Chapter 60 : Chapter 60
Chapter 60 : BOOM!
The first five minutes passed quietly.
The liquid in the beaker gradually turned into a uniform pale blue, and the needle on the mana fluctuation meter swayed slowly within the safe range.
Only faint sounds remained in the classroom: the light clinking of glassware, the hissing of burning alcohol lamps, and the soft scratching of quills on paper—some students were recording their data.
Ryan’s gaze never left his beaker.
He watched the change in the liquid’s color, the size of the bubbles forming on the surface, and the speed at which they rose. He monitored every slight tremor of the thermometer needle. His fingers hovered over the alcohol lamp’s adjustment knob, ready to alter the flame at any moment.
He lowered his eyes to the beaker.
The pale blue liquid rotated slowly. The bubbles forming on the surface were finer than usual, and they rose more slowly.
Ryan glanced at the thermometer.
The needle pointed steadily at sixty degrees, perfectly stable.
He took out his notebook and quickly recorded several data points: time, temperature, subjective evaluation of liquid viscosity, and the size and rising speed of the bubbles.
At the eighth minute, a student encountered trouble.
A suppressed exclamation came from the back of the classroom.
Ryan looked up and saw a bespectacled boy—Martin, he recalled. They had worked together last semester in a Magi-Engineering class. The boy stared at his beaker with a pale face.
The liquid inside the beaker had rapidly shifted from the expected pale blue to a murky grayish-brown. A greasy layer of foam floated across the surface.
“Mana reflux…” Martin muttered. “How could this…”
Professor Horne walked over and examined the beaker. His brow furrowed.
“You added the solvent in the wrong order. You put the Silverleaf Mint Extract in first, did you not?”
Martin opened his mouth but produced no sound. He only nodded vigorously.
“One step out of order, and the entire reaction chain collapses,” the professor said coldly. “Start again. Thirty minutes deducted.”
Martin collapsed back into his chair, clutching his hair.
This small incident made the atmosphere in the classroom even more tense.
Students began checking their procedures more frequently, verifying formulas, and some even pulled out their textbooks again for confirmation.
Ryan did not allow himself to be distracted.
His gaze returned to his beaker.
This time it was the temperature.
The thermometer in the water bath remained stable, but extremely fine frost began forming along the inner wall of the beaker—not the white mist of condensed vapor, but real, delicate ice crystals slowly spreading along the glass.
That was wrong.
During the preparation of the Winter Resonance Potion, the liquid’s temperature should always remain above freezing.
The Ice Crystal Flower powder released cold energy while dissolving, but the water bath heating normally neutralized it, forming a dynamic equilibrium.
Frost forming on the inner wall meant…
…the release of cold energy had far exceeded expectations.
Ryan immediately adjusted the alcohol lamp, lowering the flame.
The thermometer needle dropped by one degree—fifty-nine.
But the frost did not stop spreading. In fact, it spread faster.
Ryan frowned and reduced the flame again.
Fifty-eight degrees.
The frost finally stopped spreading, but it had already covered nearly one-third of the beaker’s inner surface.
The pale blue liquid rotated slowly within the ring of ice crystals. The scene looked strange yet beautiful.
Ryan began calculating rapidly.
According to the standard model, the autumn batch of Ice Crystal Flower had activity fifteen percent higher than usual. He had reserved a twenty percent safety margin.
But under the current conditions…
The release of cold energy exceeded the standard value by at least thirty percent.
No—perhaps even more.
He glanced at the large clock on the wall.
The twelfth minute.
According to his calculations, the second mana peak of the autumn batch should occur around this moment.
He held his breath, his fingers hovering over the alcohol lamp’s knob, ready to extinguish the flame at any moment.
Inside the beaker, the liquid’s color began to deepen.
It was not a sudden transformation, but a slow, uniform darkening—from pale blue to sky blue, and then to a deeper indigo.
The mana fluctuation meter’s needle began to rise, but it remained within the upper half of the yellow safe zone, still far from the red danger line.
Ryan stared at the needle.
His heartbeat thudded in his ears.
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
The needle trembled at the very top of the yellow zone, as if testing the boundary, but it never crossed it.
Then it began to descend slowly.
Ryan released a long breath.
Sweat had formed at his temples. He wiped it away with a trembling hand.
Safe.
It should be safe.
He adjusted the alcohol lamp again, stabilizing the temperature at fifty-eight degrees.
The frost along the beaker’s inner wall began to melt slowly. The liquid stabilized at a deep indigo color—at least two shades darker than the standard finished product—but the mana fluctuations had returned to the safe range.
Abnormal, but controllable.
Ryan wrote in his notebook:
Twelfth minute. Expected peak appeared. Intensity exceeded standard but remained under control. Possible cause: individual variation in material batch or storage conditions affecting activity.
After finishing the note, he lifted his head to check the progress of the other students.
At that exact moment—
“BOOM!!”
A violent explosion erupted from the back of the classroom.
The sound was like a hundred glass bottles shattering at once, sharp enough to pierce the eardrums.
Then came the splashing of liquid, the crackling scatter of glass fragments, and students screaming—not one voice, but several overlapping in panic.
Ryan snapped his head around.
At the moment he turned, the corner of his eye caught sight of several deep-blue fragments flying directly toward his face.
Their edges were wrapped in ice crystals, gleaming with deadly cold light beneath the magical lamps. They moved so quickly that they left only blurred streaks behind.
No time to dodge.
The realization exploded in his mind.
His body instinctively tensed—
But the expected pain never arrived.
The fragments halted less than a foot from his face, as though they had struck an invisible wall.
They were not deflected, nor simply blocked.
They were… suspended in midair.
Ryan’s pupils contracted.
He saw the fragments trembling slightly in the air. The ice crystals along their edges crumbled into tiny white particles that drifted downward.
The fragments themselves seemed wrapped in an invisible force that softened their momentum. Their speed slowed from lethal to sluggish, until they stopped completely, hovering in the air like insects trapped in amber.
The entire process lasted less than half a second.
Then the fragments lost their support.
Clink. Clink.
They fell onto the desk, rolled a few times, and lay still.
Ryan felt warmth briefly brush against his shoulder.
The warmth vanished almost instantly, so quickly it could have been mistaken for an illusion.
But he knew it was not.
It had been faint and fleeting, like a feather brushing across the surface of water.
Then the warmth disappeared completely, as though it had never existed.
Ryan stood frozen for a moment, his breathing slightly unsteady.
He looked down at his hands, then touched his face.
No wounds.
No blood.
Not even a splash of liquid.
Those lethal fragments had truly been stopped at the final moment.
He took a deep breath and steadied his racing heartbeat.
“…Thanks, Syl.”
He whispered the words in his mind, so softly that only he himself could hear them.