Witch Troupe and the Undead

Therefore, Professor Roach made slight adjustments to his teaching plan here, treating everyone equally and pushing them all to the limit. As for extra tutoring, that would be something to discuss in their fourth year. Since there was a special refresher course, there was no need for him to manually sort through the material.

"Master Roach, do you have a moment?" The person who entered was a professor from the Alchemy and Creation Department, whose name seemed to be Lawrence. "I heard that you once modified a train engine, is that right?"

“Ah, is that so…” Roach paused for a few seconds, then looked at the students who were working on their exams. “What are you looking at? There are 20 minutes left to hand in your papers. If you’ve finished, check them and don’t make the same mistakes again. I’ve already suggested to the dean that students who make the same mistake three times in a row should have their vacation canceled for the month.”

"..." Several thugs trembled with fear. Earlier, some had tried to threaten Professor Roach with his family background, but after inquiring, they found out that Professor Roach was personally delivered by the head of the Military Intelligence Bureau, so they didn't dare to make a move.

What's worse is that although the plan was canceled, the people they contacted knew what a high-level alchemist and the witch behind him meant, and they didn't hesitate to tell Ms. Elena and the parents of these scoundrels about it.

Before Ms. Elena could ask for their parents' help, they received a handwritten letter from their father. Although the contents were slightly different, the message was the same: "I'm going to prepare the horses and whips right now!" The horses were for an urgent trip to the capital, and what else could a whip be used for besides whipping the horses? It's hard to guess!

Then, when Lady Elena called the parents, several knights' sons had already heard from their servants that their master was cleaning up the portraits and armor of their ancestors and had brought out outfits that hadn't been used for years, clearly indicating that he was preparing to change the heir.

Having learned from these past mistakes, before Professor Roach could even call their parents, these troublemakers obediently bowed their heads and admitted their wrongdoing. Of course, a beating was probably still inevitable, but if they had gotten a decent report card beforehand, the severity of the beating wouldn't be out of the question.

However, if the report card is still bad at this time, especially if a basic mistake is made three times in a row, it can only mean that their father may not understand alchemy, but he can definitely understand the report card and comments. This beating may be escalated.

"Those of you who were laughing, stop laughing. Go to Miss Livia's after class today and get two sets of intensive test papers." Instantly, even those who had decent grades stopped laughing. Miss Livia's intensive test papers were truly "intensive."

It's not just the difficulty of the test questions that's being increased; even the test paper and the text on it are being reinforced. This means that if you can't solve the problem, this thing will keep repeating its questions in your ear in the middle of the night, making you dream about solving the problem.

It forces you to either ask a professor or go to the library to look up information. If you make a mistake, especially a basic one, these texts will loudly mock you and repeatedly repeat your basic error.

That's not even the worst part. If you do too badly, those test papers with those scathing comments from "Assistant Professor House" will grow legs and race around the campus, reading your name and comments as they go. If it weren't for the barrier, they could probably race all the way out of the academy and let the whole city know that the Imperial Royal Academy has a "donkey turned idiot".

“Alright, I’m going out for a bit. Haven’t you all been curious about who Assistant Professor House is? He’ll be proctoring the exam from now on.” Roach stood up, pressed his hand to the amulet on his chest, and sent a message to the slacking-off Black Horse.

Soon, a black horse rushed into the teaching building, and amidst the surprised gazes of passing students, it raised its front hooves, pushed open the door, walked into the classroom, and plopped down on the podium.

"Assistant House...it's really House!" Everyone stared in disbelief at the black horse on the stage, which was rubbing its hooves with a file wrapped around one of its front hooves.

"What are you looking at? Hurry up and do your homework!"

“You, yes, the one in the third column and fifth row from the right, no matter how much you stare at the pendulum, it can’t make it.”

"And that spirit summoning circle, you summoned a dog spirit. If it can do it but you can't, you need to reflect on whether you're even human." The basics of summoning magic are all about summoning animal spirits because animal thinking is much simpler.

"Oh, so you're planning to use it to peek at the answers? Don't bother. Even if it sees the answers, it can't tell you which ones are correct. If it could, then you'd just be a dog that looks a lot like a human."

It's confirmed, this is assistant coach House. Only he could say something so hurtful.

"There are still fifteen minutes left~ Don't cry, crying counts as time too~" Black Horse was very happy to watch the negative emotions on these students' heads accumulate at an alarming rate. He guessed they would have nightmares tonight.

He felt that he was helping people, since they wouldn't have nightmares at night and could have normal, pleasant dreams about attending class instead—well, you ask if this wasn't a nightmare for the person in question?

Of course, but those dreams about attending classes are all caused by the Little Witch's test papers. Old Ma is very familiar with Livia's magical reactions, and he won't eat those kinds of dreams.

"No matter how much you look at your deskmate, he won't give you the answer because he hasn't solved it either." Old Ma is very good at catching cheaters, but the bad news is that he can't punish those who use supernatural cheating methods, because being able to cheat with such abilities also shows that they have indeed mastered the relevant skills, and the purpose of the exam has been achieved.

The good news is that only a few people have the ability to cheat like this. Most people still use the conventional methods. Even those who roll the dice, Old Ma maliciously used magic to interfere with the dice results, so that all the options rolled were wrong.

"Oh, so you use demonic incantations to question demons? Don't even ask. You're asking a berserker demon a math problem? If he could solve it, he should have been reincarnated as a winged demon by now!"

"Hey you, stop praying. You could pray to some god of knowledge instead. Why are you praying to the Lord of Light? Oh, I just remembered the church lends money at exorbitant interest rates. Never mind, keep praying. I believe that if his angels can figure out those complicated compound interest calculations, then solving your math problem won't be a problem." Black Horse saw the student below, who was a devout believer in the Lord of Light, turn from white to red, then from red to purple, and finally to a dark purple. It was quite amusing.

"Professor Roach, will everything be alright?" Professor Lawrence asked, glancing around the classroom.

"Nothing will happen. At least Old Ma can proctor and grade the exams without any problems," Luo Qi said.

"What if those students can't help but make a move..."

"Don't worry, this horse is Livia's familiar. It can take down at least a small squad of knights."

"Then it's alright." Lawrence didn't say whether the students would be in trouble. In the eyes of traditional mages, those who dared to attack their teachers were the type who could be buried immediately.

The academy's underground laboratory is used for construct engineering. There are no explosives (important!), so there's no need to worry about blowing up the entire school. It's located here because many of the construct engineering commissions and orders come from the Imperial Military, so it's classified, and keeping it underground makes it easier to keep secret.

On the creation platform was a half-finished multi-legged chariot, the kind commonly used by the Empire. On the other side of the platform, it was empty, with a large number of material racks and a huge amount of metal ingots scattered around. Against the wall were various sizes of arcane furnaces and smelters, as well as alchemy workbenches and mechanical workbenches.

A group of mages and alchemists were loudly arguing over a tilted wooden board at the edge of a platform. A huge blueprint, seemingly a structural design for some kind of train engine, was pinned to the board with thumbtacks. There were more than a dozen such wooden drawing boards here, as well as shelves that looked like blackboards, which were also covered with various blueprints and wooden models.

"Master Roach, you've arrived too!"

“This is…” Roach glanced at the train engine on the platform, “So the trains are all made by the academy?”

"Otherwise, where would we find so many alchemists to work for free?" Lawrence made no secret of the fact that he was using older students as laborers, and besides, it wasn't a bad thing for them, was it?

"So you're... designing a new train?"

"Yes, it's a commission from the Royal Chamber of Commerce Alliance. Princess Freya recently granted them partial road construction rights and operating licenses, but the Royal Chamber of Commerce doesn't sell them assets like trains, so they have to design and order such trains in advance."

"Are you able to manage all that work?"

“We’re too busy to keep up with the orders from the Empire,” Professor Lawrence shrugged. “But the merchants aren’t asking for the high-speed trains the Empire has, nor do they want such luxurious features. They’re asking for a train that can be manufactured in a regular alchemy workshop.”

"Have you considered a steam-powered, purely mechanical train?" Roach suddenly asked.

"Well, they've considered that, but the fuel cost would be a bit high, and the speed would be very slow, requiring a long time to warm up the engine (the steam locomotive needs at least several hours to heat up and pressurize)."

"I don't think they need to consider this issue. They can just keep the machines running at full capacity. Anyway, their transport volume is larger than that of the Imperial Royal Railway Company. Although not stopping the machines will cause accelerated mechanical wear, the cost can be offset by the transport volume compared to their continuous high-intensity transport." Roach thought that this was the same thing on Earth. As long as the transport volume is large enough, this shortcoming is not a problem.

“Master Roach, that would require storing a large amount of coal at the station, which would be too costly. And as for steam locomotives… our steam engines might not be able to power such heavy locomotives…”

"Use wheels!"

“But no one has ever designed a car with wheels!” The other person shrugged. “I heard that Master Roach modified the front of a previous car, and it seems to have been made with wheels, which is why I invited you here to ask.”

Surrounded by a group of people, Roach then went to see the sketches. To be honest, he thought they could design a pure steam locomotive in two days at most, but they always wanted to add some magic, which was why they were stuck here.

Of course, without magic, the early steam locomotives had no advantage over the magic locomotives on the assembly platform next door. Moreover, a pure steam locomotive didn't need any alchemists, which meant that what these people did was no different from ordinary craftsmen—they would be embarrassed to charge commissions for it!

"That's simple. I used a magical annihilation furnace before..." Roach briefly explained the principle of the furnace he used before. His theoretical knowledge was not particularly outstanding, but now there was a large group of high-level arcane mages and alchemists here. Why not organize them to tackle the annihilation furnace?

"It is indeed a brilliant idea, so that we can convert primordial magic into pure elemental magic output, but how do we make the wheel work with elemental magic..."

"Are you an idiot? Can't you even think of this? When you're dealing damage, why annihilate it into attribute-less magic, and then convert that attribute-less magic into water magic? That way, we can use fire magic to obtain a large amount of water magic."

"We can't move the river onto the train, but we can obtain enough flames on the train using a phlogiston furnace. Wouldn't that create a water flow using water magic to power the waterwheel and get it turning?!"

"..." Luo Qi wondered if he was lacking in imagination. Why hadn't he thought of this idea of ​​growing grass before? It could be converted into water magic, and then generate high-pressure, intense water flow to drive the water wheel. Similarly, wind magic, or air elemental magic, could drive the wind wheel.

“I think the water magic is not enough; it’s not enough that the spiritual water cannot be reused,” someone objected.

"Why not start with spiritual water at level one, and then convert the expanding, high-temperature spiritual water vapor into air element magic? In this way, fire element and air element (wind element) will react with each other, with wind element increasing the activity of fire element, and fire magic accelerating wind magic to eventually form a super-fast whirlwind."

"Then you don't need to replenish your Qi element?"

"As long as the train is running, the faster it runs, the faster it takes in air!"

“The discarded wind elemental crystals can also be used with a secondary pressurizer to spray them backwards~” Roach thought for a moment and added. Although the “supercharged turbofan jet engine” seemed to be for fighter jets, it didn’t seem impossible to use it for trains. As for whether the power would be too strong, that was not his concern.

"That's right, how come I didn't think of that? This kind of arcane furnace also solves the heat dissipation problem. The waste heat is directly exchanged with the high-pressure air mass filled with wind elements through this heat conduction array. In that case..."

"The high-temperature heat flow can be ejected backward to accelerate or ejected forward to decelerate. As long as the pressure tank is full, it can decelerate and accelerate. When the pressure tank is full, the excess magic power can also be drawn out through this conduit to repressurize the arcane furnace and improve the utilization rate of phlogiston fuel!"

It must be said that everyone here is highly skilled. As soon as Roach proposed the idea, each of them quickly determined how to implement the function based on their own professional fields. Now, all that remains is how to combine these functions and work them together.

"I have an idea. If this power unit eventually generates a massive jet of airflow, what if it sprays downwards? Could it fly?" Roach looked in surprise at the bespectacled old professor in the corner. The professor smiled gently at Roach. He had initially thought they wouldn't consider this possibility, but now…

"That's right, there are strong winds at high altitudes, which means there's definitely enough wind element magic! We just need to provide the power for takeoff, and we can fly using the environmental magic!"

"It can even fly faster and faster!"

Roach: "..." Have these people skipped the airship stage and started using jet aircraft?

"I only have one question: how do you control it? The airflow at high altitudes is complex, how do you control it? And how do you get down?"

"..." Everyone was stunned. Right, going up is easy, but what about coming down?

Although the sorcerers immediately had an idea to use the Featherfall spell, their colleague tapped the engine of the over 100-ton vehicle and fell silent.

The Featherfall spell can't bring something weighing hundreds of tons that's been launched at supersonic speeds to a safe landing. Or rather, the required spell power and braking cost are higher than the cost of takeoff.

“We can discuss this issue later. However, I do have an idea. Let’s postpone this plan for now and call it the ‘Airship’ Plan.” Roach felt that how could an alternate world and a magical world be without romantic things like airships and sky pirates?

However, doing this would be too difficult, and he also had to remind them that they currently had a sugar daddy paying for it, so it was better to satisfy the sugar daddy's requirements first.

Moreover, even if you were to build an airship, you would still need a high-output magic engine. Therefore, the two are actually related research topics, which calmed down the group of professors who were immersed in the dream of "I must build a mage tower that can fly in the sky in my lifetime".

"Then the name of this new engine will be..."

"Armstrong Boomerang Jet Head"

"Rotary jet is a fitting name, but what does Armstrong mean? A place name?" A professor looked at Roach with confusion.

"I just said it offhand" can't exactly be the name of a Dutch port or the name of some strangely shaped cannon, can it?

"Okay, we can use any code name we want. Let's call it the Armstrong Cyclone Jet Head Project."

Chapter 226 Hanging High

According to the theories and plans proposed by Roach and the professors, the locomotive needs an air intake, and the air intake speed needs to be fast enough so that when it is running, there is enough atmospheric wind element to enter the interior.

Roach originally intended to integrate it directly into the dynamic element, but the professors had different opinions on this. On the one hand, he himself had not yet figured out the real-world correspondence model of the dynamic element. From a scientific point of view, it was still at the level of a self-consistent theory and there was still a long way to go before it could be applied.

On the one hand, the artisans and alchemists in those workshops have spent their entire lives learning the basic theory of the four elements. If you suddenly say that the wind element and the fire element are the same, not to mention that they would have to start from scratch in terms of theory, all kinds of runes, rituals and crafts from the perspective of mysticism would have to be changed. This is a pure "craft", and they simply cannot master it in less than ten or eight years.

Not to mention, the ritual sites, alchemical reactors, material configurations, storage, and transportation all changed, and even the prices of various materials on the market fluctuated wildly.

In other words, for factories, unless this change is already right in front of them, they would rather continue to use the ancient four-element ritual site—it's not that the more advanced something is, the better; it's that the more stable something is, the better, while meeting the needs—because anything involving industrial mass production has one important indicator: yield rate.

Even in this world where mysticism exists, this is true. Or rather, due to the difference between mysticism and physical science, its requirements are more stringent. If you inscribe a rune incorrectly, it can really cause an explosion or the entire large-scale ritual site to disappear in an instant, or even lead to completely unpredictable and mysterious consequences.

Therefore, the results of the elemental system were still used in the end. A complex spherical structure was used to absorb the wind elements and atmosphere entering from the front. Four metal pipes extended from the two sides of the spherical structure, two of which were connected to two large cylinders at the rear. The cylinders were connected to the combustion chamber and the steam power chamber.

The combustion chamber burns phlogiston powder to obtain a large amount of fire element magic. The fire element magic heats the high-pressure gas mass in the cylinder to form ultra-high temperature gas that is ejected forward, becoming a scorching gas flow with fire element properties. It mixes together in the spherical device. Finally, the excess fire element is taken away from the two mithril conduits above the sphere and circulated back into the steam power chamber.

The high temperature generated by phlogiston and the injection of excess fire element will increase the output of the steam power chamber, allowing the heat engine to complete its work more quickly. In this situation, the water element magic formed by the spiritual water will be annihilated into attribute-less magic in a gentler way, and then the attribute-less magic will be transformed into wind element magic.

The ordinary water vapor after annihilation is then channeled through heat pipes to the carriage to become a controllable heating system inside the vehicle, or introduced into two large spirit water tanks at the rear of the locomotive. Regarding Roach's questions about how to ensure the purity of the spirit water and how to release the waste energy of the water elemental spirit, the professors came up with a very simple solution.

A long strip of "foam crystal" was attached to the wall connecting the water tank and the power car.

"The amount of foam here is related to the abundance of water elements, and the waste energy of water elements will manifest as the water becoming viscous and turbid. Therefore, the accumulation of waste energy can be seen through the observation window here. We have installed a filter screen at the bottom so that this turbid water can be discharged from here."

"You know that water elements can automatically regenerate in water, right?" The depletion of wind elements would make the airflow become stagnant. Of course, Roach could understand that when the kinetic magic was depleted, the molecular thermal motion of the atmosphere would decrease significantly, and atmospheric convection would become extremely weak.

A large amount of ambient heat and the kinetic energy of your breathing are absorbed by it to regenerate the magic and crystals you used up before. Therefore, the manifestation is that breathing becomes difficult and you feel that the surroundings have become particularly dull and silent.

However, since the elements of wind and fire are essentially one, both originating from the movement of magic itself, the energy used up can be replenished quickly with changes in ambient temperature.

If the water element is also integrated, it should follow the same principle. "I know, but is this regeneration speed fast enough?"

"It's too late, but we mainly use the wind element, don't we?" The rebirth of the water element seems to be related to the earth element. Although Roach doesn't understand the principle, and he guesses that the professors' theories can't fully explain why, it doesn't prevent him from using this plan.

"The bottom filter is inlaid with a large number of topaz fragments, so the water elemental spirit can be replenished quickly, turning ordinary liquid into spiritual water. Moreover, this bubble crystal itself can provide additional water elemental magic." The professor of the Elemental Department showed the crystal, which was about a foot long, in his hand. "Once the bubbles inside completely disappear, it can be replaced. This thing is not expensive, after all, spiritual water is not an expensive material."

For alchemists, it can be used for both alchemy and potion making. In some higher-standard experiments, it is even used to clean vessels to remove residual foreign magic and avoid interfering with the experimental results.

Roach understood this to be a magical version of the U-tube, where the operator only needed to observe the bubble crystals in the cockpit to know whether the consumption of spiritual water and the regeneration speed were controllable.

After the above series of processes, the resulting high-energy wind element torrent will rush into the giant wind turbine at the rear, which is like a large water turbine of a hydroelectric generator, presenting a huge disc shape.

Inside, instead of fan blades, is a spiral cavity resembling a snail shell. The torrent of wind element gradually dissipates and is absorbed within the shell, transforming into the power that drives the giant mechanical gears connected to the wind turbine. This power, in turn, drives a series of complex mechanical and magical structures, such as connecting rods and ratchet wheels, causing the two sets of steel wheels to rotate.

Excess wind energy is injected into the cylinder behind the wind turbine, where it is recharged by fire energy before being injected into the front. Any excess airflow that cannot be processed is discharged through the high-pressure exhaust port surrounding the wind turbine, thus completing a complete "fire-water-wind triple-element work cycle".

As long as this power cycle can start, the engine and the creation can obtain a continuous and surging power, but there is a big technical problem right now.

"Can't this thing be redesigned?" Roach said, pointing to the prototype model on the platform.

"But this shape best matches our design plan. As for what kind of casing to put on the outside later, that's the factory's business. Besides, it's not even certain whether this whole cycle will work."

After all, although everyone has done the paper calculations and small-scale tests and found no problems, whether the whole system will run into trouble is another matter. After all, this vehicle is not meant for a sorcerer like Roach and a witch to drive. There is no way to persuade the excess magic power not to cause trouble, nor can the overflowing elemental power be adjusted through the rune disk.

Therefore, the entire system must be designed so that ordinary people or those with basic magical education can operate it using various mechanical devices. So…

There is a problem: if even a small amount of redundancy overflows in any link of this cycle, the entire system will explode after a certain number of cycles because the waste energy in a certain link is not processed in time or the energy of work done is far greater than the demand. This results in a huge amount of waste and waste energy.

In this situation, everyone naturally used the simplest and most robust method to manufacture this device, and also considered the problems of obstacles and wind resistance when moving at high speeds. Now let's re-examine the shape of this thing.

First of all, its core is at the very front, where there is a nose air intake, followed by an arc-shaped shield structure, which reduces wind resistance on the one hand and accommodates the huge disc-shaped wind turbine behind it on the other. Then, behind the wind turbine, there is a ring of high-pressure exhaust ports that face outwards, which can also serve as injection ports to provide additional power.

This formed the entire front section into a hemispherical shape, which was then connected to a horizontal, elongated gearbox. A large amount of steam and power pipes were connected to the front section along the gearbox, similar to the early steam locomotives. The rear of the mechanical powerbox was where the steam power compartment and cylinders were located, as well as the driver's cab. Finally, on both sides of the driver's cab were two cylindrical water tanks.

The side-mounted configuration was adopted because this was a test vehicle and it was impossible to attach another water tank car at the rear. If it were for actual use, the two water tanks could be removed, and a water tank car could be directly attached to the rear of the locomotive.

However, this results in a structure with a hemispherical head, a cylindrical body connected by numerous pipes, a platform at the bottom with wheels and guardrails on both sides, and two huge cylinders at the rear.

"This Armstrong Cyclone Jet Accelerator Armstrong Motorbike is such a perfect replica!" Roach thought it was a bit of an eyesore. If you were to describe its design in more detail, it would probably look like the "Moro" from Persona lying down.

However, the other professors and occultists, caught up in their excitement, paid no attention to the issue of appearance.

"Contact the nearest alchemy workshop; we're preparing to build a prototype."

"By the way, is there any space available at the construct testing grounds?"