A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 507 Resisting the Restriction

"Unit 2-101 is ready!" "All units are ready!"

The former technician, the "legendary commander" of the Imperial Army during the Second Battle of Moncado Fortress, has been entrusted with an important task: he is in charge of the anti-magic devices for the entire Helmut Line.

The junior technician was promoted to "Imperial Tech Master," a title eagerly anticipated by all the other tech enthusiasts. Filled with pride and excitement, he nodded: "Let's begin."

The anti-magic devices have been upgraded to the fourth generation. They no longer require the roar of a steam engine to activate, the preparation time for activation has been greatly shortened, and the duration has been greatly extended.

The new model is powered entirely by a strange thing called "passivation metamorphic dust," which seems to have appeared overnight. "Great Tech Master" couldn't understand when the Imperial Army's logistics department could get such a useful high-energy magic source.

With final preparations complete, the [Radio Communication] spell went silent, and instead, a non-magical radio communication system, developed in reverse engineering based on that spell, was activated. As the devices on the defensive line were confirmed one after another, Helmut's "Wall of Sighs" system began its first full-scale trial run.

"Eat some mints, it'll make everyone feel better." The spellcasters felt the familiar discomfort. "Big Tech Master" was experienced and gave all the people with magical abilities in the facility some to boost their spirits.

Meanwhile, the magic guild was in complete chaos.

"The line has been interrupted!"

"Transmission failed, cross-border transmission failed! Cross-border transmission suspended, operation halted!"

The guild communication room watched as the nodes in the northern part of the continent went out, with only a few lines transiting through Bain, Istani, and the Low Countries still showing normal operation.

The Senate had anticipated the deployment of the anti-magic device, and the guilds quickly activated their contingency plans.

The Helmut Line did not cover the entire territory; the eastern end was at the border of Bain, and the western end was not built after the Black Forest. The contingency plan included two approaches: first, cross-border communications would involve multiple transit points to bypass the line; second, telegraph lines had been pre-installed along the middle of the line, modeled after the Bain-Valois system. For simple text messages, if the messenger allowed the guild to view the mail, it could be converted into wired telegrams for transmission.

Byrne, in a forest on the outskirts of Munnik.

"Is it starting again?" Martin saw Caroline and Andrei were there, along with many spellcasters and apprentices. The last experiment to resist the anti-magic device ended without success, and he thought Rorschach had forgotten about it.

Rorschach had conducted experiments inside the tower before, but that wouldn't work now.

He had previously tinkered with the device he had peeked into the crashed airship, but after deepening his cooperation with the Imperial Army's logistics department, Rorschach had obtained most of the original parameters and structure from the "technical requirements" of the tender and the development of the power supply interface.

Rounding up, it becomes "joint research and development," and rounding down even further, the fourth-generation anti-magic device was developed by Rorschach himself.

Regardless, there's now a long-lasting device in Bain's forest that's just as effective as the defense line. The hand-made ones from before could operate safely in the isolation chamber of the magic tower, but if this thing we're testing today were installed inside the tower, not only the magic tower, but the factory would probably explode too.

"Let's begin." Rorschach nodded, indicating that Martin could start the device.

The spellcasters all stood far away, and Martin, whose talent for magic was the opposite of anything else, felt perfectly comfortable. He was the perfect person to start the fire.

Rorschach also brought some of the apprentice mages from the Arcane Tower to participate in the test. It was their first time receiving the device's baptism, and they were initially skeptical. However, after witnessing the expansion of the domain, they realized what it meant for spellcasters.

It could be described as suffocating on a magical level.

Rorschach explained the improved version's performance: "The closer you are to the device, the more severe the interference with casting. You can try to cast the spell after increasing the distance, but it will basically cause the spell to fail." This effect is very different from the one-shot version of "Magic Tsunami".

He personally tested it and found that the long-endurance version of the device had a restricted area of ​​about 1,000 meters to the left, right, and bottom, which could also be called a dead magic zone; an area extending 800 meters outwards was a zone of severe interference and failure; beyond that was a disturbance zone. However, this was for archmages; for ordinary spellcasters and unprotected alchemical devices, the area within 2,000 meters was a restricted area.

Rorschach was now just steps away from the device, but he insisted on trying it.

Even standing at the pinnacle of spellcasting, the familiar feeling remains unchanged. The docile, obedient, and easily manipulated magic, like water and oil, has now transformed into wildly swirling sand, and anyone attempting to control it will suffer a backlash:

Imagine a sandblasting machine facing you; it won't be long before the high-speed bursts of "sand" polish the mage's cerebral cortex smooth.

The extremely chaotic frequency—no, the device emitted what could be described as "pseudo-random"—was something Rorschach couldn't use to cast magic, but he could still sense the distribution of magical energy itself.

Magic is triggered by the vibration of magical energy at a specific frequency. Magical energy itself is a particle, and it is what Porosia wanted to find a clearer perspective to observe it and to determine its current state, which is the basis for controlling it.

But this seems impossible. At this moment, the mages cannot withstand the terrible environment within the domain, and it is obviously impossible to depict the current waveform of the environmental magic using Master Poincaré's machine. The result would only be overload.

It is up to Rorschach himself to find a perspective that elevates perception to encompass extreme situations that are difficult to occur in nature.

Rorschach just stared at the running machine, feeling nauseous and dizzy, his vision blurry.

Wait, is it just a blurry view? Martin was waiting for the stop command at the nearby control panel when Rorschach found him and asked, "Hey, look at this device with your eyes, do you feel any blurriness?"

Martin did as instructed, hesitated for a moment, and then said, "It seems so." He looked again and again, and finally gave a definite answer: "There is an unstable double image."

"Good, excellent." Rorschach's praise puzzled Martin, who watched as the Archmage walked step by step toward the device.

Matter can also be waves. I myself am made of matter, and I can be discrete, yet I can still maintain myself even after being discrete.

Rorschach had experienced a similar feeling in [Vacuum Form], and now he was trying to give up resisting. He not only let his own magic power surge together with the "storm" in the environment, but also tried to make his physical body and the anti-magic device resonate together.

Caroline and Andrei were the first to stabilize themselves and regain their senses within the magic-suppressing area.

They discovered that Rorschach himself had been getting closer and closer to the device at some point, and then he vanished into the forest without a trace.

"Rorschach?" "Rorschach—?"

A familiar voice suddenly echoed in their minds, instantly calming their panic: "It's alright, I'm here."

"You are."

"I'm distributed across this field, and most likely I'm located about five steps away from the device, in the southeast direction. However, I'm deliberately preventing my matter waves from collapsing, so you might not be able to pinpoint my exact location."

Following Rorschach's description, they saw a shadowy figure near the device.

Caroline quickly realized: "Rorschach, are you communicating with us using [Communication]?"

"Yes, it's still unstable, but at least it's a breakthrough." Rorschach's voice was as usual: "The transmutation dust we've filled isn't enough to keep the device running for too long, so let's stop the first set of experiments here."

(End of this chapter)