did. Instead, she eagerly raised a parchment scroll and asked, "Professor, can we start the lesson now?"
Ailoch, Pierce, and others couldn't help but look at Lydia with a hint of pity and nostalgia in their eyes, remembering how excited they were on their first day of Arcane Mathematics class.
"Since everyone is so eager, let's start the lesson now!" Lynn turned to the gray-haired witch and said, "Jonny, collect everyone's homework."
"I gave you a whole day, so I assume you've already calculated the data for the Lookout Airship, right?" Lynn said with a smile.
As soon as these words were spoken, the classroom erupted in cries.
As members of the elite class of Arcane Mathematics, each of them had strong arithmetic talents. However, calculating the structure of the Lookout Airship was quite complicated, especially when it came to the precise measurements of the airship's gas envelope, which was elliptical in shape.
Even though Lynn had previously taught them the relevant formulas and provided some data, accurately calculating it was still a challenging task.
Reluctantly, they handed in their calculation papers, and Lydia was no exception.
In fact, over the past half-month of constructing the airship, every time Lynn came to explain the blueprints, he also taught her various geometric formulas and theorems, so her learning progress was not lower than that of the elite class students.
Lynn took the stack of parchment scrolls collected by Jonny, and as he glanced at the first one, he couldn't help but furrow his brows and asked, "Deborah, why are there only the dimensions of the gas envelope and cockpit? What about the tail wing?"
"But you didn't provide the data for the airship's tail wing," the red-haired witch stood up and said weakly.
"But it can be inferred, can't it?" Lynn looked at the wizards present and explained.
"The shape of the tail wing can be divided into a right-angled triangle and a square. I've provided you with a proportional flat diagram. If you pay attention, you'll notice that one of the diagonals of the cockpit is parallel to the diagonal of the airship's tail wing, and they are of the same length. Since you have the diagonal's data, you can easily calculate the other values using the Pythagorean theorem..."
"That's not so easy..." The red-haired witch said with a mournful face.
Lynn was unforgiving and straightforward, "Go back and copy the relevant formula fifty times! Also, recalculate the data for me before the end of the class!"
The students in the audience couldn't help but shrink their necks, as they couldn't calculate the area of the tail wing either.
"What is this Pythagorean theorem?" Tik turned to Ailoch beside him, puzzled.
"It's a mathematical rule Professor discovered. For a right-angled triangle on a plane, the sum of the squares of the lengths of the two legs is equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse..." Ailoch, after double-checking his notebook several times to make sure he was not mistaken, said with a slightly excited expression.
Having attended the award ceremony yesterday, he naturally knew that he was in the presence of a three-ring wizard and an alchemical master! Such a big shot was actually consulting him!
Ailoch felt that this was probably the proudest moment of his life!
"What does 'squares' mean?" Tik continued to inquire, as these terms were unfamiliar to him.
"'Squares' simply means multiplying the same two numbers..." Ailoch was very confident, not even looking at the formulas in his notebook. He then went on to explain the formulas for the area of circles and polygons.
Tik's face revealed a look of understanding. He had noticed a similar pattern when he was learning to draw magic circle patterns, but he hadn't summarized the rules for every shape like Lynn did, forming an independent discipline.
Some alchemists in the Wizard City enjoyed exploring these things. It was said that some had even calculated pi to nine decimal places, which was incredibly accurate...
Ailoch glanced at Lynn on the platform, estimating that he hadn't gotten to his homework yet, and an audacious thought came to his mind. He looked at Tik, feeling a bit nervous, and said, "Mr. Tik, some time ago, Professor Lynn came up with an interesting game. Would you be interested?"
"What game?" Tik was somewhat curious.
Ailoch immediately got excited. He picked up a quill and casually drew a 3x6 grid on a piece of parchment, then thought for a moment and crossed out the last square. He proceeded to explain the rules of the game.
"Starting with one copper coin, do the values in the following squares have to double compared to the previous one?" Tik repeated, then wondered why Ailoch had specifically crossed out one of the squares.
"Yes, as long as you can fill in all the squares, those ten gold coins are yours!" Ailoch took out all his savings and then added, "But, correspondingly, any coins you put down are mine!"
One copper coin to ten gold coins was a whopping difference of a hundred thousand times...
Tik became increasingly interested in the game. In his mind, he quickly calculated the total when filling in the last square and exclaimed, "Interesting, truly interesting!"
The value in the seventeenth square was 65,536, which, when added up, was...
"In total, it's 131,071 copper coins!" Ailoch promptly replied.
Tik spent a dozen seconds or so doing a simple addition and found that it was indeed correct. He realized that Ailoch had specifically crossed out one square to prevent him from reneging due to the large amount.
Tik was left feeling both amused and helpless. Since he didn't have any silver or copper coins with him, he directly took out four magic gold coins and placed them on the table. He was always one to honor his bets!
"Three gold coins are enough!" Ailoch didn't dare to ask for more and quickly pushed one back.
Tik was not the first alchemical master to be tricked by him. After losing to Professor Lynn here, he immediately played this grid game with his father, Albert, when he got home. In the end, he theoretically won all the family's wealth, but he didn't get a single coin and was severely beaten!
That's when he realized that being too greedy could lead to a beating...
Fortunately, this alchemical master was a man of his word!
Ailoch happily accepted the three gold coins. However, the next moment, he heard a familiar voice from the platform.
"Ailoch, since you're so well-versed in arcane mathematics, why don't you come up and explain it to everyone?"
The joyful expression froze on the face of the fifteen or sixteen-year-old boy. He shivered involuntarily, standing up with a slight tremble.
Lynn looked at him kindly.
You sly little guy, trying to bamboozle others with the knowledge I imparted to you! Under the amused gaze of the other students, Ailoch had no choice but to reluctantly make his way to the podium. He picked up a parchment scroll and, with his limited knowledge of arcane mathematics, stammered through his presentation.
Ailoch had never felt time drag so slowly in his life. Nervous and with his mind gone blank, he struggled to remember anything. Laughter rippled through the audience below as he stumbled over his words. In the end, he was dismissed from the stage after just a little over ten minutes.
Considering Tik and Lydia's learning progress, in the following class sessions, Lynn reviewed several geometric formulas he had taught before.
As the class ended, Tik also presented his gift: a thick book titled "Runes and Alchemy."
Although the Yeyeta Academy had some basic alchemical books, they couldn't compare to a gift from an alchemical master.
Lynn flipped through the pages, and aside from explanations of basic alchemical runes, there were annotations at the bottom of each page.
There were so many annotations, and they couldn't have been added at the last minute; it must have been a "textbook" used to teach a core apprentice.
Even so, it was a very precious gift. It meant that he could save a lot of time on his path to learning alchemy.
Lynn exchanged some polite words and then accepted the alchemical book.
Tik, fresh from an arcane mathematics class and filled with questions, needed Lynn to clarify some things. However, he noticed a young halfling girl who had been loitering nearby since the end of the class and politely excused himself.
"Professor Lynn!" Lydia immediately stepped forward, placing a bulging money pouch on the lectern, her hands on her hips, and said proudly, "Yesterday, we sold 837 tickets for a total of 83 magic gold coins and 70 silver coins..."
The halfling girl couldn't stop talking about the bustling scene on the square yesterday afternoon, where the line for the airship extended all the way to the harbor. Everyone was eager to fly up and see the skies.
In just one day, so many tickets had been sold. Lynn was also somewhat surprised; it seemed that the allure of flying was even greater than he had imagined.
"By the way, there's this ledger," Lydia continued, pulling out a small booklet she carried with her and handing it to Lynn. It contained a list of all the people who had purchased tickets, even detailing which batch of airships they boarded.
Lynn asked his AI to record all this data and then handed the halfling girl the bag of money, which belonged to the halflings, along with the ledger.
"When you get back, tell Darren that he doesn't need to bring this every day. Checking it every so often is enough."
The halfling girl looked puzzled because Lynn's reaction was different from what Darren and the others had predicted. Given the substantial amount of money, they assumed he would demand a daily check.
Lynn didn't explain further. He had loosened the control over money somewhat intentionally. He wanted to see if these halflings would engage in any shady dealings behind the scenes.
An airship was just the beginning. There would be plenty of opportunities to make money in the future. For example, the Wizarding World was still using very outdated papyrus and parchment scrolls for record-keeping. Lynn could profit from selling paper alone.
But he couldn't personally take care of these matters. He would need to hire trustworthy people.
It remained to be seen whether these halflings could resist their inner greed.
As they were chatting, there was suddenly a rush of urgent footsteps from outside the door. Then, the classroom door was flung open, and Darren rushed in. A day had not passed, yet this scruffy halfling looked much more haggard than before. After scanning the room, when he spotted Lynn, he looked like he had seen a savior, panic in his voice.
"Professor Lynn, it's bad! Ralph... Ralph is dead!"
Ralph? Who was that? Lynn hesitated for a moment and was about to ask, but before he could, Darren, in a state of distress, grabbed his sleeve and dragged him away.
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