A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 508 The Converging Magic String

The spherical mechanism at the core of the machine lost its luster, its rotation slowed from high speed to slow, and finally stopped.

Rorschach's figure also stabilized as the magic power subsided.

He appeared with a smile. Caroline frowned. "You're taking too much risk. While casting spells under these conditions is powerful, what if you fail by casting on yourself?"

"Okay, strictly speaking, I didn't cast any spells at the time; I was just verifying a phenomenon." Rorschach tried to explain what had just happened and why he couldn't hold back his smile:

"The device developed by the Empire can prevent magic and even divine miracles from occurring. Its basic principle is that high-frequency, disordered magical pulses interrupt any process that requires the mobilization of magic."

"That's something we all know."

"But the researchers of the Empire, and we ourselves, have overlooked one problem. We've focused too much on magic itself and haven't realized that magic inherently alters the material world. So how could a device that causes magical energy to surge in the environment not also affect the material world?"

Rorschach noticed that slight blurriness during his observation: "At the center of the device, even the existence of physical entities is no longer so stable; they are trembling with the device's output, and reality is experiencing subtle chaos. Please allow me to state an unverified theory..."

"Everything in the material world has its own frequency and wavelength, which can also be described as fluctuations. However, in the past, these fluctuations were very small. If we consider matter as being distributed in space with a certain probability, in most cases the probability distribution is very concentrated, giving us a definite position and shape."

"This device is now shaking the probability distribution, making the probability distribution of magic more extreme, while making the probability distribution of matter more uniform. Although this trend is very, very small, we spellcasters can amplify this tendency within ourselves."

"Incidentally, this means that this is a small crack in the instability of the real world, preventing the Mother Goddess from intruding while also opening a window for Him. Hopefully, He won't wake up and discover this." People close a door for the Old Gods, but unconsciously open a window for Him, though it seems neither side has noticed.

Rorschach had experienced this several times before without noticing. The reason for this was that the magic-suppressing devices of the past emitted instantaneous pulses, achieving their purpose through the first wave of overclocked tsunami and the subsequent brief magic vacuum. The current "persistent type" has finally exposed this special phenomenon.

Andrei's mind was as foggy as the device was running. Caroline, who had studied spacetime, barely managed to follow Rorschach's train of thought: "You mean, the reason you disappeared just now was to disperse the probability of your distribution in space?"

"Yes, this 'self' is more accurately described as the constituent matter of my physical body. It is the dispersion of its two elements: momentum and mass. But we are spellcasters, with powerful souls. I have not dissipated, but rather broken free from the shackles of my old organs, gaining a more exquisite perspective."

In that magical, enhanced version of Arcane Vision, he lost his perception of matter, but that didn't mean Rorschach became blind. On the contrary, he was in complete interaction with magic, the base being a pitch-black space, while the magic was materialized as bright tides.

The tides weren't the raging waves he'd imagined. To Rorschach, their distribution probability was concentrated, arranged in striped intervals, rotating and alternating around the device. Ordinary spellcasters would be helpless in this vortex of death, but with his current vision and state in sync with it, Rorschach felt that controlling them wasn't impossible.

It begins with capturing a "stripe," where the magic on the stripe is altered in spatial position and shape by Rorschach interference, and further concentrated and compressed into fine threads.

He then saw that the two brightest lights in the "stormy" were Caroline and his first disciple Andrei.

Rorschach twisted the thread, separating the two ends and draping them over them. If you were to take a cross-section of the "thread," you could see that the chaotic magic surging from within was still uncontrollable, but manipulating the thread itself seemed to be effective and unaffected by other turbulent currents.

This is how he cast the [Communication] spell within the anti-magic device. It was an innovation in spellcasting; he still used the vibrational frequency of magic, but Rorschach used the device to polarize the probability distribution of these vibrations, pushing it further to the state of a "string," and then plucking it to "play."

Although it was just a simple zero-ring spell, it was Rorschach's first step.

Of course, if only he can succeed, then this spell will be meaningless.

However, a bold idea popped into Luo Xia's mind: it seemed that a new magic polarization—no, stringing device—could be added to this "magic-suppressing device," which could be combined into a "magic weaver."

If successful, the machine will have a truly nasty effect—disabling the old spellcasting system, which must be accomplished by plucking a "magic string." The device can also interact with the tower spirits on the Golden Tree for more precise backend control and assistance.

The assistance of the Golden Tree Tower Spirit must be very important, because Rorschach found this casting method to be exceptionally difficult, or perhaps he himself was not yet proficient.

If Rorschach were any more wicked, the era of privatized spellcasting would be just around the corner, and there would be no need for different levels of spellcasting; there would only be VIP1 and level 29 mages.

No, no, no. This device can't cover the entire continent, but it can replace the Empire's plan, changing the blanket ban on mages casting spells in cities to allowing only the new system to be used within urban areas, and even adding blacklists and whitelists.

If the technology is realized, it will be most meaningful to the magic guild.

If Rorschach's idea comes to fruition, with the magic guilds deploying the system in major cities, they can gain the upper hand over the Empire on this issue, allowing the guilds to operate the devices themselves. Furthermore, Master Kano's dream of a "powerful guild" can be realized first in the cities. Most importantly, if the mages are dissatisfied, the guilds can deflect blame: controlling magic is not our wish; the Empire forced us to! They didn't want you to cast spells in the city in the first place; be grateful for this compromise!

Yes, Rorschach was pleased for the Magic Guild.

"Hmm, Professor Rorschach?" Andrei saw Rorschach's sinister grin after finishing the first experiment and was worried that his teacher might have had an accident and lost his mind.

"Huh? Oh." Rorschach snapped out of his futuristic daydreams and instructed Martin to distribute energy potions to the mages and apprentices who were not in good condition to help them recover. He shouted, "No one who hasn't fainted is allowed to leave! No work today, everyone do desensitization training to adapt to the anti-magic field!" How can we conduct subsequent experiments if these people are acting like they're dying as soon as the machines are turned on without desensitization?

Caroline was still somewhat suspicious: "Rorschach, what were you thinking just now?"

"I'm wondering if I can use this as leverage to join the Arcane Senate." Rorschach is now working as hard as the elders for the entire guild, but he doesn't have an equal position. He has to ask Master Humboldt to pass on a message to Master Colbert, or Rorschach himself to communicate with Cano and Feuerbach. What kind of situation is this?

(End of this chapter)