Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 50 The Essence of Magic

The next two days were uneventful.

To António's great regret, although he gave "Sofia" several chances, she not only did not take the opportunity to escape, but also calmly accepted her life under house arrest in the military camp.

Sister Teresa of the Convent of St. Jeanne personally delivered a small box containing, as Sophia had said, her birth certificate, baptismal certificate, and some other Lavoisier family items.

Sofia's eye color, hair color, and birthmark all matched those on her birth certificate. At this point, Antonio was basically convinced of Sofia's identity.

The next step is to obtain copies of Antoine Laurent's birth certificate and baptismal certificate from the church where his daughter was baptized, and then compare them. If the two sets of documents match, her identity will be definitively proven.

A respected guarantor, birth documents, and tokens—this is how "a person" can be proven to be "a person" in this era.

In other words, whoever has the complete set of documents and can match the descriptions in the documents, is legally Antoine Laurent's daughter.

Although there are many loopholes to exploit, this is already the most rigorous method available to people in this era.

Sofia agreed to Antonio's proposal to use the contents of the notebook as payment from the Veneta Republic for restoring Antoine Laurent's reputation. This was a win-win situation; Sofia inadvertently protected the reputations of Antonio and Winters, as Antonio had already resolved to leave the notebook's contents in Veneta, even if it meant breaking his promise.

Meanwhile, the Army Headquarters Military Police Department has been extremely busy these past two days. Lieutenant Colonel Field has carefully confirmed that none of the spellcaster officers in the Venetian Army have been absent, missing, or dead in the past few days.

At the second general meeting of the military police officers, Winters raised a possibility: the man was indeed a spellcaster, but not from the Venetia Army. The man wasn't returning to Venetia, but rather heading there; he was a spellcaster from the United Provinces Army.

However, the three military police officers currently have no means to verify this, and can only send an official letter to the United Provinces Army. But given the current tense relationship between the two sides, it is estimated that this letter will only be ignored.

However, the salvage operation yielded some unexpected results. Hailan Harbor is a natural deep-water harbor; the seabed at the dock is mainly composed of coral reefs and rocks, with a relatively thin layer of silt. Four skilled swimmers managed to retrieve both the guns and swords in a single day.

The problem is that neither the gun nor the sword has any markings or emblems that could identify the assassin, so they are basically meaningless.

The biggest find was that the salvage crew also recovered Major Moritz's sword. Moritz had lost his sword the day he drowned, and he had been using a simple old sword recently. Finding his expensive and ornate ceremonial sword was a pleasant surprise.

However, Winters' mind has been elsewhere these past few days, not on the assassination, but on Antoine Laurent's notes.

At the military academy, all spellcasters had heard their seniors recount this mysterious story: Antoine Laurent, the father of the Alliance spellcasters, who was executed over a decade earlier, was conducting research in the final stages of his life that could overturn the magical system; he had touched upon the essence of magic. After his death, his manuscripts were lost, and his findings vanished with them.

No one knows where this story originated, but what is certain is that it has become increasingly like a myth. This is because Winters alone witnessed two iterations of this story during his three years at the officer cadet academy.

Antoine Laurent's research became increasingly elaborate and fantastical, and his manuscripts, passed down orally among spellcasters, were transformed into artifacts capable of turning spellcasters into legendary, world-destroying great magicians.

As a spellcaster, Winters certainly didn't believe anything could magically enhance a spellcaster's abilities. Just like he said to Ike, "Give a child a good sword, and he'll become a top swordsman?"

However, being influenced by such stories for many years still gave him a mysterious idea about Antoine Laurent's research manuscripts: although they were not as magical as the stories described, they must have recorded very important information.

However, after he finished copying the notebook, he had very mixed feelings.

The contents of this notebook are quite chaotic; it's somewhere between a diary, a collection of inspirations, and a record of experiments.

Much of the content seems to have been written down as thoughts came to mind; some are scattered ideas, and some are the results of experiments. There are many sketches and revisions, and some rough sketches in the corners and edges, which seem to have been drawn casually when my thoughts were stuck.

Does Antoine Laurent's notebook contain important information?
of course.

But for the Republic of Venetia, the most useful thing recorded in this notebook was probably only the sketch of the "Fire-type Spell Potential Testing Instrument".

Although the drawing was rudimentary, Winters understood what it was. The entire instrument was essentially a sophisticated balance. Two glass spheres were placed at opposite ends of the balance, connected by a glass tube.

The drawing was very simple; the glass sphere in the sketch seemed to contain some kind of liquid.

Winters speculated that the two glass spheres and the glass tube connecting them should be a closed system, and the liquid inside the glass spheres should be some kind of highly volatile liquid.

As a spellcaster, Winters quickly figured out how the testing device worked. Simply put, it could detect even the weakest magical abilities.

An untrained spellcaster's magical abilities are as faint as the tiny sparks produced by a flint and steel, and this ingenious instrument can detect the presence of those sparks.

First, the balance is adjusted to achieve equilibrium. If the subject possesses fire-related magical abilities, even the weakest ones, as long as they can slightly vaporize the liquid inside the glass sphere, the balance will be disrupted.

Even Winters couldn't help but applaud the ingenious design. You see, the hardest part isn't training a spellcaster, but finding someone with magical talent from a vast sea of ​​people.

Like normal people, spellcasters have two eyes and a nose. Before being tested, even the spellcasters themselves are unaware that they possess magical talent. Their magical abilities are so weak that even if they unconsciously use magical power, the effect is so subtle that neither they nor others can detect it.

And so, those with magical potential remained buried in the crowd. A sudden headache or a sudden chill in their lives was actually phantom limb pain caused by unconsciously using magic. But these signs went unnoticed even by themselves and were quickly forgotten.

This testing device can detect even the weakest magical abilities.

The selection of potential magical individuals has always been a closely guarded secret of the United Provinces Republic. By exclusively mastering this technology, spellcasters from all republics, regardless of gender, are sent to the United Provinces for training.

Obtaining these blueprints means that the Republic of Veneta can break away from the Republic of the United Provinces and independently select spellcasters. It could even bypass the United Provinces and independently train its own spellcasters. After all, the content of spellcaster training is not a secret; Veneta has hundreds of spellcaster officers, all of whom have received complete training courses at military academies.

As for the rest of the notebook... it overturned Winters's understanding of magic.

But Winters' magical abilities remain at the same level before and after reading the book.

However, its contents kept Winters awake for two sleepless nights. In this notebook of casual notes, Antoine Laurent wrote:

"People in ancient times believed that the world was composed of four elements: fire, air, earth, and water. The people of Serica believed that the world was composed of metal, plants, fire, earth, and water. Naturalists divided all things in the world into plants, animals, and inanimate objects. But I think the world they saw was not beautiful; it was too chaotic and disorderly. So I went a step further and divided everything that exists in the universe into two categories: matter and energy."

Everything that has a physical form is matter; water, gas, and stone are all matter.

Everything intangible is energy, such as light and heat.

Based on this, Antoine Laurent proposed a hypothesis: conservation of matter.

Magic cannot create matter out of thin air, nor can it destroy matter out of thin air.

Vaporization does not annihilate water, but rather transforms it into gas.

The "water-making technique" does not involve creating water out of thin air, but rather condensing water vapor in the air into liquid.

Antoine Laurent documented his experiment: in an extremely dry room, a spellcaster could only "create" a few drops of water even when using water-making magic at full power. However, in a humid outdoor environment, a spellcaster could quickly "create" a cup of water even when using water-making magic at full power.

In addition, he conducted another experiment, a metal powder combustion experiment, which ultimately confirmed that the reason why the metal powder becomes heavier after combustion is because substances in the air enter the metal. When the metal powder is heated in a closed system, although the metal powder becomes heavier, the mass of the entire system does not change.

On the first page of his notebook, Antoine Laurent wrote: "What is magic? Is magic a trick? To conjure an apple? To conjure a rabbit?"
If magic can create matter, then if magicians all over the world keep creating water, won't they eventually flood all the land?

Definitely not. The essence of magic can be summarized in a beautiful and poetic statement: it can and can only change the energy state of matter.

However, I do not yet have sufficient evidence to confirm this.

The remainder of the notebook verifies this hypothesis: Antoine Laurent overturned his own established magical system and rebuilt the three major categories of spells.

In the section on "Analyzing the Nature of Sound-Based Magic," Antoine Laurent confirms that the essence of sound is vibration. "Sound" is simply the vibration of a sound source spreading into the surrounding medium.

The essence of sound magic is the ability to alter the vibrational energy of matter. Therefore, Antoine Laurent renamed sound magic as vibration magic. He also proposed a new spell concept called "Resonance."

In his reflections on acceleration magic, the father of Alliance spellcasters believed that accelerating objects was merely a manifestation of acceleration magic. He argued that the state of motion of matter is essentially a form of energy, which he called kinetic energy. Acceleration magic was categorized by Antoine Laurent as the ability to alter the kinetic energy of objects.

As for fire-based spells, there wasn't anything revolutionary about them. However, the father of spellcasting did have some new ideas. He believed that fire was the release of energy stored within matter. Light and heat are both forms of energy release. Fire-based spells, therefore, replaced fire in achieving the transfer of energy.

Later, Antoine Laurent felt that a mathematical system should be established for magic, but the notes abruptly stopped, as if some unexpected event had interrupted his research.

Winters read and copied the notebook with a completely bewildered expression.

The contents of this notebook should be accurately categorized as magical philosophy and magical principles. The vast majority of the content consists of Antoine Laurent's conjectures and explorations about the nature of magic.

Practical content, such as how to improve a spellcaster's spell level or what training methods are more effective, is not mentioned at all.

However, this might not be entirely Antoine Laurent's fault, as the father of the Alliance spellcasters was not a spellcaster himself and had no magical abilities. His research focused entirely on theoretical studies, with almost no practical application.

The most practically valuable part of the entire notebook is probably the sketch of a magical talent testing instrument that Antoine Laurent casually drew.

"The essence of magic is to change the energy state of an object."

After reading the entire notebook, Winters remembered only one sentence. He didn't know if it was right or wrong, but even if it was right, his magical skills wouldn't improve dramatically just because he knew the "essence" of magic.

Winters was in tears: "General Antoine Laurent was right after all. 'A spellcaster's power comes from knowledge and practice.' There are no shortcuts. Even if you know the essence of magic, what good is it? You still have to practice your arrow-throwing spell diligently every night."

However, Winters benefited greatly from Antoine Laurent's analysis of sound-based spells, as he had previously believed that sound-based spells only affected sound.

Antoine Laurent's assertion that the essence of sound is vibration, and that sound-based magic should be called vibration-based magic, opened a new door for Winters.

He also tried practicing the "Resonance" spell recorded in his notes a few times. Antoine Laurent himself was not a spellcaster; "Resonance" was merely a spell idea he had recorded, much like Winters's idea of ​​a spell to vaporize blood, which had never been actually verified.

The so-called resonance technique was inspired by an accident during Antoine Laurent's military career. During a march, while crossing a small bridge, the synchronized gait of the warhorses caused the entire bridge to tremble violently, eventually leading to its collapse and numerous deaths and injuries.

After observation and reflection, Antoine Laurent concluded that the bridge itself was vibrating slowly, and the gait of the warhorses overlapped with the bridge's inherent vibration period, like swinging the bridge on a swing, which eventually led to the bridge's collapse.

Therefore, he proposed a hypothesis: if a spellcaster's magical abilities were powerful enough to amplify the inherent vibrations of large structures like bridges, they could potentially destroy them. However, achieving this effect would require unimaginable magical power, so it remained merely an idea on paper for Antoine Laurent.

Winters certainly didn't have the magical ability to destroy bridges and houses, but he cleverly verified the spell's feasibility in another way.

He bought some thin glassware to experiment with, having Elizabeth tap the glassware with a spoon while he tried to use "sound" spells to amplify the sound of the glassware being tapped.

After dozens of failed attempts, the glassware shattered with a crackling sound amplified many times by magic. This meant that Antoine Laurent's statement was correct: sound magic essentially alters the vibrational state of objects, and such spells should be renamed vibration spells.

Thank you to readers Yanyunsan and 20181013204343295 for the recommendation vote, and to all the friends who voted for me before. Bowing in gratitude. In a sense, this is a low-magic world where magic has strict rules: it can only change the energy state of an object. But consider this: in a world governed by the laws of physics, humans can change the energy state of objects through their own will—this is actually a form of high magic. And as long as the principle of "can only change the energy state" is followed, magic is omnipotent. Following this principle, everyone can create their own magic.

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(End of this chapter)