The lecture hall smelled of stale incense and old parchment.It was a semi-circular amphitheater, with rows of uncomfortable wooden benches rising steeply toward the ceiling. Dust motes danced in the shafts of light filtering through the stained-glass windows.

  I sat in the back row, trying to find a comfortable position. It was impossible. The Academy designed these seats to keep students awake through pain, not interest.

  "Water," Professor Vane droned on, his voice echoing magically from the podium below. He was a thin man with a beard that looked like dried seaweed. "Water is not merely a substance. It is a mood. It is the tears of the Goddess Isara."

  He waved his wand, and a stream of water rose from a basin, twisting into the shape of a dancing nymph.The students around me gasped. Quills scratched furiously on parchment.*Topic: Isara's Tears. Property: Emotional Resonance.*

  I didn't write anything. I stared at the floating water."**Surface tension manipulation,**" Mark II analyzed in my ear, his voice a welcome anchor to reality. "The target is using telekinetic mana to overcome gravity. Efficiency rating: 12%. He is wasting 88% of his energy on the aesthetic shape."

  "It's a show," I whispered back.

  "Mr. Julian?"

  The room went silent. Professor Vane was looking up at me. His eyes were magnified by his thick spectacles."I see you are not taking notes," Vane said, his voice silky and dangerous. "Perhaps the Artificer of Sector 4 believes he has mastered Hydro-Mancy? Tell me, what is the primary cause of turbulence in a fast-flowing river?"

  The class turned to look at me. I saw smirks. I saw curiosity. To them, I was the "Gun Merchant," the rich outlier who bought his way in.

  I stood up."Reynolds Number, Professor."

  Vane blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "Turbulence isn't caused by the 'anger of the spirits'," I explained, my voice calm. "It's a ratio of inertial forces to viscous forces within a fluid. When the flow velocity increases past a critical point, the laminar flow breaks down into chaotic eddies. It's physics. Not mood."

  The silence stretched. A girl in the front row giggled nervously.

  Vane’s face turned a shade of purple."Reynolds... Number?" he scoffed. "You speak in gibberish. You treat the elements like dead things, boy. That is why you have no mana. You do not respect the soul of the river."

  He gestured to the window, toward the roaring sound of the White River that cut through the city."The river demands sacrifice. It demands prayer. If you try to force it, it will drown you. Sit down, and learn silence if you cannot learn magic."

  I sat down.But I wasn't listening anymore.*Force it,* he said.*Drown you,* he said.I looked out the window at the river. I didn't see a goddess.I saw millions of tons of water falling downhill. I saw kinetic energy waiting to be harvested.I didn't need to pray to it. I needed to put a turbine in it.

  The Cafeteria.

  Lunch was a loud affair. The Academy cafeteria was divided strictly by social class. The nobles sat at the high tables near the windows. The scholarship students sat near the kitchens.I sat alone.Or I tried to.

  "Is it true?"A student with messy red hair slammed his tray down across from me. He wore the robes of the Alchemist track."Is it true you're making gunpowder out of... you know. Shit?"

  I looked up from my stew. "It's called Nitrate extraction, and yes."

  The boy grinned. "That's disgusting. I love it. My dad pays six gold a pound for Academy crystals. If you're selling it cheaper..."

  "Wait for the next batch," I said. "But I have a question for you. You know the Old Mill? Upstream?"

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  " The Haunted Mill?" The boy lowered his voice. "Yeah. Nobody goes there. The Water Spirits are aggressive. They smashed the last wheel the Millers tried to install."

  "Aggressive spirits," I mused. "Or just a high-velocity current that smashed a poorly made wooden wheel?"

  "Does it matter?" The boy shrugged. "It's cursed territory. Why?"

  "Because I have a theory," I finished my water. "I think the spirits just need a job."

  The Old Mill.

  Two hours after class, I stood on the rotting wooden deck of the Old Mill.The roar of the water was deafening here. The river narrowed between two cliffs, accelerating the water into a white, foaming frenzy.It was violent. It was beautiful.And it was perfect.

  "Scan complete," Mark II projected a grid over the rushing water. "**Flow rate: 50 cubic meters per second. Head drop: 12 meters. Theoretical power output: 4.5 Megawatts.**"

  "4.5 Megawatts," I whistled.That was enough to power the factory. Enough to run the arc furnaces. Enough to start the Haber-Bosch process to make infinite fertilizer and explosives.And eventually... enough to power electric lights for the whole city.

  "But we have a problem," Amelia shouted over the noise. She was holding her hat to keep it from blowing away. "Look!"

  She pointed to the center of the river.The water wasn't just flowing; it was *surging*. Shapes formed in the foam—vague, humanoid shapes made of water and anger. They smashed against the rocks, shattering into spray.Low-level Water Elementals.This is what Professor Vane meant. The mana here was wild. Any wooden wheel we put in there would be torn to shreds in minutes.

  "Vane was right," Amelia yelled. "You can't engineer this! It's too magical!"

  "He was half right!" I shouted back. "Wood is weak! But we aren't using wood!"

  I opened my inventory—or rather, the dimensional storage ring I had finally bought with the gun profits."Mark, initiate **Project: Dynamo**."

  "Affirmative. Loading blueprint: Vertical Axis Kaplan Turbine. Material: Reinforced Steel."

  I turned to Vorian and his squad of soldiers, who were looking at the water spirits with unease."Captain!" I ordered. "I don't need you to fight the river. I need you to pour concrete! We are building a diversion channel!"

  "And the spirits?" Vorian asked, hand on his sword.

  "Let them come," I grinned. "I'm counting on them."

  "What?"

  "Spirits are made of Mana," I explained, pulling a copper coil from my bag. "Mana is energy. When they hit the turbine blades, they won't just spin it with physical force. If I coat the blades in conductive silver..."

  I looked at the schematic Mark had generated.It was a hybrid engine.A physical turbine to catch the water.A magical induction coil to catch the *spirits*.

  "We're going to grind them up," I said darkly. "Professor Vane says we should pray to the spirits? No. We're going to turn them into electricity."

  Construction: Day 3.

  The Academy ignored us. They thought we were just playing in the mud.That was their mistake.While they were debating philosophy in their ivory towers, we were pouring quick-dry cement (a Roman recipe Mark pulled from the database).

  We built a Cofferdam—a temporary wall to block the water.Inside the dry pit, we installed The Beast.It wasn't a water wheel. It was a steel propeller, enclosed in a pressure casing. Connected to it was a massive copper-wound generator, scavenged from melted-down bronze statues I bought from the scrap yard.

  "It's ugly," Amelia noted, looking at the squat, grey metal housing.

  "It's industrial," I corrected. "Ready?"

  We stood on the walkway above the new channel.The water spirits were gathering behind the floodgate. I could see their frothing faces. They were angry. They wanted to smash the intruders.

  "Open the gate!" I commanded.

  Vorian turned the wheel. The sluice gate lifted.**ROAR!**The river rushed in. The water spirits rode the wave, screaming with the sound of crashing surf. They dove into the intake tunnel, intending to destroy the obstruction.

  They hit the steel blades.WHIRRRRRRRR!

  The turbine didn't break. It spun.It spun faster than any wooden wheel ever could. The water spirits were sucked into the vortex, their physical forms shattered by the steel, their magical energy released in the chaos.

  And then... the hum.A low, deep vibration that shook the floorboards.*MMMMMMMMMMMM.*

  I looked at the voltmeter on the wall. The needle jumped.10 Volts.50 Volts.110 Volts.**220 Volts. Stable.**

  A spark jumped across the test gap. A bright, blue-white arc of pure electricity.Not magic lightning. *Man-made* lightning.

  "Power output nominal," Mark II announced. "Electrolysis Chamber coming online. Nitrogen Fixation protocols active."

  Amelia stared at the sparking arc."You did it," she whispered. "You bottled the river."

  "I didn't just bottle it," I looked toward the distant spires of the Academy.The lights in the Academy were flickering mana-lamps, dim and expensive.My arc lamp was burning with the brightness of a small sun.

  "I just made their gods work for minimum wage."