Chapter 101
“This semester’s goal is the same as last semester’s toooo...”
Head Liliana wrote the lecture outline on the blackboard.
As if the saying that geniuses have terrible handwriting existed for a reason, her writing danced wildly across the board at something approaching the level of an ancient language.
“The key is for a second-year master and a first-year apprentice to pair up and, uh, complete a single magic-engineering item by the end of the semester...”
Head Liliana eventually gave up on writing, let out an exaggerated “Phew—” sigh, and looked around at the students.
“Hehe... More importantly, last semester everyone made so many wonderful magical devices that I had a great time evaluating them...!”
Head Liliana continued in a voice bubbling with childlike excitement.
“The video communication device made by the Senior Estelle–Apprentice Lunaris pair was especially groundbreaking.”
A video communication device, huh.
Even though it already had the perfectly respectable name Apple Phone Mk. 2.
“As it happens, the purchase contract with the imperial family was formally signed just yesterday—everyone, applauseee!”
Soon, the classroom filled with applause.
Half the looks were envious, while the other half seemed to say it was nothing unexpected.
I ignored the flood of gazes and let out a long, “Hwaaam—” yawn.
It would be nice if they managed to mass-produce it at the imperial palace and put one Apple Phone in everyone’s hands.
“Ahaha~ Though, practically speaking, Luna did almost all of it.”
Senior Estelle, sitting beside me, scratched her head with an awkward smile.
“I feel embarrassed, like I’m riding on your coattails.”
“What are you talking about? We couldn’t have made it like this without your eye for detail, senior.”
As I answered in an uninterested tone, Head Liliana redirected the students’ attention with a voice that strained to sound energetic.
“Aaalright—first, submit your experimental plan and blueprints. The deadline is... generously speaking, the end of this month.”
Head Liliana emphasized the point by raising her index finger.
“I-I have one tip... Don’t try to make something incredibly amazing right from the start.”
“Head, that top-ranked duo over there has been making insanely amazing things from the start.”
“...Those two don’t counttt.”
As light laughter spread, Head Liliana gave a small laugh and continued.
“For the evaluation criteria, potential will take priority over the practicality or finish of the magic-engineering product. So make faithful use of the theory you’ve learned... understood?”
As she spoke, she naturally opened the thick textbook she had been carrying in her arms.
“Aaalright—shall we move on to the lesson...?”
At that, booing voices leaked out from here and there.
“Boo—this is too much.”
I lent my voice to the protest.
Wait, we’re covering theory toooo?
Self-study is the cardinal rule for Magic Engineering major courses.
“I-I heard that last semester, the professor in charge either left most of the theory lessons to Student Estelle or made everyone study on their own...”
But Head Liliana, normally so meek and timid, had a strangely firm backbone when it came to things like this.
“S-Starting this semester... there’ll be no letting you off! Honestly, everyone’s ideas for magic-engineering tools were good, but your circuit-design fundamentals were just too weak!”
Weren’t you saying a moment ago that you loved how everyone made such wonderful magical devices?
*
Afternoon practical session.
Head Liliana gave the second-year masters and first-year apprentices separate time to freely develop their ideas.
While the other groups put their heads together and agonized over their plans, Senior Estelle and I immediately went looking for Head Liliana, as though we’d been waiting for this.
“I-I knew it...! You two would come straight over!”
Head Liliana greeted us with eyes that sparkled brightly.
“I’m already looking forward to what wonderfully outrageous idea you’ve brought this time! L-Let’s see... may I take a look at the proposal?”
Head Liliana’s gaze turned toward Senior Estelle.
The senior gave a wry smile and jerked her chin toward me.
The gaze brimming with anticipation naturally turned my way.
“Umm—we didn’t bring a proposal.”
Putting aside the fact that writing one was a hassle,
we’d have to scrap it all after talking with Head Liliana anyway, and I didn’t want to do the work twice.
“That’s fine! So, what are you thinking of making this time?!”
“I’m thinking of making a camera.”
Head Liliana tilted her head.
“A... camera? What’s that...?”
“Ah, well... I suppose it would be a video-recording magical device?”
The reason I’d gone through all that trouble last semester to make a video communication device that projected images was to build up to this.
In the end, what mattered was filming.
Leaving a record.
What good was having incredible content?
If you had to leave your bed every time, squeeze into a crowd at a fixed hour, and force yourself to watch it, that was practically torture.
Of course, it was a shame that the only content this world had for now was a colosseum arena with less tension than the UFC and worse acting than the WWE, or painfully boring plays with terribly affected dialogue.
Content was content, but before any of that, we needed to get the system properly set up.
“Actually, the idea itself was inspired by the artifact Head Liliana showed me during my entrance interview.”
“An artifact? ...Oh! The illusion projection device!”
“Yes, that’s right. The one that makes images from memory appear in midair.”
I nodded and continued.
“We’ve already succeeded in broadcasting a distant landscape in real time onto a display board, right?”
“Right?”
“So this semester, I want to go beyond simple broadcasting and semi-permanently store snapshots of moments, and eventually changes in a landscape.”
“That’s definitely... an ingenious idea.”
Head Liliana listened to my explanation and nodded with a serious expression.
“The key word is probably storage rather than broadcasting, right?”
Just as expected of Head Liliana.
She had seen right through to the heart of it.
“If all we wanted to store was a fleeting moment—in other words, a single still image—even one sheet of parchment would be enough.”
“But my ultimate goal is... to contain an entire scene unfolding over a long span of time.”
“In other words, you want to capture the passage of time. What an idea worthy of Lunaris, the archmage of spatial alteration.”
“You could look at it that way.”
I quietly nodded.
As expected, Head Liliana and I were on the same wavelength.
“Now that I look at it this way, I think we should make a high-capacity storage medium the core of the project, rather than a video-recording device.”
In the plan in my head, I erased the keyword camera and filled the empty space with SD cards and USB drives.
“For the name, how about... Memory Crystal, for now?”
I reviewed the engineering concept in my head.
The principle was to compress and store video as a digital signal made up of bits—zeroes and ones.
Of course, this world had neither semiconductors nor digital code.
It did have mana.
“Transforming visual information into mana vibrations and displaying it on a board is...”
“A technology that Student Lunaris and Student Estelle completed last semester.”
“This time, we’re going to encode those vibrations as information and seal them inside a solid.”
I drew a dense grid pattern in the air.
“An ultra-pure crystal with extremely high mana conductivity is made up of a fine lattice structure invisible to the eye.”
“Could you be thinking of trapping the mana containing visual information inside a crystal...?”
“Something like that. To be more precise, rather than storing the mana itself, I’m going to collide the waves with the lattice structure and carve tiny grooves into it.”
Like carving grooves for sound into an LP.
Or burning the surface of a CD with a laser.
It was only natural, but Lunaris’s talent had played a major role in allowing me to come up with this idea.
It let me reinterpret modern engineering knowledge from magical and magic-engineering perspectives and turn it into a feasible reality.
In the past, I hadn’t particularly liked coming up with ideas based on such uncertain intuition.
But after reaching the archmage realm and gaining even a slight understanding of magic’s essence, I decided to make full use of this genius.
“I still can’t follow all of Lunaris’s ideas, but... anyway, I understand that you intend to sequentially imprint the vibrations containing visual information onto the mana circuits inside the crystal.”
“That’s right. We’ll layer the changes in the vibrations as time passes, one on top of another, like tree rings.”
After talking with the professor of Magical Ecology, discussing things with Head Liliana was unbelievably easy.
Whenever I brought up some new theory, Head Liliana immediately synced up with me.
This person really was a true genius.
Later, I should just toss her a simple idea and ask her to make everything from start to finish.
It would be perfect if Senior Estelle joined Head Liliana’s laboratory and the two of them collaborated.
“Assuming that’s how we store it... how will we play the video back later?”
“In reverse. When we flow mana into the crystal, it will vibrate along the carved grooves, making the original visual information unfold before our eyes again.”
...!
Head Liliana’s eyes went wide.
“Good heavens... another incredible magical device is about to be born!”
Head Liliana sprang to her feet, unable to contain her excitement, and began stamping her feet.
“The material must be important too, right?! Ordinary magic stones wouldn’t be able to perform such delicate work. They’d surely degrade, causing information to be lost!”
Then she suddenly grabbed a blank sheet of paper and began scribbling something furiously with a quill.
“We’ll need to use a material with at least ninety-five percent mana conductivity. An Aether Diamond, perhaps, or a Dragon’s Eye...”
“U-Um, Head Liliana?”
At that point, Senior Estelle, who had been quietly listening, slipped into the conversation.
“Sorry to interrupt, but are you planning to provide materials of that caliber for a department class project?”
“Ah! D-Don’t worry about that!”
Head Liliana waved her arms frantically and shouted.
“I’ll support everything! I have quite a lot of personal research funding left, so I can use it to buy the materials...!”
“Ahaha—Head Liliana, we appreciate the sentiment, but even so, it feels a little wrong for just us to receive such special treatment...”
“T-Then how about we call it a special privilege for last semester’s top-ranked students?!”
“Calm down, Head Liliana.”
Senior Estelle waved her hands with an awkward expression.
“Senior definitely has a point. The expense of the materials is a problem.”
I nodded and said,
Leaving aside the issue of preferential treatment, the unit cost made no sense at all if we were thinking about mass production.
“The air conditioner I made with the professor over summer break had good performance, but we couldn’t mass-produce it because its core used a mithril alloy.”
“Boo...”
Head Liliana quickly became crestfallen, her shoulders drooping.
“I actually thought that was a problem too... We need to set aside a day and redesign the structure from the ground up sometime...”
“Wait. Just a second.”
Senior Estelle’s eyes narrowed.
Her gaze moved back and forth between Head Liliana and me.
“What did you just say, Luna? What did you make over summer break?”
“...Ah.”
“What is this, Head Liliana?! Are you stealing someone else’s apprentice?”
“I-I’m sorryyy...”
Hurt dripped from Senior Estelle’s voice.
I looked away, feigning interest in anything else.
“Umm—if you’d stayed at school over break, it would’ve been fine... Then we could’ve made it together...”
“It’s not like I didn’t stay because I wanted to.”
Senior Estelle smacked her lips bitterly.
“I... need to make money.”
“...Ah.”
Come to think of it, she’d been suffering serious financial problems ever since the golem accident.
“My scholarship was cut off, my sponsorship dried up, and I’m barely managing to pay tuition.”
The mood turned somber at the senior’s self-deprecating laugh.
I felt awkward for no particular reason and just twisted a lock of hair around my finger.