A/N: Happy Belated New Year Everyone!! Hope that you all had a great Holiday Season!
Carman was awake late at night, it was the weekend and he didn't have to worry about getting up early for school the next day. He was particularly relieved that he had these breaks as he wasn't sure if he would be able to maintain his calm with how often Camille Engrenage had been bothering him in the classes they shared.
For some reason she had chosen him as a rival of sorts, and insisted on showing him up whenever she could, and got visibly ticked off whenever he chose to let her answer the teacher's questions. He had started to compete with her after she looked like she was about to either stroke out or charge at him with a knife from across the classroom. It was childish, and made him feel like he was dying from cringe at times, but apparently that is what she wanted as she started to leave him alone after that.
Carman was doing very well at the academy, the training regime for Physical Education was great and apparently they would start training in actual combat after the next monthly assessment. His other classes were also similar enough to what he had learned back on earth that many of the theories he was familiar with could be applied.
His instructors in math related subjects did give him odd looks and occasionally docked him points because he used equations that they didn't recognize from time to time. However, no matter how many points he lost, Carman refused to switch to the new methods they were teaching him. He knew it was a dumb hill to die on, but he just couldn't keep the numbers straight when using Teyvat's math.
However it wasn't his academics that were keeping Carman up tonight, it was a theory that he had, and that has been scratching at the back of his mind since he thought of it. Carman stood and stared at a large Transfiguration circle that he had carved into the middle of his workshop. In the center, was a few feathers he had gathered from various birds.
If he had still been at level one in his Transfiguration and Transformation skills he likely wouldn't have tested this out so soon, but thanks to carefully reading the research notes from Nicolas Flamel his skills had increased to level 3.
Using the information he was getting from the circle, he tried shifting around the compounds to change the color and pattern of the feathers, it took him a bit, but he eventually found the compound that pigmented the feathers. He spent the next hour seeing what would happen as he changed the density of the compound, added new elements into it, replaced or completely removed it from the bristles.
Eventually, he managed to get specific colors. But creating new and unique patterns was above him.
After figuring that out, he placed a mouse Ryuzu had caught for him into the circle, it was in a small iron cage and was eating a couple of nuts and fruits he had tossed in with it. Carman noted the color of its fur and eyes for future reference. Then he placed his hand on the circle and read the information it was outputting.
At first, he was bemused as he could not find the compounds that that he had been working with previously. However, after some brief searching, he found a similar chemical present in the mouse.
Using what he knew about how the concentration and structure of these compounds effected the visible color, Carman experimented trying to gain a better grasp on what differences there were between the different pigments.
After a while, Carman returned the mouse to its original state after having changed its fur to a variety of colors and patterns. It was time for his last experiment of the night. Taking a few strands of his own crimson locs, he placed them onto the circle, and powered it up. Examining the structure, he quickly found the chemical responsible for pigmentation among the continuous chain of dead cells. by moving them around and even removing some, Carman was able to get a varety of colors, some that were even unnatural back on earth, it seemed that the compound used to pigment the humans of Teyvat's eyes and hair was much more versatile in the colors it could produce, allowing for greens and blues, silvers, and purples on top of the normal shades of black, brown, blond, and white.
"It seems like transfiguration and transformation could be a decent method of disguising myself, being able to change my hair and eye color in a matter of hours would be useful. Pity it's not permanent, I'd have to alter cell structure for that, but I am not messing with DNA." said Carman before yawning. "That's enough for tonight. Better head to bed before I make a mistake and give something cancer."
-To be continued