CH 24

Marcus’s Education (2)

If you are reading from a pirate or aggregator site, please read from the translator’s site: yado-inn (dot) com I have to put the link like this or else the bots will remove it, sorry 

The next morning.

When I came to the fields after practicing magic, I found a bunch of fairies with motivated faces, and Marcus looking exhausted after he finished watering.

“Good morning, Marcus. Thanks for watering,” I walked up to him while I gave my morning greeting.

“Ahh, thanks to the fairies’ kind and careful instruction, I finished this morning’s watering without any problems.”

Marcus smiled and shrugged his shoulders as he watched the fairies hanging out around the field with determined looks on their faces.

“Today, I want you to learn another task.”

Marcus tilted his head, “A task?”

“Do you know what distilled water is?” I asked Marcus as I unlocked the laboratory cabin.

“No, I don’t know,” Marcus shakes his head.

“Well now, what is normal water like?”

“Hmm,” Marcus cocked his head in puzzlement at my question.

“Well, I want you to draw some well water into this wooden bucket. Then, you can check the water with “Appraisal” and see what it looks like.”

I handed a wooden bucket to Marcus and sent him to draw water.

After a while, Marcus came back with an excited look on his face.

“Well water contains a lot of things, doesn’t it!?”

Marcus seemed to be looking at “Water” with his “Appraisal” eye for the first time.

“That’s right. That’s why this can’t be used for alchemy.”

I instructed Marcus to put the wooden bucket back into the shed while inviting him to go to the table with the glass apparatuses.

“Then, what water do you use then”

As expected, Marcus still did not understand even with the corresponding glass apparatuses in front of him. He probably hasn’t been allowed to do much work as an alchemist until now.

“The answer lies in the glass apparatus in front of you. It produces pure water called “Distilled Water”.”

Marcus blinked at me, looking at the glassware he had seen but never been allowed to touch.

“…Were you talking about using this when you mentioned a new task?” Markus asked me timidly, but also hopefully.

“Yup. Your job in the morning is to make “Distilled Water” using this!”

There were two chairs, so I sat on one and encouraged Marcus to sit on the other.

“I’ll show you how it’s done first, so watch along.”

“Ahh!” Marcus nodded, his eyes full of curiosity as he looked at the equipment.

“First, you need a clean flask… ah, the flask is the vial with a round bottom and a long neck. You fill it with well water and set it on the “Distiller”. On the opposite side, place a clean, empty flask.”

I filled the starting flask with water and set it on the distiller.

“Then, you turn on both the heating magic tool at the bottom of the starting flask and the cooling magic tool on top of the flask.”

Then, I turned on the magic tools.

Small bubbles slowly began to form on top of the water, clinging to the sides of the beaker, then the bubbles gradually became larger and larger. Water vapor began to build up and drops of water piled up on the lid and flowed into the receiving flask.

I pointed at the water that collected and flowed down and told Marcus, “This is distilled water.”

After a while, the water had already been transferred to the receiving flask, so I turned off the switch on the magic device.

“Now, compare the water in both flasks.”

[Water]

Classification: Liquid

Quality: Good

Details: Distilled water. Pure water.

The water left in the starting flask looked like this:

[Water]

Classification: Liquid

Quality: Normal

Details: Water with impurities concentrated. Waste product.

“The water has divided into pure and impure!”

Markus was very excited.

“This is going to be your task every day, so calm down. Well now, it’s your turn now, Marcus.”

I removed the still-hot starting flask using thick gloves and dumped the water. Then, I transferred the distilled water into a large water jug for experimenting use.

“This is how you wash the dirty tools.”

I put a little distilled water from the water jug into the starting flask and twirled it around to wash it. I threw away the water and placed the flask in the basket where I kept my apparatuses to dry.

I picked up two clean flasks and handed them to Marcus, “Well now, give it a try.”

Marcus took a big deep breath and composed himself.

Marcus set up the equipment according to the procedure I had shown him earlier and began to operate the distiller. Recreating exactly what he had seen, Marcus completed the distillation process and added the distilled water to the water jug.

Marcus seemed to be overwhelmed with emotions at being able to do something somewhat alchemy-like for the first time.