Episode 028: Tap! Tatatap! Pow! Pow!
Tap! Tatatap! Pow! Pow! Chalk dust scattered everywhere.
Fuck. She won't even notice now since she's anesthetized, but this is gonna hurt like hell later. Why's there no middle ground with this girl?
My right hand, with no intention of stopping, filled one blackboard and, still unsatisfied, moved to the next. Equations chained together one after another. Of course, my brain didn't understand a single bit of it.
Snap! The chalk broke. But my hand didn't stop—it kept grinding the broken piece and writing on. The scraping sensation under my nails transmitted through my half-numb senses. Even feeling only half of it was creepy as fuck.
Regardless of my will, I twisted my whole body like a mad mathematician locked in battle with the blackboard.
Murmurs rose from behind.
"Wh-what is that?"
"It's too complicated... Can we even try to understand it?"
Even if it's short, you idiots wouldn't get it anyway.
And after a long while. Only after filling both blackboards to the brim did the floating sensation enveloping my body ebb away like the tide.
Remaining uses today: 2/3
Ugh! My goddamn wrist hurts like a bitch! I turned my head to check Iris's eyes—then a bit more to see the professors' faces, the ones I'd had my back to until just now.
Hmm. Okay. The professors were still staring holes into the equations my right hand had scrawled, not grasping them yet, so I couldn't guess the results. But Iris wasn't looking at the blackboard. She was looking at me. And smiling.
That pleased, proud smile spreading across her lips, practically shouting 'My boy's a champ.'
Unlike the old professors floundering in the swamp of equations on the board, she seemed to have understood those messy scribbles long ago.
Well. This should be enough. At least it wasn't like last time, where I just slapped the answer down without showing my work.
That was when it happened. Professor Hiks, who had been silent, tucked his cane into his sleeve and declared solemnly.
"Professor Iris."
"Yes, Professor Hiks."
"It seems today's class should be held in another empty lecture hall."
The students buzzed. Switching rooms mid-class?
Even amid the commotion, Professor Hiks's eyes remained fixed on the blackboard.
"And I'll apply a preservation spell now."
"...Understood."
Iris reached toward the blackboard. Light began to shimmer across it. Probably some kind of coating. Something like that.
Iris addressed the students.
"Pack your things in advance. I'll check if the next lecture hall is empty and we'll move right away to continue today's class."
The students looked baffled but, overwhelmed by the atmosphere, started gathering their books.
And amid that.
What a sight. Just a sight.
The stares directed at me were quite the spectacle. Contempt and disdain had lifted, replaced by sticky awe and doubt.
Until the rumors that I'd become Iris's disciple, it had been 'No way, that barbarian?' Now it was 'Ah, so that's why. We mediocre fools just couldn't see it.' Total attitude flip.
I swallowed a hollow laugh inside. These fuckers trash-talk me then suck up... Toying with people like that?
Gotta give 'em credit for that flip-flopping resilience. Of course, some were still in denial, like 'Is this kid for real?'
"Kasian, pack your things."
"Yeah."
As I moved to step away from the podium.
"You did well."
Iris patted my shoulder and whispered.
"...I thought my wrist was done for."
"I'll rub it for you later."
Not in that sense. She's definitely an idiot when it comes to socialization.
* * *
As Professor Iris, her disciple, and the students ebbed out like the tide, the white-haired old professors swarmed the blackboard as if by appointment. With the eyes of archaeologists unearthing a rare artifact.
"...Hah."
Professor Hiks glared at the blackboard as if to devour it, then finally let out a deep sigh.
"A genius, indeed. No, what is this...?"
His gaze lingered on the very first line scratched on the board. That initial slash—
"Arrogant... This wasn't written to solve the problem. It looks like it was meant to rewrite the problem itself from the start."
Rewriting the problem. Entirely possible. Magic intervenes in causality. Due to its perilously difficult nature, so-called 'formulas' had no absolute answers.
Papers existed claiming 'This is the most efficient way,' backed by hundreds of pages proving why. But they weren't logically 'perfectly optimal.' Impossible. No one but a god could perfectly calculate the gaps in causality.
Thus, delving deep into magic inevitably veered into philosophy or religion, much like swordsmanship.
"This... implements fire element manifestation using a water element method, doesn't it?"
The plump old professor's question drew a trembling response from the bespectacled one beside him.
"Precisely, it's closer to water element. It differs from the orthodox water manifestation method too."
In millennia of magitech history, humans with mere century lifespans had no choice but to cling to the 'orthodoxy' left by past geniuses. It was the safe, quick path.
Yet the formula before them outright denied that common sense.
Conventional fire element handling presupposed extreme maximum convergence and extreme maximum divergence. Fire's volatile nature made control difficult.
Mages thus compressed mana into the core the instant it converted to fire element, then detonated it point-blank. That was orthodoxy.
"Hah. A chain of convergence and divergence."
Hiks clicked his tongue in amazement. The formula scrawled by Iris's disciple was utterly different.
Trigger divergence in the first mana circuit. Instead of discarding the exploding energy, use the recoil to force convergence in the next circuit. With that power, converge stronger and faster, then unleash an even mightier divergence. Like everything swept away by waves.
Build greater convergence on stronger divergence, then diverge again.
"Chaining infinite convergence and divergence like this? To think it's feasible not just in theory, but in practice."
"This... isn't suicidal?"
The listening professors shook their heads. A 0.001-second slip in casting would cause mana backlash and self-detonation. Heart bursting or brain melting. A one-way grand tour to the afterlife.
Yet the equations on the board danced that dance of death flawlessly.
"He managed implementation and fine-tuning, it seems."
Eric exhaled in admiration. Mages, contrary to their mystical image, despised unverified fantasies.
Anyone could hypothesize. With causality intervention, anything was possible. The key was real implementation.
Thus, if Iris's disciple had merely hypothesized 'What if we tried this?' they'd scoff and move on.
But.
"The department head agrees. From my eyes, this... bears the touch of someone who's cast it countless times."
Hiks nodded. A beautiful formula. No superfluity, no logical flaws—intuitively clear. Details impossible without experience.
Thus, not a mere hypothesis, but a proven thesis fragment.
Chills ran down their spines. An arrogant twenty-year-old freshman tossing out a sliver of a perfected formula as provocation.
'Judge it yourselves. Is this nonsense, or the real deal?'
Even so.
"Heh."
Hiks wasn't displeased. No—a hot something boiled deep in his chest. He tapped the final period on the board with his cane drawn anew.
"Yes. A genius needs this much pride."
Challenging authority, dancing with death to forge new paths. A grandmaster to usher a new era required such nobility and arrogance.
"A genius, indeed. Perhaps even surpassing Iris."
No one refuted it. These old professors had once been prodigies across the empire. This magitech department gathered the realm's finest talents.
They all remembered. The despair and awe upon first beholding the true genius, Iris von Evergarden.
Had she appeared not as a young girl but in her thirties or forties, mature, they might have drowned in inferiority.
Yet today, that nightmarish thrill revived. From a twenty-year-old "barbarian" freshman's fingertips.
"If our world is grayscale monochrome, theirs is full-spectrum color."
Hiks murmured, trailing his fingers down the board.
"If our melody is noise from a broken phonograph, theirs is a master's live hall performance."
Cruel but true. The board forced acknowledgment. These equations offered a glimpse through the window of their colored world.
No logical leap. They simply saw differently.
'Perhaps...'
A strange ambition flickered in Hiks's eyes.
'One Iris might not suffice, but with two outliers like that?'
The continent's mage society had two axes: the Imperial Academy's magitech department, and the southern free-trade city-state Bardray's Magic Tower.
For two centuries, one clock spring had stalled between them.
Research on ancient magic, sealed as uninterpretable.
'Those two might finally wind that spring.'
Thrills raced down his spine. Hiks gripped his slender cane with trembling hands.
'A letter... I must write a letter.'
To the former department head, Iris's secluded master. Your disciple found a monstrous talent.
Of course, that monster's head held only thoughts of grabbing his diploma and bolting.
Last night in dreams, Kasian clutched harvested potatoes and corn in both arms, mumbling 'This is paradise.'
Were Hiks to learn that, he'd clutch his neck and collapse.
* * *
Clatter, clatter. Inside the top-grade carriage heading to the palace. Cushions plush, interior comfortably climate-controlled by artifacts—yet Evelyn de Leopold's mood was more foul than ever.
'Shut up.'
She frowned, pressing her temples.
The academy had buzzed all day. Every corner, one topic.
Kasian del Parne.
'That barbarian wrote something amazing in front of the magitech professors?'
'Professor Hiks gave a standing ovation, they say?'
'Not an illiterate, but a hidden genius?'
'Maybe we've been witnessing a genius's quirks.'
Evelyn bit her lip.
'That barbarian, a genius?'
She couldn't accept it. Didn't want to.
The praises still buzzing in her ears had her on the verge of neurosis, her pride shredded.
"Haa..."
To cool her irritation, she looked up. Across from her sat the future sun of the empire. Her perfect big brother, Crown Prince Louis de Leopold.
Normally, they'd discuss piled-up documents or state affairs. Or he'd gently ask how her day at school was.
"..."
Louis stared blankly out the window with unfocused eyes. Propped on the sill, his side profile watching passing scenery looked vacant, like a man missing a screw. Lately, even anxious.
His fingers tapped the sill irregularly. Tap, tap.
'...What on earth is big brother thinking?'