1. Open Up, Dimensional Gate!
"Heh heh… They all called me mad. But just you watch. The one who laughs last is the one who truly wins."
A madman's cackle echoed through the moldy old laboratory.
One year since I had enrolled at the Academy. The short, short winter break before my second year, and I had shut myself away in this dank basement, cut off from the world entirely.
A student, by rights, ought to devote himself to his studies. But here at Firandel Academy, the only soul truly worthy of the name "student" was me.
"What the fuck—did they all come to the Academy to date, or what?"
I could understand the giddiness, with the place packed to bursting with hot-blooded young men and women in the prime of their youth. But there are limits to socializing, surely. Holding hands and cooing at each other in the middle of class—is that normal? I gave them a look for disrupting the lecture, and suddenly I was the weirdo. And these were the talents meant to shoulder the nation's future someday. I couldn't help but despair at the Academy's standards.
It wasn't just my classmates, either. The dusty old fogeys heading the departments were no better. That pathetic look on their faces when I brought them my revolutionary dimensional theory… even now, my blood ran hot remembering those idiots clicking their tongues about "delusions" and "a waste of time."
Firandel Academy was a thoroughly secular place. All it weighed was immediate combat firepower and the political connections of noble houses; the pure scholarship and dimensional theory I devoted myself to were written off as a waste of money.
In the end, I'd had no choice but to furnish this basement laboratory myself, draining my own savings and my scholarship to do it. Well, it did come with the advantage of researching freely on my own… though thanks to that, the stares around me grew only harsher.
"Ian, your skills are excellent, but you really can't read a room."
"Research is all well and good, but why not go outside and build some social skills?"
"…Honestly, you're kind of a loner."
Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I was spending my own money, in my own basement laboratory, burning my own mana—what did reading the room have to do with any of it? Did I embezzle someone else's funds? Run illegal gambling to bankroll my research?
No—they had branded me a social misfit for one reason and one reason only: I refused to snicker along at the level of the vulgar masses and waste my soul on their hollow socializing.
Honestly, if it were up to me, I would have kicked the lecture hall door open and hurled the entire stack of papers containing my life's research straight into their faces, without mercy.
But that would have been nothing more than barbaric violence, devoid of intellect. The fact that a supreme genius archmage stooped no lower—those bastards should treasure it as their family's honor for the rest of their days. Well. There was no need to waste any more emotion on such insignificant humans.
"The mediocre can never understand a genius's magnificent solitude—or the fruit that ripens at its end."
Fleeing the incurable fools, all that remained to me was a cold, clammy basement laboratory, and perfect solitude. And today, the fruit of that solitude hung shimmering before my very eyes.
A silvery rift, warping in the empty air.
I brandished my staff, flush with triumph. With the final incantation, the tear in space that had wavered unstably above the great magic circle at the center of the laboratory finally locked into place.
I had done it! A historic moment. The Dimensional Gate those old professors could never reach in a lifetime of devotion—the one they dared dismiss as delusion—I had flung wide open, all by myself! Unable to contain the surging emotion, I applauded myself.
"See? I knew I could do it."
Did they have any idea how much I had endured to get here? How much effort I had poured out while dodging all those sidelong glances? In particular, the unpleasant memories of stopping by the magic shop for materials flickered through my mind.
"Oh? A first-time customer! You're an Academy student, aren't you? Looking for anything in particular?"
"…Uh, w-well. M-magic… p-parchment…"
"Hm…? What was that? Could you speak up a little?"
The memory of my face burning scarlet as I mumbled before that young clerk's sparkling eyes. The shame of paying for a completely unrelated scroll because I couldn't manage the words "I'd like to exchange this," and trudging home with it.
…Granted, I am a tiny bit shy around strangers, but that was entirely the fault of that blockheaded merchant for failing to comprehend my noble enunciation! But those tearful humiliations ended today.
"Hck."
A single hot tear rolled down my cheek. Drunk on my own greatness, chewing down and swallowing the emotion, I walked toward the Dimensional Gate with a solemn expression.
For hundreds of years since the Great Sage invented magic, the world had stood still. The era of idiots all-in on elemental magic, scrambling for nothing but bigger firepower, was over.
Now, through Dimensional Magic, the history of magic would evolve to a whole new stage. I would be recorded in the history books as the Second Sage, and every last one of those who had treated me like a fool would be forced to look back and regret.
I had even perfectly drafted the lines to deploy in my first press interview. …Ah, but getting too famous sounds exhausting in its own way.
"Ahem. Ahem."
I readied my throat and completed the final incantation.
"Now—welcome it! This dazzling new age about to dawn!"
The great vortex that would prove my magnificent theory correct! And regret it—regret it desperately!
"Why did we fail to recognize you back then, Lord Ian!"—on their knees, groveling, rubbing their hands raw!
"We were wrong, Lord Ian!"
"Please, forgive us just this once!"
"Heh heh heh…"
Listening to the phantom wails of my beautiful classmates sobbing within my imagination, I snapped my eyes wide open.
…
Hold on. Something was wrong.
According to the transfer formula I had derived—burning through months of calculations and tens of thousands of sheets of parchment—the gate should have opened at a size a person could comfortably pass through. But what lay spread before my eyes right now was…
A silvery hole the size of a single joint of my finger.
"Uh… hm… why is it like this?"
Why, though? The magic circle had been flawless, and the mana output was within the margin of error.
Ah, come to think of it, I had rounded off the last three decimal places when calculating the dimensional resistance coefficient—but surely that couldn't account for a discrepancy this enormous? Flustered, I slammed my staff against the floor.
"No, no. This is merely the initial phenomenon of a gate opening. The spatial tension simply hasn't stabilized yet. Raise the output, and any moment now the heavens and earth themselves will split wide open!"
I gathered my mana and poured it into the magic circle once more. With a majestic tremor, the tear in space widened by the faintest degree.
Zzzt— krrk.
Had it widened? No… if anything, it seemed to have shrunk.
Holding my breath, I brought my hand up to the hole. About the width of one joint of my thumb? That was it.
…
Wiping the cold sweat from my brow, I stared hard at the silvery hole the size of one joint of my finger. No matter how I wrung my output to its absolute limit, no matter how I rolled the pronunciations of the ancient terminology across my tongue until it twisted and raised the density of the magic circle, this freakish little hole showed not the slightest sign of widening any further.
The Dimensional Gate was one finger joint wide. It had locked perfectly at precisely the size of the first joint of my thumb.
…
But let me make one thing clear: my experiment did not fail. It had unmistakably pierced the dimensional barrier and linked to the coordinates of a completely different world—that much was fact.
It was merely that… I couldn't physically put my body through it, that was all.
"Whew……"
Gulping down rough breaths, I swept my hair back. Calm down. Don't panic, Ian. To a genius, a crisis is simply another opportunity for discovery.
Granted, visually speaking, it differed quite a bit from the world-shaking Dimensional Gate I had envisioned. If any of those know-nothing mages saw this, they would clap their hands and sneer, "See? Your grand delusion is nothing but a mouse turd in your pocket!" My blood boiled just imagining it.
"I can't leave it like this."
It was fine if astonishing the world got postponed a little. If I gave up here, I would be branded for life as a washed-up fool who had done nothing but spout nonsense from a corner of his room—I would sooner bite off my own tongue than see that. It was absolutely unbearable. I could never let go of my grand dream: to succeed without fail and flatten the noses of every bastard who had ever looked down on me.
But first—this experiment gets classified as top secret.
So what if the completed dimensional transfer formula couldn't physically admit a person? All I had to do was find the best possible countermeasure for this narrow little rift.
"That said, I do want to see what's on the other side. How do I manage that?"
Stuffing my physical body through, or any sizable observation equipment, was out of the question. Which left exactly one answer.
Send in a familiar and share its vision.
That way it could move about freely, and I could observe with ease. To a mage, a familiar was the most useful tool to deploy into dangerous expeditions in one's stead—for mages, whose own bodies were their most precious assets, it was practically a necessity.
By the Academy's orthodox curriculum, a familiar was meant to be another self to the mage—a being with whom one shared a portion of one's own mana in communion, a companion for life.
Noble-born mages used to pay exorbitant sums to contract colossal, menacing magical beasts, or noble phantom beasts bearing the blood of rare spirits, all for the sake of showing off. A falcon with sleek plumage, say, or a silver wolf wreathed in mystical aura. In the practical exams, how elegant and dignified a familiar one summoned served as a yardstick of one's family's standing.
Hah. What a waste of mana, to spend it on mere appearances.
To me, that sort of superficial flair was worth less than garbage. Communion, bonds—such emotional extravagance simply did not exist in the dictionary of a Great Archmage who prized efficiency above all else.
Which was why I owned no biological familiar. If I needed one, building a golem would do just fine.
The problem was that, right this moment, I had nothing at all small enough to slip through that cramped little hole (thumb-sized, mind you).
Even the smallest familiar I know of is basically fist-sized.
But I was hardly the man to give up here.
If anything, this works out. A machine engineered by my own hands for maximum efficiency is worth far more than some brainless familiar decked out in nothing but flash.
Strip away the unnecessary parts, apply a few modifications, and it would be more than sufficient for exploring the other side.
Some time later, I scrambled to gather my tools atop the alchemy workbench, then picked up the metal components and mana-conductive wire that had been rolling around the laboratory floor.
"Heh. Golems? For someone who scored perfect marks in the fundamentals, that's child's play."
I rebuilt the frame from scratch. What was required was extreme minimalism! Since the goal was vision-sharing, I made an artificial eye the base and carved away every unnecessary protrusion and ornament. Then, inside, I installed an ultra-miniature transceiver array.
The result of all this: a thumbnail-sized eyeball golem.
"I hereby name it—the Observer's Gaze."
This masterpiece, named by my own hand, was an ultra-compact reconnaissance weapon—its mana consumption kept radically minimal, yet capable of transmitting ultra-high-definition visual data back to my main body.
With a pair of tweezers, I carefully picked up the delicate little eyeball familiar.
"Alright, in you go."
At last, I gently slid the Observer's Gaze, dangling from the tip of the tweezers, into the Dimensional Gate.
And there, on the far side of the mana-linked vision, in a brand-new world, what I beheld was—
A very, very small living creature.