A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 434 Whom to Follow?

Before the wedding of Barth, the resident mage of Würzburg died unnaturally, allowing the young man to pull some strings to take his place. He was next in line, but unfortunately, the unlucky assassin found Rorschach instead.

Subsequently, the resident sorcerer's superiors promised to launch an investigation, but nothing came of it, and the patrol officer Mariano, who nearly died, was never heard from again. It is highly likely that the investigation was suppressed by the military and the accompanying sorcerers.

As for the reason for the assassination, Rorschach guessed that those people were probably imperialists who could not tolerate the close association between the resident mages of the states and the king.

"Thank you for the reminder." Rorschach acknowledged that this information was important. The group of mad dogs' attention was probably not on Bain's side at the moment, but that didn't mean they wouldn't come after them again, especially if the Kingdom of Bain might intervene in the situation in the future.

As for the archives, the fact that the organization is now gone has indeed saved him a lot of trouble, but Luo Xia doesn't care anymore. With his current strength, even if the organization still existed, no one could stop him from leaving if he wanted to.

Even if the secret files brought by the Chancellor were made public, the Empire would have no grounds for complaint. Moreover, he didn't have the same desire to "come to power" as Barth, and no political enemies would use this to pressure him. As the saying goes, "He who has no desires is invincible."

Perhaps the prime minister was aware of this as well, for he handed the file to the person in question: "I wonder if Master Luo Xia is satisfied with this 'gift'? You should thank Mr. Sebins: outside of this file, your identity is concealed by a code name. Therefore, even if the military mages take over the broken mechanisms, they will not be able to find you for the time being."

"I'm a little curious about my code name."

"The 'Owl.' The 'Owl' on which high hopes were placed." Sepins never trusted spellcasters and controlled the number of mages in the mechanism, but the gap between ordinary people and spellcasters could not be bridged by scrolls and alchemical tools alone. Whether he realized this later or not, Otto knew that the failure of the mechanism was inevitable.

At least his old friend's judgment was correct. The prime minister was unsure of Luo Xia's current strength, who seemed to be focused on running his business. In terms of his empire, he was at least on par with the Thyssen family, who were guests of honor in the palace.

The private dinner was still going on when the Prime Minister learned that Rorschach had been involved in the development of new communication technologies at the Tower of Stars, and of course, he had also noticed the telegraph lines in Byrne.

Rorschach promised to license the technology to Imperial companies, but the Chancellor wanted to acquire the radio technology instead.

The Tower of Stars has been successfully developed? Was it Poincaré's doing? It seems Rorschach's information is outdated; he didn't even know that a prototype machine had been captured from the battlefield by his former roommate. Therefore, he could only confess that radio technology hadn't even been realized when he participated in the research.

But he had a new idea: "The Imperial Army's advantage lies in its greater number of low-level spellcasters compared to the National Guard. Researching and replicating Valois's technology is certainly feasible, so why not take advantage of this?"

"You mean..."

"Improve it based on the [Communication] spell." Rorschach thought it was feasible. The [Communication] spell was a somewhat secretive spell. Rorschach hadn't delved into its principles, but could only confirm it through the process of learning it, relying on the vibrations of environmental magic to transmit.

However, it's clear that the vibrations of environmental magic don't travel very far; the range is about the same as speaking normally. So, could we introduce electrical magic to turn the caster into a humanoid base station?

"Both [Communication] and [Electric Claw] are low-level magic. What if we tried to combine them? We could discard the principles and mechanisms of radio transmission and reception, and instead replace the carrier of magical communication with electromagnetic waves. This would differentiate it from the wireless motors made in Valuwa, making it easier to avoid interception, and would also allow for a longer transmission distance. I'm sorry, these are all immature ideas."

"I don't know much about this, but I assure you, this idea will be taken seriously." As the prime minister spoke, his secretary was taking notes at lightning speed.

As the secretary took notes, while Rorschach spoke eloquently, the Chancellor pondered the current trend: magic was spreading, and the Empire would accelerate the discovery and training of gifted individuals. But was this expansion of the spellcaster pool necessarily a good thing? Like the gradually out-of-control Imperial Army...

Mages will get involved in the military, and soon it will not be limited to the military. The chief mage's subordinates are an example, as is the person I am talking to now, Bart.

But to defeat the National Guard, which also had mages involved, this was the only option. There's a Far Eastern proverb: "Drink poison to quench thirst." From the prime minister's perspective, the two countries were currently having a drinking contest, hoping the other would die of thirst or be poisoned.

During his conversation with Rorschach, Mr. Otto also received a gift in return from Rorschach. The young man revealed that he would develop a new light gas, which is only slightly denser than light phlogiston, but stable in nature. When filled into an airship, it would not turn it into a mobile airborne explosive barrel.

What brought the Chancellor some comfort was that Rorschach showed considerable interest when he revealed the reforms to the Imperial electoral districts. Since the young man was willing to cooperate with the Empire, the Chancellor was no longer worried that he would side with Valois, and his willingness to support the reforms indicated that he was not one to blindly follow the Bavarian royal family.

That's enough. Otto wouldn't be foolish enough to expect a mid-level mage to pledge allegiance to an emperor he'd never met.

The prime minister's journey was not yet over; he would revisit the palace one more time, and then, according to the itinerary, travel to the southern states once more.

In the conference room, all the familiar faces were present, along with Bart and the "new face," Varon. This unfortunate fellow still looked pale. Although he had arrived in Byrne long ago, he hadn't been assigned any work and had instead focused on recuperating. Only recently had he begun to take over some of Andrei's tasks—if Andrei continued like this, without much time to practice magic, he would probably be an apprentice for life.

When Master Humboldt visited, he gave this person a "follow-up examination," and the conclusion was that the "lungs" were functioning well.

As for Varang himself, he was young but had already "died" several times, so what kind of storms hadn't he seen? At this moment, in the conference room, making his debut in front of various "big shots" in the special zone, he was as calm as a dead man.

In his eyes, King Byrne was also running out of good juice. The young mage sitting at the head of the round table, his savior, had once been a guest of honor of Charles XVI. Only he knew in the conference room that from the gold mine incident to the mining company's bankruptcy, the outbreak of the crisis, and even the king's execution, everything was inextricably linked to Rorschach.

Seeing that the tyrannical Byrne dared to let the "King's Slayer" cause trouble on his own, haha.

Click! The door lock closed with Rorschach's [Mage's Hand], simultaneously sealing off the conference room space (Rorschach used a spell cloud to cast a spell uploaded by Caroline). This sudden change immediately tensed and made the attendees serious, except for the completely unfazed Varon.

"Some things need to be said behind closed doors. Everyone has worked hard all this time. Now the special zone has two locations and five factories, and the scale is so large that even the Imperial Chancellor has come to take notice."

A cheerful chuckle filled the conference room, except for Varan.

"Unfortunately, our period of peaceful development is coming to an end, and we have reached a critical juncture. We can only attract the Prime Minister's favor; which side should we side with?"

"The Bain royal family." Rorschach looked at Bart and Mr. Hasse;

Valois's gaze fell on teacher Caroline, as well as Andrei and the expressionless Varen;

"The Empire," he paused, "...which side should we ally with and share the spoils with? Or should we choose neither?"

(End of this chapter)