"...Are you sure about this, Clair?"
"Why not? My dad constantly used these before. If he says to try it, then we should!"
"But you know... You just showed me this liquid melting a metal spoon in seconds..."
"It's okay, it's okay! And, that wasn't melting! That was dissolving!"
"Right... Doesn't make it any better, to be honest."
"Aahh! Shut up for a bit Noah! I l-like it that you are worried but too much worry is annoying as well! My dad told me to try it, so it's okay! Probably..."
"..."
Clair ignored Noah's silence and continued working on the tank in front of her. The tank was an experimental side project that was given to them by Dion for research.
A month had passed since Corvin started on his grand plan to incorporate electricity into everyday life. Even though the usage of the steam engine had already spread a bit in the Empire and the Margravate had already started producing machine parts within it's giant steel industry, the parts were made for steam engines and not electric motors, since electric motors weren't just jumbles of steel pipes arranged in a clever way.
So everything had to be developed there by them for the first time. That's why Clair was getting advice from her father about materials to work on. And in his latest letter, Dion asked them to test something for him using an electric generator.
While he was working on acids and metals, testing the extremes of how magic could change the reactivity of matter, he caused a small lightning to appear inside his lab. The lightning, similar to the electric arc Clair once showed him, made him curious and he managed to get the same results with different materials.
This made him to question the current theories about matter. The current theory suggested that matter was a condensed form of the mana that was around. This could explain why mages could change the properties of matter, but didn't explain chemical reactions.
There was another theory that suggested matter was made out of various characteristic elements that interacted with each other, like acidic and metallic. This theory explained why different materials acted differently, but failed to explain why mages could change matter only using mana.
So he asked Clair to test a small experiment using the currently unused generator they had in the factory.
"Plug this cable here.... Put this rod inside..."
Muttering to herself, Clair put the experiment together. As she dipped the metal rod inside the solution, the gauge connected to the rod show a changing value. As the metal dissolved and the other metal rod in the acid grew new crystals on it, Clair nodded in satisfaction.
"Great. So, something is supposedly going from this rod to this rod..."
Then, using her magic, she carefully caused the dissolved metal inside the tank to settle down without changing anything in it. After getting rid of the acid and making sure she collected the metal, she started measuring it's weight.
Using different metals and repeating the same experiment, she wrote down the data she collected at the end of the day.
"...Weird... Once or twice can be a measurement error... but every single time, these ones lost a little bit of weight after being dissolved..."
She wrote down every value and seperated the metals into groups depending on the weight change. Then, she wrote down a letter to her father about her findings. In the few following days, they would constantly exchange letters and conduct new experiments, ultimately ending with them naming the thing that carried electricity an "Electron" and the birth of the "Electron Theory" that tried to explain why chemical reactions happened. During this process, they also discovered different ways to use and also a way to store electricity.
*****
While Clair and Dion were working on their new theory, Emperor Terry and the Altus army was still in the north, conquering the Septen Kingdom. It had been a month since the Eidzunge declared war on the Septen Kingdom.
Currently marching towards the capitol of the Septen Kingdom, Terry stared towards the sea.
"...Let's see how this turns out..."
A day later, when the Altus army arrived at the Septen capitol, the gates of the city were already open, a sign of surrender. The king had surrendered to Terry, and they were willing to negotiate for peace.
The peace conference took only a day, and the Septen king agreed on the treaty. He was going to give the control of the city near the strait to the Altus family, pay reperations and the remaining land of the Kingdom was going to be shared between local lords and Altus nobles.
After dealing with the peace treaty, there was only one thing remaining to do. Terry called his butler and ordered.
"Felyp should be managing the rest of the army. Write him a letter to return and ready the navy in a week. The Eidzunge are occupying our territories."
"By your command, Your Majesty."
The next day, Terry lead the army towards the Northern Strait. It took half a week to get there in formation, but they couldn't be too relaxed. The Eidzunge were formidable opponents, even though they weren't known for their land armies like the Altus, they were fighting close to their homeland. Their logistics were stronger, and they were also defending behind walls.
Sitting on his horse and staring at the walls of the city, Terry ordered the mages to attack the walls. Explosives made by alchemists were launched towards the castle by vector mages, while matter mages and energy mages worked together to create heat beams using mirrors. The enemy mages countered the attacks in their own ways.
*****
Sitting at his throne, Fhölle absorbed the butterfly monster into himself. The bug turned into red glowing particles and entered his body as he thought about his plans.
He had observed the Altus army for quite a while, and investigated a lot of different things, enough to give him a headache. And he reached a conclusion.
He wasn't a person greedy enough to cause a war with a major power just for a single city. At first, he just wanted to test his chance to acquire the city easily, but was going to retreat if it became a headache.
He didn't need to care about his or his kingdom's pride as he could just use his tamed monsters to artificially create a problem which could be used as an excuse to pull out of the war. But he decided to fight the war after his observations.
The Altus were using a weapon he never saw before. A deadly weapon that succeeded in both scaring the enemy and also killing them, even through armour. He tried to get as much knowledge about the weapon, but couldn't acquire much. The Empire was also testing this weaon for the first time in a war.
That's why he decided to stop them before it got out of hand. Currently, only the Empire had access to these weapons, and this made them really dangerous, and their expansion even more dangerous.
'But that is a really boring battle... Let's spice things up...'
Remembering the siege at Anfre city, he wanted to test something himself as well. He ordered his advisor to get the navy to attack the Altus navy and then blockade their naval trade.
"Y-Your Highness, what if our navy loses? Then what should we do?"
"Heh! That was a great joke, but don't ask me something like that again."
"I-I'm sorry, Your Highness!"
As the young advisor tried to get down on his knees in panic, Fhölle stopped him and said.
"It's okay, let's just blame this on your youth. Well, soon you will see why our navy is said to be unbeatable in battle by anyone."