A Strong and Powerful Morning

Strong and powerful morning! Waking up in the bed of my brand-new house felt completely different. People really do need to live somewhere decent, don't they?

"Urrrgh. Pwah."

I worked the stiffness out of my body, took a shower in the sleek new bathroom, brushed my teeth with a vigorous scritch, and washed my face with a decisive splash.

I even tried on a bathrobe. It felt like wearing clothes made of towels, and the whole thing was so awkward that I dried my hair right away and changed into real clothes.

"Off to work!"

Yuria, Director of the Magic Bureau — ready for action! Another energetic day, coming right up!

"Mheh-heh-eh-aeuugh."

"Please pull yourself together, Director."

Noted.

Going to work is a disease that destroys people. Anyone who claims otherwise is either not human or a monster that has already lost its heart.

Since the Bureau's own building still didn't even have its pillars up, we'd been given a vacant office in the Sejong Government Complex as a temporary workspace… and from day one, I was being buried under a mountain of documents whose very purpose I could barely grasp.

Mmm. The terms I'd asked them to add to the definitions section had been properly reflected.

"Ooooh~ Completely perfect signature."

Scratch, scratch.

"I am~ a super cool~ ma~gi~cian~"

"…"

"Next~ document~!"

"Ah, there's a typo here. And so Security Clearance Draft 12 is eliminated from the tournament~ What a shame~!"

"…Aigoo."

Serin was sighing with unusual frequency today — no surprise, given that she'd been driving a two-hour commute since early morning on top of all this work.

Getting from home to here had taken nearly two hours even by car. Serin insisted she was fine, but the route ran from Seoul through Incheon all the way to Sejong. There was no way that wasn't exhausting. Absolutely exhausting.

For reference: Serin was currently processing, through the electronic system, roughly twice the volume of paperwork piled on my desk. The system was called Onnara — I had no idea who named it, but their sense of humor was truly outstanding.

There were only the two of us in this room, and the backlog of electronic approvals was so massive that Serin didn't even have time to teach me the system. Fortunately, there was no shortage of paper documents either, so I wasn't left sitting around idle.

If I'd just abandoned her to work alone while I goofed off, she probably wouldn't have left me alone about it.

I feel like I'm turning into someone from the old days — no phone, no computer.

"Serin, take it easy once in a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠while. Want me to grab some coffee?"

"If your intelligence is functioning normally — no. Ah. I'm fine."

"Oho. Talking back to the Director?"

"If you fire me, your paperwork will more than triple. If you can handle that, I won't stop you."

"Ugh."

The Magic Bureau is open for business as usual… probably…

"Director? I'm going to need a little help with this one."

Serin stopped her furious typing and called me over.

"What is it?"

I walked around behind her and looked at the screen. A page titled "Initial Research Project Setup" was open at the top of the site.

"Since we're an organization under the Ministry of Science and ICT, and a large number of science and engineering partner institutions are involved, we need to set milestones at the Magic Bureau level."

"Ahh."

A milestone, literally speaking, was a stone marker placed every mile along a road — but these days the word was used more for the major intermediate checkpoints in a long-term project.

We're going to Mars!

If you set a long-term goal of going to Mars, you'd need intermediate achievements along the way to get there, right?

First, take a photo of space and come back. Next, build a space station. Then establish a deep-space communications network. Then try to build a lunar base, only to end up in a soul-to-soul showdown with the Third Reich lurking on the dark side of the moon… wait, no, that's not it.

Anyway — that kind of thing is a milestone.

"My long-term objective is obviously this."

Serin tilted her head after reading the neatly written line I'd penned on scrap paper with a mana pen.

"The founding purpose of the Magic Bureau is…"

"I know. The founding purpose of the Magic Bureau puts more weight on Korea's national interest."

Once I rewrote it as a new sentence, Serin finally nodded.

An obvious difference. I wanted to save the Earth; the state had no interest in draining tax revenue to protect the entire planet. That kind of volunteer work — the kind nobody ever thanks you for — is what they call diplomacy.

In the end, the Magic Bureau's ultimate goal had to be the universalization of magic. What the high-ranking people in government wanted was the monopolization of magic as proprietary technology.

I agreed with the former. I opposed the latter.

"Can this country even monopolize magic-related technology? Feels like ambition well past our station."

At a glance, that might sound like the words of some immature person who can't wait to trash their own country while idolizing the neighbors.

But domestic engineers keep leaking overseas without end, government agencies and research organizations are constantly under cyberattack… and I still had no idea how they planned to withstand the pressure from the surrounding great powers.

I remembered the Foreign Minister's face during my earlier audience with the President — the way his expression had jumped the instant I floated the line, "Must be hard, dealing with the neighboring countries."

Until they brought me a concrete blueprint for how to protect the technology and achieve monopolization without friction with neighboring states, I had no intention of greenlighting it.

More than anything, I had my own goal of rebuilding the Magic Tower as an international cooperative institution.

"For now, let's set the final goal as universalizing applied magic technology across the civilian sector."

Serin nodded and hammered away at the keyboard.

"Yes. Then for the intermediate achievements…"

"Hmm. Nuclear fusion power has already moved past the prototype stage, so leave out electrical infrastructure… Announcement of four new materials with outstanding industrial value, elucidation of magic's principles through modern science, and a pilot education program for magic?"

"Understood. I'll draft it based on what you've described. We'll still need your help on the detailed plans, of course."

"Anytime."

Hehe. On the surface it just looks like planting the roots of magic as a technology — but the goal selection had a deeper background underneath.

The four new materials are for researching things that can produce effective results against Outer Gods. Beings that don't originally belong to this universe barely interact with most ordinary matter, so you need new materials and new forms of interaction.

Elucidating magic through modern science will give us the minimum capability to reverse-engineer the various equipment and magitech devices currently sleeping in my Sub-space.

And the pilot education program for magic… well, if more people awaken to magic and learn to use it, the research capacity of future generations should rise, right?

"I'll write up the specific properties of the four new materials for you."

"Thank you."

I thrust my hand deep into my Sub-space and pulled out two metal ingots, a bolt of tightly rolled fabric, and a pouch filled with powder that shimmered with a faint blue light.

"…?"

Serin's eyes, which had been watching me, went round as saucers.

"You're presenting already-made materials as new materials…?"

"Well, that's how it worked out. So — secret!"

"…"

Serin's pupils darted back and forth as if her thoughts had suddenly multiplied. She picked up her phone, set it back down, looked at me again, and let out a long sigh.

"…From now on, please do that where I can't see it."

"Hehe. Got it."

I raised mana in the direction facing Serin.

"Mana condensation, plane generation. Color assignment."

I created a black privacy screen, hid behind it, and began writing out each material's properties, advantages, and manufacturing methods.

Scratch, scratch.

First: ultra-high-molecular-weight white silver steel.

It self-luminesces in dark places and maintains absolute luminosity regardless of distance. In magitech engineering, its distinctive high density and durability make it as ubiquitous as water.

Silver 100g, platinum fine powder under 2500 mesh 100g. Those materials exist on Earth — but then hexo-orion crystallized powder 1.7g, and mithril powder of eight-nines purity or higher… that's where the problems start.

Hexo-orion is a relatively common metal in the other world, sulfur-colored with a metallic luster. Mithril is exactly the mithril you'd expect, but explaining it at length raises too many issues. It doesn't exist on Earth. Still, starting ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠research from similar metal materials should work, right?

But there was a real problem.

"Serin. Angels don't live on Earth, do they?"

"…Excuse me?"

The celestial races of the other world. Species with angel wings who live clustered on sky-islands — and a lump of metal they produce with their proprietary techniques, called a moonlight ingot, was listed as an essential ingredient.

We're going to have to manufacture the base materials from scratch, huh!

"Just talking nonsense."

Working this way, I began organizing the manufacturing methods, marking with asterisks every step that modern Earth technology couldn't solve.

Scribble, scribble.

Process 1 was okay. We just needed to find a catalyst on Earth that could play a role similar to hexo-orion.

Just writing the name of the second process was already enough to make me dread it…

…

I'm counting on you, future me!

I filled page after page with process procedures after that, and even sketched crude little illustrations of each step, until I had something resembling a reasonably convincing alchemy notebook.

"Haaah. Hope this works out."

If someone told me to build a nuclear fusion reactor by myself, I could knock one out no problem. The goal had only ever been a single prototype, and the materials I kept in my Sub-space were more than enough for that.

But things like these ingots — things that needed mass production — had hard limits as a one-woman show. The industrial-scale foundation had to be laid properly, which meant a long, hard road stretched out ahead of me.