Gunpowder Plate Armor and the Magic Revolution

"Any energy that truly exists in the world must have its simplest process of motion." — *Introduction to Magic Measurement and Basic Standardization*. In his previous life, as a university student, Noze Stella found himself transported to a world where gunpowder, armor, and magic coexisted. It was also a world where feudal empires, free federations, and theocratic states coexisted. At this moment, the entire world was being swept up in an unprecedented torrent of change. Gunpowder was being revolutionized; blacksmiths' bellows pounded day and night, the roar of cannons drowning out the horns of knightly duels. Stone castles that could withstand sieges for months were reduced to rubble and dust in days under heavy artillery bombardment; lead bullets from matchlock muskets could pierce the plate armor passed down through generations of nobles from three hundred paces away. Politics was being revolutionized; imperial edicts lost their power in border provinces, and the territories of hereditary nobles were shaken by waves of citizen uprisings. The federal flag rose over the ruins of the old world, while the imperial family and nobles clung tightly to their millennia-old privileges, attempting to plug the gaps in the times with iron and blood. Even magic, once the most mysterious and untouchable art, is undergoing a revolutionary upheaval. Once upon a time, magic was a miracle accessible only to the chosen few, the sharpest weapon used by royal and divine power to consolidate privilege. Now, magic is no longer a divinely granted privilege, but knowledge that can be learned. Norze is swept along by the tides of time, and one day, he will become the very tide itself.