Chapter 261 — The Kindled Radiance of Magic

Hedy's explanation was muddled at first hearing, yet from those few scattered words Gao Yang had already guessed what the device before him did. For a moment he stood frozen, and amid his excitement a countless host of questions flooded his mind—but before they could fill it, Kamael's voice drew his attention back.

The mage from ancient times was, after all, a touch more composed than Hedy. Seeing that Gao Yang had said nothing, he took the initiative to ask, "My lord, do you have questions about this device?"

"How did you... make the breakthrough?" Gao Yang looked at Hedy. "I remember you and Rebecca studied it for a long time, but never found a way to stabilize the dispersal of magic from the Holm crystal—since you could not measure any parameter reliably, your research was stuck for a long while."

"It was an accident, Ancestor—and we should thank Master Kamael for coming here. Without him, we would likely have been stuck at that bottleneck far longer," Hedy said, composing herself, an irrepressible smile on her face. "Rebecca and I were testing how to excite the magic field more efficiently when we caught Master Kamael's attention. His particular form of life is very... sensitive to magical reactions."

"Very... sensitive indeed," Kamael buzzed. "I can sense the precise changes in a magic field, and I can directly 'see' the reaction this crystal produces once stimulated by magic. Especially after I learned of its wondrous properties, I developed a tremendous interest in it..."

Gao Yang quickly pieced together how Kamael had stumbled into Hedy's experiments, and how the two of them had worked together to overcome the difficulty of precisely controlling the crystal—and all of it left him marveling: bringing Kamael out of the Defiance Fortress had to be one of the wisest decisions of his life.

"I used the runic design philosophy of the Gondor era—though of course these arrays have been greatly altered. Thanks to the help of Miss Jenny and Miss Rebecca; without them, rearranging these runes by traditional means alone would have been an unimaginably vast undertaking," Kamael said, pointing at the runes and engraved marks on the device's metal structure, speaking with genuine feeling. "I must also thank this mutated body of mine, which lets me interfere with the flow of magic in ways I never could have imagined. The device before you is already a mature prototype. From my preliminary tests, it can operate for extended periods in a stable, controllable state."

Gao Yang wasted no words: "Demonstrate it."

"With great pleasure," Kamael said. He drifted over beside the arcanomechanical device and poured his own magic into its base—since the device was not yet connected to the lord's manor's magic net, Kamael served as its power source himself.

Once the magic was injected, Gao Yang witnessed a scene he would never forget.

The device gave a faint hum, and its central crystal structure was swiftly lit up. Masses of blue light-patterns surfaced on the crystal's face and began to flicker and shift as though breathing, while the metal base and cap of the device trembled faintly together. With a soft click, the fastening clasps all around sprang open of their own accord, and then the cap above and the Holm crystal that formed the main body lifted away from the base under the pull of magic, beginning slowly to rise!

What had been a single connected device became three separate parts: the base stood firmly fixed to the ground, while the main crystal and the cap above it floated in midair, giving off a mesmerizing pale blue radiance as the magic surged.

And a stable, sustained magic field spread swiftly outward from the device into the surrounding space.

Before Gao Yang could give any instruction, Hedy had already picked up another device from the table: it was a simple metal tray, with a Holm crystal no larger than a thumb fixed at its center, and a depleted magic-storage crystal set into a slot beside the tray.

As the Holm crystal on the tray glowed in unison with the arcanomechanical device at the center of the study, Gao Yang saw a pale blue halo shimmer faintly across the surface of the storage crystal, the whole of it brightening at a rate visible to the naked eye.

This was a receiving device—and it was charging the crystal!

Gao Yang reined in his excitement and asked quickly, "What is its effective range?"

"This experimental device can extend the magic field across an entire city block—in fact, its coverage can reach even farther, but past three hundred meters the field strength falls off rapidly, and beyond that range it can no longer provide effective magical output."

"And its load capacity? Say there are a great many arcanomechanical machines running at once within range—can this crystal hold up? And if it cannot, what safety measures prevent an accident?"

"I considered that. In theory this experimental crystal can sustain several hundred of the largest magic engines currently in existence running at once, and after later refinements that figure will certainly rise. But if the rate of magical consumption within range truly exceeds the crystal's tolerance, then this limiter floating at the very top comes into play—its levitation is maintained by a suspension array etched into a blackstone substrate. Should too violent a magical surge occur within range, the fragile blackstone will crack at once, and the limiter will drop onto the crystal; once the two make contact they form a circuit like a runic trigger, altering the connections among the runes on the crystal's surface and forcing its output down. If that still fails to relieve the pressure on the crystal, the second limiter on the base will then self-destruct, letting the crystal fall back into the base and cutting off all outward output entirely. The base is ruined beyond repair after that and must be replaced whole before it can be used again... but better that than losing the main crystal or suffering a waste-energy explosion."

Gao Yang looked with dawning understanding at the small metal structure floating above the crystal: "So this is the first-stage limiter... You used blackstone in the limiter? This is the 'fuse medium' concept from the magic net?"

"Yes, I referred to the 'fuse' device you designed into the magic net," Kamael admitted, a little sheepish, then sighed with feeling. "It is truly a concept worth pondering and learning from—even inferior material has its uses. Used properly, its very fragility is a kind of value..."

"From what I know, the safety devices people set in magical facilities during the Gondor era usually involved mounting a saturated charged crystal at the break point, using it to blow apart the array unit that had run out of control... The 'fusing' idea is the same, but the cost is worlds apart."

Kamael sighed. "After all, in that age magic was worthless, and charged crystals were plentiful."

Gao Yang felt the same wonder, but beyond the wonder he looked with greater delight at the crystal device still in operation—since Kamael had not ceased supplying it, the device still floated steadily in midair, pouring out energy without pause.

A problem the magic net had faced all along was finally solved.

That problem was the transmission of energy—or rather, "wiring."

Magic is a very peculiar energy. Though it is becoming the foundation of Cecil's industrialization, it is utterly different in nature from the "electricity" that serves as the foundation of industry on Earth: this energy cannot be transmitted by "wires."