Chapter 53: Do You Want to Take Me as Your Master?

“Works… huh?”

After pondering for a moment, Ye Xu’s fingers lightly stroked the neck ring around his throat, searching for something inside that wouldn’t be too world-shocking.

The teacher waited patiently beside him, curious about what this student could possibly produce.

“Oh.”

A moment later, Ye Xu’s eyes brightened slightly.

With a flash of night-purple magical power, a “bullet” the size of a human head appeared in his hand.

“Mm? What is this?”

The composed old professor let out a faintly surprised sound.

“Magitech thermal armor-piercing bullet. It’s one of my…”

“more proud works.”

Stroking the silver-gray shelled bullet in his palm—its head shaped like a drill bit, the entire body inscribed with purple runes—Ye Xu’s eyes filled with a trace of nostalgia.

He wasn’t lying. This wasn’t merely one of his proud creations; it was the very first magitech device he had ever made, or rather, the first one-time-use magitech tool.

When he was nine years old, he had just finished reading all the magic books in Navila’s house and begun learning magitech. This was the first finished magitech device he had created.

Although from today’s perspective both the mana conversion rate and final power output were crude and low, it remained an extremely important milestone in Ye Xu’s life. It proved just how terrifying his talent truly was.

After only ten days of self-study, he had produced a military-grade magitech tool that could be directly deployed on the battlefield for Magitech Knights. He completely conquered Navila’s family, causing them to invest in him without regard for cost and to nurture him with every available resource—thus beginning the rest of the story.

In the years that followed, other magitech devices were lost or used up, but this one had always stayed with Ye Xu as an unforgettable memory.

Now it was helping him greatly, because among everything stored in his neck ring that he could normally pull out and that was related to magitech, only this remained.

“Mm…” Professor Vilans examined the work with a professional gaze. Then, after receiving Ye Xu’s nod of approval, he took it into his own hands, stroking the runes upon it before asking, “Can you explain the design principles and function of this thing to the teacher?”

Ye Xu didn’t mind. He took back the armor-piercing bullet and pointed at the runes one by one as he explained…

“The high-temperature runes engraved in the bullet head at the top can heat the tip to a temperature capable of melting the outer armor of a Magitech Knight the instant it is activated. At the joint between the head and the body are spiral runes that, using the power of wind magic, allow continuous spiraling acceleration in the air to achieve armor-penetration effect.”

An extremely simple and crude effect, yet undeniably practical.

In this world, whether Magitech Knights, magical beasts, or powerful foreign races, they all generally possessed terrifying physical constitutions and extremely strong surface defenses.

For example, with a body of steel—even if the muscles inside were high-strength alloy fibers transformed through alchemy—ordinary weapons found it extremely difficult to inflict effective damage on a Magitech Knight. Even magic often required spells that took an extremely long time to chant or consumed enormous amounts of mana.

Even though human souls were innately spiritually powerful, such waste was ultimately unsuitable.

After all, although Magitech Knights were powerful, they were not original flesh bodies. When a person’s mana flowed inside them, there was still a minimum extra loss of 17%. For some magitech devices made with lower-grade materials, the loss could reach as high as 30%.

Thus, from the moment the first-generation Magitech Knights appeared, they were equipped with large-scale magitech armaments that only needed activation or mana infusion to use, rather than relying on the pilot themselves to chant and release magic for every single attack.

This “Magitech Thermal Armor-Piercing Bullet” was a magitech tool that had appeared alongside the first-generation Magitech Knights and had been passed down to the present day.

The difference was that the first-generation Magitech Knights had long been phased out, yet this armor-piercing bullet had fought for ten thousand years and remained standard general-purpose armament on most Magitech Knights even now.

“Mm~ Not bad, not bad at all.”

Watching Ye Xu put the armor-piercing bullet away, Professor Vilans nodded in satisfaction.

A consumable magitech tool didn’t count for much by itself. But if it had been entirely made by the student himself…

It meant the creator at least possessed a medium “professional-grade” level equivalent to many grassroots magitech masters employed in the industry who made their living through magitech techniques.

In this world, the term “mage” could summarize all people capable of wielding mana.

At higher levels, it was further subdivided.

“Mage” specifically referred to personnel engaged in the research and development of various magics. In addition, there were “magitech masters” specializing in magitech techniques, “alchemists” specializing in alchemy, and the most numerous and common “knights” specializing in combat.

Aside from mages being divided into five levels based on their mastery of different-grade magic—and knights similarly using those five levels to denote strength—

magitech masters and alchemists used an entirely different assessment system based on the profundity of their knowledge and skills: “entry-level,” “professional-level,” “specialist-level,” and “master-level,” with each level further divided into high, middle, and low tiers.

Most people spent their entire lives specializing in only one path. For example, although Vilans’ magitech technique had already reached low-tier master level—comparable to a fourth-circle advanced mage—his magic level was only the commonplace third-circle.

And the student before him, at such a young age, had already walked so far along both the magic and magitech paths simultaneously?

“Hahahaha, the young are to be feared, the young are to be feared~” Professor Vilans stroked his beard, slowly standing up as he sighed to Ye Xu. “In that case, these basic magitech courses are indeed meaningless to you.”

Or rather, not just these courses—the magitech-related knowledge that could normally be learned through four years of regular classes in this school held no meaning for Ye Xu whatsoever.

After all, even the Magic Academy’s graduation requirement for ordinary students in their fourth year was merely low-tier professional level, allowing them to consider making a living through the magitech path afterward.

If one wished to achieve higher accomplishments, they could only join school clubs, enter a teacher’s laboratory, research new magitech techniques, produce Magitech Knights, or pursue degree examinations and the like.

Vilans naturally had no intention of letting a genius like Ye Xu waste four years buried in these ordinary courses.

“If I remember correctly, your name is Ye Laixi · Nal, right?” Recalling the information about Ye Xu he had seen a few days ago, Professor Vilans asked, “Younger brother of Earl Nal from the Ross Kingdom?”

Ye Xu was not surprised that a professor of Vilans’ obvious standing in the school knew his identity. He simply nodded slightly in acknowledgment.

“You two brothers really are both quite extraordinary.”

Looking at Ye Xu before him, Professor Vilans sighed once more before inquiring,

“So, kid, do you want to take me as your master and join my magitech research lab? As long as you’re willing, I can apply to the school for you to be exempt from classes. For the next four years, all your magitech course grades will be calculated as full marks!”