A mage? A spell engineer!

Chapter 142 Master Rorschach, I Have to Criticize You

The professor and the temporary faculty member/researcher walked side by side down the corridor, talking as they went. Rorschach felt awkward stopping Poincaré from eating.

After listening to Rorschach's brief explanation, Poincaré concluded, "So you're experiencing a conflict between the effects of your two magic circles?"

"Yes, I hope to continue the idea of ​​the delaying magic circle and find a similar method to absorb and reduce transmutation dust energy. Since higher-level magic has been placed in the forbidden library, I hope you can issue me a permit."

"Alright." Archmage Poincaré nodded. "You can take a look at high-level defensive and alteration spells. Although your current spellcasting ability is probably not enough to support you in casting them, learning their concepts can still be enlightening."

After the professor finished speaking, he added, "Master Luo Xia, based on my initial understanding of you, I must point out one thing."

These words were spoken quite seriously; coming from a professor, they were practically equivalent to "I'm going to criticize you." Rorschach was taken aback; after all, even his mentor, Archmage Kano, had never said anything like this to him. Rorschach genuinely wanted to know what was wrong: "Please tell me."

"Your research on magic lacks an abstract way of thinking," Poincaré said, not wanting to directly tell the kid that his math was a mess. "Right now, your thinking is still stuck on shifting from the application of spells to the application of magic circles. But that's not entirely your fault."

Whose fault is that? Rorschach felt that Professor Poincaré often said things that made Master Cano sneeze.

The two walked until they reached the restaurant. "Rorschach bread, and a side of soup," Poincaré ordered for himself. Rorschach was bewildered. When did the restaurant start having a dish named after him? Or was there a new chef with the same name as him?

"A loaf of bread cut in half, filled with ham slices and lettuce, spread with white sauce. And a bowl of beef broth, please." The boy wanted to see what "Rorschach Bread" was, but felt a little embarrassed to order by calling his own name.

Next, the food was served, and the two of them received the exact same dishes.

"."

"This way of eating is quite good." Poincaré, disregarding his archmage status, grabbed a piece of bread and ate it just like an apprentice. Before taking a bite, he didn't forget to praise the person who brought the bread with meat and vegetables to Valuwana.

With the professor's permission, Rorschach borrowed the contents of the restricted section. Most of the books on the restricted shelves were ancient texts, which did not follow the increasingly refined format of academic articles and were more like compilations of manuscripts. You could even see lengthy diary entries written on expensive paper at the time, and you could tell from the lines that the author's mental state was generally unstable.

Rorschach found a large book on the first bookshelf. Its cover was so worn that it was impossible to identify what animal it came from, and judging from the wear and tear, it had been read many times.

Is this a frequently borrowed book? Rorschach felt it was worth reading. Unfortunately, upon opening it, he discovered the author's name had been torn off.

"Grand Duke Arnyu sent me a pike today. This hideous water beast has stumped me. It's too big; even my largest pot can't cook it all at once. But destroying its integrity during cooking would diminish its spirituality and my spiritual practice, Grand Duke. I have received your insult! I curse you."

Luo Xia was speechless for a moment. What kind of chaotic villain was the author?

The text then describes a summoning circle that is supposedly bound to the "devil," and the talisman pointing to the spirit of a high-ranking noble is written in reverse. This evil spell must have been ineffective after the "Great Extinction of the Symbolic World," but that doesn't stop Rorschach from concluding that the person who wrote the diary was definitely not a proper sorcerer.

As he flipped through the pages, a spell he happened to record caught Rorschach's attention: "These mediocre people can't understand the most fundamental driving force of magic! Order! Direction! Time! Ordinary people who can't use magic can't reverse these ironclad laws. Heh heh, I've devised a miraculous spell, but fools will never understand that it's worth recording."

The Second Law of Thermodynamics? Rorschach felt the author had grasped the essence of things. He pointed out that without magical intervention, the passage of time could not be reversed, and things always tended towards chaos. Unfortunately, the wizard who later wrote the book shifted away from the original concept worship and began to promote statements such as "chaos is the end of the world" and "all things will return to disorder," which contradicted the Church of Light and Order.

His envisioned magic utilizes the "directionality of reality's development without magical interference" to create a fictional "reality" free from magical intervention. When other spells take effect, their "essence" is extracted, and this portion of "essence" is consumed and returned to the non-magical "fictional reality," thus reversing the effects of other spells.

What exactly is this extracted "essence"? After repeatedly studying the ravings of the Chaos Evil author, Rorschach finally managed to grasp a little. First, it is not simply ether; ether is merely the medium through which it is presented. Second, it is not "spell frequency." Indeed, those who reached the level of archmages could discover that every spell has a corresponding "melody," but the author dismissed this, declaring that "melody" is still just a superficial appearance.

What exactly is it? Rorschach continued reading.

"Even the dumbest apprentice knows that casting spells consumes magic power within the body. Unfortunately, even after these mediocre people become mages, they still can't understand where the consumed magic power is used. They think that mages, like those illiterate professionals, use their precious internal magic power as if it were environmental magic."

The author's next words take on a religious or anti-religious tone, with the word "sacrifice" appearing frequently. The general idea is that the spellcaster or the recipient of divine favor uses their mental organs to construct a certain order by consuming the magic power within their body. This order is then dissolved through "magic" as it develops into disorder. When the order unfolds, it receives a response from the ether in the environment, which then spreads the order into the real world.

Both spellcasters and gracious recipients can produce this orderliness. The author views the process of "unfolding - receiving a response - dissipating" as a sacrifice to a great being, gaining the ability to alter reality. The object of a gracious recipient's sacrifice is, of course, a god, while a mage sacrifices to a god of magic or some other being—a point the author is not concerned with.

The author argues that casting spells does not increase the order of the real world, but rather extracts the "essence" of the symbolic realm and releases it into reality during the sacrifice. This is why the "unfolding" results in such a rich variety of spells. In reality, the entire process actually accelerates the world's descent into chaos.

Thus, the principle of magic is finally revealed: if the "order" that has not been fully dispersed is extracted and the previous influence is made up, it is also necessary to retrospectively construct a "reality that has not been affected by magic" and return it to the world. The basis for this construction is the directionality of reality developing towards disorder.

"Entropy increase? Information entropy?" Rorschach only had a rough understanding of it in his previous life. In fact, few people could fully understand the concept of "entropy" without its calculation formula. In his original world, "information entropy" was named that simply because of the similarity in properties, not because "information entropy" was a type of "entropy".

But in this world of divine arts and magic, it is clear that "symbolism" and "reality" can be transformed into each other. Therefore, "information," as a form of anti-entropy, may indeed have the ability to directly reverse the increase of entropy in reality, which could manifest as magic. The caster may seem to be creating the impossible, but in reality, they are bringing the possibilities of the symbolic realm to life and transforming them into the certainty of reality.

Rorschach, drawing upon his own experiences of being elevated to the astral plane by Dryuyaz, gained new insights into the realization of spells, or, in the author's words, into "the way ordered things unfold":

In a past life, there was a hypothetical scenario: a monkey endlessly typing on a typewriter, and from the random, endless arrangement of letters, a complete collection of Shakespeare's works might appear. Now, the spellcaster already knows that a "work" exists in the endless combinations of arrangements, and that the original of this "work" is already in the symbolic realm. Therefore, the spellcaster produces "orderliness," just as reciting the title in quotation marks and finding the original in the symbolic realm temporarily takes the place of the "monkey" and types out the complete collection of Shakespeare on the typewriter called "reality."

However, it's impossible for a spellcaster to type every single word perfectly, so the same spell will vary from time to time. Gods and powerful mages can upload their "works" to the symbolic realm, leaving behind the "original".

However, according to the book's description, it is clear that producing "information" that can directly affect reality requires a greater price, and the entire world, including the "symbolic realm," is still inevitably sliding into a system with increasing disorder.

Unfortunately, the author's thinking was blinded by a bizarre "chaos worship," with lengthy passages of "sacrifice" and "praise of chaos" causing later generations to simply overlook his wild ideas. Following the description of the "reversal spell" is a line of small print with a later note: "No other records of this spell have been found, nor can it be reproduced. Do not pray to the concept of 'chaos.'"

"Tower Spirit, I need to reserve a practice room." Rorschach copied down these mad words on the spot, translating them into his own language, and using this idea to try to construct new spells.

This chapter gave me a headache, so it took me a long time to write. There's still one more chapter to go, and the acknowledgments will be in the third chapter.

(End of this chapter)