The First Unique Magic Art
The First Unique Magic Art
If I had to name the single greatest invention of 20th-century humanity, I would pick the transistor.
The transistor is synonymous with the semiconductor. There wasn't a single existing electrical product that didn't contain this component. That alone was enough to explain its standing.
Perhaps the book knew it too. The hardcover book I kept tucked against my chest quivered faintly, as if declaring that this was the puzzle piece needed to return to my original world.
[◆ Progress]
[Unclassified Magic Arts : 0/148]
That was probably the connection. Where in those numbers did anything look like elemental magic?
I didn't think long. I took a deep breath, then immediately opened my mouth.
"Then let's start by purchasing about ten bundles...."
"Give us everything you have."
Professor Haspelt's face went blank at my sudden outburst.
"Who gave you the right to decide that?"
A voice steeped in fury clawed at my ears. Even so, I didn't stop.
"If we don't buy them now, you'll regret it later. Sir, how much per piece?"
"O-One gold coin per bundle, miss. I have about a hundred bundles in stock."
Buying everything meant one hundred gold coins. That was more than enough to buy two ordinary slaves.
"That's fine. We'll buy all of them."
Veins bulged in Professor Haspelt's eyes. It was the signal that she was about to rage. I had to get ahead of her before her lips started to move.
"Stop this nonsense and quietly...."
"Professor, I won't let you down."
I cut her off with impeccable timing. Considering my original status, this rudeness was so extreme that getting beaten and dumped on a hillside wouldn't have been surprising.
But I didn't flinch. I faced the glare of the empire's highest-ranked noble head-on.
I focused on Haspelt's burning eyes. Red irises that looked like molten ore clashed in the air with sulfur-gold ones that sat in a state of perfect calm.
"These magic stones will change the world. There's no time to hesitate over a single gold coin."
I deliberately shifted my tone and register to signal that this was sincere advice between researchers, not a master-servant exchange.
As if the situation had grown stifling, Haspelt pulled out her long pipe and bit down on it.
Fwoosh. A plume of smoke as white as cotton candy rose into the sky. That was a good sign; it meant she had started to deliberate.
Someone who was always deferential had risked rudeness to say this. The incongruity must have been jarring to Haspelt. If I had normally treated her lightly, perhaps she wouldn't have reacted this way at all.
"You said the Gold-Eye Tribe... knows what this is?"
The fact that she voiced the question was enough. I answered with a nod instead.
The movement of Haspelt's throat was subtle. She propped her chin in her hand and let out a low, brief hum.
It didn't take long for her to accept my sincerity.
**
The people of this world were not fools. If they had been truly stupid, they wouldn't have built the academy buildings in the 20th-century Bauhaus style. Looking around the campus, which brilliantly evoked a machine-age aesthetic, I sometimes felt as if I had time-slipped into the Belle Époque.
A civilization's development is proportional to its accumulation of knowledge. The people of this world had built formidable scholarship of their own. Dozens of geniuses had existed, and anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of talented minds had changed the world, little by little. That change remained ongoing.
In the end, I couldn't expect to hold some inherent advantage over others just because I knew the knowledge of my original world. People who stopped working were inevitably left behind.
To put it simply, it meant that someone else besides me could recognize the transistor's true worth at any moment. Before that happened, I had to corner the market by any means necessary.
Was I aiming for a trading margin? As if. I'd be taking a loss no matter the selling price.
The price would surge within a month at the latest, because someone, even if not me, would make it happen.
I had taken five sacks from Professor Haspelt first. Just under five hundred top-grade magic stones were now in my hands.
These stones had a market value of five gold coins. As the saying went, seeing something made you want it; no one would have blamed another slave for running off to sell them immediately. Seen this way, Haspelt had essentially entrusted an astronomical sum to a mere slave.
It was late at night when I returned from the market. It was the hour when the professors, Haspelt included, clocked out and the students were in their dorms or inns for the night. I remained in the Flame Magic Research Building alone.
With the key I'd received from the professor, I headed for Experimental Laboratory 3.
[Experimental Lab 3 — Mana Amplification Element Research]
If I compared this to a university from my original world, this was where semiconductor processing was studied, and also the location where its maximum output was tested. In any case, it fell under Professor Haspelt's jurisdiction, so I could use it as I pleased.
Clunk.
"Good."
I opened the hardcover book that I would now sorely miss if it were gone.
[Unclassified Magic Arts : Overview]
[Unclassified Magic Arts are special magical techniques that can be used without spirit blessings or scrolls. Mainstream academia uses the term 'Unique Magic Arts'.]
[The exact number of Unique Magic Arts is unknown, but the latest publications list 148 types.]
I turned the pages one by one. To confirm which magic was related to the transistor, I had to scan through every entry.
Then, near the very end, I finally found one.
[Unique Magic Art (Unclassified Grade) ─ Current Switching]
"This is it."
The name gave me the feeling straight away.
A transistor has two major functions.
The first is using a small current to control a larger current: the so-called amplification function.
The second is cutting off or switching on the current entirely. That is what specialists commonly call switching.
The core of both functions lies in control. The transistor's advent allowed humanity to manipulate electricity at will.
Someone might ask how impressive it was simply to control one thing like electricity, but well—if the person asking that enjoyed using a computer or a smartphone, wouldn't that be a contradiction?
A computer. Even in this era, there was a calculator that ran on scrolls. With help from magical engineers, it felt like I could probably make one somehow.
For now, that seemed difficult. What I could accomplish at the moment was probably limited to simple operations and experiments.
Recalling my experience so far, magical-circuit components in this world tended to correspond to electrical components in the other world. These magic stones were probably no different.
Good. That was rational thinking.
It might even be possible to handle top-grade magic with just a single puff of a Mana Cigarette. I could potentially operate millions of scrolls with only a trace amount of mana particles. This would spare the mages on the northern front considerable hardship.
That wasn't all. Just as one gram of uranium in my original world could power 23 million household electric heaters, these magic stones could rescue orphanage children shivering in the winter cold at a cheap price. It meant they could be of sufficient help not only in combat but in daily life too.
Above all else, it would help with my return home.
"Three birds with one stone."
First, I checked the prerequisite knowledge required for acquisition.
[Unique Magic Art (Unclassified Grade) ─ Current Switching]
[A general term for all magic that amplifies or cuts off the flow of magical power in a circuit or circle. It is said the Demon King who once plunged the Arens Continent into peril used this art.]
[When cast, depending on the user's capabilities, the magic of the caster or the surrounding area can be completely manipulated. The calculations required during manipulation are heavily influenced by the caster's mathematical reasoning.]
[▷ This magic has not yet been learned. Learning it will cause the first change to the 'Unclassified Magic Arts' acquisition count.]
[▶ Knowledge required to understand this magic]
[■ Required]
[Law of Mana-Particle Conservation (Wanderer perk: waivable)]
[Mana Wave Theory (Wanderer perk: waivable)]
[Kirchhoff Equivalent Circuit Law (condition met)]
[Basic Semiconductor Theory (condition met)]
[Modified Maxwell Electromagnetic Equations (condition met)]
[□ Optional]
[Fermi-Dirac Distribution (condition met)] — Required when handling the fire and water elements
[Bose-Einstein Distribution (condition met)] — Required when handling the earth and wind elements
[Shockley-Read-Hall Recombination Theory (condition met)] — Required for trap manipulation
[Boolean Algebra (condition met)] — Required for logic circuit creation <<Related theory: computer hardware processing>>
There was no issue with learning it. I'd long since finished covering the relevant knowledge back in undergrad.
I pulled out a sheet of Magic Paper. It was a scroll that stored a Light Arrow.
The reason I was holed up in Experimental Lab 3 was that this place had a magical device for measuring magical-power intensity. When I brought the Light Arrow scroll to the device, a relative mana-particle value appeared.
[Measurement target : Light Arrow]
[Classification : Fire Magic / Scroll-Written]
[Maximum output : 45 microsieverts]
[Average output : 23 microsieverts]
This was typical. Twenty-some microsieverts was destructive enough to snuff out a mid-grade magic beast like an Iron Drake.
I removed the Magic Paper, inserted several transistors at appropriate points, then repeated the identical measurement.
[Maximum output : 275 sieverts]
[Average output : 241 sieverts]
"Oh."
Micro was the prefix for one-millionth. The jump from tens of microsieverts to hundreds of sieverts meant the output had been inflated by a factor of one hundred million.
Just looking at that, it was a remarkable result. Like putting a hundred won into the stock market, going to sleep, and waking up the next day to find ten billion—except that couldn't actually happen.
This unnatural-seeming phenomenon could be explained through the mana-particle concept. Because spirits emitted mana particles, what appeared at a glance to violate charge conservation made actual physical sense.
I derived meaningful data through repeated experimentation. It was fascinating and enjoyable. At times like this, there was a real taste of immersion. When I came to my senses, dawn had already broken.
Someone else might have figured this was a good place to stop and called it a night.
I wasn't going to be satisfied here. With that thought, I put a Mana Cigarette between my lips.
"Compose, Sagnac interferometer."
[Physical Item : Interferometer]
[A device capable of amplifying or canceling amplitude by utilizing the interference properties of waves. Highly sensitive to the external environment, and thus cannot be applied to ordinary scrolls.]
A wave: the flow that transmits energy. Such waves possess a physical quantity called phase.
When two waves in matching phase meet, their intensity is explosively amplified. When waves in completely opposite phase meet, they cancel each other out and fall silent as if nothing had happened.
Then consider this: what if dozens of waves, all with identical phase, gathered into a group and moved simultaneously?
[Maximum output : 66.1 kilosieverts]
[Average output : 34.9 kilosieverts]
The output had been amplified by that factor.
Kilo. The unit for one thousand. I'd grown tired of calculating the ratio of change.
Probably an inflation factor of about ten billion or so. I felt like I could push this even further.
"...Shall I tweak it just a bit more?"
**
[◆ Progress change notice]
[Current Switching has been fully acquired.]
[Through independent research, 'Current Switching' has derived into 'Element Operation'.]
[This is being registered as the unique magic art of the identifier 'Aether'.]
[Supreme Unique Magic ─ Element Operation]
[Progress updated : Unique Magic Arts 0 (of 148 total) → 2 (of 149 total)]
"Ah."
I had pulled another all-nighter.
"It's fine. Sleep is what you can do when you're dead."
I stepped outside while feeding myself the rationalization. It was the sort of self-delusion that any grad student had probably tried at least once.
One silver lining was that Professor Haspelt had told me yesterday that I didn't have to clean anymore. Which meant I could hole up in the lab like this without having a master nag at me.
But if I stayed only in the lab, my life would turn miserable. I had to get some fresh air at least once a day.
Wow, that delicious air.
A brief walk was pure heaven.
I had been strolling slowly along the campus paths when it happened.
"Excuse me! Are you an upperclassman here?"