Technology is a lot like a role-playing game. After grinding for resources for a long time to unlock a new skill tree, spending the skill points is a breeze.

Simply put, it experiences explosive growth.

And since science in this world also includes magic, it may be acting as a catalyst.

The resulting explosion was a bit on the large side.

A single industrial revolution here seemed poised to accomplish everything from Earth’s three industrial revolutions all at once.

Zog studied the crudely made cathode-ray tube, overcome by a sense of absurdity, like seeing a legendary hero ride a stray mutt into battle.

Never mind that it was black and white, used progressive scanning, had a frame rate of only 25, and was low-resolution. Since it relied on Magic Power to excite an alchemical fluorescent material, prolonged use would even leave burn-in marks on the screen.

But, because it was designed to play back recordings from a Magic Crystal Stone, it read information from fluctuations in Magic Power.

And this Magic Power fluctuation data was composed of the four Elements, manifesting in the time domain as a discrete signal with four states.

In other words, it was a digital signal cathode-ray tube.

"Does your invention have a name?" Zog asked.

"The Glass Plane for Imaging, Based on Alchemical Fluorescent Material Excited by Magic Power Output from an Image-Enabled Illusion Magic Crystal Stone."

’Figures. He must have gone to the same school as Yuno,’ Zog thought. ’I suspect no one in the entire research institute knows how to speak plainly.’

’Look what writing academic papers has done to the poor guy.’

"How about we just call it Demon Vision?"

In the common tongue, the root word for "Magic" was different from the one for "Devil," so the name didn’t bring to mind some doomsday device created by an evil lich.

"Whoa, Demon Vision! That’s great! How come I didn’t think of such a good name?"

’If it weren’t for something similar back on Earth, he wouldn’t have thought of it either.’

Zog thought that maybe in the future he should just hire a team of people to be responsible for naming things. It would be his contribution to creating jobs for liberal arts majors.

After they returned from registering the patent, they headed down to the underground goblin production workshop to get familiar with the work environment.

His goal wasn’t to work the assembly line; Professor Moore and the goblin tech team’s lab was also down here, and they needed to finalize the improvement and production plan for the Demon Vision.

"Ha! If it isn’t the silly brat who couldn’t graduate after all those years!"

Professor Moore greeted Dr. Fabric heartily.

Ever since he started collaborating with the goblin team, the professor’s style had become increasingly unrestrained.

It was hard to tell if his mind had been warped by the goblins, or if he was finally able to drop the mask he’d worn for years at the research institute.

’He had cast off his golden shackles and shattered his jade lock; only now did he truly know himself.’

"Pro-Professor?" Dr. Fabric, who had been curiously observing the mechanical assembly line, jumped in surprise.

The old man before him sported a lion’s mane of hair, an oversized lab coat, and a pair of slippers.

He seemed to be Professor Connor Moore, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

He’d heard the professor had resigned from the institute; he never thought he’d be here too.

"You invent this thing?" Professor Moore headed straight for the Demon Vision; it was far more interesting than any person.

"Not bad. Tools!" the professor called out. A few goblins ran out from the lab with pliers, wrenches, and screwdrivers, and proceeded to disassemble the Demon Vision right where it stood.

"No, it—this..."

"Don’t worry, we’ll put it back together for you in a moment. There might be a few spare parts left over, but I guarantee it’ll still work."

"Professor, weren’t you researching the Difference Engine?"

"Difference Engine? Useless piece of junk! You’re the foolish kid, so I’m the foolish old fart. I’ve been a fool for much longer than you, so that makes me the number one fool in this workshop."

Dr. Fabric was starting to worry about his new job. ’Is this the mental state of someone who has reached the frontiers of research?’

"Come on, I’ll show you to your lab," Zog said. "We have a meeting to get to in a bit."

To be precise, it was a meeting to discuss the plan for building a Demon Vision network.

Zog was in the conference room, waiting for his all-star lineup of research staff to arrive.

The public’s demand for film and television entertainment was immense, which was evident from the fact that the Shadow of Evil films were still playing to sold-out crowds months after their release.

But the Shadow of Evil couldn’t be popularized in the short term. Magic Crystal Stones were like RAM sticks; their price increased exponentially with capacity. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Even Zog himself only had a dozen or so complete Magic Crystal Stones for each Shadow of Evil film.

So the appearance of the Demon Vision was perfectly timed. However, the current model could only read content by inserting a Magic Crystal Stone. In practice, this only drastically reduced the Magic Power needed to project the crystal’s contents, which clearly didn’t meet the real user demand.

The ideal situation would be to create a Demon Vision signal and then distribute that signal to each device, since the Demon Vision itself already had the ability to parse magical image signals.

Just like a television network.

But the problem was how to generate the signal, and then how to transmit it.

This was the part where he most needed a Shannon and a Fourier. He, of course, had no idea how to do any of this. His entire understanding of communications engineering was limited to the sounds of wailing and despair from the dorm next door during finals week. Oh, and tropical-flavored iced tea.

Therefore, he could only rely on the collective wisdom of the group.

Furin was the first to arrive. Ever since joining the development work for the Visible Inscription Workshop, she had visibly lost her vitality.

Every day, she wore clothes that were practically pajamas, tied her hair up with whatever she could grab, and wore no makeup.

Office life was dragging the Dragon down.

Thankfully, she had a great natural foundation, so she was still a knockout.

Zog had every reason to suspect that when she first used the Complete Transformation Technique, she must have spent several days just on the character creation screen.

Her original form, however, was also in line with the aesthetics of both humans and Dragons—slender and dignified, completely unlike Zog’s ferocious appearance that made you feel like you’d get your head bitten off just for looking at him.

The staff from the technology and magic sides gradually filed in.

Zog stood at the blackboard, sketching and writing as he explained his concept for the Demon Vision network.

Giving a lecture every now and then was quite fulfilling, if not for the fact that his claws kept scraping against the blackboard.

SKREEE—SCHREEE—SQUEE—

The ear-splitting sound was pure torture.

"So, does anyone have any ideas?"

Blank stares were the prevailing theme in the conference room.

The concept of "information" itself wasn’t yet well-defined in this era; jumping straight to information transmission was indeed too big a leap.

"Be useful! Aren’t you supposed to be the walking encyclopedia of Magic on the Feilin Continent?"

Zog tried to pull his tail out of Furin’s hands. For some reason, this Dragon always had to be fiddling with something when she was thinking, and right now, she was furiously rubbing the tip of Zog’s tail.

He tugged lightly.

It didn’t budge.

"Stop it, I’m thinking!"

"Go play with your own. What, you don’t have one?"

"But I’d have to transform to make mine appear, wouldn’t I?"

"If your claws are that itchy, go tear up newspapers like a senile old coot."

"I’ve got it!" Furin suddenly slammed her hand on the table.

"War Axe! Get this shattered table out of here. The floor isn’t cracked, is it?"

Zog carefully scanned the floor. He had used proper, high-quality stone for these floors just to show off; he might be rich now, but being wasteful was a bad habit.

"Why are you so fixated on using a so-called ’signal’ to transmit the content?"

"Uh, what other way is there?"

On second thought, Zog realized she was right. He really had been constrained by Earth’s established paths, always trying to replicate technological achievements with Magic.

"We can use object duplication! We place a Rune marker on every Demon Vision. Then, when the main Magic Crystal Stone is playing, we use a spell to create a temporary duplicate of it at each marked location.

"The duplicate would retain the contents of the main Magic Crystal Stone, but it wouldn’t be able to project them. That’s where the Demon Vision comes in—it can read the images from inside it."

Zog scratched his head. To be honest, he didn’t fully understand the implementation process, but his motto was: when in doubt, try it out.

"Do you know how to do this kind of object duplication?"

"Nope."

"Give me back my tail!"

"But I know a Dragon who can, and they’re in the city right now."