A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 119 Poincaré

The following afternoon, Rorschach received Professor Poincaré's summons. The tower spirit reminded Rorschach in his dormitory: "Rorschach, intermediate mage, Professor Poincaré wants you to go to his office, located on the second floor, eleventh house, third star."

The circular building of the Tower of Stars is divided into twelve palaces on each floor. Some palaces are entire classrooms, such as the grand lecture hall in the twelfth palace on the third floor. Others are divided into several rooms, with stars used to indicate specific locations.

Third Star. Rorschach found the place. It was called an office, but it was actually a mix of research and work areas, with countless stacks of papers, bookshelves, and storage cabinets, as well as several complex and wonderful machines. Rorschach was immediately attracted by these machines when he entered. Their parts were extremely small, and the arrangement of gears and cranks followed a certain pattern.

"Isn't it fascinating? Everyone who enters my lab for the first time is captivated by these amazing machines." The speaker was Professor Poincaré, the master of the room.

His hair was thick but shaved very short, which was unusual in Valuana, and he wore gold-rimmed glasses with a magical glow on the lenses: "They are computing machines from Istani, oh, the third one is a copy I made myself, with a slight improvement in precision. And I am Poincaré."

"Hello Professor, I am Rorschach. Professor Cano recommended that I seek your help."

"Yes, I already know. Let me see the magic circle." Rorschach handed the metal disk to the professor, along with the several elven totems he had copied and the [Deryaz Forest].

"I think your idea is fine, but to design it further, it should first be transformed into a system that we are familiar with, just like you transformed the totem of 'divine law and performance' into our geometric form."

"Can other elements be converted as well?" Luo Xia seemed unable to find corresponding elements for other elements in the mage's magic circle system.

Poincaré led Rorschach to a corner of the research lab, where materials for making the scrolls were laid out: "Now we need to obtain the spectra of these totems' activation. Each magic circle, when activated, generates a specific waveform vibration in the etheric environment; this is from your empire's sages."

"Wilhelm van Leipzig's theory." Rorschach hadn't expected Poincaré to know it too. It seemed the Empire's attempts to block it from the start had failed; before the manuscripts of this genius were even retrieved, papers had already been published and circulated in magic guilds and various mage towers. However, the Tower of Stars and the Empire's researchers had taken two different paths.

Poincaré was also somewhat surprised: "Yes, you know about it too? Oh right, Master Cano's group also studied this mysterious viscount's ideas." He gave an understanding and gratified smile: "Although the mysterious viscount cannot be found, he is definitely one of the greatest geniuses of our time."

Professor, you have this "I'm a genius too, I understand you" look on your face.

Poincaré had Rorschach draw the totem with him, explaining, "Ordinary spells and magic circles, such as 'ether waves,' occur for an extremely short time, which current methods cannot detect or record. So what we are doing now is trying to find a way to extend the duration of a single cycle of this wave."

Rorschach immediately thought of the answer: "Learn to use a scroll?"

"Yes, similar to learning how to make a scroll, we also use this method to delay the time it takes for these totems to occur, and obtain waveforms." Poincaré and Rorschach first drew the totems of "Guardian" and "Life Force" respectively, and connected them to the excitation unit of the geometric system.

"Okay, let's record the waveform." The professor took out a roll of paper tape, loaded it onto a machine, and after testing that it wouldn't jam, placed the "Guardian" roll on the platform on the side of the machine, above which hung an "antenna" made of mithril wire.

"This is the input end, which detects the signal of etheric tremors, amplifies it, converts it into a waveform, and records it on the paper tape. To ensure the uniform speed of the rollers, I added a magic-driven uniform rotation device to the Istani machine."

Inputting ether activates the reel, and the paper tube begins to spin. A rapid clicking sound rings out as the perforated paper tape is ejected, just like the punch timers Rorschach had seen, but with much finer perforations. These discrete points depict the waveforms that appear when the tested totem is excited.

Rorschach looked against the sunlight and saw that it was a jumble of pulse signals.

"Master Rorschach, if you accidentally tear the paper strip, we'll have to start all over again."

"Excuse me, here you go. What's next?"

Poincaré took the paper strip: "If you've read my recently published 'Applied Mathematics of Deterministic Problems in the Excitation of Magic Arrays,' you'll know how I can give a simple explanation."

As he loaded the paper tape and operated the new machine, he briefly explained the principles to Rorschach:

"For arrays that differ from the Euclidean system, we can first detect the generated ether waveform. Of course, the spectrum you are seeing now can be seen as the result of the superposition of multiple fundamental waves."

Poincaré believed that the etheric oscillations during the activation of a magic circle could be broken down into multiple simple, repetitive fundamental vibrations. Once the fundamental wave was identified, it was only necessary to find a magic circle unit within the existing Euclidean magic circle system that could induce the same waveform vibration. By adjusting the scaling factor and activation time, the corresponding magical effects of non-Euclidean magic circles, runes, and totems could be replicated.

"So for now, my work is to 'translate' the magic arrays of the old era into the structure of the modern system. This research started when I was working with Chief Cano, who also needed to translate the ancient teleportation arrays into the Euclidean system."

"If we could obtain the spectrum of unknown magic arrays or even spells," wouldn't that solve the problem of completely replicating spells from magic arrays?

"Even with magic arrays, we can only detect them by creating learning scrolls with time delays. It's still too difficult to record the waveforms of instantaneous spells and spells where some ether operates within the caster's body. Moreover, each person's spellcasting is subtly different, and the waveform deviation obtained each time is much greater than that of magic arrays." Poincaré shook his head and continued with his work.

Of course, magic circles may have some deviations due to non-standard drawing, but if a magic circle can be activated correctly, it means that the error is still within an acceptable range.

Moving between several machines, Poincaré successfully produced several strips from a single paper strip, and Rorschach also helped him get three.

After reviewing the previous results, the professor loaded them all into the last machine. This machine was much larger than the previous ones, with gears resembling a gearbox. The professor carefully dripped lubricant between some of the gears. "Young man, you'll have to put in some effort and crank this handwheel, but don't crank it too fast."

Rorschach did as instructed, and amidst the high-frequency clicking sounds, a new wave was drawn, which was basically consistent with the first paper tape, along with the fundamental frequency spectrum that had been disassembled.

"Next, we need to compare the geometric units with the fundamental wave and design the configuration to achieve the fitting effect we need. The relative positions and sizes between the basic units, as well as the timing of the ether injection into the circuit, are all factors to consider." The implication is that Rorschach's "Shield" yesterday did not take these factors into account at all.

"Professor, what if I want to construct an alien magic circle?" Rorschach rolled the scroll into a bucket: "I need to draw a magic circle on the inside of a cylindrical wall, and then the target of the spell is an object that passes through the cylindrical wall."

"It's a bit difficult. Other units and configurations can be obtained through topological transformations, but obviously your symbol is too complex to be converted. It's also not homeomorphic to a torus, so it's not going to work."

"Can't it be translated like other totems?"

"It clearly points to a deity, and since this locator is useful, it must be backed by a god who hasn't completely fallen into oblivion." Poincaré returned to the first machine recording the spectrograms:

"This is the second machine I've made. Mage Rorschach, you're from the Empire, you don't believe in the God of Light and Order, do you?"

"I don't believe it." After Rorschach finished speaking, Poincaré continued, "I once tried in private to record the spectrum when the talisman pointing to the god of light and order was activated, and the result was that I successfully blew the first machine to pieces."

(End of this chapter)