Getting out of the office of the factory, Noah walked into the factory itself while muttering.
"Why did he get a letter with the Emperor's wartime seal?"
As he entered the factory, Corvin, who saw his stressed face, asked.
"What happened, Noah?"
"The Emperor sent you a letter."
"? The Emperor?"
"Yeah."
"Let me take a look."
Opening the letter and reading it, Corvin made a thoughtful hum.
"I see... So they want me to make something that can get over the walls of a city but not use magic in any way so that the enemy mages don't feel the ripples of mana while also causing damage when it lands. I see... So I need an explosive that isn't made with alchemy..."
"Can't you use the black powder?"
"No. That stuff is an explosive for sure, but it's not good enough."
"Hm? Why?"
"It makes too much smoke. The more the smoke is, the less efficient it is. It works well in the narrow barrels of the guns, but it won't work well in the wide open air."
"So, what are you going to do now? You can't just refuse it, can you?"
"Well, I want this war to end as well. There are almost no workers left to clear the Werga Passage."
"Oh, right... If the war ends, my job will also be easier as well... Alright! Tell me what you need, Corvin!"
With his new found motivation, Noah offered help to Corvin. Corvin stared into the distance while thinking and muttered to himself.
"...I need something that burns fast... Fast enough that it can explode... in open... air..... Ah! Water!"
"Huh?"
"I just need some water!"
"...That's it?"
Noah, who was expecting something hard to find, lost the fire in his eyes as his friend asked something so basic.
*****
Corvin wrote a letter back to the Emperor, stating that he was working on the request and would be there to help as fast as possible. After sending the letter, he went to the study at the factory and started working on the project with Noah.
The idea that came to Corvin's mids was simple. He remembered the experiment he did with Clair. The experiment was meant to test if electricity could be used to seperate elements. But it also resulted in another discovery.
Water was made up of a flammable gas and a gas that burned things.
Corvin's idea was to mix these to gases to create a highly explosive mixture that could be used as a bomb.
Since the gases were light, they could be launched in to the air using a big metal can filled with black powder as propellant. With proper wings giving flight stability, this thing would be able to fly over the enemy walls and explode violently on impact with the ground.
While Noah was drawing what Corvin told him on the paper, he had a question.
"How do you keep coming up with these weird ideas, Corvin?"
"What do you mean weird?"
"I mean all of them. Using a burning powder to make a gun, using electricity to make machines and light, and now this. Filling a big can with a bunch of black powder with a tank full of explosive gas in it, and launching it at the enemy. How do you keep coming up with these unusual stuff?"
"What do you mean unusual? Isn't it obvious to-"
"That's not what I am saying. As you were trying to say, it is obvious once you realize they can be used like that. But, being the first one to realize that is unusual. It's like your common sense is weird... no, different."
"Why?"
"Normally, when you ask someone to solve this problem, most would just tell you to use a vector mage and throw the explosive from further away or faster, so that the enemy doesn't have time to detect it. But, no one would think about using an explosive to make another explosive fly. Your thinking is too different from others."
"Different?"
"Yeah... It's like... Using magic doesn't come to your mind except when you have no other choice. It's the same for the gun. When I heard we needed to make a new weapon, I thought we were going to find a way to use alchemically made metals to make a better sword or something at first. Even though that's not what the task was, that's about what would come to someone's mind at first."
Noah squinted his eyes with suspicion at Corvin. He wasn't serious since Corvin was one of the people he trusted the most, but he acted like that to corner him psychologically, so that he doesn't run away from the question.
"But not you... Your first idea was to launch metal pieces at your enemy from afar. And, it took you no time at all to make a design for it as well. It's like you already knew how to do it from the start."
"I-I don't know, okay? Isn't it like how you make paintings? It just comes naturally."
"But, I have my magic guiding me when I do that, yours is much more weird. There is something strange about you. Your common sense is different from everyone, and two years ago you even knew when a colossus was going to attack before it appeared."
"Th-That was an excepti- Wait... two years?"
"Hm? Yeah? Did you forget to count the years?"
"Wait..."
"We are second year students, did you forget?"
"Huh?"
"? It is about the end of the summer break, and after that, we will be second years."
"What? Why didn't we celebrate it or something?"
"What are you talking about? Celebration comes once you graduate from the Institute..."
"I thought it was every year..."
"It really is different... Sigh~, Can we just work on what you designed?"
"Sorry... Yeah, let's finish the design."
'He ran away from the question again...'
Giving up on pursuing the answer to that question for this time, Noah continued on with the drawing. As he was drawing, Corvin was thinking about his question.
'Am I really that weird? Isn't magic much more weird than me, or am I the weird one because I find magic strange? I just want to bring the stuff from the world I saw in my dreams to here...'
After failing to find an answer on his own, and without asking himself why he thought the world in his dreams had the technology he was working on, he stopped thinking about the matter more and focused on his project.