Transmigrated as a Peasant: I Conquered Magic With Science

Chapter 4

[Option two: Hide.] 

Also impossible. The Commander had promised a purge at sunrise. They would search every house, every cellar, and every hole in the ground. They would be found, and they would be killed. 

[Option three: Fight.]

Arthur looked at his burned right hand. He looked at his thin, weak arms. He was a sixteen-year-old boy with no weapons, no armor, and no combat training. The enemy was twenty fully armed, professional soldiers led by a Commander with magical gear. 

It was a mathematical impossibility. 

But Arthur was an engineer. When faced with an impossible problem, you didn't give up. You changed the variables. 

“I need resources,” Arthur thought. “I need weapons. I need power.”

He began to search the cellar frantically. He tore through old wooden crates, kicked over empty barrels, and dug through piles of rusted junk. 

"Arthur, what are you doing?" Clara asked weakly between coughs. "You need to rest... you are hurt."

"I am looking for anything we can use," Arthur replied, his hands moving quickly. He found a rusted iron pitchfork, missing one of its prongs. He tossed it aside. It was useless against steel armor. He found an old coil of hemp rope, a half-empty jar of animal fat, and a few heavy rocks. 

Nothing. There was nothing here that could stop twenty soldiers. 

Frustration boiled inside him. He kicked an empty wooden barrel. The heavy barrel rolled across the dirt floor and smashed into the far wall. 

The sound wasn't the barrel breaking. It was the sound of the wooden floorboards near the wall cracking under the impact. 

Arthur froze. He stared at the broken floorboards. 

A faint, sickly purple light was shining up through the cracks in the wood. 

The air in the cellar suddenly grew heavy. The tingling sensation of Mana that Arthur had felt in the town square returned, but this time, it was suffocating. It felt like standing next to a massive, unstable electrical transformer. The hair on Arthur's arms stood straight up, and a low humming sound filled the small room. 

"Arthur..." Eliana whimpered, shrinking back against the wall. "What is that?"

Arthur didn't answer. He walked slowly toward the broken floorboards. He dropped to his knees and used his bare hands to rip the rotting wood away. He dug his fingers into the cold, damp dirt underneath, pulling the earth away like a madman. 

A few inches down, his fingers hit something hard, smooth, and warm. 

He cleared the rest of the dirt away. His breath caught in his throat. 

Buried in the earth beneath his house was a massive crystal. It was the size of a human skull, jagged and rough. It pulsed with a deep, dark purple light, beating slowly like a glowing heart. 

The original Arthur’s memories provided the name instantly. 

A Ley-crystal. 

They were rare, highly concentrated formations of pure, crystallized Mana. The nobles fought wars over them. They powered the massive magical floating cities of the King. This must be why the soil in Oakhaven was dead. The crystal had been slowly draining the life force from the land for decades, hoarding all the energy inside itself. 

“This is it,” Arthur thought, his eyes wide with disbelief. “This is a battery. A massive, unregulated power source.”

If he could harness even a fraction of the energy inside this crystal, he could fight the soldiers. He could build weapons. He could do anything. 

"Arthur, step away from that!" Clara cried out, her voice suddenly filled with panic. She tried to stand up but fell back into the hay. "That is cursed stone! It belongs to the earth! It will kill you!"

Arthur knew she was right. To the people of this world, raw Ley-crystals were deadly. Touching one without the proper magical tools and incantations caused mana-poisoning. The chaotic energy would tear a normal human body apart in seconds. 

But Arthur wasn't a normal human. He understood energy. He understood flow, resistance, and grounding. 

“I can control it,” Arthur told himself. ‘I just need to act as a conductor. I will draw the energy in, stabilize it, and store it in my body.”

"I have to do this, Mother," Arthur said softly, never taking his eyes off the pulsing purple stone. "It is the only way we survive tonight."

Before Clara could scream for him to stop, Arthur reached out with both hands and pressed his palms flat against the cold, smooth surface of the Ley-crystal. 

The moment his skin touched the stone, the world exploded into pain. 

It wasn't like a burn or a cut. It was a cold, violent shock that ripped through his very soul. 

The crystal did not want to be controlled. It was wild, ancient power. The moment Arthur opened his magical pathways to draw the energy in, the crystal surged, rushing into his weak body like a tidal wave breaking a wooden dam. 

Arthur screamed, his back arching in agony. He tried to pull his hands away, but he was paralyzed. The crystal acted like a powerful electromagnet, locking his palms to the stone. 

"Arthur!" Eliana screamed, running toward him, but an invisible force pushed her back. 

Arthur looked down at his arms in horror. The sickly purple light of the crystal was traveling up his veins. But it wasn't just glowing. Where the light touched, his skin began to turn a deep, necrotic black. The veins bulged against his skin, looking like black poison spreading rapidly up his arms, heading straight for his heart. 

The crystal wasn't giving him energy. It was consuming him. It was eating his life force to fuel its own power. 

‘Too much…” Arthur’s mind screamed as the black veins reached his shoulders. ‘The voltage is too high! It's frying the circuits!”

His vision began to fade to black. The cold of death wrapped around his chest. He had made a fatal miscalculation. The crystal was going to kill him before the soldiers even had the chance.