Chapter 82
“Goldie.”
“Yesh.”
“Was that your own idea, or did the Saintess tell you to do it?”
“Of course it was Goldie’s idea─ Eeeek!! Don’t pinch my cheeks!!”
Akion pinched and pinched Goldie’s cheeks after she caused another appropriately sized incident that day.
- S t r e t c h~!
“Waaaaah!!”
Even so, Akion found Goldie’s cheeks fascinating as they stretched farther and farther.
How could a person’s cheeks be this springy…?
Then, on a sudden impulse, Akion turned his eyes to the Saintess, who was raising her hand beside him.
“Saint? Don’t tell me you’re going to pinch mine too─ Aaaaaah.”
“These don’t, though.”
Unfortunately, the Saintess’s cheeks did not stretch as well as Goldie’s.
They were so elastic that they simply refused to stretch?
Thus, Akion committed the audacious act of pinching the cheeks of the Saintess, one of the three great powers of the Heavenly Church.
“The Saintess needs to work on this.”
“Exactly what am I supposed to work on?!”
“Ahem. I mean you should work on them as hard as Goldie does─ Eeeek!! I was joking!!”
“I’ll let you off with this, but still, don’t tease people too much. Understood?”
“Yes, Saint….”
Of course, it was only a joke, and the Saintess’s holy light sword could not harm a person in the first place.
After ending with the bizarre advice that the Saintess should develop more elastic cheeks, Akion decided to forgive the two of them.
* * *
So, what happened with the espresso-machine development?
“Haa, haa…!”
“Hk, gek, guh.”
There were all sorts of complicated valves,
a purifier to prevent contamination in the incoming water,
and a timer-based music-box system that could adjust the extraction time in increments of 0.5 seconds,
and on top of all that, they had installed a heat exchanger in the pressure boiler─ The result was a design of grotesque difficulty by modern mage standards…
“It’s finished…!”
“Now we can go home and sleep, uhh, waaah…!”
A two-group espresso machine capable of pulling two espressos at once had been completed.
“Where do you think you’re going? Now you have to do your own research assignment─ Ack! Ack! I’m joking, so let go of my hair!”
Akion had his hair pulled by both of them as punishment for teasing his sisters, who had been marinated in overtime and all-nighters.
And they had every right to, considering he had worked them so hard that even Aysirel, his guard, and the Saintess had pretended not to notice.
“I took you in, and this is how you repay me. Tsk.”
“Akion….”
“No matter how much resentment you hold, you mustn’t kill him….”
Rather than assign a new task to comfort the graduate students for their hard work, Akion postponed that for the moment and immediately gave them both some time off.
Of course, he could only do that because he had time to spare. He had wanted to rest like this when he was in graduate school, too.
“You should work them without killing them until they repent, as long as it doesn’t harm their health, Saint.”
“Sometimes I think the Saintess is worse than Akion….”
After sending the two of them away, Akion stood in front of the two machines.
One was the bean grinder they had already made.
The other was the espresso machine whose completion they had confirmed moments earlier.
“Phewww….”
Each was a beautiful machine assembled by Clad’s hands, which tolerated not even a micrometer of error.
They probably would not explode while in use.
- Click.
The concave, cylinder-like thing attached to the espresso machine was the portafilter.
Actually, this was unfinished, too.
For now, to prevent corrosion, they had cast it as a single piece of brass and coated it with tin, but….
‘We’ll have to make stainless steel, or something.’
Even so, the coating would eventually peel off and cause trouble.
To resist corrosion, they would ultimately need stainless steel.
But to make stainless steel, they had to obtain chromium and nickel,
and reduce the carbon content of the stainless steel containing them to 0.08% or less.
To lower that carbon content, they even had to blast the mixture with oxygen and argon gas while making it.
‘Sooner or later, we’ll have to properly obtain an inert gas.’
Still, argon was relatively easy to obtain among inert gases, so if he set his mind to it, he could manage somehow.
Of course, “relatively easy” was relative.
It still required a hellish process, such as liquefying air, distilling it, and separating it into its components.
- Whirrrrr~!
- Clack clack clack!
“Hmm. Is it really that delicious?”
“It certainly is! Huuu, it was an enchanting coffee unlike the drip coffee I used to brew…!”
It would take quite a while to get that far… so for now, Akion decided to focus on coffee.
Coffee beans ground to a uniform consistency went into a doser, and he pulled the dosing lever to fill the portafilter with grounds.
Then, after pressing them with a flat disk so that the grounds were tightly packed inside the filter….
- Click.
- Clunk! Vroooom….
He attached it to the espresso machine and pressed the extraction button.
The pressure boiler, heated piping hot by the turbine pump and Ma-gic electric heater, announced that extraction had begun with a trembling sound….
“The pressure gauge… It’s holding steady at 9 bar.”
Hot, high-pressure water passed through the coffee grounds compressed under the proper amount of pressure, extracting the coffee, which then flowed out through the filter’s tiny holes.
- Trickle, trickle.
A layer of fine, reddish-brown crema foam piled up over the black liquid collecting below it…
“Done.”
“That’s all…?”
A double shot of espresso was complete.
“Professor Akion, please hurry…!”
“Boss. Please calm down.”
Now, if one added a single precious spoonful of sugar to this cup,
it would make a demitasse like the ones served at an Italian espresso bar.
- Click.
Thus, Akion and Ariba each held a cup.
“What is that they’re so nervous about…?”
“Because it’s delicious, I suppose.”
- Gulp…!
Despite the puzzled looks from those around them,
the two downed the espresso in their cups in one gulp.
And then,
“Mmmmmm.”
“Hooooo.”
The rich flavor of the espresso and the sweetness of the sugar blended together, wantonly ravaging Akion and Ariba’s tongues.
“This is cof— No, this is coffee too.”
Ariba’s drip coffee was certainly good coffee.
But the umami of espresso, extracted with the oils inside the beans left intact, was certainly excellent as well.
“I never knew the oils inside the beans could cling to the mouth like this…!”
Ariba’s over-the-top reaction made a slight sense of unease creep over Akion, but….
“Professor Akion! C-could I have just one more cup?”
“Other people need to try it too, so please wait. And next… I’ll teach you how to make steamed milk, so try it as a café latte.”
It seemed he was simply reacting that way because it was so delicious, so Akion let it slide.
*
The next morning.
“Ugh, Boss. A cup of coffee, please.”
It was currently final-exam season, when academy students were being ground up and consumed.
Courses without midterms staked all their grades on the final, so academy students were inevitably ground down even harder.
“Oh, Hessler! Good morning!”
“You’re full of energy, Boss….”
That was why Ariba’s café tended to be bustling from early morning.
The coffee was expensive, but one cup let them somehow endure their forced all-nighters and the fatigue they caused.
“Really?! Even though I pulled an all-nighter, you say I still look full of energy? I suppose the coffee I had yesterday was just that delicious!”
“Eek.”
That was why Hessler could not understand Ariba’s all-nighters.
No, even if you poured coffee down your throat, it was hard to keep going through the fatigue.
But Ariba was brimming with energy as if nothing were wrong.
“For someone like you, Hessler, I recommend a cup!!”
Ariba did not want to be the only one to have the precious experience of drinking espresso.
He did not mind showing off a little, but as someone who had always liked coffee, he wanted the customers to recognize how excellent this new menu item was.
- Click, clack!
- Whirrrrr~!!!
“Boss, what’s that? I’ve never seen that device before…?”
“It’s the latest coffee machine Professor Akion made!”
“Oh….”
As it happened, Hessler was also an undergraduate taking Akion’s Introduction to Basic Science.
But since he was an undergraduate in the Faculty of Knight Studies… he was having a rough time trying to make his barely functioning brain turn over while studying.
But could he really drink coffee made with the latest magical device created by Akion?
With those expectations, he looked down at the small cup that emerged moments later.
“The aroma… is really rich, isn’t it?”
“Exactly! The fats within the beans remain intact, giving off a rich aroma!”
With a precious spoonful of sugar lavishly added as well, it vigorously stimulated Hessler’s body as he began to enter the realm of overwork.
- Drink it, Hessler….
“Ghk…?!”
It seduced him relentlessly, as if drinking it were the only way he could be saved.
- Click!
In the end, Hessler could not resist. He downed a demitasse of espresso in one shot, and….
“……Wow.”
He simply ended up marveling at how incredibly delicious the coffee was.
“This is incredibly delicious.”
“Of course! Professor Akion is definitely a genius!”
That did not mean Ariba’s drip coffee was bad, though.
Perhaps this was simply another kind of charm… It gave him the realization that there was such a field within coffee.
“One cup of that and you’ll be fine for two days!”
“Haha, thank you. Keep the change!”
Having poured coffee straight into his body, Hessler immediately went to train with the Faculty of Knight Studies.
And then,
“Hessler. Congratulations. You’ve set a new record in the running event.”
“It’s all thanks to your guidance, Assistant Instructor. Thank you!!”
“No, I didn’t really guide you at all today….”
Hessler was in excellent condition that day.
He had expected to be exhausted from studying all night….
- Vwoom!
“The vibration of your aura is much more stable than yesterday, Hessler.”
“Thank you!! It’s all thanks to your ocean-like understanding and guidance, Professor!!”
“No. This is your talent. The ability to absorb instruction quickly is a talent, too.”
He was absorbing instruction with strange ease.
‘Could my talent have finally blossomed?!’
Hessler was confused yet delighted enough to spout Gyeongsang Gothic internally.
Of course, this phenomenon was not limited to Hessler alone.
- Shhhhh….
“Oh ho. I didn’t know you could absorb instruction so well.”
“I didn’t know I could do this well either.”
From the Faculty of Knight Studies, where Hessler belonged, to the Faculties of Magic, Arts, and Administration.
It was a phenomenon that began appearing across every faculty.
“Hmm. Is this… backflow?”
“……Now that I look at it, it was backflow?! Good heavens, no one had noticed. How did you notice it?!”
“I just had a feeling the moment I saw it.”
Undergraduates, staff, professors, and research slaves… no, graduate students, without exception!
As if they had made a deal with the devil, they had gained tremendous comprehension, albeit temporarily.
Their one thing in common was….
“Could it be because they drank espresso?”
“But it’s only a cup of coffee, isn’t it? And it’s much less than the drip coffee we usually drink….”
“You’re probably just feeling good today!”
That morning, they had all drunk espresso at Ariba’s café.