Chapter 70

70. The Elephant Must Go Into the Fridge

***

The symposium preparations were going smoothly.

We successfully cultivated the blue mold, too.

I also prepared dozens of bread-filled glass jars.

Sterile blue mold strains—these will be shared with researchers planning to conduct studies related to penicillin.

We’ve even succeeded in creating the initial liquid culture medium for commercial use. This part wasn’t too hard, but precipitating penicillin molecules as barium salts in a weakly acidic solution…

Istina’s voice interrupted my thoughts.

“Professor! Is this supposed to catch fire?”

“The alcohol lamp broke. Extinguish the flame.”

“Yes sir!”

—Another catastrophic failure. Well, I’m not exactly a chemist anyway. There’s no way this would have worked.

Commercial production will require massive resources, and maybe someone will figure it out eventually. As far as I remember, the chemical purification process for penicillin is absurdly complex.

The general procedure goes like this:

Cultivate the blue mold in a weakly acidic solution, add acetic acid at some point, then centrifuge it. After various steps, you finally get it in the form of a barium salt solution.

But where do I even buy barium…?

“Istina, go outside and pick up some barium for me.”

“Barium? What’s that?”

“Just bring it.”

“How am I supposed to buy something if I don’t know what it is, Professor?”

Turns out Istina couldn’t find barium either.

Oh great. If the grad student says they can’t do it, it’s probably impossible. How are we going to fix this?

The answer was simple.

If technology fails, just borrow the power of magic. And if that doesn’t work, it’s simply not our time yet. So, we moved on.

This is the Alchemy Department research building at the Academy.

Back in the day, I borrowed a distillation apparatus from here once. Though technically, I never returned it, so “stole” might be more accurate.

Anyway, this is a place I’d normally avoid at all costs, but today there was no choice.

Istina and I entered the alchemy department building wearing plague doctor masks.

“But Professor, do we really need to wear these just to go next door?”

Yes, we absolutely do.

“No gray-haired chemists around.”

“What does that mean?”

“They say chemists tend to die young.”

“Oh.”

Back in my past life, students in chemical engineering or related fields used to joke about this. Scary, but true.

Even Newton, who dabbled in alchemy, had his hair analyzed posthumously. It contained four times the normal amount of lead and fifteen times the normal amount of mercury.

So naturally, he developed dementia later in life.

And even before that, he lost money investing in the South Sea Company, stuck needles into his own eyeballs, and engaged in all sorts of bizarre behavior. Was he ever truly sane?

Anyway, the conclusion is clear: if you want to live long, stay away from chemists. And when you must meet them, always wear a mask.

“You never know what kind of poison they’re brewing. Wear the mask.”

Without complaint, Istina put on her mask.

“So, which professor are we visiting in the alchemy department? Wolfram Professor, right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know him?”

She shook her head.

“He’s just one of the nicest professors in the alchemy department. They said he’s the most likely to help us.”

“Good job.”

“Thank you.”

Sounds like someone similar to Professor Klaus.

After insisting she couldn’t buy barium, she somehow managed to come up with a solution. Grad students really can do anything—it was all just an act.

We quickly arrived at Professor Wolfram’s lab. Smoke seemed to be wafting out, but thankfully we’re wearing masks.

Knock knock knock.

The door wasn’t locked.

I walked into Professor Wolfram’s lab, but it was empty. Just a giant cauldron sitting in the middle of the room.

Fortunately, it was empty—but who knows if it’s coated with lead, mercury, or arsenic? I stayed as far away from the cauldron as possible.

“Professor Wolfram!”

No response. Is anyone here?

I sat down on the couch in the corner.

“The Imperial Palace is funding your research!”

“Is that good news?”

What should I say to get a reaction?

“Graduate student salary increased to 30 gold per month!”

Rustling sounds.

At the last line, a door at the back of the lab opened. A scruffy-looking graduate student peeked out.

“Wait, is the salary really doubling? What do I need to do?”

“Just kidding.”

“Eh…”

Judging by the situation, this must be Wolfram’s grad student. By the way…

30 gold doubled? That was actually twice what Istina gets paid. At 15 gold, we wouldn’t even be able to afford the mold’s food in our lab.

The alchemy department grad student frowned.

“Who are you? Why are you wearing a mask?”

Rather than explaining that we’re wearing masks because we don’t know what poisons you people brew, I just shrugged.

“Asterix from the Healing Department. I came to request assistance from the alchemy department.”

“Oh, I’m Luciana. One moment.”

Luciana rubbed her eyes and retied her hair. She clearly woke up suddenly.

“What’s the issue?”

“One thing: where’s Professor Wolfram?”

“He went back to his family estate. He’ll be gone for a few days… If you have any questions, you can ask me.”

Luciana suddenly perked up, as if remembering something.

“Ah, Professor Asterix—you’re the one who discovered the centrifuge recently, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, it really is you! There was quite the commotion in the alchemy department about that. We could separate mixed solutions with it.”

True. I mainly used it for blood separation, but centrifugation has countless other applications.

“Good to hear.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

Luciana hopped onto the professor’s desk in the center of the lab, and I placed a sample bottle containing fungal liquid on the desk.

“This is what I wanted to ask about.”

“What is it?”

“Medicinal mushroom solution.”

It’s technically a fungus, so let’s just call it a mushroom.

This is blue mold culture liquid that’s already been centrifuged once. Now we need to figure out how to extract penicillin from it.

Honestly, I didn’t have a concrete plan. Maybe magic could somehow make it work? Or keep running the centrifuge until something happens? Although, since it’s water-soluble, centrifugation might not separate it properly.

“We need to extract a specific substance called penicillin, which kills bacteria.”

“I see.”

“Is it possible?”

“It looks difficult based on this alone. We don’t know much about this substance yet, do we?”

“Well, we still need to try, right? This is a major research project, and the Imperial Palace will fund it. Plus, I’ll credit you as a co-author on the paper.”

“Funding?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

I don’t know.

If I ask Mint, Violet, or even the Imperial Prince, we might get a decent sum. Honestly, I’ve never worried about that side of things.

“Luciana, right? Teacher Luciana. If you succeed, I’ll cover your tuition for next year.”

She closed her eyes and thought for a moment.

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright, I’ll give it a shot. Leave the culture here, and please document as much as you can about the target substance.”

Seems like the negotiation succeeded… I nodded, and Luciana stared intently at the culture flask.

At least she seems enthusiastic.

“What did you plan to do, Professor?”

“First, centrifuge it. Then check each layer of the separated solution to see if our desired substance is present or if there’s any concentration difference.”

Luciana scratched her head.

“Ooh, that could definitely work.”

“That’s all I’ve thought of so far.”

“Let’s try it. We have crystallization magic and water removal spells too. Or we could just purify the pure liquid, removing all impurities and mold substances, then condense whatever’s left?”

“Alchemy is your specialty.”

“I’ll do my best to finish it quickly.”

That’s right. If we don’t need to inject it, we can just remove the problematic large-volume impurities and compress it into pill form. There might be other methods too?

Looks like a solution is forming. Luciana licked her lips while staring at the mysterious solution.

***

There will definitely be an answer.

The elephant will fit in the fridge.

We left the alchemy department building. We removed our suffocating masks, and Istina beside me looked slightly upset.

“Professor.”

“What is it?”

“Can you cover my tuition too?”

Ah, crap. I shouldn’t have brought Istina along. I forgot she’s also a grad student. Anyway, she seems annoyed.

“Teacher Istina, if the Imperial Palace sends a lot of funding this time, I’ll cover your tuition. Deal?”

“I understand. I was feeling a bit hurt.”

Still… Don’t you earn money working in the ward? You make ten times what Luciana does, right? Maybe Istina’s just petty?

“By the way, do you really think that person can isolate antibiotics? It seems tough.”

“I think it’s possible?”

Once we present this at the Witbi Symposium, people across the empire will start researching ways to produce penicillin. Finding the answer is just a matter of time.

Ideally, we’d be the ones to discover it, but the commercialization of penicillin is ultimately inevitable.

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