Chapter 2

I cleaned off the magic ink from my hands and looked around in satisfaction. After a decade on the job, this was my biggest project yet, even though I was the only client for this one.

The next day, the master of Icicle Mountain returned.

Bear Windom was one of the three God-tier practitioners of Crylestia School. He practiced Deep Freeze magic. Supposedly, his body temperature was always under freezing, and touching him could freeze your finger.

Rumor had it that he was 300 years old, though he looked to be under 250.

His expression was always icy, and he did not speak much. The school’s students nicknamed him the Ice Cube.

Pushing open the door to the main cave and feeling the temperature gradation, Bear looked like his family jewels had been stolen.

“Who messed with my arrays?”

Everyone in Icicle Mountain shook in their boots.

Meanwhile, I was in a living area eating a cold pastry. When I heard Bear’s voice, I looked up and found a silver-haired man at the cave entrance. Cold air swirled around him, and he seemed like a man-shaped AC unit to me.

“I did it,” I said. “The original design made no sense. Cold air could only ever come in and not go out. The living areas were too cold and ate up our energy.

“I changed it so there’s some temperature gradation. The living areas are actually habitable now.”

Bear looked at me.

I looked at him.

“Do you know who had set up these arrays?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Who?”

“Me.”

I nodded. “Alright. Your skills are subpar.”

In an instant, everything went quiet.

The new students beside me were scared stiff, but I was not afraid at all. I had been doing AC repair for ten years. I had met too many clients who thought they knew everything.

I was not worried about fixing something that did not work. I was more worried about people who could not admit that they had made mistakes.

Besides, I really did think that the array design had been awful.

“Your array was flawed.” I stood up and started counting the problems off on my fingers.

“Firstly, the cold air had no circuit to follow. Everything hinges upon the fulcrum. The load of the fulcrum was three times what was normal, so its longevity was at least halved.

“Secondly, you relied on the students’ own magic to forcefully maintain their body temperature. You’re making the clients do the work, and that doesn’t make sense.

“Thirdly, you put the training and living areas in the same temperature zone. Don’t you find it too cold to sleep in an ice box?”

Bear did not speak. He only stared at me, looking like he was going to explode. After a long time, he finally said, “It’s cold.”

I kept hounding him. “Then what do you think of my changes?”

Bear kept staring at me. After a while, he came further into the cave, reached the living area, and stopped.

It was 47 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It’s decent.” His tone was slightly warm.

Just then, the system popped up.

[User has completed an S-tier array improvement task. Reward: Magical XP +500; Array Blueprints: Level 1 unlocked.]

S-tier? Fixing the central AC system was an S-tier task?

The system replied, [The array was the design of a God-tier practitioner. No one had changed it in 300 years.]

[The user has not only changed it but also gained the approval of the master of the mountain. Difficulty magnifier was 10x.]

Well, alright.

I watched Bear in the living area, standing there like a normal person without shivering. I thought to myself that my future was set. I could keep doing this.

News traveled quickly. Everyone soon found out that a new student at Icicle Mountain had changed the master’s array and was not frozen to death. Instead, she had won the master’s approval.

The speed with which this news traveled was akin to the speed of the cold air in Icicle Mountain.

The next day, someone came looking for me.

It was the assistant principal of Medici Mountain. She was a white-haired old woman. She had been practicing her craft for fifty years, and her temper was hotter than the ovens she used.

“You’re the student who fixed the arrays of Icicle Mountain?” She looked me up and down. “You know about arrays?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then what did you fix?”

“Ventilation.”

“What?”

“Ventilation, the system of air flow and warmth, along with air conditioning engineering,” I explained. “To me, the magic in this world works like a heating system. Magical energy is the medium, arrays are the pipes, and the array fulcrums are the compressor. It’s all the same.”

She did not understand, but she was very straightforward.

“There are some temperature issues in the oven room of Medici Mountain. High-level magical pills require precise temperatures in the ovens.

“I’ve tried to fix it for the past thirty years, but the temperature’s always off by about 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Can you fix it?”

There was a temperature difference of 68 degrees Fahrenheit? In my field, that was a matter of temperature control. It was a classic problem of bad ventilation.

“Let me see.”

In the oven room of Medici Mountain, I understood the issue at first glance.

The issue was the manner of supplying magical energy, which was “fixed frequency.” Magical energy was supplied at a fixed rate to the oven, but the oven required different temperatures during different phases.

It was like needing an AC unit to cool and heat at different times, but the unit only had an on switch.

The solution was simple. It had to be changed into a variable frequency system.

I added some adjustment symbols to the magical supply array, making it so that the flow of magical energy could adjust itself according to the oven’s needs.

The mechanism worked exactly like a compressor. It would provide exactly how much was needed, not more and not less.

After making this change, I had one of the practitioners try the oven.

The temperature fluctuation changed from 68 degrees Fahrenheit to 7 degrees Fahrenheit.

The old woman stared at the oven for two seconds before becoming exceedingly impressed with me.