The Mysterious World Under Steampunk

"You have done a good job, why do you continue to add some unnecessary things?" Leo closed the research report in his hand, and then went to the fourth city tutor who came to ask for help when there was a bottleneck in the research, Said: "You have obtained a stable formula in one hundred and seventy-three experiments, and all the tests are in line with your original research goals, or even better, why do you need to add some unnecessary things, How about destroying the stability of the formula?"

"I just want to make it more powerful." The words and deeds of the instructor from the Fourth City in the face of Leo, are not so much like a scholar who came to exchange knowledge, but more like a scholar who came to teach. s student.

I saw that the instructor's face and hands exposed outside the burqa were covered with scars, one eye was also a prosthetic eye, and his ears were also deaf. He needed to wear special hearing aids, and his skin had a lot of burns. The whole person looked very scary.

His name is Rowell, and he is a very famous instructor in the Fourth District. He is famous because all the assistant scholars who participated in his research died, and everyone died in a miserable state. Almost no one Can be buried in a state of whole body.

The reason for this is mainly because his research project is a kind of gunpowder that is different from the gunpowder used by countries all over the world. The scars on his own body and the dead assistant scholars are all due to repeated failed experiments.

The gunpowder used in this world is very unstable. There are reasons for both the gunpowder formula and the laws of the world. For example, the gunpowder of the same formula is more stable and more powerful when used in the New World, but it is placed in the Old World. , the power becomes very chaotic, sometimes large and sometimes small, and the trigger is extremely unstable, so the army of the Old Continent still mainly uses cold weapons.

However, because of the effectiveness of gunpowder weapons used by New World countries such as the Otter Federation as an example, even though gunpowder is very unstable, countries in the Old World still have not given up on the development and research of gunpowder formulas, and even the Church of God is also carrying out related research. Research.

As the place with the most wise men in the world, the academic city naturally has its own gunpowder research project, and there are more than one. Among these gunpowder research projects, Rowell's research is the most valued, because his formula is powerful and In terms of stability, it is far better than other formulas. For this reason, the academy built an extremely strong laboratory near the academy specially for him, surrounded by the army of Theresa Kingdom.

It is also because of this that even though Rowell is the mentor of the Fourth District, he rarely appears in the Academy City. Most of the time, he conducts experiments in his own laboratory.

Normally, he and Leo would not have much interaction, and it is impossible to ask Leo for help with his own research report, but what is interesting is that such a person who devotes himself to his research project and is indifferent to foreign affairs But he is an avid fan of all-knowing chess. In Leo's challenge of one against a thousand, he was one of them, and he was also the last few chess players to concede.

It is also for this reason that he has great respect for Leo's knowledge. After tentatively asking Leo a few difficult questions about his experiment and getting very useful answers, he decided to take his research report to the public. To Leo, see if Leo can help him solve the problem that has plagued him for many years.

However, there were some problems in the execution of his decision, because Leo is a foreign scholar after all, and his research has designed the most important secrets of the school city and the kingdom, so the management also discussed this matter. Fan, and also consulted with the kingdom, finally decided to agree to show a part of the research report to Leo, and exclude the content related to the specific formula.

It's just that these people never thought that even if Leo didn't see the formula, he would be able to deduce the complete formula through the experimental process in the report and some fragments of information revealed, and even modified each of Rowell's experiments. The recipe ingredients are also guessed.

When Leo read the research report in front of Rowell, speculated on the formula one by one, and completely restored Rowell's thoughts and intentions at that time, Rowell's mentality could no longer be described as shock Now, and he no longer just respects Leo, but worships him like a believer. He has even gradually agreed with the outside rumors that Leo is the incarnation of the Spirit of Knowledge.

However, Rowell didn't know that Leo was also shocked by him when he read the research report. What caused Leo's shock was not that Rowell's research on gunpowder was far more advanced than most people in the world. , but Rowell's good fortune and vitality.

The number of experiments recorded in the report is as high as more than 300, of which there are 294 failure records, and nearly 90% of the 294 failures are due to instability during the rationing, directly Detonation, and the ratio of each new formula is personally operated by Rowell.

In this case, the person doing the matching couldn't escape the explosion range at all, that is to say, Rowell has suffered more than 200 explosion injuries at close range in the past so many years, but the miracle is that Rowell is still still alive. Alive, even if he was alive with bruises all over his body, compared with those assistant scholars who died in the explosion, his luck and vitality were obviously extraordinary, but such a person was just an ordinary person.

In addition, Leo also discovered that Rowell's experiment had already been successful. He obtained a stable formula in the one hundred and seventy-third experiment. The only flaw was that the power of the explosion was slightly smaller. Merely met the minimum standard of research objectives.

Because of this, Rowell still did not stop researching, constantly adding different materials on the basis of this formula, trying to improve its power, but the result is still not getting the desired result.

After discovering the problem, Leo directly gave a pertinent suggestion, but obviously Rowell did not intend to accept this suggestion.

Rowell's reaction did not exceed Leo's expectations. He thought for a while and said, "You can try combining the two formulas."

"Two formulas?" Rowell didn't quite understand what Leo meant.

Leo explained: "The formula in your early sixty-seventh experiment, the power of that formula has reached the standard requirements of your research target, but it is very difficult to trigger the explosion, you can use that stable formula as this formula The trigger of..."

"I understand!" Before Leo could finish speaking, Rowell jumped up from the chair. He was very excited and ran out of Leo's room like crazy without saying anything to Leo. The office made people outside feel extremely confused, wondering what Leo had said to Rowell just now.

Sylvia, who had stayed by the side without speaking since just now, took a look at the research report that Rowell hadn't taken away, and asked thoughtfully, "Will the suggestion you just gave be effective?"

Leo didn't answer right away, but thought for a while, and said, "The final effect may far exceed his expectations."

"This is not a good thing." Sylvia said again.

"It depends on whom." Leo responded.

Undoubtedly, it won't be long before a powerful and stable new type of gunpowder will appear in the Old Continent, and corresponding weapons should also appear. This will definitely change the situation in the entire Old Continent. It is not known if they benefit from this change, but what is certain is that the Church of the True God or the Church of Heretics, which has the most extraordinary power, will not be the beneficiary.

Afterwards, the two rejected other visitors, put on the burqas exclusively for senior tutors, left from the back door of the research building, and walked towards the large library in the fourth district.

As early as a few days ago, after they obtained the status of senior tutors, they knew that they didn't need to accumulate additional contribution points. The authority of senior tutors already made them eligible to consult the banned books in the big library of the fourth city.

Therefore, they submitted the relevant application on the same day, but the application was not approved until today. They were allowed to enter the fourth city's large library to look up any materials within the next three days. There was no time limit or reading limit for accessing materials. But the premise is that you must be accompanied by the keeper of the forbidden book area, because many of those forbidden books contain dangerous power, if you are not careful, you will be corrupted by the power, and you need the keeper to restrict those dangerous forces or Imprisonment can be read safely.

During this period of time, Leo and Sylvia have also learned about the Keeper of Secrets through various channels, but even scholars or tutors from the city do not know much about the Keeper of Secrets.

Now I just know that there is a Secret Keeper organization inside the Academy City. This organization is not under the jurisdiction of the Academy City. It is related to the dean of the city, because the shape of the badge of the secret keeper is almost the same as the exclusive badge of the first dean of the school city.

Almost all keepers have a very magical forbidden power, which can limit and weaken all supernatural powers, whether it is the power of evil gods, the power of blood, or the power of true gods. When encountering this kind of forbidden power They will be suppressed and weakened, so all items involving extraordinary power in the academy city are guarded by secret keepers. Even the royal family and the Belmont family have hired a group of secret keepers from the academy city to guard some special power items.

No one knows where these keepers come from and how they came about. The only thing we know is that keepers will join in every once in a while, and keepers don't have any entertainment activities, and they don't have any ordinary people's feelings. They don't know how to fall in love or get married, and they don't retire. They don't rest until they die, so many people in Xuecheng call them stone people.

Leo and Sylvia had tested the forbidden power of the keepers. They found that the forbidden power of these keepers was related to their age. The older they were, the stronger their power. An old secret keeper in his seventies, the forbidden power in him has already begun to have an obvious suppression effect on the power of Leo and Silvia.

According to Leo's deduction, if there is a keeper over a hundred years old, maybe even a demigod will be suppressed like an ordinary person.

However, it is basically impossible for a hundred-year-old secret keeper to exist, because while these secret keeper possesses this kind of restraining power, their bodies will also be greatly weakened, like the 70-year-old secret keeper who has already It can be said that the limit of lifespan has been reached, and the lifespan of most of the keepers cannot reach this level. According to records, most of the keepers died of various diseases when they were around forty years old.

Leo also tried to judge where these keepers came from from their accents and habits, but the result was disappointing. The accents of these people were all very standard local official languages ​​of the Kingdom of Teresa, even more standard than The locals spoke well, and their habits were the same as those of ordinary people, and it was impossible to find any useful clues from them.

Even so, Leo still had some guesses about the origins of these keeper. He felt that these keeper were not produced naturally, but were produced according to some kind of intelligent module like him in the past, because these keeper Almost identical living habits, ways of doing things, and indifference to the outside world make him feel like a cyborg.

For this reason, he went to the cemetery next to Book Town where the Keeper of Secrets was buried, and took away some of the bones of more than a dozen corpses of Keeper of Secrets.

Although the Keeper of Secrets possesses powerful restraining power in front of them, there is no difference between them and the corpses of ordinary people after death. That power also dissipates from them with death, and their power in life cannot be recovered by any method, even through A certain degree of resurrection, and the resurrected Secret Keepers are just ordinary people.

Therefore, the Academy and the Secret Keeper organization thought that no one would be interested in the Secret Keeper's corpse, so they did not take special care of the Secret Keeper's cemetery. When Leo took the body remains from the cemetery, he would naturally No one stopped it, let alone discovered it.

It is precisely because the bones of these keepers no longer have that kind of forbidden power, so when Leo decomposed and analyzed these bones through witchcraft and other methods, there was no abnormality, and after the analysis, he became more and more sure Contrary to my previous guess, these secret keepers were man-made, and they used the blood of the same person, because the bones of all the secret keepers were completely consistent after analysis, and these secret keepers are most likely a group of people who have undergone physical transformation. clones.

After Leo told Sylvia about her discovery and about human cloning, Sylvia was also very surprised when she knew about it, and she also had some associations, thinking that the bloodlines used by these keepers would not It would be Rupert Fitz, possibly even Rupert Fitz alive, secretly creating and controlling the Keeper Organization.

Although Sylvia's association was a bit wild, Leo had to admit that it seemed reasonable, and decided to look for opportunities in the future to see if he could find the mysterious source of the Keeper and solve this mystery.