The Art of Mana Bonding
Let's start with the conclusion.
It was an absolute, dog-ugly disaster.
Not just an ordinary failure, either. We were completely and utterly screwed from the word go.
Chuckling like men who had already reserved their Nobel Prizes in advance, Hyeong-jun and I strolled into the laboratory.
"It's really been a while since I've set foot in here."
Looking around at the exorbitantly expensive equipment—the kind that would make our old university advisor drool with envy—I couldn't hide my admiration.
"Whoa, you guys added even more gear since I last visited? How much did all this cost?"
"Does that even matter?" Hyeong-jun scoffed. "Once we measure mana and publish our findings, the cost of this equipment will look like pocket change."
"Oh, true that. That's our Old Man Kim for you. Sharp as a tack, just as expected of a Gwanaksan alum."
Flicking on every light in the laboratory, Hyeong-jun tossed me a white lab coat and asked, "You don't have any trouble casting magic again, right?"
"None at all. If it's just levitating chopsticks like before, I can do it right this second."
At my answer, Hyeong-jun seemed to recall something and pressed further.
"Come to think of it, what's the actual principle behind that levitation? At first I assumed it was a superconductor, but floating above a palm or a dining table has nothing to do with the Meissner effect, does it? What kind of magic makes a pair of chopsticks hover in midair like that?"
"Oh, that? It simply uses mana to repel external interference. You couldn't grab it because it kept deflecting your fingers, right? That was mana pushing back."
Hyeong-jun's eyes widened into saucers.
"What? Magic can do something like that? Didn't you say you can only use low-tier magic right now?"
"I did."
"Repelling external physical interference sounds like high-level magic to me, doesn't it?"
"No, no, no. The tier of magic is determined by how complex an attribute you process mana into having. Imparting a simple repulsive property to mana is the most basic function there is, so it's strictly low-tier."
As I wagged my index finger back and forth while explaining, Hyeong-jun stared in sheer awe.
"Incredible. I never imagined the day would come when I'd see real magic with my own two eyes."
Then, his face turning dead serious, he locked eyes with me.
"We need to... detect mana, right?"
"Let's get right to it."
Having reached an instant consensus, Hyeong-jun and I began prepping the experiment to detect mana.
Or rather, we were about to.
If not for a single, sudden question that popped into my head.
"Wait a second, Hyeong-jun. How are we actually supposed to measure mana?"
"Huh? We can't measure it."
"What? If we can't measure it, what's the plan? Didn't we come here to prove mana exists?"
"Well, that's true too."
"???"
My brain short-circuited.
Seeing my blank stare, Hyeong-jun clicked his tongue in disappointment.
"Man, you've really lost your edge being out of the field for so long. Is direct measurement the only valid way to observe something?"
"Ah."
"It's a form of energy completely outside the framework of modern science. Naturally, the verification method has to be different. We go for indirect proof of existence by demonstrating its observable effects. Exactly like dark energy."
"Oho. Look at that confidence."
I gave him a slow, mocking round of applause.
Then another question struck me, and I asked him:
"Okay, but how do we provide indirect proof? Isn't universal reproducibility the absolute foundation of scientific proof? Sure, I can demonstrate it here, but who else in the world can cast magic?"
Hyeong-jun froze dead in his tracks.
Like a rusty, ungreased machine, his head creaked around to face me.
"C-Can't you... teach someone?"
"Doubt it. Even back in that world, magic was something only those born with innate talent could sense and learn. And the mana density here on Earth is far thinner."
There were several talents required to become a mage. All of them were crucial, but the one non-negotiable prerequisite was the ability to perceive mana.
Yet, as established earlier, the mana density between the Continent of Retnia and modern Earth differed by a factor of one thousand. Which meant that to become a mage here, one's sensitivity to mana would have to be a thousand times sharper than that of someone from the magical realm.
How many people on Earth could possibly possess a gift that was rare even back in Retnia?
"Well, even if such people existed, I have no intention of teaching them."
"Why?"
"Ever heard of keeping the secret arts within the fold? Why on earth would I hand down my precious esoteric knowledge to random strangers? Unless it was you, maybe."
Hyeong-jun's ears perked up instantly.
"If I said I wanted to learn, would you teach me?"
"Nope."
"What? Why the sudden backtrack?"
"Because you've got zero talent."
When I cut him down so ruthlessly, Hyeong-jun protested in indignation.
"How do you know without even testing me?"
"You stared right at floating chopsticks and didn't feel a damn thing. That's proof enough you don't have an ounce of talent."
"Son of a bitch," Hyeong-jun grumbled, looking thoroughly defeated. "That's the first time in my entire life anyone has ever told me I lack talent. Man, that's demoralizing."
"Chin up. Frustration is what builds a man's character."
"Shut up. I don't want comfort from you."
"Oh, I wasn't comforting you. I was teabagging. Jealous, aren't you?"
"Aaargh!"
Leaving him to howl like an infamous internet dragon, I turned around and began idly perusing the laboratory.
"You've got a lot of fascinating stuff here. Is this what you've been working on lately?"
Several materials lay scattered in disarray across the workbench.
"Let's see... this is nickel, and is this graphite?"
"Don't touch that, it's not graphite. That stuff is practically royalty."
"Then what is it?"
"Graphene."
"Oh, so this is graphene?"
I had heard the name countless times in the news, but this was my first time seeing it in person.
"How expensive are we talking?"
"It's reduced graphene oxide—rGO. Roughly 1.5 million won per gram?"
"Gasp."
I recoiled a step in genuine horror.
"That really is royalty. Two grams of that is my entire monthly paycheck."
"Exactly. So look with your eyes, not your hands."
"Understood, sir."
I resolved to behave myself and inspect the laboratory strictly with my eyesight.
"So what are you actually researching these days?"
"The interfacial resistance problem."
"Solid-state batteries?"
"Yeah."
"Damn, you picked a beast of a problem."
Interfacial resistance.
As anyone with basic scientific literacy knew, a battery is divided into a positive cathode and a negative anode, with an electrolyte filling the space between them to serve as the transit medium for ions. A solid-state battery replaces that conventional liquid electrolyte entirely with a solid material.
Boasting vastly superior safety and energy density compared to liquid-electrolyte batteries, solid-state technology has long been hailed as the holy grail of next-generation energy storage.
And the single most insurmountable barrier to commercializing solid-state batteries was interfacial resistance.
For ions to do their work, they must migrate seamlessly across the boundary between the electrodes and the electrolyte. However, because both the electrodes and the electrolyte are solid, no matter how flawlessly polished you make their surfaces, they fail to achieve seamless atomic contact at the microscopic level.
What happens as a result? The flow of ions across the interface is severely choked and obstructed. In roadway terms, it's like a twelve-lane highway suddenly bottlenecking into six lanes without warning.
This impedance of ion transit at the junction of electrode and electrolyte is precisely what scientists call interfacial resistance.
It causes performance to plummet, ruins charging efficiency, and dramatically slashes lifespan—a fatal trifecta. Because this bottleneck remains unsolved to this day, the global battery industry has been desperately shifting toward semi-solid-state batteries as a compromise.
"It's not like I had some groundbreaking lead or anything," Hyeong-jun admitted. "I just got curious and decided to poke around at it in my spare time."
"Any luck?"
"Do I look like I had any luck?"
Hyeong-jun grabbed a stack of papers scattered across the desk, crumpled them violently into a ball, and hurled them into the wastebasket.
"Those are all records of failure. Theoretically, if you can bond graphene flawlessly across the interface, you can boost efficiency by more than five times. But theory is just theory, and reality is a bitch. I've already blown through tens of millions of won in raw material costs alone."
"Oof."
"No matter what method I try, the second it goes into electrical testing, the interfacial resistance spikes through the ceiling. Meaning the electrolyte ions can't migrate properly."
Hyeong-jun gave a tired shrug.
"To be blunt, I've hit a complete dead end. I don't even have a clue which direction to steer the research anymore. There's a damn good reason why everyone is bailing to semi-solid-state batteries these days."
"Well, if a problem that top scholars at multinational conglomerates couldn't solve could be cracked by you tinkering in your spare time, the world wouldn't make any sense."
"Hey, stop hitting me with cold hard facts."
Hyeong-jun let out a bitter chuckle.
That bitter chuckle froze solid the very next second.
"Actually... I think I can solve that."
There is a craft known as Mana Bonding.
On the Continent of Retnia, it was primarily utilized when forging magical armaments. In layman's terms, it was essentially supernatural superglue or molecular welding.
A technique that infuses a layer of sticky, cohesive mana between two materials to lock them into unbreakable alignment.
Because it resisted heat, physical shock, and material deformation under virtually all extreme conditions, it was used across a wide variety of industries. But because the underlying formula was so simple, it was typically learned as a trade by low-tier mages who lacked the talent for greater spellcraft.
"No, wait... what the hell is this...?"
Peering through the ocular lens of the electron microscope, Hyeong-jun was struck dumb with disbelief.
What he was examining was an electrode and a layer of graphene seamlessly unified through Mana Bonding.
Something I had cobbled together in less than five minutes.
Pulling back from the microscope, Hyeong-jun shook his head repeatedly.
"I'm staring right at it and my brain still refuses to accept it. Can I run some stress tests on this?"
"Go nuts. That's why I made it."
Hyeong-jun carefully extracted the test sample and immediately subjected it to torture.
He blasted electrical currents through it, threw it into an electric furnace to bake at scorching temperatures, and finally took a steel hammer and began pounding on it with resounding clangs.
After sliding the battered sample back under the microscope to inspect the structural integrity, he turned toward me, his face pale.
"This is literally magic. It's totally untouched no matter what I throw at it. Continuous rapid charge-discharge cycles, baking at over five hundred degrees Celsius, beating it with a hammer—zero lattice deformation, zero delamination. How is this even physically possible?"
"Of course it's possible. It's magic. Though, to be fair, not just any scrub could pull this off. It requires an archmage of my caliber to manipulate mana down to the molecular lattice."
Fusing materials at the atomic bonding level with such pinpoint accuracy was definitely not something an ordinary hedge-wizard could achieve.
"So go on. Kneel and worship."
"Damn it all. Just for today, I will gladly revere you. This is an absolute cheat code. If the researchers working on this around the globe ever saw this, they'd die of sheer indignation."
Starting with me, Hyeong-jun muttered under his breath.
Then, as if struck by an epiphany, a sharp question crossed his mind.
"Wait, is mass production possible? If it requires you to handcraft every single piece one by one, it's completely useless commercially."
"Oh, that? Totally possible."
"How?"
"We just use a magic circle."
In Earth terms, a magic circle was essentially an automated manufacturing circuit.
You engrave the geometric circuit formula onto a substrate, channel mana into it, and the spell effect automates and sustains itself. Inexperienced mages typically used them to deploy higher-tier spells beyond their personal capacity, though that was hardly a limitation I needed to worry about.
"I'd have to look at the exact production line to be certain, but if we etch a magic circle onto the relevant assembly module and activate it, we can churn out identical results on an assembly line."
"Without needing specialized mega-machinery?"
"Yep. None needed."
"What about lifespan limitations? Earlier, you said the levitating chopsticks would lose their charge after thirty minutes. Doesn't this have an expiration date too?"
"Technically yes, but it's practically negligible. The chopsticks required continuous mana expenditure to sustain the repulsive force against gravity. But with Mana Bonding, once the molecular fusion stabilizes, it stops consuming mana entirely."
"Then how long will the bond last?"
"If I intentionally tune it for longevity? A hundred years easily. We can adjust the shelf life however we want."
"Is there anything your magic can't do?"
"Nope. As long as it doesn't require an absurd amount of raw mana, pretty much everything is fair game."
"Holy crap... I'm going insane."
Hyeong-jun began pacing back and forth across the lab with frantic, adrenaline-fueled strides.
Then he spun around on his heel, lunged forward, and seized my hand in a vice-like grip.