Ch.7874 – Atomizer

After the fourth period ended, lunchtime arrived.

We ended up standing in the cafeteria line with Ji-hye, alongside Seo-ri and Yu-na who were still growling at each other.

Everyone was busy talking about the performance assessment from the morning.

Ji-hye clapped her hands together.

“So your class had a number competition too! Our class record was 9.3.”

“It was so close, Ji-hye! I got over 9 at the end too!”

“Who got first place? Was it NoName?”

“Ahem…!”

“…?”

Yu-na proudly lifted her chin and snorted.

“You only did well because NoName helped you.”

Seo-ri shot her a curt glance.

Since the end of second period, Yu-na’s elevated excitement showed no signs of diminishing.

Seo-ri, who had already heard the full story once, relayed the same information to Ji-hye.

“But injecting mana that precisely was super difficult too!”

“Yes, yes, you’re amazing!”

“But how did NoName figure out that number?”

The structure of the model magic circle was beyond elementary school curriculum. It might even be middle or high school level.

It was natural for Ji-hye to be curious.

“We received a magic circle that satisfied the harmonic mean. If the northern optimal solution was 150 and the southern was 200, the total would be around 171.42.”

“What’s a harmonic mean?”

“Hmm… how should I explain this.”

Saying it’s the reciprocal of the arithmetic mean of the reciprocals would be too confusing.

In these situations, explaining with simple numbers was easier.

“What’s the average of 1 and 1/3?”

“Umm… I feel like I know this… I definitely learned it… wait a second!”

Ji-hye wracked her brain and barely managed to answer.

“3/3? No, that’s just 1! 2/3?”

“Wow, our Ji-hye is so smart!”

“Stop teasing me when you already know the answer!”

She roughly pushed away Seo-ri’s hand that was patting her head.

“This is how you calculate the harmonic mean. Answer my questions one by one. What’s the reciprocal of 1?”

“That’s 1, of course.”

“Then what’s the reciprocal of 1/3?”

“Is it 3?”

“Find the average of those two.”

“That’s easy. 2!”

“And if you take the reciprocal of that?”

“Umm… 1/2?”

“Correct. That’s the harmonic mean. Get it?”

“No, I don’t understand at all!”

I thought I explained it simply.

I guess I’m not cut out for teaching kids.

If even simple math like this is difficult, I have no idea where to start teaching Adella later.

Anyway.

After getting our meals in order, we went to the farthest corner of the cafeteria and each took a seat.

The seating arrangement was always the same: Seo-ri next to Ji-hye, and Yu-na next to me.

“Wow, this bulgogi looks so delicious.”

Yu-na put down her tray with a bright smile. Fortunately, today she had piled her tray with rice and meat dishes.

“Is that all you’re eating again? Want some of my meat?”

“I’m fine.”

“If you eat so little, you might get sick later.”

I’m eating little because I’m already sick.

I put some bulgogi in my mouth, hoping Professor Cheon would bring good news about the potion soon.

Unlike the usual non-stop chatter, today’s atmosphere was unusually quiet.

Seo-ri and Yu-na were rolling their eyes around, seemingly thinking about the harmonic mean I had explained earlier.

Unlike Seo-ri who kept trying to understand, Yu-na, who seemed to have grasped it somewhat, asked me another question.

“I understand the formula. But I still don’t get what that coil magic actually does.”

“You’re curious about the coil magic, Yu-na?”

“No… I mean, yes, I am curious. Please explain…”

Surprisingly, Yu-na bowed her head and asked first.

She usually had a strong tendency to not admit what she didn’t know, so she must have been genuinely curious about the magic.

How could I explain it easily?

There were limitations to just explaining with words.

“I’ll show you when I take my potion later.”

Indeed, there was no better way than demonstrating an example directly.

* * *

Formulas and theories are actually just supplementary elements when explaining magic.

In the end, to understand magic, you need more intuitive observations about why these phenomena occur.

I brought Yu-na to the school’s backyard.

Right next to the wall separating the middle and elementary sections, I placed a potion bottle I had brought from class.

“Why did we come here?”

“To show you the magic.”

“It’s kind of scary with no one around.”

Indeed, unlike the garden in front of the main building, the backyard was overgrown with weeds.

It definitely contributed to the eerie atmosphere.

But the reason I specifically chose this location was because people rarely passed through here.

“Did you bring a pen you don’t use anymore?”

“Yeah, this one’s broken so I don’t use it anymore.”

I took the four-color pen Yu-na handed me and removed all the contents, leaving only the plastic shell.

With that, all preparations were complete.

“The model you saw earlier was magic that generates heat using an electromagnetic coil. I’ll try to recreate something similar, though not exactly the same.”

Before opening the potion bottle, I recorded the magic circle’s form on the ground.

It might be difficult to understand just by looking at the form, but let me try to explain it as simply as possible, channeling my inner master teacher.

“This thing made by twisting wire around is called a coil.”

“I know about coils! We learned about them in science class in first grade.”

“Oh, that makes this easier. This part here is a formula that makes electric current flow through the coil.”

“Electric current?”

“Yes, electricity.”

“You make electricity flow? Why?”

“When electricity flows through a coil, it generates heat.”

“So the coil gets hot?”

“Yes, extremely hot.”

I skipped all explanations about voltage, current, and resistance.

Right now, the common knowledge that current flowing through a coil makes it hot was sufficient for understanding the magic circle.

“What happens if water gets hot?”

“Umm… hot water?”

“Make it even hotter.”

“Water turns into steam!”

“That’s right. We’re going to use the coil’s heat to turn liquid into gas.”

First, I drew an inscription magic circle on the ground and linked it to the pen.

I boldly removed the complicated electromagnetic operation part and modified the magic circle to provide conventional current supply.

[Inscription: Heat Transfer-Coil]

I added a pointer formation circle to make the pen’s interior follow the principles I had written in the magic circle.

“Yu-na, imagine there’s a small coil inside the pen like this.”

“Okay.”

“What would happen if we dropped potion onto a hot coil?”

“Wouldn’t the potion turn into smoke? Or wait… would the coil cool down?”

“We don’t want the coil to cool down, so I put cotton in the middle. We drop the potion one drop at a time onto the cotton.”

“Then it would turn into smoke!”

Yu-na answered confidently, and I confirmed her answer.

As soon as I opened the potion bottle, I inserted the pen into the flask’s opening.

I filled the remaining space completely with clay left over from last week’s art class to prevent the residue from oxidizing.

A ridiculous-looking structure was created, but it wasn’t easy to explain this magic any better.

“The key to this magic is resistance. Look carefully. If I inject mana here, the total resistance becomes 0.5 ohms.”

Tap-tap-

I tapped the pen twice to activate the inscription magic circle.

And as soon as the magic circle on the ground lit up, I put the end of the pen to my mouth and inhaled.

The potion is absorbed by the cotton, and immediately vaporized by the heated coil, creating steam.

The gas that traveled from the pen to my mouth, from my mouth to my throat, and from my throat to my lungs, turned into a hazy smoke that spread out in clouds when I exhaled.

“Whoooosh.”

As expected. Taking the potion this way definitely reduces the bitter taste.

Moreover, mana in a nebulous state tends to stay in the body once it enters, so efficiency-wise it wasn’t much different from taking it as a liquid.

Why hadn’t I thought of taking it this way before?

It was a moment when I once again felt the desperate need for creativity in life.

“Woooow! How did you do that, NoName? Smoke is coming out of your mouth!”

“Should we try doubling the resistance? Would that double the smoke?”

“More than this?”

Seeing Yu-na so excited made me happy too.

I changed the resistance to 1 ohm and put the pen in my mouth to inhale again.

“Whoooosh.”

“Wooow, the smoke! *cough cough*… ugh, it’s bitter.”

Yu-na waved her hands through the smoke, which was about twice as much as before, and coughed as if some had gone up her nose.

“You shouldn’t try to breathe it in on purpose. Do you want to try too? This one isn’t bitter at all.”

“I almost died when I accidentally took it last time…”

Yu-na shook her head vigorously.

If she doesn’t want to, I can’t force her.

I continued puffing out smoke to empty the remaining potions before fifth period started.

Yu-na, who had been observing how the magic circle worked, muttered:

“It looks just like cigarette smoke.”

“Yu-na, you’re really smart, you know that?”

“Huh?”

“This works exactly like a cigarette.”

“What?”

I exhaled the last remaining puff, completing my lunchtime dose.

Although inscription magic circles can be used for a long time, twenty uses seemed to be the limit as no more heat could be expected.

“This is called an atomizer. It’s a device found in e-cigarettes.”

Do kids these days not know about e-cigarettes?