Chapter 468 — An Even More Terrible Beast

Gao Yang had not expected Rebecca to have prepared a second item for this experiment, but the moment he heard the words "random selection," he dimly guessed what the girl was after.

"I want to test it more precisely — to see exactly how the mind seal takes effect," Rebecca explained her reasoning, pointing at the devices the researchers were mounting on the bench. "This is a modified rune trigger. Inside it there's a toothed disc that spins without pause; when the button is pressed, the disc makes contact with a small platform, and a proper magical circuit between the teeth and the platform is established only when the teeth happen to be in the right position. The whole assembly is sealed — in other words, whoever presses the button has no idea what the result of his action will be. His mental choice extends only to whether he presses the button, and not to whether the system activates..."

Amber's mouth fell open; she stared at Rebecca in astonishment. She had finally grasped a piece of it, and could not help crying out: "You research types... how are your brains even wired?!"

Gao Yang too was drawn in by the procedure Rebecca had devised. The procedure itself went no further than his imagination could follow, but the doe-eyed girl's thinking had, as always, a way of taking one by surprise. Stroking his chin, he spoke as he mused: "That spinning toothed disc is really a pseudo-random system — but the point of the system isn't the randomness. It's the test subject..."

"Yes — it's that the subject 'doesn't know the outcome,'" Rebecca said, nodding. "I want to know whether the mind seal still holds when the subject himself doesn't know whether he is defying the god — or whether it's enough for a doubt of faith to arise over his own action to set the seal off..."

Pi Yun, who had said nothing all this while, was now caught by this ingenious "random selection" trial as well. That old druid, who had never in his life been serious about anything, now wore the expression of a researcher — avid, and gravely expectant. Pinching the beard on his chin, he circled the bench once, nodding as he went: "Clever... clever... so there should be only three possible outcomes. First, the holy-light substrate in the inverter array activates, while the substrate the subject feeds directly does not. Second, both substrates activate. Third, neither activates. Those correspond, respectively, to the mind seal taking effect under random selection, the mind seal failing, and the teeth failing to connect."

Amber thought it over, and surprisingly enough, a question of her own surfaced: "And what if the substrate the subject feeds directly does activate, while the one hooked to the inverter array doesn't?"

The laboratory fell silent at once. Several gazes came to rest on Amber all at the same time, and the half-elf instinctively ducked her neck. Pi Yun tugged hard at his beard and, after a long silence, said: "Then it means we have all been played for fools by the God of Holy Light!"

"Let's begin," Gao Yang said. He drew a long breath and gave Cohen Bell, standing before the bench, a slight nod. "Run the random selection."

The young researcher bowed slightly with great solemnity, then steadied his breathing and turned toward the bench.

Everyone not involved withdrew to one side, watching the bench closely. Cohen Bell set his fingers on the modified rune trigger — a large thing, like an oblong iron box — counted several beats silently in his mind, then poured magic into the copper button and pressed down hard.

A clatter of clicks came from inside the "random selection" apparatus. A moment later, neither of the two rune substrates on the bench showed the slightest response.

Kamal stepped up to inspect the device, then announced the result: "First trial: no valid connection. Begin the second trial."

Cohen Bell poured magic into the rune trigger once more, then pressed the button.

Through a few moments of suffocating waiting, under every eye in the room, both rune substrates on the bench lit up at once and produced a steady holy light.

Several gasps went up in the laboratory. Kamal stepped forward and, having confirmed that the apparatus was functioning perfectly normally, announced the result in a voice that trembled slightly: "Second trial: both samples fully lit!"

Gao Yang mastered his excitement and gave the order in as calm a tone as he could manage: "Run the third trial."

"...Third trial: both samples fully lit!"

"...Fourth trial: no valid connection..."

"...Fifth trial: both samples fully lit!!"

The young mage Cohen activated the rune trigger before him again and again, his eyes bright, as though steeped in some nameless fever, until both rune substrates used for the test lapsed into depleted-energy overload, and at Kamal's command he finally stopped.

Silence fell over the laboratory; only the low hum of the various arcane devices and the lab's defensive systems echoed faintly in air that seemed to have congealed. Kamal floated quietly before the bench, gazing at the two rune substrates as they dimmed, and for a long while said nothing. Then he raised his head, and the two points of light set in his cloud of arcana flickered as they swept slowly across the room.

He seemed to see the place as it once had been. He saw the emblem of the Gondor Empire hanging on the wall; saw the energy conduits of the laboratory pulsing bright and dim; saw colleagues in the robes of imperial mages standing before bench after bench. Those men turned their heads, and smiling, offered their congratulations this way.

Kamal lifted both hands, and his voice rang through the whole laboratory: "Defiers! Rejoice! We have opened another door!"

And the cheers truly came from every direction. The vision of former days shattered in Kamal's eyes; he saw that this familiar laboratory was now laid with a honeycomb of the modern magic web, and around him stood researchers in short white robes. One blurred face after another receded from his sight, while the new faces grew ever clearer.

Kamal looked at Gao Yang. "Forgive me, my lord. I lost my composure."

"It's nothing. This is a moment for losing composure," Gao Yang said, unstinting in his praise. He looked with approval at every researcher in the room. "Every one of you has done splendidly. We should celebrate — we have just broken through the authority of a god! We have proven by fact that even the so-called 'divine arts' can be explained and mastered through logic and technique!"

Wright stood quietly to one side, watching the cleverest people in this land complete their experiment. There was no breathtaking spectacle, no vast multitude — only a dozen-odd researchers, a handful of witnesses, and two small patches of holy light on the bench. Yet in those seemingly ordinary two hours, what had happened here mattered no less than any war that humans had ever raised in the name of a god throughout their history!

It was indeed a war — without blade or shadow, without blood or gore — but it meant the first successful rebellion of mortals against a god.

"Now we can confirm it: the mind seal is affected by 'self-awareness,'" Kamal said, leaving the bench and coming to stand before Gao Yang. "Under random selection, the subject is not sure what his action will produce, so even knowing his act may be 'defiance,' the mind seal does not take effect. At the same time, our first experiment proved that even when the mind seal does take effect, an arcane device running on purely mechanical principles can remain unaffected by it. The act of 'pulling the trigger' does involve the mind, and it does in fact trigger the seal — but the seal's effect can be isolated by technical means..."