What Are You Doing, Sis? (14)
What Are You Doing, Sis? (14)
I had the exact same dream as last week.
I journeyed alone through a world veiled in darkness. Smoke rose everywhere, from the seas to the continents, as fire demons incinerated the atmosphere above the surface. Every single spot I stepped on became ground zero.
After walking a few steps, I realized I was smiling. I reset my expression to blankness and moved my motionless lips.
-So another universe departs.
An eerie auditory hallucination coiled around my ears. Whenever I heard that sound, my eyelids would lift and I'd wake up.
"......Haaah."
It was a nightmare so bad I genuinely considered getting a psychological consultation. I pulled myself together, letting out a sigh as deep as the abyss.
I tossed the damp pillowcase far into the corner and pushed myself upright. A round little head came into view.
"Oh, you're up?"
Sitting at the desk and scribbling furiously, Rote noticed my presence and looked back. I silently nodded in answer.
"What's wrong? Are you feeling sick anywhere?"
"I'm fine."
"Tell me if you're in pain. I can go get some medicine from Teacher Gliston like last week."
"It's okay."
She must have had a hard enough time looking after herself while studying at the academy, but she was such a busybody. I liked having a roommate like that.
I'd seen plenty of high school classmates whine at me to cosign their loans, but I'd never met anyone who was so unconditionally dedicated without asking for anything in return. I was almost moved to tears.
"Anyway, what are you doing sitting there at the crack of dawn?"
I deliberately changed the subject. It was to hide my feelings of gratitude.
"Ah, this? I was writing a letter."
"A letter? To your father?"
"No. I intend to address it to His Imperial Majesty."
"Ah...."
An unexpected name came out of Rote's mouth.
A letter to the nation's head of state. I had a rough idea of what it was about.
"I still can't understand it. How could you make Flare state-managed and distributed to the public? You're the one who completed it, Aether, and you're the one who gave up the patent so everyone could use it freely!"
"I did."
"So for the Imperial Household to confiscate it is just nonsense. Who would ever bother inventing new scrolls after this?"
I was nodding along in agreement when—
-Bam!
"There's one more thing besides that."
A little kid walked in through the front door. It was the fox beastman girl, Frey, who had agreed to meet and research together today.
Today, Frey's mood was unusually deflated. She continued what she was saying with a dark expression.
"For an empire that borders the territories of Magic Beasts, the individual freedom to develop and possess scrolls is practically a founding ideology. If people hadn't been able to freely create and use scrolls, this nation would have been annihilated long ago without ever expanding."
Rote wasn't the only one displeased with the Emperor's decision.
Starting with Frey, the overwhelming majority of mages researching and studying in the Empire had rebelled against this decision from the Imperial Palace. To them, distinctions of status like noble or commoner were meaningless. Right then, everyone was united under the banner of being a mage, filing a collective appeal.
"Right now they've only banned Flare, but as they say, he who steals a needle will steal a cow. We have to get the Imperial Household to retract this decision somehow!"
I didn't need to look far to see who the mastermind behind banning Flare was. It had to be that bastard Blueberry.
Honestly, I provided the spark for this incident. When I tried to threaten Rosemary with Flare, she made this extreme move to secure her own safety.
"Hang on, both of you calm down."
If these two friends displayed their mounting anger in this situation, it would only make me feel awkward.
A cornered rat would bite the cat. If the mages' demands to rescind the Flare confiscation grew too intense and gave Rosemary no room to think, that bastard might make some crazy decision. For example, using the Emperor to make an example of someone and kill them.
Let's just hand over Flare for now. This level of deception wasn't a choice—it was a necessity.
"It seems too sensitive a topic to discuss from the morning. Shall we go borrow some books from the library first, like we talked about yesterday?"
Once I shifted the subject, the two of them cooled their anger. Rote and Frey faced each other and nodded.
**
At the library, each person could borrow four books at a time. Also, you could borrow up to twenty hardcover thesis copies.
We used up all our student IDs to borrow 12 books and 60 related theses and transported them to the club storeroom.
It was a stack of literature amounting to 12 books and 60 papers. Even with a handcart, heavy was heavy.
"Phew, when are we supposed to read all this?"
"We're not reading all of it. We're just going to find the parts we need and reference them."
"...So what are we referencing?"
The books we picked were all mathematics books. There were either no books specifically on Magic Arts themselves, or in most cases, it only took up a chapter of a book.
The two of them except for me seemed not to understand why we needed these kinds of books for developing Flare. And it was understandable, because even Rote and Frey knew the formulas that acted as Flare's theoretical foundation to some extent. Their point was that they already knew Flare to a degree, so why were we borrowing these books?
"Are you trying to create new magic like a Spirit King or the Grandmaster or something?"
"Who knows."
I smiled bitterly and walked into the room.
It was the same secret club room where I had plotted with Vermel. This time, instead of some unrelated elf bastard, I'd brought two close friends here.
-Thud
When I, the last one in, closed the door, darkness soaked the room.
"Why did you tell us to come in here?"
"Wow, it's dark. Can we even do research properly here?"
"Wait a moment."
After maintaining a decent brightness with Light, I pulled out a scroll from the bag that had practically become an extension of my body.
"What's that?"
"White Night."
"White Night?"
It was the first time I had shown this scroll to Frey and Rote. It was a rare item I had extorted from Akasha back when I was in the Saliere territory, in exchange for handing over the tokamak.
Looking back, it was a net gain. There was only one White Night, and it was even incomplete, but I could rebuild the tokamak anytime as long as I had the materials.
"What is White Night? What's it used for?"
"I'll tell you just one thing for now. If you understand this, we won't need Flare."
The two of them stared wide-eyed like crucian carp caught on a fishing line.
"Is there something stronger than Flare?"
"Where did you get it?"
I raised my index finger to my lips, signaling that it was difficult to explain any further than that. Nobody pestered me to tell them. That was because both Rote and Frey were completely absorbed in admiring the glowing Inscription Formula engraved on White Night.
"Wow, it's so complex.... I can't interpret a single bit...."
"The world is vast and there's still so much to learn. Do you understand this? And if you do, can you teach us?"
I was so glad that the friends I made were ones with such an intense academic zeal. They tried to learn new things on their own without me having to ask them to research together.
I wished I had research colleagues like this back on Earth.
[Honestly, is there anything easier to blow up than a group project? Am I right?]
Frey, who had been focusing intently on White Night, pursed her lips and let out small exclamations of awe. Then, since she couldn't see a part that was far away and started squirming, I had to give her a piggyback ride.
"...Ugh, it's hard! But if we keep at it, something fun will definitely come out of it!"
"You're saying this can replace Flare and act as a stepping stone to develop a powerful spell that can defeat all the Magic Beasts, right?"
Looking at the glint in their eyes, I could tell who to leave this task to. No, I didn't even need to point it out.
"Aether, leave this to me. I'll try interpreting the Output Section or something. I can ask you when I don't know something, right?"
It seemed that a scroll defined in Minkowski spacetime had stimulated Lady Saliere's inquisitive spirit. Of course, I fully intended to permit that.
"Of course. For starters, let me give you the hints I know....... Yeah...."
The Hardcover Book defined the White Night spell as follows:
[A legendary-grade Unique Magic Art that freely manipulates quasi-neutral plasma. When this Magic Art is used, the atmosphere continuously emits photons as excited electrons release energy, thereby always maintaining a bright state even at night.]
White Night itself was a spell related to electromagnetism.
People in this world didn't know the details of electromagnetism. It wasn't that they were completely ignorant, but the development was slow compared to Earth, and they didn't teach it properly in schools.
Looking at the description in the Hardcover Book, it was clear you needed a decent knowledge of electromagnetism to interpret this properly. However, I didn't have enough time to slowly teach electromagnetic interaction to Frey and Rote from the ground up.
[So what are you going to do? You can't research this alone, and to do it together, Master, you'd first have to teach all the basics to your friends.]
I knew. So even if I taught them, it meant I would be using a different method.
"Rote, Frey. You're both good at math, right?"
"Yeah. To some extent."
"Hey! Do you take us for fools? To get into Tillet, you need to be able to handle a level of education that takes four solid years at other academies with ease!"
"That's a relief, then."
[What are you going to do?]
There was a way.
There exists a mathematical method to glimpse the electromagnetic interaction even without knowing Maxwell's electromagnetic equations. Simply put, you can derive one of nature's fundamental laws using just a few mathematical tools.
[Is that even possible?]
Why, didn't someone say so?
If the language of Korea is Korean, and the language of Earth is English...
Then the language of the universe is mathematics.
"I'll start from the part I was thinking about the other day. You see that linear algebra book and the one about group theory over there? Focus on looking up unitary matrices and symmetry groups in those. If you read the metric part carefully too, you'll be able to understand the Output Section relatively easily."
At my words, Rote nodded without a shred of doubt and began flipping through the books.
"What about me? What should I do?"
"Come out with me for a moment."
Frey tilted her head slightly like a curious little fox kit. I took Frey to the supply room, gathered some iron tools and Magic Stones, and sat down at the work table.
"What are we going to do?"
"You know there's a cultural festival coming up soon, right?"
"Yeah."
"We're going to submit a piece for the exhibition."
"Eck, all of a sudden?"
Frey tilted her head in confusion, but soon focused her attention on me as I drew the blueprint.
Even as I was drawing the blueprint, my mind was full of thoughts on how I could deceive Rosemary.
As a result, I settled on leaving the daytime research to Rote.
Then what would Frey and I do?
Simple. We would just have to put on a smokescreen.