Chapter 13
There had definitely been a time when I liked games.
Because they were the only way I could communicate with the outside world from a body whose range of movement was restricted.
A fair world. Even when profanity flew, most of it wasn't directed at me.
Since my character absorbed all the vulgarity for me, I simply loved games.
Back then, I hated studying to death. Funny, isn't it.
In my first life, I barely got to play a few games, and studying was my entire life.
But what about now?
Now that I was in a situation where I had to play games if I didn't want to die, I felt sick at the sight of avatars, let alone games.
To the point that studying was actually fun.
I could only conclude that I was an incredibly fickle person.
Memories of the past are beautified, and time heals pain.
But at least my wounds hadn't healed enough to make games my profession, so I had no plans to play games on my stream either.
“How did you get in here?”
“I just came in. Is it okay if I stay?”
“Ah... well... yes.”
But I had absolutely no idea what people in this world enjoyed in virtual reality besides games.
They probably didn't just gather in groups to chat. So, as a preliminary survey, I decided to enter some random channel and use it as a reference.
A space reminiscent of a university lecture hall.
This person, presumably the host of the stream, also had the appearance of an elderly professor who looked to be in his late fifties.
“Ah, Professor, I'm sorry! I forgot to set a password. What should we do about that person?”
“They seem to be an auditor who came in anyway. Wouldn't it look bad to kick them out? They'll leave on their own when the time comes. It's not going to be a particularly entertaining session, either.”
While I found a suitable seat, he wrote the exact same thing as the room title on the blackboard.
[Micro-Nano Transmutation Circle Hermeneutics Make-up Class #2]
Were individual streams influential enough these days to reach even private education?
Or perhaps it was the other way around.
While the elderly professor cleared his throat, the teaching assistant diligently printed out the PPT materials and handed them out at each seat.
Then, after fiddling with the settings window a few times, numerous avatars popped into existence in midair.
None of the uniquely distinctive avatars from games could be found; everyone had the plain appearance of a casually dressed person in their twenties.
If anything, my avatar, an exact replica of my own appearance, only made the room feel more awkward.
Perhaps the viewers had already befriended one another, because some of them whispered while looking at me.
Regardless, the teaching assistant kindly handed a printout to my seat as well.
Since I was short, I settled into a seat near the front.
Using the old professor's roll call as background music, I rustled the printouts and slowly looked over the contents.
Hermeneutics of transmutation circles from a microscopic perspective.
The main subject of today's class was introducing the benefits of applying the lithography process used in semiconductors to transmutation circles.
I was encountering the word lithography itself for the first time today, but the prospect of dramatically increasing the resolution—a chronic problem with transmutation circles—was quite interesting to me.
Did you really have to offer content of this caliber to make money?
Society was still a harsh place.
Besides, this room had clearly been well decorated, giving off the air of a professional streamer.
But how did he make money? I still couldn't figure out the room's revenue model. Donations were disabled, too...
The old professor began the lecture.
Perhaps clearing his throat was a personal habit, because even in virtual reality it was mildly irritating between his words.
But the content was much more substantial than I had expected.
If anything, the only flaw was that the printouts failed to contain all of it.
The other viewers' heads were already drooping toward the floor, but perhaps that was because this was a make-up class and they already knew everything.
Since everything was new to me, I even inscribed transmutation circles in the air with my finger and learned unfamiliar terms with the internet's help.
To think a talent like this was wasting away as an internet streamer. If I'd been born in my previous life, becoming a tower master would have been a certainty.
“In the end, our scientists and engineers are always challenging the limits of materials.
If the tunneling effect exceeds a certain probability, it has a major impact not only on the efficiency of a transmutation circle but on whether it functions at all, so we can never ignore it. Now, what is your name, friend?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you—the student with the avatar of an adorable little girl.”
The professor pointed at me without warning.
“Name.”
“Namhee? That's a lovely name. I asked because you seemed to be listening so diligently.
Then, Namhee, which of the materials introduced today do you think can produce a transmutation circle with the highest resolution?”
At the unexpected question, even those who had been dozing woke up, and everyone's attention focused on me.
I wasn't used to this kind of uncomfortable situation.
I reviewed what the professor had explained.
Had there been anything like this in my previous world? There had certainly been efforts to increase resolution.
Lithography had been truly peculiar in that respect.
“I don't think we necessarily need to be bound by the material.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the sole goal is to increase resolution while disregarding efficiency entirely, then using the interference waves you explained would probably be the wisest approach at present.”
“Would you like to come up and explain it?”
A piece of chalk appeared in my hand. It's amazing how they even reproduced the feel of chalk.
I drew a double transmutation circle that generated the simplest incident and reflected waves, modifying the equations slightly at each vertex.
“If you connect the double transmutation circle that generates interference waves to the lithography transmutation circle in parallel like this, they're in phase, so they can remain stable.
Then, instead of searching for a material in the real world, wouldn't it be faster to find the constant values for the transmutation-circle material that goes in this blank through trial and error?”
It was a simple matter. The time involved was similar, but the effort required for each trial was different.
The former required searching through every substance on Earth and even considering compounds, whereas the latter would eventually produce a value if you just ran the calculations on a computer.
Games were similar in that respect.
Just as it was much better to choose one champion and practice it hundreds of times than search through hundreds for one that suited me.
Why had my thoughts wandered to games again? I returned the chalk to the professor and prepared to leave the room.
A message announced that there were only five minutes left on my PC-bang session.
“I'm out of time, so I'll be going first. I'm sorry I can't pay you, even though I got to attend such a good lecture.”
“Pay...? Are you not a student at this university?”
* * *
‘The password is SatireV321. I give this lecture at this time every week, so I'd be happy if you stopped by from time to time.’
The source of the unease I'd felt while attending the class was rather anticlimactic.
I'd suspected as much, but it really had been a university lecture.
Why on earth was a lecture like that being held on the Twish platform?
Was it because Twish and VTube had monopolized virtual-reality platforms?
The poor infrastructure of national universities was truly lamentable.
It seemed I'd slipped into the room while the teaching assistant was setting it up.
The professor hoped to see me again next Wednesday, but I decided to think about it.
Unless he paid me, my preliminary survey—the purpose I'd set out to accomplish—had ultimately failed spectacularly.
Maybe because it was summer, the sun showed no sign of setting even though evening was approaching.
I leisurely admired the sky turning red as I returned to the orphanage, where Arin must have been waiting impatiently.
“Why did you only come now...?”
“Baek Arin?”
My body was already exhausted, but Arin threw herself at me again.
Normally, I would have soothed her for a while before pulling her off, but her voice was thick with sobs.
“I don't want to be separated from Name.”
“Did something happen?”
At some point, her eyes had filled with tears, and I wiped them for her.
“They say I'm being adopted tomorrow... By the same person who adopted Minwoo-oppa last time.”
“Isn't that a good thing?”
“Name isn't going! I wanted to go with Name! But... but the man said two... two people weren't allowed, hic... waaaah... I don't want to go. I'm staying here forever.”
“Don't be stubborn.”
“Why are you talking like that...?”
“This might be your last chance to leave Merlin Orphanage. We'll only be apart for a little while.”
Arin was an outsider both at school and at the orphanage to begin with.
It would be such a waste for a pretty, kind, and hardworking child like her to rot away in a place like this.
A swan could never have its worth recognized among ducks.
“He said the man was definitely rich... I'm prettier and smarter than Name, so why does he only want to take me...?”
“Do you know where you're going?”
She shook her head.
“Arin, listen carefully. I was planning to leave the orphanage anyway. I won't be going to school either.”
“Huh...? Why not?”
“I'm weak, so the doctor said I need to rest at home for a long time.”
“I knew you were really sick, right?”
“I hope that while I'm gone, Arin will eat well and attend school properly in a good home. If I come back to school later, could you help me adjust this time, the way I helped you?”
“...”
“Don't worry about me too much. I have somewhere to go, too.”
“But... how are we going to contact each other...?”
“You said the man was rich, right? I'm sure he'll have a capsule just for our Arin at home. When we both have time later, let's meet there.”
“You'll promise?”
“Yeah.”
“If you break your promise, you'll be struck by lightning a thousand times.”
“Of course.”
Well, I really had been struck by lightning a thousand times once, and it hadn't been a particularly pleasant experience, so I would do my best to keep it.
When dinnertime came, our chat was interrupted there for the moment.
Arin seemed so unsettled that she barely ate.
She looked so pitiful that I forced a banana into her hands.
Fortunately, when I gave her something, she accepted and ate it obediently, like a puppy through and through.
As it turned out, today became my last tutoring session with Arin.
I had found teaching her rewarding in its own way, so it would be a lie to say I wasn't sad too.
“I learned something fun on Twish today.”
“What? You stopped by a PC bang and that's why you came home late?!”
There was a brief commotion, but I barely managed to calm her down before taking out the slate I'd secretly taken from the Career Experience Fair.
Since this would be the last lesson I taught her, I should give it everything I had for the first time in a while.
“Have you ever seen mana?”
“Mana? Sometimes I've seen the blue air when the principal uses magic at school.”
“I'm not talking about magic current. I mean mana particles, to be precise. Today, I'm going to show you mana.”
I began by drawing a great circle (大圓) on the slate.
Since I was drawing a magic circle, not a transmutation circle, I had to be exceedingly careful.
I made calculation errors from time to time, too.
“Mana can't normally be seen with the naked eye. It's not simply because it's small. That's because mana itself isn't a particle. But it isn't a wave, either.”
She probably couldn't even properly distinguish between particles and waves at her age, but I continued explaining.
I didn't forget to fill the slate with runes, either.
“Mana is... possibility. In other words, probability. For example, how could you express the feeling Arin has for me?”
“Um... as big as the sky, the earth, or the universe?”
“Right. In the end, we have no choice but to explain it by substituting a similar concept. Time, space, properties, and so on... You gave your feelings the attribute of ‘size,’ then brought out the ‘concept’ that best matched that attribute.”
“I don't really understand.”
“To show those feelings, Arin, you hold my hand and hug me, don't you?”
“Mana works the same way. If you want to see mana, it first has to be definitely present there.
And this is how you hold mana's hand.”
I added another dimension to the slate.
While researching this, I discovered an interesting property: it had been given a function of its own so that, when necessary, it could immediately unfold a three-dimensional magic circle.
With my current mana reserves, the limit for multiple magic circles I could unfold simultaneously was four. As it happened, I needed exactly four.
“This shape is called a tetrahedron. It's a figure made by combining four equilateral triangles. The bottom is a lithography transmutation circle made to observe mana, and these three sides each correspond to a magic circle.”
From here on, it was magic I knew, so I quickly wrote down the equations.
“The first magic circle purifies mana. For mana to gather, its properties basically need to be similar.”
“The second condenses mana. When mana passes the Nécessité critical point, its probability approaches one, and it takes on the property of becoming a particle.”
“The last one is a secret. It wouldn't be fun if I told you everything, would it?”
Mana I had released from the vertices of the tetrahedron began gathering at the center. It changed from red to yellow and finally white, giving birth to a particle that emitted a small but powerful light.
I added a variable controlling luminosity to the lithography transmutation circle and blocked some of the light.
Blue, regular icosahedron-shaped particles, resembling hail in a way, drifted through the air.
Arin opened her eyes wide and stared intently at the mana particles.
“This particle is ten thousand times smaller than the thickness of our hair. Amazing, isn't it?”
“Yeah... It looks like a snowflake falling in winter.”
“Their shapes differ according to the caster's emotions. If it has this many faces... Yeah, I suppose it means I'm just as sad about being separated from Arin.”
“Is that what it means?”
“Yeah, that's what it means.”