In the huge workshop laboratory, the instruments and furniture that had originally been neatly and thoughtfully arranged were now scattered messily in every corner. Some of the equipment even showed obvious damage.
Large amounts of parchment crumpled into balls and trash were strewn all over the floor. The walls, the ground, and even the precise alchemical apparatus were covered with countless alchemical formulas and doodles.
The Kennedy siblings were each lying on two long sofas that sat crookedly in the corners of the room.
It looked like they hadn't washed up in a long time. Their hair was extremely messy, and their bodies were stained with many brownish-yellow smudges.
What made Link's temper flare the most was that beside the two sofas, whose leather had already been completely worn out, there were rows upon rows of liquor bottles packed tightly together.
"Hoo~"
Link took several deep breaths in a row before barely suppressing the anger in his heart.
He simply couldn't understand it.
This experimental workshop had been handed over to the Kennedy siblings for less than a month, all told.
How could they have trashed it into this state?
It seemed that when Link opened the door, he let the cold wind in.
The younger Kennedy, who had been lying spread-eagle on the sofa, suddenly groaned, then struggled to sit up while holding onto the sofa, and glanced toward the doorway.
Without any warning, the younger Kennedy's gaze collided directly with Link's anger-filled eyes.
The air froze instantly.
The younger Kennedy's previously unfocused pupils suddenly locked in, then rapidly dilated.
At the same time, as the muscles in his face twitched, his expression gradually twisted into one of terror.
"Ah!"
The younger Kennedy finally screamed.
"What's wrong? What's wrong?!"
The older Kennedy was so startled that he suddenly flailed up from the other sofa.
He looked around in all directions for quite a while, and only after spotting Link standing in the doorway did he finally let out a sigh of relief.
"Oh, it's Link."
As he spoke, the older Kennedy lay back down again.
This scene made the cold gleam in Link's eyes deepen a few degrees.
With a thought, the doors and windows that had been tightly shut opened automatically.
Wind and snow instantly surged into the laboratory, driving out all the warmth and completely sobering up the lightly dressed Kennedy siblings.
They grabbed the filthy robes on the floor and threw them over themselves haphazardly. Just as they were about to complain, they heard Link slowly say in an extremely cold tone, "So this is how you muddle through your work?"
The younger Kennedy had already returned to his usual shy demeanor and shrank back into the corner.
Hearing this, the older Kennedy's body stiffened. With great effort, he turned to face Link and forced out a smile.
"Misunderstanding, boss! We've really been working our hearts out the whole time! As for all this…"
The older Kennedy's gaze flicked over the liquor bottles on the floor, his eyes darting as he said, "This is all celebration after successful research!"
"That's right! That's exactly it!"
"Our research achieved a breakthrough last night!"
"So we celebrated a bit!"
"Oh, really?" Link said expressionlessly. "Then what exactly have you researched?"
No sooner had Link finished speaking than the older Kennedy was eager to answer.
But Link immediately continued, "Don't even think about trying to fool me with some half-baked, overly complicated theories. Don't forget, you're not the only alchemists serving the Weasley family."
"To be honest, I'm really disappointed in you."
"If this time you still can't produce some results, then your work assignment and work location may need to be changed."
"Hmm… how do you feel about going to Black Africa to expand the alchemy market there?"
Hearing this, the older Kennedy's expression finally turned fearful.
Link had never been a philanthropist.
Back when he officially began investing in the Kennedy siblings and this workshop laboratory, he had already signed a 20-year employment contract with them, along with a lifetime non-compete agreement.
So the older Kennedy knew very well that if Link said he would throw them into Black Africa, then after graduation they absolutely wouldn't be able to go anywhere else.
Just imagining the terrifying shamans, witch doctors, and cannibal tribes of Black Africa made the older Kennedy shiver uncontrollably.
The chill Link gave him was far more bone-piercing than the wind and snow outside.
Driven by this immense pressure, he practically scrambled and crawled over to the workbench, yanked off the black cloth covering it, and stuffed the thing underneath into Link's hands.
Link's eyebrows knit together slightly.
What he was holding at the moment was something about two meters long, shaped somewhat like a longsword.
The difference between it and a real longsword was that its blade was entirely made of a hollow "steel tube."
And on the pitch-black surface of that "steel tube," dense ancient runes had been engraved.
As for its hilt, it was a large mass of metal formed from all kinds of precision machinery combined together.
Because it lacked an outer casing, Link could clearly see the densely interlocked gears inside, as well as large amounts of wiring.
Overall, this "sword" had a strong steampunk vibe, at least in Link's impression.
The older Kennedy didn't stop moving. He reached into the hilt mechanism and fiddled with it for quite a while, then took out a large vest and, after connecting it to the wires inside the device, put it onto Link.
"Boss, try pulling the trigger on the handle!"
The older Kennedy said excitedly as he helped Link turn and aim at an alchemical mannequin in a corner not far away.
After all this, even Link's usually unruffled face, kept calm by Occlumency, began to twitch for once.
Letting the boss personally test a bizarre device that was obviously just a prototype at first glance,
Someone like this would have long since been fired in a normal company or organization, or even exiled to Black Africa.
But looking at the blazing, hopeful look in the older Kennedy's eyes, Link ultimately pulled the trigger with a cold expression.
The next moment, Link felt a sudden disturbance in the stable magic inside his body.
It began to grow more and more active, then was drawn out through the vest he was wearing, and finally surged through the dense wiring into the "strange sword" in his hands.
Buzz!
The gears inside the hilt of the "strange sword" began spinning at high speed, and the ancient runes engraved on the hollow steel tube started to glow with a faint blue magical light.
Within the magic-sensing field of view provided by Link's Super-Sensory Charm, the magic drawn from his body was being continuously recompressed and reshaped inside the hilt, then finally poured into the hollow steel tube for final acceleration…
At last, a mass of orange-red fire burst out from the hollow steel tube, flying straight toward the alchemical mannequin in the distance and exploding into a sea of flames.
Watching the mannequin, along with the entire wall behind it, slowly turn charred under the covering flames, the Kennedy siblings jumped around excitedly as they shouted, "Whoa!~ Just as expected of the boss! The power is actually this big!"
The older Kennedy's praise wasn't deliberate flattery to avoid being exiled to Black Africa, but genuine admiration.
This was very clear when viewed with Legilimency.
But at this moment, Link couldn't smile.
He silently stared at the older Kennedy until the excited grin on the latter's face gradually stiffened. Only then did he lift the still-scorching "strange sword" in his hand and say, "With this kind of power, it's at best on the level of an ordinary adult wizard."
"But to cast that Firestorm spell just now, this weird machine drew nearly one-tenth of my magic."
"Do you know how many spells of that same strength that one-tenth of magic could normally fire off?"
Hearing this, the older Kennedy scratched his head awkwardly.
"Boss, this is still just a first prototype. A lower energy conversion rate is normal. We'll definitely improve it later!"
Link shook his head.
He wasn't optimistic about the older Kennedy's explanation.
Strictly speaking, this was essentially just an oversized, specially made wand.
Only, a real wand used an ultra-high-conductivity material as its core, combined with the wand body, to assist a wizard in casting spells.
During the process, the wizard still had to control their magic themselves in order to cast a spell.
But the device the Kennedy siblings had made simply cut out even that last step.
In other words, a wizard using this set of equipment was nothing more than a pure magic battery.
They only needed to feed magic into the device, and then the device would run its magic circuits according to a pre-set program, forming fixed spells.
Link had to admit that the Kennedy siblings' ability to come up with such an idea and actually turn it into a physical object could indeed be called exceptional talent.
If everything went smoothly, this set of equipment could directly narrow the gap between ordinary wizards and elite combat wizards like Aurors and Hit Wizards.
Because through this device, they could inexplicably gain mastery of nonverbal casting, and at an extremely high rate of fire.
But the problem was that the energy conversion rate of this prototype could no longer be described with the shallow word "low."
Even with the vast amount of magic in Link's body, it could only provide this device with enough energy to fire ten spells of not particularly great power. The effect for an ordinary wizard could be easily imagined.
And that wasn't all.
Although Link, as a potions master, didn't know much about alchemy, he could still recognize that the hollow steel tube of the "strange sword" was entirely made from a mithril-obsidian alloy, an ultra-rare material.
Yet even using such expensive materials, firing that single Firestorm spell still left the entire hollow steel tube scorching hot and glowing red.
This meant that not only was this thing extremely costly to manufacture, but its rate of fire was also pitifully low.
The difficulty of solving these two problems was probably even greater than that of creating this groundbreaking prototype in the first place.
Link removed the equipment and said, "How are you planning to optimize it? By filling this hollow tube with a 'wand core' like a normal wand?"
"You could tell this was modeled after a wand?" The older Kennedy was clearly startled by Link's breadth of knowledge, but then said with some disappointment, "That is indeed a path we could try, but the cost would just be far too high."
'So you do know the cost is too high?' Link rolled his eyes inwardly.
At this moment, the younger Kennedy, who had been hiding shyly under the sofa the whole time, suddenly poked her head out and said softly, "We're currently planning to try optimizing the magic circuits formed by ancient runes. If it goes smoothly, as long as the magic circuits are good enough, not only can the magic conversion rate be improved, but the overall manufacturing cost can also be reduced."
Hearing this, Link gave the younger Kennedy a deep look, staring so intently that the shy girl immediately shrank her head back again.
Her idea of optimizing the magic circuits was indeed correct.
But just as Link had thought earlier, the difficulty of doing this was simply too great.
It would be nothing short of creating an entirely new spell out of thin air.
And not just any spell, but one on the level of the Patronus Charm or Fiendfyre.
Still, it was ultimately a good thing that the Kennedy siblings had such dreams. Link felt he should support them as much as possible.
Thinking this way, the dark clouds covering Link's face gradually dissipated. He smiled and pointed at the device on the floor as he said to the older Kennedy, "Not bad. It seems you really haven't been slacking off. But how did you come up with an idea like this?"
As soon as this came up, the older Kennedy became excited again.
Grabbing Link's arm, he said, "Our inspiration came from you, boss!"
Link tilted his head in confusion.
"More precisely, it was because you told us to go learn more about Muggle technology. That's what gave us so many new ideas!"
As he spoke, the older Kennedy ran to the other side of the laboratory and yanked open a huge curtain.
As the curtain fell, what appeared before Link was a shipping container.
It was painted entirely red and wrapped with massive silver-white ribbons, looking exactly like an oversized Christmas gift box.
Only, what was inside this "gift box" wasn't flowers or toys or any normal presents, but neatly stacked crates of firearms and ammunition.
"Boss, take a look!"
The older Kennedy picked up an AK-47, skillfully snapped in a magazine, and unleashed a burst of fire at the alchemical mannequin that had just been blasted by the fire spell. "Isn't this way better than a wand?"
Link was utterly stunned by the scene before him, his mouth opening unconsciously.
He had indeed instructed the Kennedy siblings to go learn more about Muggle technology, but he never imagined that after just one trip, they would come back with AK-47s.
The key issue was, how did they get so many of them?
Sending this stuff to Black Africa would be enough for some small country there to fight a small war, wouldn't it?
Was Muggle society's control over arms really this lax?
Suddenly, a mark engraved into his DNA flashed through Link's mind.
"You went to the Bear Country?" Link blurted out.
Hearing this, the older Kennedy froze for a moment, then nodded.
"Yeah. That place split up a few years ago, life's been really hard there. We couldn't bear to see it, so we used magic to move some supplies over for them."
He then pointed at the container behind him and said, "So they sent us these things back as Christmas presents."
Hearing this, Link nodded.
If that was the case, then everything made sense.
At this stage, the Bear Country would even dismantle tank production lines to sell them off. Selling a container of AKs was nothing at all.
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