Release That Witch

After Roland arrived at the lab on Redwater River, he soon found that the damage was not as serious as he had imagined. The main lab where acid was prepared had remained intact with only two of the glass windows broken in half.     

"Your Highness, please help our mentor. He's heavily hurt and dying."     

Upon Roland's appearance, a crowd of anxious students tried to gather around him, only to be stopped by the guards. Roland made a hand movement, signaling everyone to calm down for a moment. "Where's he now? Let me have a look first." Then he turned to Carter, asking in a low voice. "Where's Nana?"     

"I've asked someone to send for her. She'll come soon."     

"Good."     

Roland nodded and entered the lab with his guards.     

Kyle Sichi lay on the ground with blood trailing off from his body in a manner that suggested he might have been dragged to the main lab from the accident site. His face was smeared with blood and pus, which should have been caused by the sputtering strong acid during the explosion and a few fingers were gone from his hands, leaving white bones visible.     

The students had given him some first aid. It seemed that they had gone through similar accidents in Redwater City, and so they could perform the procedures of taking the injured person away from the accident site, stopping the bleeding and seeking help in a proper fashion. However, the injury would have been incurable if it were only treated with herbs and left for self-recovery as usual.     

Roland asked his men to guard the door and wait for Nana while he and Carter sought to retrieve the chief alchemist's fingers. Otherwise, even if the little girl cured him, it would be impossible for him to continue the chemical experiments. That would also mean a great loss for Border Town.     

"It looks as if a storm has hit," Carter held his nose and said, "and it smells so bad, so strange!"     

"It's the smell of nitrogen dioxide." Roland glanced around the small room that had its windows all thrown open. They were unlikely to be poisoned by the remaining gas. The glass bottles on laboratory rig were all shattered, acid water trickled down and formed tiny streams on the ground.     

"Remember to look for the fingers with tools. Never touch them with your own hands." The prince warned. "There're gloves in the cabinet."     

Since Soraya's power evolved, he sent a dozen thin corrosion-resistant gloves to the labs. But he could tell from the alchemist's condition that he had performed the experiment without gloves. If he had worn gloves, they would have kept his fingers inside despite the explosion.     

One item in the cabinet above the laboratory rig caught Roland's attention. He found to his amazement, after taking it out, that the bottle with a peculiar design contained actually the white liquor sold in Convenience Market. There was no more than a half of its content left in the bottle.     

Kyle went so far as to bring white liquor into the lab! It was hard to imagine that an experienced chief alchemist would drink during an experiment!     

"Your Highness, Miss Nana is here!" one of the guards said.     

"Okay, continue to guard the door and keep the students out." Roland returned to the main lab while Carter kept looking for the fingers among glass fragments.     

"Is it him?" Nana gradually got used to treating serious injuries. She had grown from being the little girl who did not dare to look at blood or fainted in the face of horrible wounds. She had grown a lot, both in terms of competence and courage.     

"Please treat the caustic burns on his face first." Roland nodded. "Carter's looking for his fingers. You'll help reattach them back to where they were."     

"There's no need to do that." Nana gave a small complacent smile. "I can cure such tiny injuries directly now."     

Roland was startled as he watched in a daze. Nana put her hands on the alchemist's chest, closed her eyes and then a dramatic change immediately took place upon Kyle. Within a few seconds his face resumed its former look and his missing fingers grew back slowly. First bones, then flesh and skin, at last nails and hair. After a quarter of an hour, his fingers were completely the same as before.     

At this moment, Carter came out of the side lab. "Your Highness, only three were found. I think the other finger might have been blown to pieces... Uh?"     

"Since when could you do that?" Roland asked in surprise.     

"Around a week or so. When I did the training on chicks, I found that I could make broken limbs grow back as long as I put enough magic power into it." She stuck out her tongue. "I might have remembered what you said. That human body parts are composed of cells. So there must have been a loss of cells where limbs are lost. If magic power can compensate for the loss, why couldn't they bring the lost body parts back? Then I tried it out."     

"Any body part can grow back?"     

Nana shook her head. "It's too exhausting to treat the broken limbs this way. It's okay to make fingers grow back. Yet I can do nothing to bring back arms or shanks since my volume of magic power is far smaller than Anna's."     

[It's because you haven't come to adulthood,] Roland thought to himself. Was this change a sign of her power's evolution or was it the result of the training? He could not tell if there was any change in the characteristics of her power without Nightingale's presence. If this change was only due to the increase in her magic power, Nana's capacities after adulthood would certainly be exciting.     

"Your Highness, he woke up," Carter said.     

"What happened... to me?" Kyle looked at his hands, both intact. He touched his face in bewilderment and began to say, "Should I..."     

"You should have died from serious injuries caused by a chemical accident. But a witch has saved your life. Here's the person who cured you of your wounds, Nana Pine." Roland decided to tell him things about Nana, a man who came to Border Town for chemical equations could not be beyond enlightenment. Even if he detested witches, he would not go so far as to desert his work at hand to report to the church. Besides, with the presence of Lucia in Border Town, the cooperation between alchemists and witches must happen sooner or later.     

"God, you're saying this witch could cure the injury caused by alchemical... no, chemical experiments?" Kyle's reaction was quite unexpected. "Hahaha, it couldn't be better, Your Highness. I'll not have to take dangers into consideration and I'll be able to test the reactions in any way I like!"     

"So what happened?" Roland was relieved. "Why did you bring white liquor into the lab?"     

"No, Your Highness, it was used for the experiment," Chief Alchemist Kyle exclaimed excitedly, "I've made what you asked me to experiment on."     

"You mean... mercury fulminate?"     

"Yes, Your Highness, the lacking reactant is actually alcohol!" he said quickly, "I had tried dozens of chemicals without any progress before I went to the market to buy some liquor to chill out. Then it suddenly occurred to me that 'Elementary Chemistry' had mentioned that alcohol is an organic solvent and also an indispensable chemical in certain reactions. So I tested on distilled white liquor as a new reactant and succeeded the sixth time... In several test tubes, gray crystals were formed. I remember that I noted down the heating time and reaction temperature and took out some of them for a test, which had shown exactly the same qualities you described, pale gray needle-like crystals or powders that were extremely sensitive and violent. Just as I tried to filter all the residues in the remaining test tubes, the test tubes suddenly blew up."     

Now it occurred to Roland that mercury fulminate was usually made by adding mercury and ethanol to an excessive amount of nitric acid or made directly by the reaction between mercury nitrate and ethanol.     

"Nice job." He patted Kyle Sichi on the shoulder. "Your achievement can win you the highest honor and reward in Border Town."     

In this way, the solution to the percussion primer in a self-contained cartridge had emerged.