Chapter 115 — The Spinning Wheel and the Bearing

To be honest, it was only after he encountered this metal egg that Gao Yang finally realized how fortunate his present circumstances were: he had not lost his memory, he had landed in a world likewise dominated by humans, he possessed an identity that allowed him to blend in smoothly (though that identity carried a somewhat unnerving, supernatural flavor), and he had a satellite view that might prove enormously useful—and most important of all, he possessed the memories of Gao Yang Cecil.

That last point was especially crucial. It was precisely because he held memories from two worlds at once that he could face this time and place—whose physical laws differed so drastically from Earth's—with relative ease, and that when Earthly experience failed him, he could draw on "this world's" experience to pull through.

The Nikolai Egg, however, had no such recourse; this metal sphere's situation was the absolute opposite extreme from Gao Yang's:

It had lost its memory; it possessed no experience or knowledge that took effect in this world; it had been seized as a test subject the moment it arrived; and most importantly of all, it had dropped in, in the style of an egg-shaped creature, onto the territory of the dreaded upright apes...

If Gao Yang's task—farming and climbing the tech tree in a world with utterly alien physical laws—already counted as Hell difficulty, then this sphere had smashed straight through the ceiling of every lord of Hell, rolled headlong into the Devil King's cauldron, and found the bottom of that pot coated in chili-and-durian.

So Gao Yang could not help but admire the sphere's adaptability and sheer mental toughness: faced with such a desperate situation, it could still live so imperturbably and had even become an excellent straight man... Could it be that metal creatures simply had stiffer nerves?

"Hey, hey, why'd you suddenly go quiet?" The Nikolai Egg's voice jolted Gao Yang from his thoughts; the great metal ball was drifting in circles around him. "I was hoping to hear your advice—what do you think I could do? Honestly, I really want to find something to keep me busy right now..."

Gao Yang began to think in earnest. In truth, he had been thinking about it since before today: to those Gondorian mages, this metal sphere from another world with its wondrous abilities was probably just experimental material, but in Gao Yang's eyes it was a potential high-tech talent... a sphere of talent, rather. He simply knew that the ball had only just woken from a long sleep and would likely need time to adjust and settle its mind, so he had not rushed to put it to work. Now that the Egg had spoken up of its own accord, he organized his thoughts as he began: "You have the ability to control the flow of mana and to control metal. Both skills could be put to great use with me, but I don't yet know the specific parameters of your mana control and metal control, so it's hard to assign you anything."

"About the mana control—I don't really understand it myself," the metal ball replied. "You call that energy mana, but our world has no such thing at all. When I affect the flow of mana, I'm actually vibrating my magnetocytes—an organ in my body that can generate a high-frequency magnetic field. In our world, when the magnetocytes vibrate, they form a protective barrier on the body's surface, but here I found the barrier gone, and instead I could affect the energy you call 'mana,' making it briefly fail..."

Gao Yang cut it off: "You said magnetic field? You're actually using a magnetic field to affect the flow of mana?"

"That's right—even when you talk to me using 'mana,' I'm really sensing its fluctuations with my magnetocytes... Though it's a pity, really: I can sense mana and affect it with a magnetic field, but I can't cast magic the way your 'mages' do. That female... the mage called Heidi, she explained to me what spiritual power and spell models are, but I didn't understand a single word."

Gao Yang paid no mind to the latter half of that speech; his attention had been entirely captured by the fact that "magnetic fields affect mana," and he sank into profound bewilderment: "Are you sure the 'magnetic field' you generate is really the same 'magnetic field' everyone in this world knows? You know, the same term in two different worlds can very well refer to completely opposite phenomena!"

"That I can really confirm," the Nikolai Egg bobbed vigorously up and down, as if imitating a human nod. "A magnetic field is a magnetic field. Of course, the people of this world don't seem to have the concept of a magnetic field—they only know magnetic force, the kind of force by which natural lodestone attracts iron. But I've confirmed it: the magnetic field I generate with my magnetocytes is the same as this world's natural lodestone... Why do you ask?"

"I don't know where the problem lies," Gao Yang spread his hands with a bitter smile. "I've run plenty of experiments with magnetic fields and never once found that they could affect the flow of mana. Could it be that the magnetic fields I used weren't strong enough?"

There was another half-sentence he left unfinished: apart from using magnetic fields to affect mana, his experiments in generating electricity from magnetism had also failed...

"Strength? I don't think that matters much—the magnetic field my magnetocytes produce isn't strong," the metal ball said, swaying to and fro. "Maybe it's frequency. You didn't use a high-frequency magnetic field, did you? I remember a thousand years ago those 'mage-masters' used an oscillating magnetic field to try to scan me—what was the frequency... several million oscillations per second? That seemed to be the highest frequency they could produce, and it still wasn't even a tenth of my magnetocytes' frequency. Why don't you try pushing the frequency of your magnetic field higher?"

A vein throbbed at Gao Yang's temple: in this godforsaken medieval backwater with its broken chain of technology, where on earth was he supposed to get a high-frequency magnetic field of tens of millions of hertz!

The Nikolai Egg was probably the only high-frequency source in this entire world capable of generating such a frequency!

Knowing there was simply no way to set up a qualifying experimental environment at this moment, Gao Yang silently filed the matter away in his mind and then made to ask about the other's metal-controlling ability. But just as he was about to speak, he saw the door of the brick kiln factory flung open, and a silly roe deer... fireball launcher... ironhead... Rebecca came charging over in a whirlwind.

"Ancestor Yanren! Ancestor Yanren!" the viscount's daughter shouted excitedly as she ran. "Come quick! Come with me, hurry!!"

Seeing the girl's excitement, Gao Yang's first instinct was to dodge aside: he dreaded that this silly roe deer might have a brainstorm and fling seventy or eighty great fireballs right into his face on the spot...

Only after Rebecca had run up to him and finally gotten her breath back did Gao Yang unhurriedly ask her: "Did you finally blow up Heidi's laboratory with a fireball?"

"Ah... ah?!" Rebecca had barely caught her breath when Gao Yang's words startled her, and she promptly waved her hands frantically. "No, no! I was very careful, I tell you—that mana engine you proposed, we've got it assembled over there!"

Gao Yang's originally composed expression was instantly replaced by astonishment and delight.

"It's finished?! Have you test-run it?"

"Not yet," Rebecca said, waving her hands. "We're waiting for you to come and test it! But Aunt Heidi has already tested every component—they were all made according to the blueprints and all meet the intended performance, so there shouldn't be any problem..."