"Please, hire this old man! I am willing to work for free at this point. Just hire me already!"

I have been patiently waiting for this moment the entire last month. This old man has been nagging me almost every hour of the day, sometimes even at night. I finally understand why DSCS wanted to get rid of him.

I rubbed my head and looked at him, pretending to be annoyed: "Listen I'll hire you for a month but there are two rules you need to obey."

He suddenly stopped bawling his eyes out and looked at me with surprise evident in his eyes.

"First rule: no drinking. Second rule: you do whatever I say. If you follow these instructions faithfully we'll be able to restore this department to its previous state in a month or two."

"You don't even understand the foundational thesis of this department. How do you plan to fix something that's unfixable? I labored year after year and never managed to prove anything," the old man looked at me with skepticism.

"Tell me your story while we take a walk to the launchpads."

"Back then when I was still young there was a very popular field of thought that theorized magic to be a consequence of desire. In starvation studies subjects would be able to manifest significantly stronger spells. The theory was called: magic as wish fulfilment."

"I am guessing Tesla disputed the theory by replicating the experiment but he measured physical exertion instead."

He looked at me with surprise muttering: "I guess geniuses think alike."

"Anyhow, that's where I got the idea for the theory of psychoelements. The thesis is simple: elements are a consequence of an obsession."

"What would that make somebody without an element?"

He looked at me mischievously and said: "A natural skeptic!"

"How would that even work?"

"You're very good at suspending your own judgment and you're good at generating criticism of fixed ideas such as justice or truth. But most importantly you don't have an emotional need."

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"Doesn't everyone have emotional needs?"

"How many real friends do you have?"

"You have a point. However, I don't think there's ever been a case of a person's element changing along with personality."

"Exactly this was the accusation aimed at me. There's only one reason why I persisted. I managed to create a psychological questionnaire that could predict a person's element with an above ninety five percent accuracy."

"But correlation doesn't mean causation."

"I know! But those vultures from the mana department created a device that can guess a person's element on the basis of a blood test. One of the last theses that Tesla published before his death has the title: element as a spectrum of mana. That old fucker could not resist kicking me while I was down! Even on his deathbed he dedicated his last moments to pushing me into misery!"

"But he never managed to truly disprove your theory. Presence of elemental indicators could simply be psychosomatic."

"Even if that's true others did not see it this way. At that point Tesla was old but he was also extremely influential. My apprentices were leaving one by one and the title of a grandsage was slipping through my fingers. I took a risk I shouldn't have and dabbled with mind altering substances. By the time I recovered I had lost years of memories and health. And now we have five years left before my department gets shut down for a lack of evidence."

The pain and misery the old man must have experienced were showing in the many wrinkles on his face.

"What about the Theory Of Spirit Communion?"

"They wanted to merge my research with their assertions. In their eyes elements are a consequence of spirits picking specific people with specific mental traits. For example, fire spirits have a universal preference for ambitious people. Someone with no elements was simply born without spirit perception and hence the spirits don't affect his magic manifestation.

"Sounds horrible," I replied in a bored manner.

"You seem to have lost interest."

"I just don't like determinism."

We finally arrived at the dragon launchpads.

"Where are we going?"

"We're getting some ingredients from a nearby volcano."

I will need to make huge amounts of gunpowder. I will push firearms technology to the level of the 19th century. I am not capable of more than that. For example I have no idea how to create ballistic plates or steam engines. I can't even engineer a bessemer converter. I have no cheat code or system.

I was a soldier in my previous life. I know the best camouflage tactics. I can hit someone with a sniper rifle from a kilometer away. I know thousands of survivalist tricks and I am familiar with most martial arts.

Doesn't save me from a dragon's breath attack. Even if I arm my peasants with rifles they would all die to a single well prepared sage.

Magic shields, baubles and fantastic armors are in a league of their own.

But I am not giving up! I am already selling mass produced crossbows from my workshop. With the finances taken care of I'll definitely be able to think of something.