A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 541 It really wasn't me who did it.

Now it's not just the Grand Master who's suffering from insomnia. Some are still snoring away, while others are extremely sensitive to light, and the "sunlight" filtering through the curtains can wake them up.

About fifteen minutes after entering "Daylight," there was a knock on the door of the workroom, followed by a muffled female voice: "Rorschach? You're in, aren't you?"

Kano's avatar immediately perked up: "Whose voice was that just now? It sounded like Caroline to me?"

"Young man, let me tell you, I have no children. Caroline is like a daughter to me. You dare to challenge me?"

Rorschach immediately clarified, speaking at breakneck speed: "I don't know what you're so rudely speculating about. I'm currently in the mage tower's workshop, not my bedroom. As a collaborator of my tower, it's perfectly reasonable for Mage Caroline to come here to find me in case of an emergency, isn't it?"

As he spoke, he opened a door in the air, saying, "Please come in." At the same time, he suggested to the high mages, "Let's suspend the meeting for now. Since an anomaly has occurred, let's each gather information from our surroundings, exchange messages later, or hold another temporary meeting."

"That's only right." With that, Feuerbach logged off first. The others followed suit and disconnected.

"I was just speaking with the members of the Senate, and it seems that it's dawn across the entire continent," Rorschach said, inviting Caroline in. "The reason is still unclear."

He looked out the window, and everything was so sudden; the abrupt switch to daytime felt like a lifetime ago.

It's as if God himself has said to the whole world, "Those who care for their people are not asleep."

Ok?

Looking up from the window at the mountains and forests, and the chimneys and towers standing against the skyline, a sense of unease arises.

"There's no sun, no blue sky, just a vast expanse of white," Caroline said, walking to the window as well.

An inexplicable sense of oppression. Faced with a pure white sky devoid of anything else, do people lose their ability to imagine the height of the heavens? Is it high and distant or low and low? Without any reference or benchmark, this uniformity seems to become a silent violence, making people associate it with "envelopment".

Indeed, something was enveloping the earth, and people were too insignificant to be caught in the middle.

"I wonder if Andre and the others have woken up yet. Could you please go and inform them?" Rorschach thought for a moment. "There are no other abnormal situations yet. Let the night shift continue production, and have safety check the specifications of all devices, especially the components involving spell circuits."

"Make sure all spellcasters in the factory are on emergency standby, and focus on monitoring the transmutation dust collector. The security team should maintain order in the factory and the surrounding urban area."

"Okay. And what about you?"

"I'll first check and confirm the situation in the three locations, and then I'll go to the border area to take a look. If the anomaly really covers the whole world, it will definitely be reflected in the symbolic realm."

Having said that, Rorschach immediately set off, patrolling at top speed, his first stop being the coal mines on the outskirts of Kempson. He had a premonition that if the anomalies were related to Mother Earth, the facilities deepest underground were most likely to have problems.

Coal mining operations are still underway in shallow strata. Several massive tunneling machines are operating in the mine, their huge drill bits constantly biting into the soil and rocks, producing raw ore containing large amounts of dark stones.

The abandoned giant mine where the steel plant is located took nearly two hundred years and several generations of people to excavate to its current size. Now, the area size and excavation depth of the new mining area are approaching those of the original giant pit.

It can dig even deeper because there are more effective pumps.

*Pfft pfft pfft. Snap.*

When Luo Xia arrived, he saw workers and engineers scratching their heads around the water pump. Normally, the pump would pump out seepage groundwater, which, after being mixed with coal slag, would be mostly gray muddy water. However, this time, what came out was a viscous liquid.

Is it spitting out oil?

He slowed his descent and walked slowly to the water pump. The foreman, covered in coal dust, saw the delicate-looking fellow approaching and called out, "Hey, are you an apprentice?"

"A formally appointed monk."

Those around were slightly surprised: "They actually sent a proper one this time." The master changed his address, but didn't become more respectful: "Look, it's suddenly oily, black and sticky, and smells terrible."

"Shut down the pump first, it'll damage the machine." A sudden change in operating conditions is not good for machinery. After giving the order, Luo Xia used [Mage's Hand] to scoop up the oily black sludge pumped out, which surprisingly had a fishy smell of algae.

He used Arcane Vision to examine it; a faint glow shrouded it. There was a problem, but he couldn't be sure; sometimes crystals containing deposited magic in slag exhibited this same behavior.

The apprentice who had actually been sent over arrived at the mine, panting, saying, "I'm sorry I'm late."

Who are you?

"Didn't your pumping team call me to handle the emergency?" the apprentice said, somewhat annoyed. "You got up in the middle of the night to come here, and you're just pretending to be clueless."

Immediately, the masters stared at Luo Xia with wariness and suspicion: "Then who are you?"

Someone suddenly remembered something from their safety training: "You're not a spy, are you? Stay still!" and was about to shove a heavy wrench at them.

Rorschach, dressed in casual clothes, initially caught the apprentice's attention when he was just woken up. Now that he recognized him, he opened his mouth wide and stammered, "He's a mage! This sir is...is..."

"He's his teacher, you could say." Luo Xia put his hand on his apprentice's shoulder and interrupted before the other could finish speaking: "Let's go check the inlet at the bottom of the pit. Don't start the pump again without instructions."

After saying that, he picked up his apprentice, lifted him into the air, and then plunged down into the mine pit.

"A proper mage is really something else, they can even fly." The guys from the pumping team commented with a tsk-tsk as they watched the two go down into the mine.

While holding the apprentice, Rorschach asked, "Now that the sky has suddenly brightened earlier than usual, have you noticed anything unusual besides that? Like how the water here suddenly turned into oily sludge."

"No, no." After thinking for a moment, the apprentice suddenly exclaimed, "Didn't you light up the sky while conducting an experiment?"

"You guys think I'm buddies with the sun? How can it suddenly light up like that?" Luo Xia suddenly realized that the guys working the night shift were all incredibly calm about the sudden light, continuing with whatever they were doing. Did they all think I turned on the lights?

It's no wonder the night shift workers were surprised. First of all, the outside suddenly turned into daytime, which looked like magic. Plus, Rorschach had a history of being able to summon wind and rain before, so the guys thought to themselves: "Wow, is the master casting his spell again?"

That's a ridiculously reasonable guess!

Luo Xia was both amused and exasperated, but then he thought it was for the best. At least the local people could accept it calmly without causing panic, which would make it easier to carry out subsequent work.

Now that they've descended to the water intake, the seaweed-like stench is growing stronger, and even more oily sludge is gushing out, threatening to engulf the entire mine. The mine's management has realized something is wrong and is organizing the workers and equipment to be moved out of the mine.

At the same time, strange phenomena emerged all over the world, shrouded in daylight.

Especially in the northern part of the Republic and the southern part of the Empire, on the battlefields after the great war, a group of wandering grey elves drove a caravan to "dig for treasure" and suddenly discovered that the remains of soldiers buried shallowly in a large pit had begun to move.

(End of this chapter)