Morale Support: Scherzo
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“Weirdo?”
Sue put down her cup, a white ring of milk still around her mouth, looking puzzled as she questioned her classmate.
“It’s at the back gate of the school. There’s a weirdo there, often loitering near the entrance. Sometimes, they even intrude into the study rooms in the teaching building, talking unintelligibly to people. Maybe trying to kidnap girls. So disgusting.”
Her classmate replied, both of them wearing the uniform robes of the Astar Advanced Magic School. This was back when Sue was a student.
“But I’ve never seen any weirdo.”
Sue tilted her head. She had been spending a lot of time in the classrooms near the school’s back gate recently, working on the initial draft of her graduation thesis. It was quieter there, but she had never seen the weirdo her classmate spoke of.
“I heard that the weirdo was one of us, a graduate from here. But something happened later, and he went crazy. Like those mages in novels who go mad for magic, spreading their theories everywhere. It’s terrifying. If I ever encounter him, I’ll definitely teach him a lesson with the magic I’ve just learned!”
Her classmate spoke indignantly, standing up and leaving with their tray.
“Wait.”
Hastily finishing her bread and leftover milk, Sue followed suit.
Sue no longer had classes now; she only needed to present her four years of work as her graduation thesis.
But that was also her biggest worry.
When Sue had just entered school, she had been warned by senior students about the difficulty of avoiding plagiarism. If she chose a topic that everyone had researched, it would be easy to have a high similarity index, even risking rejection during submission.
So, Sue came up with the idea of choosing a rarely touched topic—the integration of the three laws of Ableton.
Ever since Lord Isaris Ableton proposed the three laws of motion 50 years ago, various kinematic formulas have been established. In the world of magic, these laws were quite practical. From calculating the distance a Mage Hand moved a teacup to the ballistic trajectory of high-level magic, the three laws of motion could be applied.
However, whether it was linear, curved, or circular motion, vibration, different movements had different corresponding theoretical formulas. This made the mathematical representation of complex movements difficult, unless one had extremely high magical talent or vast experience; otherwise, it would be challenging to control such spells.
From the beginning, people had tried to unify the formulas of various movements, but most failed. Even the proposer of the three laws of motion, Lord Ableton himself, gave up after trying for some time.
This field had become a rarely ventured research area.
Sue no longer had to worry about the issue of similarity index because very few people had delved into this field, resulting in only a handful of theses.
But she faced a bigger problem—her limited references, even her mentor couldn’t help much.
Sigh.
Sitting in the usual study room, Sue sighed as she looked at her thesis draft.
She had been caught between postponing her graduation or changing her thesis topic. Unexpectedly, while browsing the school’s thesis database, Sue stumbled upon a thesis that also researched the integration of the Ableton three laws, aiming to unify various equations of motion.
Like a fish in a drying pond suddenly seeing the ocean, Sue felt a bright future ahead.
However, not long after, she realized that the content of this thesis was too difficult to understand. The mathematical calculations involved were beyond her comprehension.
Feeling her mind in chaos, Sue lay on the table like a dead fish, unwilling to face her own thesis.
It was at this moment that a figure approached Sue. He sat down opposite her and spoke.
“Are you writing a thesis?”
It was a restrained and deep voice. Sue looked up to see a young man wearing glasses staring at her… and her thesis.
“Y-yes.”
Sue hesitated slightly before nodding.
“Oh, no wonder!”
She remembered the warning from her tablemate this morning.
Could this be that weirdo!?
Suddenly wary, but when Sue looked at him again, the man picked up her thesis draft and began reading it carefully.
“The derivation here is too crude, there are loopholes here, and here, you’re making assumptions, you should consider two other cases…”
The man muttered to himself, pointing out difficulties that Sue couldn’t grasp, and Sue stared blankly at him, realizing that some of his points seemed reasonable after pondering them herself.
Finally, the man flipped to the part where Sue referenced other theses, but he fell silent suddenly.
“W-where did you find this?”
He pointed to one of the theses, the very one Sue considered her lifesaver.
The title of the thesis was “Research on Unified Equations of Curvilinear Motion”, authored by Sirius Odman.
“It’s from the school’s archive. It seems to be a senior’s graduation thesis…”
Sue replied naturally, but she didn’t notice that the moment he heard her words, the man froze as if struck by lightning, staring blankly at the thesis in his hand.
“Impossible… How could this…”
He muttered to himself, looking dazed as he held the thesis.
“Are you… are you okay?”
Sue became more and more afraid. Though the man initially seemed normal, his current demeanor was too strange. Just as Sue was hesitating whether to call for help, the classroom door opened.
Several guards entered and quickly surrounded the man, ignoring his struggles, and pulled him away.
“Why… how could this…”
The man made no resistance; he remained deeply shocked, letting the guards take him away.
Sue was still in a daze, her gaze falling on the thesis that had astonished the man, her confusion deepening.
“Did he say anything to you?”
A young man of similar age asked Sue from behind the guards.
“He… he was giving me guidance on my thesis, and then… nothing else.”
Sue recognized this person. She replied without hiding anything.
“Forget about today’s events. Focus on completing your thesis.”
The man smiled kindly, patting Sue’s shoulder gently before leaving. Whether to deal with the weirdo or go elsewhere, Sue didn’t know.
“Okay, Professor Aucen…”
Sue nodded, watching him leave.
T/N: I realised that I messed up the names of the volume. Bloodline Elegy is correct, but Path of Evolution is supposed to be Volume 6, not Volume 5.