The Mordo Academy was unexpectedly fast. Converted into Earth units, it had accelerated to a hundred knots in a mere five minutes and was still gaining speed, settling only at two hundred thirty knots.
At roughly four hundred thirty kilometers an hour, the ship would need nearly a hundred days to reach the Mage Continent. The size of this world...
Adam badly wanted to go look at the engine room and see what powered a magitech vessel, but a place like that surely wouldn't let some idle bystander walk in.
The ship had plenty of rooms—fewer than forty apprentices, and even if each took two, there would be leftovers—so there was no scrambling for anything. Having come to an unfamiliar place and set out for a wider world, most of them had dropped the territorial squabbles of a "tiny little island" and felt a certain closeness rise in them by instinct.
The six from the Northland picked six adjoining rooms on the third deck, and that was when everyone noticed that Ophelia was in a very bad way.
Her face was dead white, cold sweat beading on her forehead, the blood-qi fluctuations around her body flickering in and out, utterly unstable. On a ship that sailed fairly steadily, she staggered as she walked. A Grand Knight who could move freely even living day and night on a jolting horseback could not manage to walk properly here.
"Miss Ophelia, what's wrong?" Cristel hurried over to steady her, asking anxiously.
Having grown up in the Northland since childhood, they plainly had no idea that there was a sickness in this world called motion sickness—and that it had nothing to do with strength.
The sailor guiding them split his mouth in a grin, apparently finding it hilarious that these Mage apprentices-to-be, soon to stand so high above everyone, could get seasick: "Haha, if you can't hold it in, just throw it up. Throw up a few times and you'll be used to it." With that he turned and walked off.
Cristel held Ophelia, at a loss. She could not understand how she herself was fine, and Ophelia, a Grand Knight, was like this.
"It's called seasickness," Adam said, standing at his own doorway.
"What's seasickness?" Cristel still did not understand.
"It's very complicated to explain. That sailor was right—throw up a few times and you'll be used to it."
Ophelia leaned weakly against Cristel, twisted her door open, and went in: "Don't worry. I think I'll be fine in a little while."
Cristel wanted to follow her in, but was shut out at the door. Somewhat at a loss, she looked around and finally settled her eyes on Adam. As a commoner she still felt most favorably toward Adam, also a commoner, even though she knew Adam was not the same as her.
As time passed since his new birth, Adam and his emotional modules had meshed more and more perfectly. By now, though he still disliked talking, it was not from a lack of feeling but simply the personality of an intelligent life form.
Meeting Cristel's inquiring look, he said, "There are ways to ease it a little, but they don't help much, and I don't think she wants any help."
With that, Adam walked into his own room. It was quite good: clean and tidy, with a private bathroom, a porthole on one side looking out on the view, and excellent soundproofing, so the wind and waves were not too grating. Three months here would not be boring for Adam—if only there were knowledge about mages to read, it would be even better.
But that was obviously impossible. Though mages styled themselves seekers of knowledge, from these few days of contact Adam had gathered that this world's research environment was plainly not very open. Mages might not go so far as to cling jealously to everything they owned, but without sufficient value in return, they would never selflessly make their knowledge public.
You could call this an extremely keen sense of copyright? Adam thought, letting his mind wander.
Ever since he had gained the chance to walk the proper path, Adam's whole soul had felt much lighter. As a former artificial intelligence, he did not fear death; he only feared wisdom, so hard-won, being wasted for nothing.
Adam stayed in his room all day working on optimizing his runes and did not come out. Meals aboard were twice a day and were not delivered to the rooms; everyone ate together in the dining hall, and the portions were limited—come late and you went without.
Adam stepped out right on the dot, and at the same moment the door of Ophelia's room across the way opened, and the Grand Knight staggered out looking worse than she had that morning.
The two exchanged a glance, and Ophelia said hoarsely, "As a gentleman, shouldn't you give me a hand?"
Adam walked over indifferently, helped her up, and the two started toward the dining hall together. The whole way Ophelia kept fighting back dry heaves. The Grand Knight's formidable constitution was nowhere to be seen; she was now worse off than an ordinary person.
"Motion sickness happens because the vestibular apparatus in the inner ear picks up stimuli beyond what the body can tolerate. Those stimuli deform the hair cells of the maculae in the utricle and saccule, which pass and register them to the center. Once the body can't adapt to that abnormal information, it resists—that's why you're seasick," Adam said as they walked.
"I don't understand a word you're saying. But if you're trying to mock me—"
"I wouldn't do anything that boring. I'm only saying that I might have a way to solve your problem."
Ophelia's body went rigid, and she said, flustered and furious, "If you had a way, why didn't you tell me earlier? Do you want to watch me make a fool of myself?"
Adam gave her a strange look, not knowing where that logic came from. I have a way, so I have to tell you? On what grounds? If there were no reason for it, Adam would not have cared in the least how awful she felt; the only reason he had spoken up was that he wanted to run an experiment—whether spiritual power, once solidified, could act upon the body.
As the solidified spiritual power runes piled up, the spiritual power gradually stopped being what it had been at the start. It now possessed "force"—a telekinesis-like force that could move relatively small, light objects. Adam was not satisfied with that. He had tried attaching spiritual power to his bodily organs to see whether it enhanced their function, but it had no effect. The data gathered from a single individual as a sample was too one-sided, so he wanted to try it on Ophelia.
"If you've already preliminarily materialized your spiritual power, you can attach it inside your ears and try to strengthen your inner ear vestibular organs, raising the threshold at which they respond to stimulation," Adam said, laying out his method.
Ophelia felt truly awful; she began trying at once, impatiently. But her spiritual power was not as strong as Adam's, and the violent physiological reaction kept robbing her of concentration, so she could not succeed.
With a test subject, Adam had excellent patience. He meticulously helped her along to the dining hall and sat down with her, under everyone's rather odd gazes.
Cristel's eyes lit up and she said loudly, "Miss Ophelia, Adam, you came! I thought you weren't coming to eat, so I was going to bring food to your rooms." She rose from her seat to go to them, but the people beside her pulled her back. Puzzled, she said, "What is it? Is Miss Ophelia—"
Henry Hugh said to her, with the air of an old hand, "You're too young, you don't understand. At a time like this, they mustn't be disturbed by anyone."
Mike Gaster chimed in a little sourly, "Yeah, yeah. Disturb them now and you'll get killed." He now believed he knew why Adam had been allowed to stay at the Count's mansion, and he was quite bitter about it.
Cristel tilted her head, then her face suddenly turned bright red. She hurried back to her seat and ate with big bites to cover her embarrassment, while inwardly exclaiming, Oh my god, they're so bold!
The two parties involved noticed none of it, unaware of the direction other people's thoughts had taken. Adam saw that Ophelia still could not get the knack, and had to guide her himself.
"Spiritual power that hasn't been solidified can be counted as formless and immaterial; it has no power to affect reality. You have to use the part that's already solidified. Break down a few runes and guide them into your ears."
Fortunately, Ophelia was not too stupid. A few minutes later she finally managed to channel her spiritual power into her ears. Adam sat beside her and extended his own spiritual power to observe the reaction, and he found that after the spiritual power entered her ears, though it did attach successfully, it did not strengthen anything—rather, it insulated.
The spiritual power became a protective layer that effectively isolated the stimulating information from outside. With no information coming in, the hair cells of the maculae in the utricle and saccule stopped deforming and transmitting stimuli to the center, and the body relaxed of its own accord.
Ophelia stopped dry heaving; color began to return to her pale face, her blood-qi fluctuations steadied, and she was recovering at a rapid pace.
But to everyone else, it looked as though Adam and Ophelia had whispered something to each other, and she had gotten shy over it.
Cristel propped her chin on both hands, eyes blinking as she stared at them, thinking, Wow, that's impressive. I'm even a little jealous.
Once Adam had recorded the information, he paid her no further attention and simply stood and left. Ophelia's goodwill toward him had soared on account of this, and she assumed Adam had gone to fetch her food, so she closed her eyes and used her breathing method to condition her body. But after waiting a long while with no sign of Adam returning, she opened her eyes and saw that Adam was already sitting in another seat, eating away on his own.
The goodwill she had just formed shattered on the spot. Ophelia felt a nameless fire blazing in her heart, but there was nothing she could rightly accuse him of, so she had to slink off and get her own food, then went and sat down beside Cristel.
The girl asked cautiously, "Why didn't Adam come over? Did you two have a fight?"
Ophelia stayed sullen and silent.
Adam turned warm-hearted. He found that there were quite a few seasick people aboard—several were slumped in the dining hall, limp and weak—and he went up to each one in turn, explained the principle, told them the method, and patiently waited for them to grasp it before moving on. He did not care in the least how awkward the others felt about it.
Only once every seasick apprentice had recovered did Adam finally arrive at a regretful conclusion: at least at this stage, spiritual power had no body-strengthening effect.
Watching Adam's back as he walked away, everyone silently marveled: what a good man.