Mage? Magic Engineer!

"Is this... liquefied peat?" Rorschach drew a small sample to himself and carefully rubbed it between his fingers. "Go and fetch a few buckets."

Rorschach had the Apprentice find some containers for the samples. After several iron buckets were filled, Rorschach applied a seal and used an Ethereal Membrane to shrink them down to the size of soda cans.

"I need you to deliver these to Andre. Tell him to send one can to the Tower of Forest and another to the Secret Technique Tower. The rest are to be kept for research... No, wait. Don’t open them until I get back."

"Understood."

Once the Apprentice and the mining equipment had been mostly evacuated, Rorschach began to investigate what lay beneath.

The first thing to deal with was the oily sludge. The center of the viscous liquid bubbled slowly and constantly. With every bubble that burst, the foul, fishy stench in the air intensified.

Rorschach parted the sludge in the center and finally detected something alive moving below, constantly churning the liquefied coal. He pulled back this "veil of mystery," at last revealing a massive, pockmarked animal brain. The moment it was exposed, it let out a sticky, muffled gurgling sound.

Realizing another life form was present, the "creature" buried in the coal sludge suddenly grew more active. It struggled to climb upward, trying to reach Rorschach, who was observing from his position hovering in the air.

An arm, more than ten meters long and caked in oily sludge, lifted with great difficulty from the bottom of the pit. The instant it broke free from the earth, it rapidly accelerated, swinging toward Rorschach.

’An arm that long?’ Rorschach was slightly surprised. He had estimated the creature’s total mass based on the size of its head, which was only about two meters across. He never imagined a single arm would so drastically exceed normal biological proportions. Moreover, its overall shape was still impossible to discern.

As the Giant Beast swung its arm, the squelching sounds grew more frequent, as if it were in a state of agitation. The massive limb acted like a whip, accumulating tremendous kinetic energy at its tip. If the construction crew hadn’t evacuated in time, much of their equipment would have been pulverized by a single blow.

This time, however, it had run headfirst into an immovable object, slamming violently against the Force Field surrounding Rorschach.

SPLAT. SPLAT. The arm disintegrated. Its component parts scattered across the surface of the sludge, then slowly sank.

Rorschach took the opportunity to observe the limb. He saw that the unnaturally proportioned appendage was composed of many large bones. It had no normal tissue, like muscle; it was merely layers of an oily film wrapped around a skeleton. These bones didn’t belong to a single type of creature—they weren’t even the same color.

’Fossils?’ When he first saw the pitch-black head, Rorschach had assumed it was just covered in coal sludge. He never thought its actual body was just bones and mud slapped together.

The Giant Beast went still for a moment, as if trying to process what had just happened. Then the oily film on its head began to shift violently, letting out a wet, rattling "roar" that clearly conveyed its fury to Rorschach.

’See? It’s getting antsy again. And I haven’t even made my move...’

’Wait a second.’ Rorschach had been about to deliver a badass one-liner, but he didn’t expect the creature to be bluffing. After its roar, it began to wiggle its uncoordinated, haphazardly assembled body. This wasn’t an attack; it was diving headfirst back into the ground, the very picture of someone beating a hasty retreat.

’Hmph. Trying to run?’

’I can’t just drag this thing out. Its main body is still unidentified, and since it’s just pieced together, shedding parts is even easier for it than for a gecko to drop its tail. If it really tries to run, it can just abandon whatever my Super Giant Qilin Arm grabs and the main body will escape.’

Therefore, the only way to stop it was to lock it down completely. To immobilize an object in water, the first spell a Mage would think of would be the [Frozen Ray], which would solidify the water around the target. Rorschach took a similar approach, but what he faced was liquefied rock, earth, and carbon.

First, he used a wide-area [Decomposition Skill] combined with intense heat, causing the oily sludge at the bottom of the pit to vaporize.

The monster couldn’t understand why its body was suddenly suspended in mid-air, nor why it was being seared by an intense heat.

Since the oily sludge contained a large amount of water, the resulting steam created significant partial pressure. Rorschach then took control of the gas circulation within the entire mine pit, turning the area into a gigantic coking furnace. Under the oxygen-starved conditions, all the viscous coal sludge was converted into coke oven gas.

If Rorschach had wanted, he could have introduced sufficient oxygen right then, or continued heating it to produce water gas, and simply blown the monster into fragments of calcium salt. But he had plenty of ways to destroy this thing; there was no need to go to such lengths. Even just swapping the [Decomposition Skill] for the [Great Splitting Technique] would have left the monster either dead or permanently crippled.

By now, the peat’s molecular chains had been broken, generating large quantities of gaseous alkanes and aromatic compounds. Rorschach chose to continue heating and manipulating the internal airflow, gradually producing unsaturated alkenes and alkynes.

Residual oxygen was still present, so combustion inevitably occurred within the zone Rorschach controlled. From the edge of the mine, it looked as if the entire pit had been completely filled by a scorching, massive Fireball.

"Holy shit, is *that* what you call a [Fireball Skill]?" one of the onlooking pump operators asked the Apprentice, who had just returned. After the Apprentice had made his delivery, Andre had dispatched more Casters to the scene.

"Er... more or less. There might be a slight difference in size."

With all the surrounding sludge vaporized, the skeletal Giant Beast’s body was fully revealed. Its bones were all haphazardly pieced together, forming a figure that resembled a Dragon, but was exceptionally twisted.

The Giant Beast thought Rorschach was trying to burn it to death and felt a bit smug. Its core was not afraid of high temperatures; as long as the bones remained, it could reform itself.

It even possessed an intelligence on par with the Dragon Race and considered playing dead in front of this powerful youngster, allowing just one or two bones to slip away deep into the earth.

’The temperature is about right.’ Rorschach estimated that the concentration of unsaturated hydrocarbons had reached the required level. He began compressing the gas within the area to increase its density. Simultaneously, the immense heat he was applying, plus the heat released from the subsequent combustion of gases, was all contained within the field.

Dust particles that were difficult to vaporize began to vitrify. As the temperature dropped, they were the first to cool, adhering to the monster’s skeleton and hardening into a glaze-like coating. Other molten particles mixed with the tar produced by carbonization and also hardened. Finally, there were the uncarbonized, unsaturated hydrocarbons. Rorschach’s Magic Power triggered polymerization, causing them to gradually condense and link together to form an artificial resin.

All these materials mixed together, acting like the expanding resin of a chemical anchor, sealing the entire monster up tight. It was rendered completely immobile, transformed into a statue of "iridescent black."

Finally, he applied several layers of seals to "gift-wrap" it. Encased in an Ethereal Membrane, it shrank continuously until the beast, once dozens of meters long, was now only about thirty centimeters high—the perfect size for a desk ornament. Of course, the preservation and packaging were for the purpose of future research.

The entire process seemed to take a long time, but in reality, it was over in about ten minutes. The preliminary work of clearing the sludge to find the creature was what had actually been time-consuming. Rorschach weighed the "artwork" in his hand and wondered, ’Does this count as refining?’

He floated to the edge of the pit. "For reasons that are still unclear, the geological strata here underwent mass liquefaction. It seems many fossils were gathered together, and combined with the liquefied coal, they gave rise to a Demon. The ground here is no longer stable. Evacuate as soon as possible."

After speaking, Rorschach saw that the Apprentice had returned, with several other Mages behind him. "Did Andre send you?"

"Yes."

’Excellent. Andre really gets me.’ He immediately gave instructions to the Casters: "The strata have stopped shifting; the primary danger has been eliminated. Carefully inspect the surrounding area. If you discover any cavities, do not enter them recklessly. Report immediately if any other Demons appear."

After giving his orders, Rorschach immediately left to patrol the other sites. For the most part, he found no other issues.

By the time he finished, nearly two hours had passed since dawn. He returned to his workshop to find several Great Mages already online, exchanging the intelligence they had each compiled.