Chapter 2 - Saintess Awakening
Saintess Awakening
Translator : Elizabeth
Louise, a sphere of light was emitting light atop her index finger.
“Aha! Ahaha~!”
Brilliantly.
In all directions.
There was no aura of blessing contained within it.
In the first place, she hadn’t even recited a prayer.
Even if she were repeating it internally in an abbreviated form, she hadn't even observed the minimal procedure of clasping her hands together in prayer.
In magical terms, it was No Incantation (Silent Casting).
A state possible only for spirits whose existence itself is magic, or for high-ranking spirit summoners who can assimilate with them.
Or, a path impossible unless one was an Archmage who had sublimated themselves into magic itself.
It wasn’t receiving light by begging for a miracle under the Goddess’s blessing, but rather,
“Left hand! Right hand! Wooow~ It works simultaneously too? Ahaha~♬”
Daringly, as if she were the Goddess herself.
So very naturally.
Without a single omen.
Simply because she told it to be there.
The light responded.
And she created that light.
“That can’t…… possibly…… Ah.”
She had already seen a similar sight once before, recently.
When Louise was doing those calculations of hers and had all her paper and pens taken away by the Convent Director.
In her so-called ‘Concentration Mode’, she had handled light at will, unconsciously.
Fixing light in the air, bending and distorting it into the shapes and directions she wanted,
As if writing down a divine revelation.
She had recklessly written down characters that humans dared not interpret.
Just like now, without a prayer, and of course, without any procedures.
That’s right.
It wasn’t for nothing that the convent had been in an uproar for a while back then, claiming Louise had awakened as a Saintess.
And now,
“Maintaining the five fingers of the right hand, while the index and thumb of the left…… and up to the middle finger, whoa! The calculation is tight~!”
The exact same situation as back then was unfolding again.
If there was a difference.
Back then, it was unconscious, so when asked to do it again, she couldn’t.
But now, unlike then.
Handling light at will like a toy—
“Ah…… Ah…….”
—Thud!
Mary eventually had no choice but to let the strength leave her legs.
Then, with a posture more reverent than ever before.
As if idolizing an icon.
She clasped her hands together and offered a prayer.
“……Oh, Saintess.”
One long-haired blonde girl called a Saintess.
She was simply laughing kya-ruru~ kya-ruru~ right in front of Mary’s eyes.
“Hm~?♬ Saintess?”
Ever so innocently.
“Me?”
And so very freely.
Sometime in the past, at the Cathedral Church.
That was the place where Louise, back when she was a simple commoner, had been dragged against her will without even being asked for her opinion, simply because the Church suddenly claimed she had an aptitude for the Light attribute.
It was the place where she received the Ritual of Light and was newly named as Candidate Number 116.
Back then, she was nothing more than a commoner and a mere candidate.
The gaze of the cathedral priest looking at Louise was nothing more than a look directed at a common individual.
However, a reversal.
“Oh, Saintess. We have been counting the days, waiting solely for the day of your descent in accordance with the time of the prophecy.”
Now, accepting without question that the difference in status had completely flipped,
In a situation where positions and attitudes were totally reversed.
The cathedral priest bent one knee more reverently than ever before.
His hands were already positioned as if praying toward Louise.
He dared to lift his head and requested of Saintess Louise.
“Oh, Saintess. Although it must still be awkward as you have just awakened, I implore you to show your miracle to everyone for the sake of these poor, pitiful, foolish lambs gathered in this place.”
“Hm? Miracle? This?”
It was the moment Louise asked that question in return.
She still did not pray separately, nor did she go through even the abbreviated procedures for a blessing ritual.
But in the fleeting moment since she asked that question.
—Voooom.
Already, dozens of spheres of light were adding brilliance to her beautiful appearance from all directions.
Compared to the time at the convent dormitory, it was a much more skilled appearance.
It wasn’t that she fashioned the light separately through her index finger.
Just because she thought it so, as if they had existed there since time immemorial.
Light was born from nothing.
“Ah, just at what moment…….”
“Among all the Saintesses in history, there has never been one who handled light so naturally.”
“It is so…… reverent and beautiful…… The Saintess…… and the light illuminating her…….”
“Finally, a miracle of light has descended upon our Dawnbringer Kingdom too! We are truly joyous!”
At least to everyone else, it looked only like that.
Yes.
That is, no matter which Doctrine of Light one looks up, undoubtedly a blessing and miracle sent down by the Goddess.
Witnessing only the result without a single process, they had no choice but to see and think of it only in that way.
Which means,
‘If I place them in a cylindrical coordinate system while maintaining symmetry, and maintain the calculation recursively by making the mana equation related to spontaneous emission adaptive…….’
To Saintess Louise, it wasn’t a miracle or anything of the sort.
The spheres of light shining brilliantly around her were nothing more than the results of her real-time mental arithmetic.
Of course, that calculation contained a new order and rules that had never existed anywhere, neither in her previous life nor in this other world where she was reincarnated.
So, seeing that she was pulling it off without difficulty doing all those calculations solely through real-time mental arithmetic.
If one were to call Louise’s brain a miracle, it was indeed worthy of being called that.
‘Mm, I wish they’d finish this quickly. Even I make calculation mistakes sometimes, you know.’
Whether they knew the mind of such a heretical Saintess or not.
The Saintess Appointment Ceremony proceeded through all sorts of procedures to the point of boredom.
“Saintess, I bestow upon you this Saintess’s Staff that has been handed down for generations in our Dawnbringer Kingdom.”
Reaching the end, the King of the Dawnbringer Kingdom, toward the Saintess,
“Yes.”
Entered the final wrap-up while handing over the staff that was the symbol of the Saintess.
“According to the oracle, you shall uphold the will of the Goddess, and in accordance with the ancient contract between the Church and our Dawnbringer Royal Family, you shall head to our Dawnbringer Academy.”
‘Whoa, the thing hanging on the end of this staff looks like a super high-purity crystal? What is it? What’s the type?! Since it’s colorless and transparent, is it just quartz? Quartz?’
“Yeppers.” (Raw: "Neng")
“……There, you shall save heroes and aid the brave, save the pitiful lambs, and by devoting yourself to the world, I earnestly hope you will save our Dawnbringer Kingdom, and furthermore our human world, from the crisis that will soon approach.”
‘No, looking at the degree of birefringence of the light…… Yeah, that’s it! It could be a BBO crystal, or maybe a BiBO crystal! It’s been so long! So, so nice to see you! My BB series crystal brothers!’
“Yep.” (Raw: "Nem")
“……Ahem. Anyway, you have worked hard through this long ritual. No matter that you are a Saintess, it cannot be denied that you are still a young girl.”
‘No, no, no, since this world is a world where a new law of physics called Mana exists, it might be that very Time Reversal Mana Crystal whose existence was predicted only in theory……!!’
“Therefore, I look forward to the day when you cultivate yourself and devote yourself at our Dawnbringer Academy alongside the Crown Prince, who carries my blood and the blood of the Hero, and finally uphold the will of the Goddess as a Saintess in the true sense.”
“Yeah! Good, I’ll have to tear the crystal off this staff later and experiment with it properly!!”
‘Yes.’
“…….”
The King froze in an instant, creating a silence.
The surrounding ministers and subjects tilted their heads as if they had heard wrong.
The Cardinal and the Cathedral Priest who were seated together were sweating profusely, making up whatever excuses they could to the benevolent Pope beside them.
And the Convent Director and the Church officials slapped their foreheads with a sigh, thinking, Right, I knew she’d do that.
“Ah.”
Saintess Louise, who unwittingly swapped her inner thoughts with the words she had to say out loud.
Stopping the calculation of the surrounding light spheres that she had been maintaining from the start of the appointment ceremony until now—which was one of the biggest reasons things had turned out this way.
Louise smiled brightly yet sheepishly and spoke first.
“Ahaha, my mistake, my mistake~♬ Shall we do it again? Mr. King?”
“…….”
At the very end of the end.
Although there were this and that happening.
Anyway,
It was the moment a Saintess of the human world, found by the Church and acknowledged by the Dawnbringer Royal Family, was born.
She loves physics so much.
It is important, so it must be said once more.
『He』 loved physics so very much.
He liked ‘Classical Mechanics’, which becomes the very basis of physics.
Based on the foundation stemming from Classical Mechanics, ‘Electromagnetism’, which solved invisible, abstract physics for the first time, was naturally even better.
‘Special Relativity’, which is naturally derived from Electromagnetism, was so moving that he couldn’t stop crying all day.
When he went back to Classical Mechanics and dug into the secrets of the coordinate system, eventually deriving ‘General Relativity’ by himself,
He lived in a thrill all day long as if he had met God.
Once, when he realized the incompleteness of physics stemming from the Three-Body Problem, he felt like the world had collapsed.
However, after encountering the new rule of statistical uniformity hidden within that complexity and chaos,
He truly felt deeply that God had not abandoned him after all.
The feeling when the world of uniformity derived from such ‘Statistical Mechanics’ perfectly matched ‘Thermodynamics’, the essence of phenomenology,
Must have been an ecstasy like being warmly caressed within the invisible hands of God.
But,
God always gives us trials.
The world of probability hidden within the chaos of incompleteness.
When a human, who should be bound to the macroscopic world of uniformity,
Dared to dig into and look inside it.
The violence of the microscopic world that unfolds only then.
When he finally perceived for himself that he could not deny such ‘Quantum Mechanics’,
The God he had believed in so firmly until then,
He had no choice but to admit,
Was a demon playing dice with us humans.
Laplace’s Demon.
The Ruler of Probability.
Where no future is determined.
The violence of possibility that pulverizes the deterministic worldview as it is.
Reality and causality trampled by superposition and entanglement.
But, so what if it is a demon?
So what if this is also true?
If that chaos is also the truth and order of this world created by God.
Now, he would simply enjoy it.
Humans simply explore the truth of the world created by God.
If one does that, one gets a little closer to God’s truth.
And eventually, one might even be able to wield that great power.
When he was violently coveting the truth as if blaspheming God, swept up in such madness.
—He realized.
“299,792,458 meters per second.”
From beginning to end.
In any chaos and complexity.
The truth that never changes.
The immutable value.
The Speed of Light.
Light existed everywhere.
In the microscopic world, and in the macroscopic world.
Whether as a wave or as a photon.
Light existed while remaining immutable.
Even in a vacuum where nothing exists.
It maintained its existence through the fluctuation of light.
It was from then.
That 『He』 began to consider light as number one.
Therefore.
When he was 『He』.
Or now that he has become 『She』.
That light, which she does not doubt as the truth constituting the world.
Was what she liked the most.
Is liking.
And said she would like forever.
Especially, the phenomenon of light she likes the most among them is,
Undoubtedly, the 『LASER』.
Laser.
Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
To interpret it.
Amplification of light by stimulated emission.
Back then, clearly,
“Aha, ahahaha!”
『He』 was laughing.
In front of his eyes, the brilliant light he made,
Which would tear apart even space-time.
As he stepped into that light himself without hesitation.
『His』 life came to an end.
Like that,
A new life as 『She』 began.
—Called Magic.
In a new world so very far from Physics.