“Alright, that’s like 2 textbooks, and 3 web serials in print,” said Kai, admiring the stack of books on his end table. The pile of hardcovers the librarian had gotten for him was much larger than what lay in front of the teen, but after careful consideration, he decided to leave most of them there while bringing a few select texts back to his room for more casual reading.

Of course, most of them were stories rather than the terse educational texts, but he felt no guilt. After all, they were all part of his syllabus, so he was just being a responsible student! Yup.

“Ready to head to the lab, Kai?” asked Marnick, sticking his head into the teen’s room.

“Sure, let me just use the bathroom first.”

The chaperone nodded and let his ward do his business in peace. Once he was done and freshened up, the two made their way to their next destination. The air between them remained silent, as the two had already exhausted all of the conversation topics that came to mind. As for Kai’s library visit, Marnick could see what he’d checked out and figure out how he felt about it through the teen’s bored, yet thoughtful expression.

Eventually, the duo arrived at a pair of stainless steel lab doors with reinforced windows showcasing the interior of the laboratory. Kai opened them and went inside. What met him was a sprawling room covered in bright white tiles and surrounded by light blue walls. There were another pair of lab doors on the other side of the room that seemed to lead to similarly decorated chambers.

This one in particular was lined with open closets filled with a variety of protective clothing; hazmat suits, hardhats, and heavy duty masks. There were also several changing rooms in one of the corners, and even an emergency shower.

The entire space was lit up by row upon row of harsh, white fluorescent lights, and the air had no smell at all to it as if purposefully filtered out. The laboratory as a whole felt exceedingly sterile. Kai felt exposed standing there, as if he were the one standing underneath a microscope being carefully observed.

“Hi there!” exclaimed a woman who came walking up from behind the teen. “I was observing you checking out our lab, and I’m guessing you’re here for the tour? You’re Kai, right?”

The teen slowly nodded in response, trying not to look startled. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Excellent! I’m Iori, and I’ll be your tour guide!” she said with a bright smile. The lady had long, black hair that went down to her shoulders, along with brown pupils. She had a relatively lithe figure covered by a white lab coat and gray dress pants, with a pair of goggles hanging around her neck. Overall, the woman looked to be of asian descent, most likely Japanese, going by her name.

“Nice to meet you, Iori,” said the teen as he shook her hand.

“Likewise! Before we begin, put on one of our clean suits and a face mask. Grab a pair from that closet over there, and the instructions on how to put them on should be on a poster in the changing rooms.”

Kai nodded at the woman, as well as Marnick, who made his exit. The teen himself made his way to the closet and changing room in question. After several minutes of trying to squeeze himself into the thin, white outfit, the teen succeeded in covering both his body and the top of his head in the white, fiberless fabric and respirator.

“Excellent, you look good in lab gear!” exclaimed the researcher as she led Kai over to the closest door. “You’d do well as a researcher.”

“Uh, thanks,” replied Kai with a shrug. “But why do I have to wear this when you don’t?”

“That’s because I have a spell around me that does the same, you just can’t see it.”

“Right… let’s just get going then.”

Through the first set of doors was another large room. Rather than being a plain, empty space with corner closets, this one contained several wide tables finished with black slate slabs that held a massive collection of glassware. Beakers, test tubes, and even liter-sized flasks filled with all sorts of strange and colorful liquids covered every square inch of all available surfaces.

Kai looked over the blues, yellows, purples, and every other color of the rainbow that presented itself to him. The diaspora of shades only held his attention for a little while, however. Next was the smattering of researchers in white lab coats similar to Iori’s. They didn’t seem to give the two any mind, so the teen didn’t bother with them for long either. Soon after, his attention shifted towards the other strange apparatuses scattered across the lab.

A hydraulic press with a stone attachment was repeatedly crushing several leaves, bones, and powdery pellets together into a loose paste inside a mortar made of the same material as the head. In another corner, a lamp shone onto a piece of strange-colored rock, the light reflecting off of it into a cast-iron cauldron. And finally, a large, box-like machine with several knobs and a large glass window was growing a crystal on top of what looked like an animal skull placed inside of it.

“So this is where you do all of your chemistry?” asked Kai.

“That’s correct!” replied Iori. “I’m the head chemist, by the way.”

“What kind of chemical lab looks like a steampunk witch’s hut? I mean, is that a mechanical mortar and pestle? Why not just use a blender?”

“That’s because this isn’t just a chemistry lab,” replied the woman, doing her best to control a twitching eyelid. “It also doubles as an alchemy lab.”

“So that’s like magical chemistry, right?” asked Kai, beginning to talk more quickly. “How does it all work? And do you still need all of these bells and whistles? What does it all do?”

“As a matter of fact, we do,” she replied in a huff. When Iori looked towards the teen and saw the glow beginning to form in his eyes, she visibly relaxed and the smile on her face began to look more genuine. “Want me to tell you what all of this is?”

Kai vigorously nodded his head in response, like a kid being asked if he wanted some ice cream.

“You know that magic is real, right? Have they taught you that at least?”

“Of course! But they haven’t really taught me any actual spells yet, though.”

“It’s only your first week here, you’ve got time to learn something neat,” the lady nodded. “Anyway, with magic being real, so is alchemy. We’ve still yet to break it down as well as chemistry was back on Earth, but we’ve been able to understand it well enough to replicate a lot of the more esoteric processes in a lab setting.”

“Why’s that? Isn’t it also, like, the interaction of atoms and subatomic particles?”

“Look at you kid, looks like you’ve passed middle school chemistry at least!”

Kai looked back at her with a glare.

“Seriously though, a lot of the new recruits who pass by here would pass for medieval peasants with how little they remember from then. So it really was a genuine compliment.”

Seeing the teen brighten up at her words, Iori continued.

“So what we do have figured out so far is that magical energy is most likely a subatomic particle, and it can stick onto various materials to give them magical properties. How it actually works and how to induce the effect without those materials, we don’t know. But we’ve managed to get close enough.”

“Alright, so do you have any examples?” asked Kai, beginning to grow impatient. “What the hell do all of these weird machines do anyway?”

“For starters, that hydraulic press acts like a mortar and pestle, if it wasn’t obvious enough. Apparently the crushing motion ‘unlocks the magical potential’ of different materials in a way that a blender would just dissipate it into the air. Don’t even ask how that works, it just does, and I’m just happy we have a way of getting a machine to do it for us.”

Kai nodded simply, accepting the limited explanation. However, his eyebrows began to slightly droop and Iori caught the reaction.

“If you thought that was boring, then get a load of this!” she exclaimed, pouring more of her energy into the cheeriness of her voice. “See that metal cauldron over there? A lot of old witch’s brews and potions require being exposed to moonlight during various phases of the moon. So to get around not exactly having a moon at headquarters, we’ve got this! By shining a UV lamp at a piece of moonrock at various angles and intensities, we can simulate all of that!”

“Wait, an actual moon rock?” asked Kai incredulously. “How did you manage to get one of those if you don’t even have rockets? Unless there’s a World out there with space ships, or something.”

“Nope, no sci-fi Worlds just yet. If we did, our soldiers wouldn’t be carrying around regular old guns and the other engineering departments would be out of business!” the woman let out a chuckle. “But we got ours through a series of high-powered portals calibrated to open up on the moon. Seriously, we had to get a ton of expensive materials, set it all up on a World with a System with Skills that made the process much cheaper, and spend months figuring out how to do it all! But I’d say it was worth it in the end, even for just a single piece of moon rock.”

Kai nodded along, enraptured at the admittedly vague story. It didn’t matter, though. This was like something out of a story. A weirdly magical technobabble-riddled fairytale that still swept him off his feet.

Iori let loose a curious smile at the teen’s reaction. “You look pretty interested in all of this. If you want to learn more about it, you should take the alchemy elective. Since you seem to know the basics of chemistry, I’ll hook you up with some of our best alchemists to tutor you!”

“For real? Thanks!” exclaimed Kai. “I’ve never really had private tutors back home, but I’ll take it, especially if they’re pros!”

“No problem! Just consider learning even more about the subject once you’re finished with your schooling here. There are a couple of really good magical universities I could write you a recommendation for.”

“Woah, slow down there,” said the teen with a chuckle. “Don’t you think you’re offering me a bit too much?”

“Nah,” replied Iori. “It’s the least I can do for someone who looks like he’s just as interested in alchemy as I am.”

Kai nodded in acceptance. Though in the back of his mind, he felt that she really was offering him too much. As the tour continued on, the teen tried to shake the feeling, but it remained there in the back of his head.