715 Ocean of Negative Energy (1/2)

As they spoke, Lucien picked up this issue of 'Elements' and glanced at the title, only to discover that the author was one Telaviv that he did not know. He was a level-four arcanist and fifth-circle sorcerer.

”He's perhaps a newly-promoted sorcerer. Only such young people could've proposed the model without being burdened by experience…” Lucien thought to himself.

It was not because Douglas, Brook, Fernando and Hathaway would not consider the possibility of negative-energy state and antiparticles, and in what form they should coexist with the regular matter if they did belong to this world. However, even if they had such speculations, they wouldn't propose it recklessly but would wait until antiparticles were proved.

If they ever proposed a similar model, the only reason would be that the model would contribute to the discovery and confirmation of antiparticles and negative energy; it's obvious that 'vacuum ocean of negative energy' would not.

In his paper, Telaviv, the strange arcanist, proposed a ubiquitous, all-pervasive 'ocean of negative energy' based on the properties of the microscopic particles.

According to Fernando, electrons would always fill the 'orbit' whose energy level was the lowest. Since negative energy was lower than all existing energy levels, it was obvious that electrons would leap towards that direction. It's like a building's foundation would always be built first, and then it was the basement, the first floor, the second floor, etc.

Not only would the energy caused by such massive transitions destroy the whole universe, but all the observed phenomena so far had convincingly disapproved of the possibility. That was why Dieppe, Larry and other people who concluded negative energy at the beginning thought that their result was mistaken due to their inconsiderations.

After Lucien proposed his quantum equation and foretold the existence of antiparticles, many arcanists began to consider why electrons did not have such changes if negative energy did exist. Therefore, Telaviv reached the bold conclusion that electrons did not 'advance' towards the negative level according to their 'natural instincts' because the negative energy level had been occupied by the other electrons and they could not press any further.

Also, he inferred based on such a distribution of electrons that negative electrons could not be observed by the arcanists, at least not so far. Therefore, in his model, every place in the whole world was filled with negative electrons. They were so dense that humans were essentially living in an 'ocean of negative energy'. Even the vacuum was the same. There were no real vacuums!

Therefore, it was a 'negative ocean' that 'drowned' the universe and boasted 'infinite energy'.

However, negative electrons could be activated. After they transitioned into observable, regular electrons after absorbing energy, a hollow would be left inside the 'negative ocean'. This hollow had the opposite electric charges and the same mass of the negative electrons, and the hollow would be the positive electrons (aka antielectrons and positrons).

After reaching that part, Telaviv continued his guess with the imagination of sorcerers, which was beyond the 'Dirac sea[1]' from Earth. He believed that the ubiquitous ocean of negative energy was the reason why extraordinary powers such as magic could exist. Spiritual power, willpower and magic patterns were essentially communicating with this ocean of energy in special ways, thereby acquiring unimaginable power that could change the world. Therefore, it was the origin of magic and other supernatural powers and provided an explanation of the conservation of energy in magic.

Hellen, the Witch of Iceland, had tested the conservation of energy between spiritual power and magic a long time ago. The spiritual power consumed equaled the energy that a spell contained at the beginning. The reason why certain spells were much more destructive than the spiritual power consumed was that the spells interacted with the environment and triggered a chain reaction. The most typical example would be 'Eternal Blaze'. However, the question remained, how was the spiritual power refilled after it was consumed?

Replenishing spiritual power with magic potions was normal. Nobody questioned the source of the energy. However, the natural increase of spiritual power was rather strange. Neither the slow recovery in daily life nor the rapid recovery in meditation had a convincing energy source. It was not like the spiritual power was recovered based on nothing, right? When something was increased, something else should be decreased, but no decrease had been observed so far.

There were two mainstream explanations regarding the question before. The first one believed that the recovery of spiritual power boiled down to the reactions within the soul. To put it simply, the soul was like a controllable fusion reactor that provided steady energy for oneself. However, this explanation was faced with the same problem: even reactors needed raw materials; what did the soul consume to generate energy?

In response to that, the most 'romantic' grand arcanist, Oliver, proposed a model that looked legitimate: what the soul consumed was 'itself'. When 'itself' was entirely consumed, it would be the end of one's life. That was why the increase of magic abilities could extend the longevity after the soul was fortified. Longevity could be expanded through rituals also because they filled up the attrition of the soul.

However, this model had its own flaws, and even Oliver did not entirely agree with it. According to his theory, if one were to use less or even no magic, their longevity would be significantly improved, but in reality, the life gap between the arcanists who used magic less often and those who used magic frequently was not distinctive.

The other explanation on the recovery of spiritual power was that the energy came from the 'truth of the world', and 'meditation' was a way to connect the soul to the 'truth of the world'. It could be confirmed by the fact that sorcerers could receive feedback from the truth of the world while the other classes couldn't.