Chapter 4: The Paradox of the Falling Stones

The next morning, Lia was awakened by a knock at her door from Adèle.

She dressed in a daze, ready to head down to the first floor for her lesson.

Instead, Adèle led her straight up the spiral staircase to the fourth floor.

“Senior, aren’t we going to class?”

“The mentor has other instructions.”

Adèle’s reply was curt, but from the tension in her profile, Lia could see a glimmer of envy she couldn’t hide.

The two arrived once more before the elegant door.

Adèle knocked, and Klein’s voice came from within.

“Enter.”

Inside the room, Klein was already standing before the lab bench.

Seeing them, he instructed Adèle, “Go teach the apprentices.

Today’s lesson is on basic elemental theory.”

Adèle froze for a moment, asking instinctively, “But Mentor, there are no other…”

“Then go organize the tomes in the library,” Klein cut her off, his tone leaving no room for argument.

“Yes.”

Adèle dared not ask further.

She gave a slight bow and turned to leave.

As she passed Lia, she cast a complicated glance her way.

Watching Adèle’s retreating back, an absurd thought popped into Lia’s mind.

‘Could it be that besides myself and Adèle, there were no other apprentices in this tower?’

“Come here.”

Klein’s voice pulled her back from her thoughts.

Lia walked over to the lab bench and saw that the apparatus on it was completely new.

Klein had evidently worked through the night to build a brand-new apparatus for collecting gas by displacing water.

A curved glass tube extended from one end of the U-shaped tube, its other end submerged in a wide-mouthed jar inverted in a basin of water.

The basin was most likely filled with a saturated saline solution.

“Today, you are responsible for observation and recording.”

Klein handed her a blank notebook and a quill.

“Record the rate of bubble formation, the time it takes to collect a full jar of gas, and any other phenomena you deem worthy of note.”

The experiment began once more.

Lia held the quill, idly drawing lines in her notebook out of sheer boredom.

‘Observe the electrolysis of saltwater?

What a joke.

I could list a hundred details about this process with my eyes closed.’

Her gaze began to wander around the room, finally settling on a neat stack of journals beside Klein’s desk.

The cover was printed with the title Magical Theory in an elegant, flowing script.

“Mentor,” she began tentatively, “may I look at those journals?”

Klein appeared to be engrossed in controlling the intensity of the lightning being channeled into the device.

Upon hearing her, his eyes flashed for a moment before he gave a casual wave of his hand, a silent gesture of permission.

Feeling as if she’d been granted a pardon, Lia hurried to the desk, pulled out the most recent issue, and began to flip through it.

She soon came across an article with a rather captivating title: On the Free Fall of Objects and Their Inherent Desire to Return to the Earth.

The paper was verbose, filled with ornate prose and complex formulas, all built upon the axiom that ‘heavier objects fall faster.’

It proposed a new mathematical model in an attempt to more precisely quantify this intrinsic driving force known as the ‘desire to return to the earth.’

The corner of Lia’s mouth began to twitch uncontrollably.

Back when she was still a noble’s daughter, she’d already had some inkling of this world’s magic.

She knew its theories were rooted in the science of her past life, a fact she’d readily accepted after regaining her memories from a knock on the head.

But she truly hadn’t expected the mages’ theories to be so… backward.

‘Isn’t this just a rehash of the ancient theory that heavier objects fall first?’

‘Have these mages spent centuries of research just to apply more elaborate patches to a flawed theory?’

The more she read, the more absurd it seemed, until she couldn’t stop herself from muttering under her breath, “How can you reach a correct conclusion when your research is built on a false premise…”

Her voice was soft, but in the silent room, it was still clearly audible.

“What did you say?”

Klein’s icy voice cut through the air like a knife.

He had stopped his work and turned to face her, his eyes fixed on her.

Lia’s heart skipped a beat.

‘Damn it, I forgot these mages have monstrously good hearing.’

Her mind raced, a thousand thoughts flashing through it in an instant.

She held up the journal, her face a perfect picture of innocent confusion.

“Mentor, I just… I don’t understand this part.”

She pointed to the article’s core thesis.

“It says here that heavier things fall faster because their ‘desire’ to return to the earth is stronger.

Is that right?”

Klein’s expression softened.

“Correct.

It is a theory proposed by an ancient master, an axiom verified by countless generations of mages.

This paper is merely an attempt to refine it.”

Lia tilted her head and posed a fatal question.

“What if I tie a large stone and a small stone together?

Will they fall faster, or slower?”

Klein froze.

Lia didn’t give him time to think, continuing her analysis alone.

“According to this theory, the small stone has a weaker ‘desire,’ so it should drag on the large stone, making the whole thing fall slower, right?

But from another perspective, when the large and small stones are tied together, their combined weight is clearly greater than the large stone alone.

So their ‘desire’ should be stronger, and they should fall faster.”

She spread her hands, looking at Klein with an innocent expression.

“So, will it fall faster or slower?

An object can’t fall both faster and slower at the same time, can it?

Isn’t that… a contradiction?”

The room fell into a dead silence.

The composure on Klein’s face vanished.

He stood rooted to the spot, like a petrified statue.

The question was so simple that no one had ever thought to question it.

Yet it was so profound that it could tear an irreparable rift in a theoretical system that had been revered as gospel for centuries.

A contradiction.

Yes, it was an inexplicable paradox.

After a moment of shock, a fervent gleam appeared on Klein’s face that made Lia a little afraid.

“…You have a point.”

He forced out the words, his voice dry.

He walked over to Lia, took the copy of *Magical Theory*, and stared at the article he had once believed in so fervently, as if looking at the greatest joke in the world.

A light flashed in his eyes.

He snapped his head up, his gaze burning as it fixed on Lia.

“What are your thoughts?

Did that ancient tome… mention this as well?”

Lia lowered her eyes, feigning an effort to recall something.

“The book didn’t mention this directly.

But it did propose a very strange idea.”

“It said that rather than studying ‘why’ something falls, one should study ‘how’ it falls.

It also said that all things actually fall in the same way, with the same pattern of changing velocity.”

She paused, then delivered the final, crucial piece.

“Unless… something is holding it up from below.

Like, for example, air.”

Klein’s body jolted.

He strode back to his desk, unfurled a new sheet of parchment, and a quill flew into his hand and began to write furiously across the page.

“Ignore ‘desire’… study the motion itself…”

“The pattern of changing velocity is the same…”

“The resistance of air…”

He muttered to himself as he wrote, his deep blue eyes shining with the light of someone discovering a new world.

This perspective had opened an entirely new door for him.

Watching his fervent state, Lia closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.

‘I’ve managed to bluff my way through this one, too.’

However, she didn’t notice that in a brief pause from his frantic writing, Klein had lifted his head to glance at her.

In that glance, amidst the excitement, there was also a flicker of indescribable curiosity.

An ancient, fragmented tome that just so happened to contain revolutionary alchemical knowledge.

And now, that same tome just so happened to inspire a revolutionary idea.

Could such a coincidence truly exist in this world?

Klein was no fool.

He had a sharp sense that the so-called ancient tome might not exist at all.

The real treasure was perhaps this little girl standing before him, who barely reached his chest.

But he had no intention of exposing her.

Compared to some ethereal book, this living, breathing child, her head filled with fantastical ideas, was clearly a far more valuable treasure.

If he scared her away, the loss would be immense.

He soon stopped writing, looked at Lia, and made a decision.

“You no longer need to attend those basic lessons.”

His voice had regained its composure, but the content of his words made Lia’s heart leap.

“In the mornings, you will assist me with my experiments.

In the afternoons, you may go to the library on the second floor; all sections are open to you.

If you have any questions, you may come to me at any time.

As for magical meditation and training, I will instruct you personally.”