The professor and the temporary instructor and researcher walked side-by-side down the corridor, talking as they went. Rorschach felt it would be rude to keep Master Poincaré from his meal.

After listening to Rorschach’s brief explanation, Poincaré summarized, "So, the effects of your two Magic Arrays are conflicting?"

"Yes. I want to build on the concept of the Slow Array and find a similar method to absorb and reduce the energy from the Transmuting Dust. The relevant High Tier Magic is in the Forbidden Book Area, so I was hoping you could sign off on a permit for me."

"Of course." Great Mage Poincaré nodded. "You should look into High Tier magic from the Defense and Transformation Systems. Although your current Casting Ability is likely insufficient to perform them, studying their underlying concepts could still be enlightening."

The professor then added, "Rorschach Mage, based on my initial impression of you, there is something I must point out."

His tone was quite serious. Coming from the professor, it sounded like the prelude to a reprimand. Rorschach froze for a moment. After all, not even his own mentor, Master Kano, had ever spoken to him like this. Rorschach was genuinely eager to hear what he had done wrong. "Please, go on."

"Your research into Magic lacks a certain capacity for abstract thought." Poincaré didn’t want to be blunt and say, ’Kid, your math is a complete mess.’ "Right now, your thinking is still stuck on adapting applications of individual spells to Magic Arrays. But you’re not to blame for that."

’Then who is to blame?’ Rorschach had a feeling Professor Poincaré often said things that must make Master Kano’s ears burn.

The two of them eventually arrived at the cafeteria. "A Rorschach Bread, and a side of meat broth," Poincaré ordered for himself. Rorschach was baffled. ’Since when does the cafeteria have a dish named after me? Or is there a new cook who shares my name?’

"Bread, sliced open, with sliced ham, leaf lettuce, and a white sauce. And a bowl of clear beef soup." The young man wanted to see what this "Rorschach Bread" was, but felt it would be too embarrassing to order a dish using his own name.

When their food was ready, they both received the exact same meal.

"..."

"This is a good way to eat it." Disregarding the decorum expected of a Great Mage, Poincaré ate the sandwich with his hands, just like an Apprentice would. Before taking a bite, he didn’t forget to praise the very person who had brought this style of sandwich to Valuva.

...

With the professor’s permission, Rorschach gained access to the contents of the Forbidden Book Area. Most of the books on the forbidden shelves were ancient tomes. They didn’t follow the established format of academic papers, looking more like compilations of manuscripts. He even found long diary entries written on what was, for the time, expensive paper. Reading between the lines, he could tell the authors were often mentally unstable.

On the first bookshelf, Rorschach found a hefty tome. Its cover was so worn that the animal it came from was unrecognizable, and judging by its condition, it had been read many times.

’A frequently borrowed book?’ Rorschach thought it must be worth reading. Unfortunately, as soon as he opened it, he discovered the author’s name had been torn right out of the book.

"Duke Arnyu sent over a pike today. This hideous Water Beast has vexed me. It’s too large; even my biggest pan cannot cook it all at once. But to break its integrity during the cooking process would be to lose its spiritual essence and would hinder my practice... Duke, I see this for the insult it is! I curse you..."

Rorschach was left speechless. ’What kind of Chaos Evil lunatic wrote this?’

The text went on to describe a Summoning Array claimed to be bound to a "devil," and even included a reversed sigil targeting the Spirit Body of a Great Noble. This vile Magic had surely become ineffective after the "Great Extinction of the Symbolic Realm," but it didn’t stop Rorschach from concluding that the diarist was definitely no proper Mage.

As he read on, a piece of Magic, recorded seemingly by chance, caught Rorschach’s attention: "These hacks can’t possibly understand the most fundamental driving force of Magic! Order! Direction! Time! Mundane mortals who know nothing of Magic cannot reverse these iron laws... Heh heh, I have conceived a miraculous piece of Magic, but the fools will never understand... It is worthy of being recorded..."

’The Second Law of Thermodynamics?’ Rorschach felt the author was onto something. The author pointed out that in a world without magical interference, the flow of time cannot be reversed, and all things tend to evolve toward Chaos. Unfortunately, the Mage who wrote the book then devolved into a primitive form of concept worship, beginning to preach that "Chaos is the end of the world" and "all things will return to disorder"—sentiments that flew in the face of the Church of Light and Order.

The Magic he envisioned, however, would utilize the "inherent directionality of reality’s development without magical interference" to fabricate a "reality" where no Magic was present. When another piece of Magic took effect, his would extract its "essence," consume that "essence," and return it to the non-magical "fictional reality." The result would be a Reversal of the other Magic’s effects.

What exactly was this extracted "essence"? Rorschach studied the mad ramblings of the Chaos Evil author again and again, and finally managed to get a tenuous grasp on the idea. First, it wasn’t simply Ether; Ether was merely the medium that manifested it. Second, it couldn’t be "Spell Frequency." Sure enough, predecessors who had reached the realm of Great Mage had all discovered that every piece of Magic has a corresponding "melody," but the author dismissed this, claiming the "melody" was still just a surface-level phenomenon.

’So what is it, then?’ Rorschach read on.

"Even the stupidest Apprentice knows that Casting consumes the Magic Power within one’s body. Unfortunately, even after these hacks become Mages, they can’t figure out what that consumed Magic Power is actually used for. They think Mages use their precious internal Magic Power the same way those illiterate Professionals use the ambient Magic Power..."

The author’s next words took on a religious, or rather, anti-religious, tone. Words like "sacrifice" appeared frequently. The gist was that the mind of a Caster or Divine Benefactor consumes internal Magic Power to construct a form of Order. The process of this Order moving toward disorder is what’s dissipated by the "Magic." When the Order unfolds, it receives a response from the ambient Ether, which then disseminates that Order into the real world.

Both Casters and Divine Benefactors can produce this Order. The author viewed the process of "unfolding, receiving a response, and dissipating" as a sacrifice to some great being in exchange for the ability to alter reality. The object of a Divine Benefactor’s sacrifice was, of course, their god, while a Mage sacrificed to the Magic God or some other entity—a distinction the author did not care about.

The author believed that Casting does not increase the Order in the physical plane. Instead, the act of sacrifice simultaneously extracts "essence" from the Symbolic Realm and releases it into reality. This is why the result of "unfolding" is so rich and varied, able to give birth to so many different forms of Magic. In reality, this entire process actually accelerates the world’s descent into Chaos.

Thus, the principle of the spell was finally revealed. One had to extract the "Order" before it finished dissipating, compensate for the initial effects, and retroactively construct a "reality unaffected by Magic" to return to the world. The basis for this construction would be reality’s natural tendency toward disorder.

’Increasing entropy? Information entropy?’ Rorschach had only a rough understanding of these concepts from his past life. In truth, without the mathematical formulas, few people could fully grasp the concept of "entropy." In his original world, "information entropy" had been named as such merely by analogy due to similar properties; it wasn’t a literal type of thermodynamic "entropy."

But in this world of Divine Arts and Magic, it was clear that the "Symbolic" and the "real" were interconvertible. If so, then "information," acting as a form of negentropy, might truly have the power to directly reverse the increase of entropy in reality, manifesting as Magic. A Caster might seem to create the impossible, but in actuality, they were causing possibilities from the Symbolic Realm to manifest, transforming them into the certainties of reality.

Rorschach connected this theory to what he had seen when Deryats elevated him to the Star Realm Layer, and he had a new idea about how Magic was actualized—or, in the author’s words, about the "way Order unfolds":

In his past life, there was a thought experiment: if a monkey hits keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, it might eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare from the endless, random sequence of letters. A Caster, then, is someone who already knows a "great work" exists within that infinite sequence and that the "original manuscript" of this work resides in the Symbolic Realm. When a Caster produces "Order," it’s like looking up the manuscript in the Symbolic Realm by its title, and then temporarily taking the "monkey’s" place to type out the complete works of Shakespeare on the typewriter called "Reality."

It’s just that no Caster can type it out flawlessly, which is why there are variations each time the same Magic is cast. And Divine Spirits and powerful Mages can upload their own "great works" to the Symbolic Realm, leaving behind their own "original manuscripts."

However, according to the book’s descriptions, producing "information" that could directly affect reality evidently required a greater price. The entire world, the Symbolic Realm included, was still part of a system sliding inevitably toward a state of greater disorder.

Unfortunately, the author’s ideas were obscured by his bizarre "Chaos worship." Long passages about "sacrifice" and "praise Chaos" made later readers simply skip over his wild theories. After the introduction to the "Reversal Magic," a line of small text had been added—a note from a later reader: "No other records of this Magic have been found, nor can it be replicated. Do not pray to the concept of ’Chaos’..."

"Tower Spirit, I need to book a practice room." Right then and there, Rorschach began to transcribe these mad ramblings, rephrasing them in his own words and using this line of thought to try and construct a new piece of Magic.