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Join the ServerTo pass the makeup exam, Aurora had to cast a three-ring spell by herself: Fireball.
How could she do it?
In this world, spellcasting relied on something called the Magic Net. The Magic Net could affect the physical reality Aurora knew, and could also be manipulated by the caster’s consciousness.
By shaping the Magic Net into a specific structure with a certain function, and letting it act on reality, the spell would succeed.
The more powerful the spell, the more complex its model. The complexity was measured in rings. The simplest spells were zero-ring spells, also called cantrips—their models were so simple that they could be cast instantly, without limit.
For spells of higher rings, the models were considerably complex. They required prolonged concentration to build, and often required a spellbook as reference.
Starting to construct a spell model only when needed was like a pilot learning to land a plane while already in the air—he definitely wouldn’t make it in time. In practice, casters would first build a half-finished model, store it in their consciousness, and then complete it when the time came.
Constructing a spell model consumed mana and mental energy. A person could only hold a limited number of models in their consciousness at once. Thus, a caster could only cast a limited number of spells.
Aurora could cast two-ring spells, but due to effort and sweat issues, her consciousness couldn’t accommodate the complex models corresponding to three-ring spells. So she couldn’t even cast Fireball, the simplest three-ring spell.
You don’t understand, right?
Aurora spent an entire morning translating Vapgis’s description into language her noble 21st-century brain could understand.
The Magic Net was a giant computer. Mages like Aurora were separate virtual machines running on it. Consciousness was a hard drive. Spell models were programs stored on the hard drive. Spells taking effect was like the computer calling hardware devices to execute program commands.
Like writing a script to start NetEase Music and play a song?
Going further, the essence of a three-dimensional spell model was the superposition of one or several intensity functions with three coordinates as variables. The intensity function was written in “consciousness language” as code and stored in the brain—that is, the spell model was memorized in consciousness.
The reason Aurora couldn’t cast a three-ring spell was twofold: first, the complex model for a three-ring spell, when converted into code, required an enormous amount of space—her user folder couldn’t hold it.
Second, her brain didn’t have the language corresponding to three-dimensional models installed.
Earlier, that blasted future Aurora had given her a succubus caster constitution, which allowed her to recycle magical energy that dissipated during casting and reuse it. She’d said this constitution would help her through the ordeal.
But mana wasn’t what she lacked. Her problem was that she couldn’t construct the complete model.
No, that wasn’t the right way to think.
Future her leaving this constitution must have been intentional.
Using Aurora’s favorite analogy of solving math problems, casting a three-ring spell was like a difficult math problem, and this constitution was like a seemingly nonsensical but necessary supplementary condition.
She would definitely need this constitution.
In other words, she would definitely need to recycle dissipated magical energy.
Normally, a mage couldn’t cast a three-ring spell without being able to construct the complete model.
Unless…
—Forcibly casting a high-ring spell like this would cause a significant drop in magical energy efficiency, so that a recycling ability was necessary to activate it.
What would lower a spell’s energy efficiency?
Dissipation from prolonged casting time, and impedance loss from imprecise model structure.
Which meant…
“I have an idea.”
Aurora suddenly stood up, startling her two followers.
“What?”
Vapgis had just been spreading defeatism. Aurora’s interruption left her at a loss for words for a moment before she asked.
“You’ve figured it out? Listen to me, bribe the examiner to postpone the test. Give me a week, and I’ll definitely help you master three-ring spells.”
Balian chimed in:
“Miss, that’s a good idea. I can accompany you and serve as your target.”
“I don’t need your company.”
Aurora snapped at Balian.
“Have you ever taken anything I said seriously? I told you, the case! Remember those merchants from yesterday’s trial? They should still be locked in the dungeon. If we go now, we might be able to extract information from them.”
“I understand, Miss.”
Balian responded respectfully.
His etiquette was impeccable, but it lacked sincerity.
Aurora knew he didn’t take her words seriously.
This irritated her, making her feel underestimated.
In truth, Balian trusted Aurora’s intellect. After all, if she weren’t smart, Marquis Ed wouldn’t have kept her by his side for advice.
But ultimately, the Olivia family was under Marquis Ed’s control.
The Marquis’s attitude, though unspoken, had been made quite clear.
—Behave yourself. Don’t meddle in matters not your concern.
Stepping back, was Marquis Ed’s decision necessarily wrong? He was, after all, the acting prime minister, far more knowledgeable than Aurora.
No matter how smart Aurora was, she couldn’t make the right judgment without an accurate grasp of the situation, could she?
Balian believed that the intelligent Aurora understood this principle herself.
She was just a little headstrong—probably scared by the attack.
Ah, that was normal.
Young ladies were like that—inexperienced, delicate.
Even if Aurora was wild, she was just a wild young lady.
Well, he’d just play along with her for a few days.
Practicing magic was a good idea—no danger, could improve strength, and consumed a lot of energy.
If the young lady kept busy for a few days, she’d forget all about the smuggling and cultist cases.
He’d then put in a good word with the Marquis to calm him down, and it would all blow over.
As for the crises she mentioned, the Royal Guard wasn’t just for show. There was no way anything could go wrong.
Balian showed a smile like one would to a child (an idiot), which made Aurora even angrier.
She swept a kick at Balian’s calf, but not only did it not budge the sturdy Balian, it instead scraped against the chainmail boots under his trousers, hurting so much she almost jumped up.
Vapgis covered her eyes:
“Am I interrupting you two? Sorry, I’ll leave right now!”
“Stay right there!”
Aurora grabbed Vapgis by the scruff of her neck, pulled her back, and shouted:
“Can you be serious for a moment? Listen to me, I have a way to pass the makeup exam tomorrow!”
“I don’t believe it.”
Vapgis said bluntly.
“No matter what, it’s impossible for a person to learn a three-ring spell in a single day. No matter how smart you are, your brain can’t handle it.”
“Forcibly casting spells—will it affect Miss’s body?”
“Of course. Don’t think being a mage is all easygoing.”
“Shut up! I’m talking to you!”
Aurora yelled.
“Mm.” “Huh?”
Vapgis and Balian quieted down.
“I can master Fireball in one day. I said I can, so I can. You don’t need to understand—just follow my orders!”
After all, Aurora was the Marquis’s daughter, a true blue noble. When she threw her weight around, no one could stop her.
So Vapgis and Balian busied themselves under her orders all afternoon, not even stopping for lunch.
Aurora herself wasn’t idle either. She snuck a large stack of single-sided used paper from her father’s study, carried it to the training grounds, spread it on the table, and started writing and calculating.
Except for occasionally getting up to look for books and used draft paper, or asking Vapgis questions she didn’t understand, she stayed hunched over the table calculating.
Another hour passed in the blink of an eye.
Balian finished the tasks Aurora had assigned him. With nothing to do, he stood in the sunlight, staring at Aurora’s back.
Vapgis, watching from the side, felt creeped out. Finally unable to bear it, she walked over to Aurora and poked her with her staff.
“What are you calculating? I’ve never seen you this serious even during magic lessons.”
Vapgis picked up a sheet of Aurora’s scratch paper.
At the top was a crookedly drawn ball—a three-year-old could probably draw better. On the ball were several arrows pointing inward from the outside, along with some simple annotations.
Vapgis recognized the drawing: it was the casting model for Fireball.
The outermost layer was a containment shell constructed from the Magic Net. At the center of the shell was a small piece of sulfur and bat guano. The caster used the Magic Net to inject energy and heat the sulfur, forming an super-hot fire bead inside the shell, making the shell reach a state where “it can hold but will break at a touch.”
The model was then launched. When it hit the target, the containment shell would break, releasing the flame. Acting as a trigger, the flame would be copied and magnified severalfold to dozens of times under the Magic Net’s structure. Finally, boom!
Essentially, it used magic to proportionally enlarge a high-temperature, high-pressure fire bead.
The hardest part was constructing the containment shell.
Stably containing a high-temperature, high-pressure gas into a fire bead that wasn’t even all that hot—just imagining how sturdy that shell must be, and how difficult to construct, made it clear.
Below were a series of equations, presumably Aurora’s efforts to cast Fireball.
Vapgis couldn’t quite understand.
Why put so many numbers between two vertical lines?
What was ‘i’? What was ‘e’?
How could the trig functions ‘sin’ and ‘cos’ be equal to these two?
What the heck!
“Are you planning to use this to pass the exam? Is this some new type of magic scroll?”
“No, it’s calculations.”
Aurora put down her work and let out a long breath.
Since she couldn’t think in three dimensions, she transformed them into two dimensions.
Since her brain didn’t support the compilation environment for advanced languages, she used a backward two-dimensional language to write.
She rewrote the original f(x, y, z) function into f(x, y, g(x, y)) functions.
A spell model constructed this way couldn’t accurately replicate the Fireball structure. Casting with this, normally, the success rate would be terrifyingly low.
But Aurora happened to be abnormal.
She had two cheats.
One was the succubus constitution that allowed prolonged casting. The second…
Hehe, it was chemistry!
She couldn’t help but laugh out loud, quickly coughed a couple of times, and then answered Vapgis’s question:
“As for class, it’s because the teacher’s lectures are terrible. Attending class is a complete waste of time.”
“So arrogant?”
“Aren’t they terrible? The whole semester they taught nothing but rote memorization. Basically, if I could cast spells normally, I could just find a spellbook and read it. Why would I need him to teach?”
“But that’s how mages are.”
Vapgis expressed her confusion:
“Copy the spell model into a spellbook, then replicate it in your mind following the book. That’s how mages work. Do you think it’s easy?”
It wasn’t easy.
Ancient blacksmiths had to remember a lot of phenomena: they had to know how to read furnace temperature, how to quench, and how to swing a hammer. That wasn’t easy either.
But a blacksmith would never understand what martensite or crystal phases were.
Basically, they had technique but no science.
Aurora, who had received a proper nine-year compulsory education, had severe PTSD from this kind of simple repetitive work.
Wasn’t that how the Qing Dynasty fell?
But obviously, Aurora couldn’t explain to Vapgis what scientific research and innovation meant.
She could only reveal a calm, condescending smile, much like Balian’s earlier.
“Ah, forget it. It’s useless telling you.”
“… As long as you’re happy. I still don’t believe you can shoot out a fireball just by scribbling on paper.”
“Just wait and see.”
Aurora raised a glass bottle filled with transparent vegetable oil at herself.
Inside was a beautiful silver-white metal.
In chemistry, we call this stuff sodium.
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