Luke Richter (3)
“I’m sorry to say this to you, Dean, but a public seminar is unavoidable.”
“…”
The chairwoman of the Imperial Magic Society, Ariel, looked at Selena with a troubled expression.
“In any case, aren’t both papers already published in the academic world?”
“No, Chairwoman Ariel. He’s only a second-year undergraduate.”
“Why does that matter?”
“It matters!”
Selena raised her voice before she could stop herself.
She had a point, of course.
It wasn’t simply because he was a student.
The academic world was a place where hierarchy was strict, and research had to survive equally strict scrutiny.
Before a single researcher could publish a paper, years of study, experimentation, and peer review were required.
And yet some second-year student had spent a single year writing one paper and claimed he was going to overturn the established consensus?
Worse, every theory and concept used in the paper was something the academic world had never once dealt with before.
This wasn’t even a matter of scholarly debate yet; it was a situation in which basic procedures and the entire system were being brushed aside.
“But the experimental data is perfect if you simply ignore it, both quantitatively and qualitatively.”
“No, that’s exactly what I’m asking you! How is that even possible? Does that brat think he can just lock himself in a room with time and training and churn out a paper? There’s no way he could write something that insane on his own in such a short time without any real manpower behind him!”
“Oh, well, I wouldn’t know about that. Isn’t the important thing this? Sir Luke’s paper has already been released to the academic world, countless people have seen it, and the experimental data and theoretical basis are too solid to dismiss.”
Chairwoman Ariel tilted her chin, as if telling Selena to answer.
“From what I’ve read, it completely overturns the core hypothesis of your paper, The Impact of Interactions Between Multiple Magic Circles on Resonance Amplification.”
“That is to say…”
“Once two contradictory papers have been made public, the proper course is for them to be openly verified. Do you understand now, Dean Selena?”
“…”
Selena only stammered in confusion and couldn’t say a word in reply.
Ariel watched her for a moment, then stroked her chin.
In truth, Ariel didn’t understand it either.
Setting aside the paper’s quality, the sheer volume of the accompanying research materials and experimental data was abnormal as well.
Even if an entire research team had thrown themselves at it, it would have taken years.
And yet both the first author and the second author were listed as Luke Richter.
Which meant he had done all of this in only a single year, and done it alone at that...
...Is he a monster?
Ariel was genuinely at a loss.
However talented the Richter family might be, this was beyond the pale—no, he didn’t even seem to belong to the same species.
Of course, they had no way of knowing.
No way of knowing the chemical reaction produced by the collision of every scrap of future knowledge from the original story, magic, and concentrated modern intellect.
And no way of knowing that a graduate student whose eyes lit up at the mere mention of a degree and a budget was, from the outset, not a normal human being.
For Luke Richter, a well-bred graduate student who had spent his entire life obsessed with scholarships because of his miserable home environment, writing a paper of that caliber wasn’t all that difficult.
“The author name is... Lab... Why submit it under a pseudonym instead of his real name?”
“...He probably doesn’t want the attention.”
“Ah, that makes sense. If people found out it was a paper presented by a student alone, it would definitely spark controversy.”
Selena nodded without much reaction.
The only silver lining was that, because the brat hadn’t used his real name in the author line, she could avoid the title of the dean publicly rebutted by an undergraduate.
Still, it didn’t change the fact that her reputation had taken a devastating blow.
Selena’s prestige was based on her overwhelming strength, yes, but a mage was still, at heart, a scholar.
And more than that, she was the vice-master of the Magic Tower—a concentration of wisdom and intellect, if ever there was one.
...This is bad.
Whenever a contradictory paper challenging established theory was submitted to the academic world, the scholars convened a closed seminar to review it.
The problem was that she couldn’t even begin to guess what that lunatic Luke Richter might do in front of everyone.
But since it was something she couldn’t avoid, she gritted her teeth and attended the seminar anyway.
There, gathered from the high-ranking figures of the academic world to the chief researchers of the Magic Tower, Luke Richter stood before them all.
“Your paper, Dean Selena, assumes that magic circles interact only on a flat plane.”
He drew several concentric magic circles on the blackboard.
Then, on top of the concentric rings, he began sketching layer after layer of pentagrams.
“But that premise is wrong. A magic circle is not merely a geometric shape drawn on a plane; it forms a fractal structure woven between spaces.”
Luke poured mana into the diagram and completed the circuit of the magic circle.
At once, the finished circle began emitting waves.
“When mana meets mana, those waves collide. Sometimes they reinforce one another, and sometimes they cancel each other out. It’s like two tides meeting.”
Luke drew new shapes on the blackboard.
Complex geometric patterns created by overlapping magic circles unfolded before everyone’s eyes.
“However, these waves do not act only on the three-dimensional plane we know. The structure of a magic circle is fundamentally non-Euclidean, and the topological singularities operating in higher-dimensional space become far more complex and varied...”
In the eerie silence, only his voice rang out softly.
He was explaining something, but most of those seated there could only stare at him blankly, faces dazed.
Then, an elderly gentleman cautiously raised his hand and asked a question.
The old man was Isaac Eckhart, the commander of the Imperial Mage Corps.
“...I’d like to hear more about this higher-dimensional space you’re talking about.”
“You could describe it as a complex space with curvature.”
“And I’d like to ask about its relationship to the magic circle.”
“The technique of a magic circle is a shape drawn on a plane, but the waves of mana that arise from it affect actual ‘space.’ If you look at the experimental data I submitted, 3-B, you’ll see it clearly.”
“I did look at it, but I can’t make heads or tails of it. If what you wrote is correct, doesn’t that mean existing resonance techniques could be amplified at least twofold with the same amount of mana?”
“Exactly.”
The people in the hall began to murmur.
The mages’ faces were filled with confusion and shock.
Isaac Eckhart frowned and spoke again.
“Further verification will be necessary, but I’m still skeptical. You did all of this by yourself? How?”
“Why couldn’t I?”
“...What?”
As far as he was concerned, that was simply Luke’s old life.
Doctoral dissertations, conference presentations, administrative work, project proposals, interim reports, final reports, cleaning the lab, booking hotel rooms for professors on business trips, arranging real-estate contracts for foreign postdocs... he had spent years grinding away like a slave under a vicious professor.
For someone like that, writing a paper that overturned the original story’s half-baked theory by using abundant funding and the information he knew from the novel?
A single year was more than enough.
Of course, the others who saw his reaction thought something very different.
That’s ridiculous talent.
He was, without question, born with a gift from the heavens.
If he lacked talent as a mage, then his talent as a scholar was nothing short of celestial.
At the same time, they started to covet him.
Most of those attending the seminar were elders or professors of the Magic Tower.
A slave... no, an apprentice who could display that level of performance in just one year?
It was no exaggeration to say he possessed talent capable of shattering the balance among the five Magic Towers across the continent.
So Isaac asked him,
“Do you have an advisor?”
“No.”
“Then how about coming under me?”
It was an extraordinary offer.
But Luke Richter answered,
“I’d rather die.”
“...What?”
He was resolute.
No—he was so firm it was almost oppressive.
A year passed.
“Dean! Deeeean!!”
“...What is it?”
“Luke Richter has gone and done it again...!”
“...”
Luke Richter, whose practical exam scores were low, had published a new paper to make up the missing credits.
“This time it’s about your previous paper on the purity of magic crystals... Wait, what was the title again?”
“The Influence of Magic Crystal Purity on High-Level Spellcasting.”
“Ah! Right! It was a paper rebutting that one, so the academic world has called me in...”
“...”
For Selena, being summoned by the academic world had become an annual event.
And the reason was none other than Luke Richter.
He was churning out papers like a printing press, and thanks to that, both the academic world and the Magic Tower had gone into emergency mode.
So much so that the author name he used instead of his real one, LabRoom, had come to be called a sage among the public.
That wasn’t all.
Whenever he had a free moment, he managed to cause some insane disaster at the Academy, shaving at least ten years off her life.
His antics during the entrance exam? Barely cute by comparison.
It was bad enough that he kept using the student council to bulldoze through the Academy’s barbaric system, claiming he intended to overturn it one place at a time, and whenever he found a question on a written exam, he would insist that the theory behind it was clearly wrong and proceed to bleed the professors dry day after day.
Every time something happened, he would file complaints with the Imperial Court in the name of building ties with the Empire, and as a result the Imperial Court had also begun to keep a favorable eye on him.
As time went on, the pressure from the Red Magic Tower grew worse and worse.
The tower master’s demands that they must absolutely invite the sage LabRoom to the tower were driving her to the point of hair loss.
So she had dealt with everything he’d thrown at her, over and over again, cleaning up every mess he made.
And then, after graduating from the Academy, the brat left for the Imperial Court, saying he was going to become a low-ranking civil official.
And now...
“Aaaaagh!!!”
Selena howled inside the carriage.
Just thinking about facing Luke Richter again after a year was enough to make her head spin.