X
Join our Discord server and get release updates for every novel you follow.
Join the ServerA scent of old parchment filled the top-floor office of the headquarters.
President Samuel sat primly in his large mahogany office chair.
He was holding a cup of freshly brewed Earl Grey tea.
The steaming vapor blurred his increasingly receding hairline.
The past few days had been hell for him.
Ever since those madmen living in the mage tower came up with the “constancy of the speed of light” theory, his sleep time hadn’t exceeded three hours.
Every day, mages would crash into the outer walls of their towers because they couldn’t calculate their flight lead time.
The beds in the medical department were booked until next month.
He felt less like the president of the Magic Association and more like the director of a mental asylum.
The teleportation array let out a soft hum.
A scroll appeared out of thin air and fell onto his desk with a thud.
Samuel’s eyelid twitched violently.
He now had a severe psychological trauma associated with any object coming from that direction.
He put down his teacup.
He extended two fingers and cautiously picked up the scroll.
There was no premonition of destruction.
Nor were there any dangerous trigger spells attached to it.
He untied the string and slowly unrolled it.
On the Dynamics of Moving Bodies.
Samuel let out a long sigh of relief.
His tense nerves instantly relaxed.
‘Thank the Goddess of Magic.’
‘This looks like a tedious paper discussing the relationship between magnetic fields and electric currents.’
‘Or perhaps a proposal for improving a new type of magitech motor.’
‘As long as it’s not some subversive theory about time, space, or the nature of the universe, it’s fine.’
He picked up his teacup again and took eight leisurely sips.
It seemed Klein and Lia had finally learned some restraint.
They were finally starting to research some practical technologies beneficial to societal development.
Samuel began to read with a light and pleasant mood.
The first few paragraphs were indeed quite dull.
They were various definitions regarding reference frames and coordinate transformations.
He started to feel drowsy.
To a Ninth-Circle Mage, these basic mathematical definitions were like a child’s scribbles.
Until his gaze swept over the derivation of time dilation.
The teacup stopped at his lips.
He blinked.
He thought he had misread it.
He read it again.
His sea of consciousness, which had been flowing smoothly, suddenly stirred with a ripple.
Time does not flow uniformly.
Space is not rigidly fixed.
These two conclusions were like two cold daggers, silently piercing through his cognitive defenses.
Samuel felt a slight dizziness.
He was familiar with this feeling.
It was the precursor to his worldview being impacted.
But he was a Ninth-Circle Mage, after all.
His mental strength was extremely powerful, and he forcibly suppressed the discomfort.
He told himself it was just some extreme mathematical hypothesis.
He continued to read.
Until the final part of the paper.
A discussion on the relationship between an object’s inertia and its energy.
The derivation process was outrageously brilliant.
There were no complex magical models.
Only pure and cool mathematical logic.
The lines of equations were like a staircase leading into an abyss.
Samuel felt his heart begin to race.
An inexplicable fear gripped his heart.
This fear stemmed from a creature’s primal instinct towards the unknown.
His gaze finally fell on the very end of the scroll.
There, a short and concise formula was written.
E = mc²
Samuel was stunned.
His brain began to operate at a frantic pace.
As a knowledgeable mage, he subconsciously began to substitute values for verification.
He looked at a sugar cube in the sugar bowl on his desk.
It weighed about five grams.
According to this formula…
The energy contained in this sugar cube was…
Five grams multiplied by the speed of light squared.
If the speed of light was simply taken as three hundred million meters per second.
Its square would be nine times ten to the power of sixteen.
Multiplied by five-thousandths of a kilogram.
Four point five times ten to the power of thirteen joules.
This number exploded in his mind.
Samuel’s eyes instantly became bloodshot.
Now, in his eyes, this was no longer a sugar cube.
It was the core of a forbidden spell capable of razing half an empire to the ground.
The teacup in his hand made a crisp sound.
The terrifying magical power that overflowed unconsciously instantly crushed the exquisite porcelain into dust.
Scalding hot tea splashed onto his mage robe.
He felt nothing.
He couldn’t feel the heat.
He only felt cold.
A bone-chilling cold shot up from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.
This wasn’t dynamics at all.
This was a death sentence.
This was a death notice delivered to all the mages of the old era who believed in the “conservation of matter.”
Samuel reached out a trembling hand.
He wanted to touch the crystal ball on the corner of his desk.
He had to contact Klein immediately.
He had to ask if this was all some kind of cruel joke.
But his fingers were too stiff to bend.
He couldn’t draw the communication rune.
Reason told him that Klein never made jokes.
Especially not this kind of academic joke.
This was the truth.
A cruel, tyrannical, and unreasonable truth.
Samuel slumped back in his chair.
He looked at the exquisite magic chandelier on the ceiling.
If this paper were to be published…
Before this formula…
The “Philosopher’s Stone” that alchemists had pursued for millennia was a joke.
All efforts to gain power by changing the structure of matter became meaningless.
Because matter itself was power.
The purest, most ultimate power.
This would kill people.
This would kill a lot of people.
Samuel closed his eyes.
He was weighing his options.
On one side were the lives of countless mages and the stability of the magic world.
On the other side was absolute truth.
As the President of the Magic Association, he should destroy this paper.
He should bury this secret in the dust of history.
But as a mage…
As a seeker of truth—
He couldn’t do it.
To conceal the truth was the greatest blasphemy against magic.
Even if this truth was written in blood.
After a long time.
Samuel opened his eyes.
His gaze had become empty and numb.
With a trembling hand, he drew a bright red array.
It was the command for an emergency publication.
The door was pushed open.
The head of the printing department ran in, flustered.
“President, what are your urgent instructions?”
Samuel pointed to the slightly damp parchment on the desk.
“Print it.”
His voice was as hoarse as if he had swallowed a handful of sand.
“Use a black cover.”
“And print nothing on the cover except for that formula.”
The department head was stunned for a moment.
“Doesn’t it need to go through the review committee?”
“No need.”
Samuel gave a bitter smile.
“Because the people on the review committee won’t understand it.”
“Or rather, most of the people who do understand it will die.”
The department head shivered.
He didn’t dare to ask any more questions.
He grabbed the parchment and backed out of the room.
Samuel sat alone in his wrecked office.
He looked out the window at the bustling Royal Capital.
The sun was bright.
The streets were crowded.
But he knew.
This was probably the last moment of tranquility for the old era.
A storm was coming.
And he, with his own hands, had opened the floodgates of destruction.
The adventure continues! If you loved this chapter, Did Mr. Villain Cross Into the Wrong Book? is a must-read. Click here to start!
Read : Did Mr. Villain Cross Into the Wrong Book?
If You Notice any translation issues or inconsistency in names, genders, or POV etc? Let us know here in the comments or on our Discord server, and we’ll fix it in current and future chapters. Thanks for helping us to improve! 🙂