A Hospital in Another World? - Chapter 288
Aurora Worton didn’t just pop up at the call.
At this moment, he was still at the foot of the mountain, working diligently and meticulously, busy to the point of exhaustion—anyone tasked with completing the soft furnishing procurement for a new residence in one day would be as busy as a dog.
Let alone Aurora Worton, who was dealing with an entire Mage Tower! All 12 floors!
All the furniture!
Facilities!
Living supplies!
All had to be in place within one day!
The boss was expected to stay in the tower tonight, and the apprentices were coming in first thing tomorrow!
When Garrett returned to the Mage Tower, Aurora was already exhausted to the point of collapse. He lay sprawled on the carpet in the reception room, his limbs spread out, while four invisible servants massaged his legs, two on each side. Seeing Garrett come in, he could only weakly glance over, pressing his chin to his chest:
“Boss, I really can’t do this anymore… Boss, you should really get a steward… Seriously, you can’t treat me like a steward…”
“Hard work, hard work,” Garrett sat down beside him, hugging his knees. “After this rush, you definitely won’t have to do menial tasks anymore. Hey, maybe we can borrow your family’s old steward for a couple of days?”
“That’s definitely not happening!” Aurora shook his head vehemently, his ears almost rubbing against the carpet:
“A place like the Mage Tower isn’t suitable for non-supernaturals to stay in constantly! Besides, he wouldn’t understand the affairs of the Mage Tower—Hey, boss, I’m telling you, you should find an older mage, one who has given up on advancing, like someone stuck at level four for twenty or thirty years, unable to move up.
Such a person, with rich experience, good at dealing with people, and not buried in research neglecting the Mage Tower’s affairs, would be perfect as a steward! It would be best if you could give him some guidance, help him break through a bottleneck, ensuring his unwavering loyalty to you!”
“Easy for you to say.” Garrett rolled his eyes at him, laying down as well:
“Where am I supposed to find someone like that? How long have I been in Nevis City, how many people do I know? Besides, I’m only level 3, bringing in someone of level 4 or 5, who would be whose steward?”
“How about… I ask my teacher to introduce someone?”
“Let’s not talk about this now.” Garrett got up: “Hey, Aurora, a question for you—can you sense the direction of electric current?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” Aurora replied lazily. He raised a hand, and a spark of electricity leaped from his fingertips:
“Like this, from my fingertips outward. Isn’t all electric magic like this? If it’s lightning on a rainy day, then it’s from the sky to the ground—”
Evocation magic, tricks, lightning intimidation. Attacks the target, causing electrical damage.
“What about this?”
Garrett, full of excitement, began pulling items out of his space bag. Aurora turned over on the carpet to see Garrett rummaging through a bunch of coils, wires, magnets, axles…
His movements were not smooth, even somewhat clumsy. Fit a few pieces together, think a bit, fit a few more, think again. Sometimes, he had to stop and dismantle a part to reassemble it differently. Clattering and tinkling…
“What are you doing, boss…”
Aurora was dying of fatigue. After a day’s work, his body ached all over, and he just wanted to roll into bed and sleep. Yet, the boss was still busily occupied with something incomprehensible, not allowing him to leave…
“Have you finished assembling it yet? If not, I’m going to sleep, I’ll come back tomorrow to see it… Yawn…”
“Almost done! Just wait a bit!”
Garrett hurried along. After another quarter of an hour of fiddling, he actually managed to assemble a strange contraption. Attaching a handle and giving it a vigorous shake—one, two, three times—
“Ah!”
Aurora sprang up from the ground.
He huddled his body tightly, leaning forward eagerly, nearly pressing his glowing face against the coils:
“This is, this is—”
This was something he had never felt before in his study of electric magic! Whether it was lightning summoned by a mage or lightning from storm clouds, it was always a swift, violent flash that disappeared…
But this was different! As the axle turned, the electricity surging through the coils was indeed lightning, yet, it was unlike any lightning!
Unstable, changing back and forth. Not the fleeting lightning from a mage’s fingertips, nor the
electric orb confined within a force field, but rather, driven by human effort, endlessly coursing through the coils without cease…
Aurora felt as if he had grasped something, yet also as if he hadn’t grasped anything at all. He snatched the handle from Garrett, using all his strength, frantically shaking it. After a dozen or so shakes still feeling unsatisfied, he simply touched the handle, murmuring a few spells.
Instantly, the handle drove the axle, the axle drove the coils, and with a whoosh, they spun at high speed. Garrett blinked twice, and the coils in his view were left with only afterimages. He reflexively reached out to block:
“Hey—”
“Let me feel it! Let me feel it again!”
Aurora leaned forward, arms spread, protectively hovering over the generator like a mother hen over her chicks. Garrett, unable to physically pull him away, could only squat beside, staring unblinkingly at the generator…
Then, with a pop, all electric current returned to zero.
The fuse had blown…
Aurora, however, had lost interest in these details. He leaped up, running crazily out of the reception room:
“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!”
“Hey—”
Garrett stood up to follow. Out the door, around the corner, upstairs—then, the door to the magic experiment lab nearly slammed in his face.
Aurora was trembling with excitement. Before becoming Garrett’s follower, he had been striving to merge “Ether Prison” with “Ring of Shock” to create a new spell. Despite numerous attempts and failures, success always seemed a million miles away:
“Ether Prison” was constant over a period, “Ring of Shock” was explosive, ending as soon as it was triggered. Aurora had always wanted to extend its duration, but no matter how hard he tried, he could only modify a single explosion into a maximum of three.
But now, he had found his direction!
Aurora stood in the magic experiment lab with closed eyes, arms spread. That kind of current…
The cyclical, constantly changing current he had just experienced…
Failed simulation.
Failed simulation.
Failed simulation again.
He was getting closer, but it was still not right…
How to ensure it seemed constant yet continuously changing?
Aurora tried tirelessly, forgetting himself. Electric rings brightened and dimmed around him, dimmed and brightened. Even though the lab was surrounded by a magic-nullifying barrier, it couldn’t block the smell of burning protein in the room.
After numerous attempts, he suddenly opened his eyes, brought his arms together, and pushed forward:
With a fizz, silver-white electricity wrapped around the Ether Prison, flashing continuously like dragons or snakes.
Aurora rushed out ecstatically. Seeing Garrett outside, he ran up, arms wide, lifting Garrett and spinning him around:
“Boss! Thank you so much! It’s all thanks to you that I completed this spell! Thank you! Boss, I’m with you for life!”
Garrett: “Uh… I understand all that, but maybe you should fix your hair first?”
Aurora’s beautiful blond hair had turned into a huge mushroom cloud, with singed, curled ends dropping black ash…
Aurora had no time to worry about that. The breakthrough after days of frustration had him jumping for joy. It was only when Garrett dragged him in front of a mirror that he began combing his hair while excitedly explaining his new spell to Garrett:
“Combining these two spells, it’s both offensive and defensive, incredibly useful! Lucky you showed me that thing! Hey, boss, that thing you made, it can generate electricity without magic?”
Garrett nodded with a smile. Aurora jumped up:
“That’s fantastic! Boss, for that bleach powder you made before, we no longer need to rent a large lab! We can just find a place, make a bigger version of your spinning thing, and let it whirl away—if not, we can hire people to crank it, or even animals to drag it!”
That’s really not feasible. There’s talk of power plants fueled by fire or water, but never of human-powered or animal-powered electricity generators. Garrett almost laughed out loud, quickly suppressing it, and said seriously:
“We can’t use this type of current. Aurora, did you feel how the electricity generated by this spinning thing goes one way, then another, back and forth?”
Aurora thought for a moment and hesitantly nodded. With his magical sensitivity, he could only vaguely sense this, not clearly. Garrett lamented:
“So we can’t use this type of current. Aurora, can you make this back-and-forth electricity into the kind you usually summon, going in one direction?”
“Ah… oh…”
Aurora’s beautiful blue eyes spun in circles, turning into mosquito coils on the spot. He tilted his head in thought for a minute, hugged his head in deep contemplation for another minute, then crouched
down to face the wall and pretend to be a mushroom for another minute…
“I don’t know! How about we fix your thing and ask the teacher tomorrow?”
Archmage Carlisle, truly a 14th-level high-level mage, immediately saw the potential when the hand-cranked generator was turned on. After feeling the surging electricity in the coils for a while, he stood up, walked to the window, and concentrated slightly, pulling his hands apart.
With a snap, a bright white arc of electricity suddenly burst between his palms, fluctuating slightly. Then it exploded, reappeared, exploded again, reappeared, exploded again, reappeared…
“Very interesting device.” The great mage stroked his unusually fluffy beard and nodded solemnly:
“As for your question—leave the device with me, let me think for a few days…”
Garrett took his leave. He had just left when Archmage Carlisle, holding the hand-cranked generator, knocked on the Lord of Thunder’s door.
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