Mage? Magic Engineer!-Chapter 121 - 118: Poincare

The next afternoon, Rorschach received a summons from Professor Poincaré. The Tower Spirit alerted him in his dorm room, "Middle Level Mage Rorschach, Middle Level Mage Rorschach, Professor Poincaré wishes to see you in his office, located at the third star of the eleventh house on the second floor."

The circular structure of the Tower of Stars had each floor divided into twelve houses. Some houses comprised a single large room, like the grand lecture hall of the twelfth house on the third floor. Others were partitioned into several smaller rooms, with "stars" used to designate specific locations within a house.

The third star... Rorschach found the place. It was called an office, but it was actually a hybrid research and office space. Countless manuscripts were stacked everywhere. Besides bookshelves and cabinets, there were several complex and fascinating machines. The moment Rorschach entered, he was captivated by these devices. Their components were extremely intricate, and the arrangement of gears and cranks seemed to follow some kind of pattern.

"Quite interesting, aren’t they? Everyone who enters my research lab for the first time is drawn to these wonderful machines." The speaker was the room’s occupant, Professor Poincaré.

His hair was thick but cropped very short, a rare sight in Valuva. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, their lenses shimmering with a Magic Aura. "They are calculating machines from Istani. Oh, the third one is a replica I built myself, with slightly improved precision. And I am Poincaré."

"Hello, Professor. I’m Rorschach. Professor Kano suggested I see you for help."

"Yes, I’m aware. Let me see the Magic Array." Rorschach handed the Metal Disc to the professor, along with his own transcriptions of the several Elf Totems and the name "Deryats Forest."

"I think your line of reasoning is sound. However, to proceed with the design, you should first convert it into a system we’re familiar with, just as you converted the ’Divine Law, Performance’ totem into our geometric form."

"Can the other elements be converted too?" It seemed to Rorschach that he hadn’t found counterparts for the other elements within the Mages’ Magic Array system.

Poincaré led Rorschach to a corner of the lab where materials for making Scrolls were laid out. "Right now, we first need to obtain the spectral diagrams these totems produce when activated. Every time a Magic Array is activated, it generates vibrations of a specific waveform in the Ether. This is according to the theory of a Sage from your Empire..."

"William van Leipzig’s theory." Rorschach hadn’t expected Poincaré to know about him. It seemed the Empire’s attempts to lock down the information had been a failure from the start. Before they could recover the genius’s manuscripts, papers had already been published and had flowed into the Magic Guild and various Mage Towers. However, the researchers at the Tower of Stars and those in the Empire had branched off in two different directions.

Poincaré was also a little surprised. "Yes, you know of him too? Ah, right. Master Kano’s group also studied the ideas of this Mysterious Baron." He gave an understanding and gratified smile. "Though the man known as the Mysterious Baron can’t be found in any records, he is undoubtedly one of the greatest geniuses of our time."

’That’s a real "I’m a genius too, so I get you" look you’ve got there, Professor.’

Poincaré had Rorschach help him draw the totems while explaining, "Normally, the ’Ethereal Waves’ from Magic and Magic Arrays occur for an extremely short duration. Current methods can’t detect and record them. So, what we’re 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. "A Learning Scroll?"

"Yes. Similar to making a Learning Scroll, we’ll use this method on these totems to delay their activation time and capture the waveform." Poincaré and Rorschach first drew the "Guardian" and "Vitality" totems respectively, then connected them to the activation units of the Geometric System.

"Alright, let’s record the waveform." The professor took out a roll of paper tape and loaded it onto a machine. After testing to make sure it wouldn’t jam, he placed the "Guardian" Scroll on a platform on the side of the machine, above which hung an "Antenna" looped from Secret Silver Thread.

"This here is the input. It will detect the signal from the Ethereal Tremors, which is then amplified and converted into a waveform recorded by the paper tape. To ensure the rollers maintain a constant speed, I’ve added a uniform-speed rotating device with a Magic Power Drive to the base Istani machine."

Ether was input. As the Scroll activated, the paper roll began to turn. A dense CLACKING sound rang out as a paper tape punched with tiny holes was spat out. It was similar to the punch-card timers Rorschach had seen before, but the holes here were much finer and more numerous. These discrete dots outlined the waveform produced by the tested totem’s activation.

Rorschach held it up against the sunlight and saw it clearly: a chaotic pulse signal.

"Mage Rorschach, if you accidentally tear the paper tape, we’ll have to start all over."

"Sorry. Here you go. What’s next?"

Poincaré took the paper tape. "If you had read my recently published paper, *Applied Mathematics in the Deterministic Problems of Magic Array Activation*, you would know... but allow me to give you a simple explanation."

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

"For Magic Arrays that differ from the Euclidean system, we can first detect the Ethereal waveform produced upon activation. Of course, the spectral diagram you’re looking at now can be seen as the result of several fundamental waves superimposed."

Poincaré believed that during the activation of a Magic Array, the Ethereal Oscillations could be broken down into multiple, simple, repeating fundamental vibrations. Once the fundamental waves were analyzed, one only needed to find Magic Array units within the existing Euclidean system that could induce vibrations of the same waveform. By adjusting the proportionality coefficients and activation times, one could then replicate the corresponding magical effects of non-Euclidean Magic Arrays, Runes, and totems.

"So, for now, my work is to ’translate’ the Magic Arrays of the old era into the constructs of the modern system. This research began when I was collaborating with Chief Kano; he also needed to translate an ancient Teleportation Array into the Euclidean system."

"If we could get the spectrum for an unknown Magic Array, or even a spell..." ’Wouldn’t that completely solve the problem of replicating a spell as a Magic Array?’

"Even with Magic Arrays, we can only detect them using the time-delay method of creating Learning Scrolls. It’s still too difficult to record the waveform of instant-cast Magic, especially the parts where the Ether operates inside the Caster’s body. Besides, every person’s Casting has subtle differences, so the deviation in the resulting waveform is much greater than with a Magic Array." Poincaré shook his head and continued with his work.

Of course, Magic Arrays also have a certain degree of deviation due to imprecise drawing, but a Magic Array that can be activated correctly proves the error is still within an acceptable range.

After feeding the tape through several machines, Poincaré had produced a few new tapes from the original one. Rorschach helped by holding three of them.

After checking the previous results, the professor loaded all of them into the final machine. This machine was taller and larger than the previous ones, featuring a gear assembly similar to a transmission. The professor carefully dripped lubricating oil between some of the gears. "Young man, you’ll have to put some muscle into it. Come turn this handwheel, but don’t go too fast."

Rorschach did as he was told. Amidst a high-frequency CLACK-CLACK-CLACK, a new wave was drawn out. It was basically identical to the one on the first paper tape, and there was also a spectrum of the decomposed fundamental waves.

"The next step is to look up the geometric units corresponding to the fundamental waves and design a configuration to achieve the desired replication effect. The relative positions and sizes of the basic units, as well as the timing of the Ether infusion into the circuits, are all factors that must be considered." The unspoken implication was that the "Holy Shield" Rorschach had made yesterday had taken none of these into account.

"Professor, what if I want to construct an Alien Array?" Rorschach rolled the Scroll into a tube. "I need to draw a Magic Array on the inner wall of a cylinder, and the target of the spell will be an object passing through the cylinder."

"That’s a bit difficult. Other units and configurations can be derived through topological transformation, but it’s clear that this symbol of yours is too complex to be converted. It’s not homeomorphic with a torus... Anyway, it just won’t work."

"Can’t it be translated like the other totems?" 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

"It obviously points to a Divine Spirit. And since this directional symbol is effective, it means there’s a god behind it who hasn’t fallen completely silent." Poincaré walked back to the first machine, the one that recorded the spectral diagrams.

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

"I don’t." Only after Rorschach replied did Poincaré continue, "I once tried, in private, to record the spectral diagram of a Spirit Talisman pointing to the God of Light and Order when it was activated. The result was that I successfully blew my first machine to smithereens."