Chapter 32
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 32
Chapter Title: One-Eyed Village (4)
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I'd vaguely thought to myself, "Just shape it exactly the same way and make it," but in truth, I'd never created a treasure-grade artifact in my life.
So, yeah, I had to admit I was flying a bit blind here.
But the moment I got tunnel-visioned on "I have to do this no matter what," progress seemed to grind to a halt.
...Is that why I can't make a cell phone?
Right, this revelation was worth mulling over some more.
Thinking back on it, after I gave up on the cell phone and holed up at home, hadn't a new lead on mana stabilization just rolled into my lap?
I hadn't started proper research yet, but still.
In that sense, dismantling the artifact had been a brilliant move.
Of course, I wasn't expecting some grand secret hidden inside.
Probably just some magic circle etched in there or something.
Etching something like that doesn't make an artifact, but those kinds of superstitions had persisted since ancient times.
Artifacts from antiquity probably fueled even more of that myth.
Still, if I could uncover even the slightest clue about how a treasure-grade artifact was made, my efforts would have meaning.
My expectations didn't miss the mark.
The yellow orb was now split cleanly in half by my hand.
The mana threads I'd unraveled had already lost their power and vanished.
To be precise, I hadn't unraveled them—I'd ripped them out.
Unlike standard or knight-grade artifacts, treasure-grade ones had mana flows so intricately designed that tearing them apart was the only way to separate the threads.
Another lesson learned.
Anyway, as I peered into the hollow interior of the bisected orb, I spotted something subtly different from other artifacts.
A faint trace that I might have overlooked if there hadn't been a magic circle inside.
It was the mark of a magic circle that had been deliberately erased.
I could have dismissed it as wear from ages past, but years of handling artifacts told me otherwise—I couldn't just gloss over it.
And the remnants left in that erased section.
As I examined it closely, a chill raced up my spine, and I shot to my feet.
"...No way."
I've mentioned before that artifacts are born from astronomical odds—a one-in-ten-million chance of some unknown interaction.
I'd said that while explaining why they're so astronomically expensive.
If I dared to guess, what I'd found looked like the trace of that "unknown interaction."
Of course, standard and knight-grade artifacts were born from unknown interactions too, but no matter how much you dismantled them, you never found traces like this.
Probably because the phenomenon was too subtle.
In treasure-grade artifacts, it was far more blatantly evident.
The true power behind artifact creation.
The more I looked, the more goosebumps rose on my skin.
Tremendous explosive force... no, energy, perhaps.
Energy that surpassed even mana itself.
'But...'
How the hell do you even explain this?
That's why we'd always called it an "unknown interaction"—no one had ever defined the phenomenon.
Something clearly happened, but we couldn't perceive it.
We knew it existed, yet it was invisible, intangible.
It felt just like... being the one-eyed man in the village of the blind, unable to see something new.
'Was I... that one-eyed man?'
More precisely, all of us.
Every mage, myself included, blind to it.
A new substance? New energy?
What do you even call it?
"Wait... hold on a second."
Let me think this through calmly.
This was the fundamental force that created artifacts.
And I'd created mass-producible artifacts using the concept of circuits.
Even if there was a fundamental difference between them, there had to be some similarity for it to have worked.
Let's start from the basics with the circuit concept.
Why did I create circuits in the first place?
Simply because objects and mana can't interact, so I approached it by making mana interact with mana.
And the core of that interaction?
Binding.
Mana binding with mana?
But... that trace held power far too immense to call it mere binding.
It was an overwhelming energy that enabled interaction between objects and mana.
Force so potent it could be mistaken for an explosion.
Binding didn't seem capable of that level of power.
...So what produced that immense force?
The only thing that came to mind from my modern memories was something absurd like the Big Bang.
An explosion?
Should I try smashing mana into mana?
'Such a primitive method...'
No.
Let's just try something—anything.
I couldn't reach it through thought alone.
And so began a month of immersion.
I barricaded myself in the lab.
"...No, this isn't it. This won't work. No answer this way."
How much time had passed?
Not much left, probably.
Every method I'd tried so far had failed.
Mana collisions, bindings, fusions... I'd experimented with every possible combination.
All failures.
"Think again. What's wrong? What the hell is it?"
The lab around me was a total wreck.
When I'd tried forcing mana to repel and collide, the shockwave hadn't just hit me—it engulfed the entire room.
Even if Professor Palrez was grateful to me and saw me as a lifelong colleague, he'd be pissed.
But I couldn't stop now.
Stopping felt like I'd lose it forever.
That's when it hit me—the insight I'd gained from dismantling the artifact.
Don't rush.
Don't get fixated on one thing.
"Yeah, this might not be the way."
Maybe approaching it by transforming mana was wrong from the start.
No matter how I transformed mana, the result was magic—bound by the world's fixed laws.
"...Then what the hell do I do?"
Critical thoughts, armed with failures, sprang up immediately.
It was frustrating, no doubt.
Something was right there, but I couldn't unearth it.
Like trying to give eyes to a one-eyed man—frustrating by nature.
So frustrating that mutterings kept spilling out.
My habit when frustration peaked.
It was the same at the end of grad school.
That's why Palrez once dragged me to a priest, dead serious.
Thought I was possessed by an evil spirit.
Anyway.
Let's recall the sensation when I first spotted that trace.
New energy. Surpassing even mana.
Until now, I'd thought of that unknown phenomenon as mana evolved one step further.
Time to shift perspectives.
Microscopic probing hadn't worked.
Go macroscopic. Broaden the view.
Go back even further.
How is mana born?
Mana manifests miracles, but how does mana itself arise?
That thing we'd never seen or recognized.
If some force influences mana's birth... that instant might be the essence I'd missed.
'Before mana is born...'
How to define it?
'The moment that decides what properties mana will have.'
Before mana takes on heat, cold... or any attributes or traits.
A pure state, leaving no traces yet.
Then there must be a force that imbues mana with attributes, sets its direction, and solidifies its existence.
Like primordial mana.
A hypothesis formed in an instant.
All that's left is proof.
If this flops too, I won't make it to the regular assembly.
Before it becomes mana, this flow I'm sensing now obviously doesn't have it.
Mana itself is like air—not everyone can detect it.
Sensing mana requires talent to begin with.
Let alone the stage before that.
The fleeting moment when mana takes form.
Is there a way to capture that instant?
The idea that popped up was using my unique mana trait.
Attribute conversion.
Forcibly suppress mana to a near-primordial, attribute-less state.
Then collide, fuse, bind—try anything.
Thinking it over, doing it directly with my hands seemed too dangerous.
'Use circuits.'
Not directly—collide circuits fixed in an attribute-less state.
That set my course.
Squeeze mana from my circle to craft circuits, and craft more, and more.
Dozens of attempts later.
Boom!
One wall of the lab shattered.
'Simple collision isn't it?'
Nor binding.
Forcibly suppressing mana to attribute-less and then binding it made further suppression impossible.
Because it wasn't perfectly attribute-less?
Or an issue with collision intensity?
Or was the hypothesis wrong entirely?
Of the three possibilities, two could be ruled out simply.
Can't confirm with dozens—ramp it to hundreds.
Not brute force, though—fine-tune more delicately.
Like aiming for the point where they seem about to collide but bind instead.
'Does that even make sense...'
But if only sensible experiments worked, the continent's long history would have uncovered it ages ago.
The reason I clung to this contradictory hypothesis was simple.
The trace in the treasure-grade artifact.
It clearly held immense energy, yet hadn't exploded.
If it had, it'd be fragments, not an artifact.
So I repeated it hundreds more times.
My circle filled with mana, emptied in a flash, refilled endlessly.
Even with the academy's latest mana cultivation techniques, this could've overheated and burst my circle.
But I couldn't stop.
A strange gut feeling told me this was working.
'Only enough mana left for one more try anyway.'
If this fails, I really need a break.
Time's flown—any more delay, and I'll miss the assembly.
Final attempt.
I infused two circuits with mana.
Suppressed attributes as much as possible, edging toward attribute-less.
Then steered them toward collision—but twisted at the last second to embrace each other.
I felt it as I did.
No way to handle this contradiction more delicately.
Felt like a divine sign to let go of attachments.
Another explosion.
Boom!
Looked the same as before on the surface.
But there was a difference.
"Huh?"
The blinding light in that explosion.
"Wha—?"
A mere instant, but the light swept around, absorbing the explosion's force, then vanished without a trace.
But I'd seen it.
Hundreds of blasts had inured my eyes—I didn't even flinch.
Not sure if success, but... definitely different from before.
But my shock wasn't just that.
My circle, mana fully depleted.
Instead of shuddering on empty, mana had partially refilled.
'My hierarchy... leveled up?'
Just from glimpsing that light once?
Erbaneck sat across the table from the priest once more, just the two of them.
Even now, with the High Elf elders desperately awaiting only the clan chief's guidance, this was an unavoidable meeting.
Because the mother's words, relayed by the priest, couldn't be shared with others.
"Let me ask once more. She said a new tree is born, exactly?"
"Yes. Those were her precise words."
"That tree being..."
"Another colossal sacred tree. Correct."
"This is insane."
Erbaneck pressed his temple again and bowed his head.
It was that absurd.
No room to doubt the Great Mother's words, but—
A new sacred tree?
That meant a great being revealing itself to the world.
'Not just any great being.'
It was tantamount to a new order emerging—one that cradles and nurtures the world.
And most crucially, there was no guarantee this being would benefit them.
No matter that it was a tree.