The Explanation Session
Yurik followed the lovely female mage to a certain room. While he was taking a brief look around, a middle-aged man with an untamed beard hurried in. He introduced himself simply as Francis, spread the circuit diagram out across the round table without further ado, and asked,
"Would you kindly explain to me what this is?"
It would be a simple verification, really—a matter of whether it was genuine or not. Yurik readily explained the principles of the circuit the man was pointing to. He wanted to go further, to describe the effects that arose when the circuit intertwined with those around it, but that alone would have taken more than a single night, so he stopped at a reasonable point.
When he finished and looked up, Francis's face was brimming with an excitement he could no longer contain. The joy of having found the real thing, no doubt.
"It really is you. You're the one! The real deal has come!"
He rushed straight over to Yurik, seized both his hands, and shook them up and down like a madman as he let out a great wahahaha laugh.
"Thank you so much for coming! It's an honor to meet you! ...Ah, but I shouldn't be doing this. Would you wait here a moment? I'll step out and be right back."
Francis glanced toward the Count's daughter. She gave a small nod, as if to say she would stay right here.
Once the middle-aged mage had departed, only Yurik, the female mage, and someone who appeared to be her escort remained in the room.
"I'm late with the introductions. I'm Yurik."
"...I'm Angèle."
Into that awkward atmosphere, people soon came pouring in. Yurik found himself wondering what on earth was going on.
"Is it really you—you're truly the mage who drew this circuit diagram?"
"It matches the eyewitness accounts perfectly! Young, and handsome, too!"
The mages, all of them aflame with excitement, crowded around Yurik. The Branch Head shouted at them to calm down.
"Everyone, compose yourselves and step back! Don't we have something urgent to settle first!"
Ah, right—. The rational mages suppressed their excitement as best they could and withdrew, then gathered in a ring around the round table and stared intently at Yurik and the circuit diagram.
"Could you tell us your name, young man?"
"It's Yurik."
"Yurik...!"
The mages nodded, carving his name deep into their memories.
"We have quite a few things we're curious about."
"Of course. I'll gladly answer anything I can."
Questions burst out from every direction, the mages unable to hold themselves back, but the Branch Head waved his hands as if to urge calm.
"Everyone, quiet. This is getting us nowhere. I'll ask what we need to know first, step by step!"
Having settled the mages down, the Branch Head wiped the sweat trickling down his forehead, then questioned Yurik as their representative.
"When did you begin improving this circuit? From the moment the diagram was posted? Or after some time had passed? And did you do the improvement work alone? Or was there someone else involved?"
Yurik answered each question in the endless stream one by one.
"It took me three days in total to improve the original diagram. It was a genuinely complex and difficult circuit—I struggled quite a bit. And I carried out the work entirely on my own."
At that, the mages wore the expressions of men wondering if they had misheard.
Francis, standing right behind the Branch Head, asked again.
"Just now... did you say three days? For that? ...By yourself?!"
"Yes."
They were all stunned. Honestly, it was not a claim one could readily believe.
Even so, they did not rush to declare it truth or lie.
If someone made a claim, then—like true mages—they need only prove it themselves!
"Then, could you explain the principles behind this circuit diagram? If possible, we'd like you to explain, comprehensively, why you changed it the way you did."
"Of course. But explaining everything will take quite a long time."
"That's fine. However long it takes is no problem. Isn't that right, everyone?"
At the Branch Head's question, everyone present nodded yes without a trace of hesitation. How long they had all yearned for the real thing to appear!
And so Yurik began his explanation of the circuit diagram right then and there. Midway through, the Branch Head briefly cut in to ask his indulgence.
"Forgive me, but this hardly seems the place for it. Allow me to arrange a proper space."
The other mages had been hoping for exactly that anyway. What he called a principles explanation was, in truth, practically a lecture. That was how revolutionary—and how radical—his explanations were.
By that point, the question of truth had already been decided. Every one of them was certain: everything the young man had said earlier was true.
"To the conference room, everyone!"
The mages poured into the conference room. They claimed their seats, prepared notebooks for jotting down the important points, and waited for Yurik's explanation to resume.
"Ahem. Then, let's begin again."
And so Yurik's explanation started anew.
Why he had inserted the circuits, the principle by which they operated in concert with the surrounding circuitry, and beyond that—the combination effects that emerged when dozens of circuits tangled and interwove with one another...
"This will be difficult to grasp through words alone. Now, look at this."
Yurik, who had been pointing at the circuit diagram on the wall with a pointer, set it down on the table and stepped forward two paces.
Then he crossed his two hands at an angle, gathered mana into his palms, and scattered it in a rush across the great round table of the conference room.
—!
The mages' eyes went wide as they watched a single magic circle spread out to fill the table.
Ah.
Yurik had drawn the circuit diagram to show, visually, how the circuits harmonized organically with one another.
The moment mana entered the intake, it coursed along the circuits like veins spreading outward from the heart, driving the diagram to life. The mages were left speechless before that actuation process, each piece fitting into place with artistic precision.
And the explanation pressed onward. Showing, alongside telling, was far more effective and intuitive than words alone.
"So that's how it works, with that kind of principle...!"
"I never imagined those four there could interlock to produce such an effect."
Circuits are infinite. Naturally, their combinations are infinite as well.
From that vast harmony of infinity, one no one could even have dared to imagine, Yurik had simply fished out a single small possibility.
He never believed his circuit diagram was perfect. Somewhere within that boundless infinity, a possibility greater still was surely waiting to be found.
Each time Yurik's explanation advanced, the mages slapped the table or their knees with their palms and burst out in admiration. Everyone was so absorbed that they lost all track of time.
"If a circuit you consider obsolete is improved well, it will surely find some use somewhere. So we must never turn our backs on the old simply because it's aged and seems useless."
"Indeed. You're quite right, my young colleague."
It wasn't as though no research had ever attempted to put the obsolete back to work. But none had ever produced results this significant.
Perhaps, on the strength of this occasion, the retro craze that had swept the southern mage circles decades ago might blaze up once more.
The explanation of circuit principles, accompanied by magic circles, continued without pause through the night.
Truthfully, to explain things in even finer detail would have taken days and nights beyond counting, so Yurik refrained from going too deep. They were all veterans in their respective fields, after all—he trusted that this much was more than enough for them to understand.
The conference room door, sealed shut since evening, finally opened only the next morning.
The mages who had dozed off from waiting sprang up at the sound of the door and swarmed the ones emerging from the conference room.
The mages who had heard the circuit principles directly from Yurik were physically worn out, but their eyes burned more fiercely than ever before.
"Back to the research wing, right now! There's a mountain of work waiting for us!"
"Yes, senior!"
The Branch Head ordered his direct subordinates to provide the handsome mage who had toiled so long a place to rest.
"See to it that he lacks for nothing in his daily life. He is an honored guest."
"Understood, Branch Head."
Yurik, exhausted from pouring out mana and talking all through the night, wanted nothing more than to rest as well. The mages gathered in the corridor, having heard the rumor that this young man was the true author of the circuit diagram, crowded in behind him. But the Count's daughter Angèle and the Branch Head's subordinate flanked him firmly on either side, and they could only watch from a distance, unable to get a single word in.
Yurik was escorted to the VIP quarters prepared in Zone 2. A man who had always drifted from one cheap inn room to another, he felt an inexplicable tingling in his soles and along his back the moment he laid eyes on the luxurious room.
"Then please, rest well."
Once the guide departed, he was alone in the room. Yurik dropped his sack on the floor and threw himself straight onto the plush bed. The soft mattress and covers carried him to heaven in a single bound. This must be what it feels like to lie upon a cloud, freshly warmed.
Next time I make a pile of money, he thought as he drifted off, I'm absolutely buying myself a good blanket.
Yurik dreamed.
A dream of giving his very first presentation in a conference room packed full of executives.
It went down in spectacular, glorious flames—and then he woke.
Yurik pressed his face into the pillow, lying flat on his stomach. A groan escaped him of its own accord.
It was the first memory from his past life he wished he could forget.