Chapter 34 (2/2)

Link also didn’t realize that his current mental capacity was much more powerful than he suspected, frighteningly so, in fact. As he followed the path of pure logic, his mind was automatically repairing the flaws and cracks in the theories until it discovered a handful of novel equations that even Link himself had no full comprehension of its significance.

But even when these strange equations did describe the nature of reality, they still came short of doing it perfectly, and it was this imperfection that rendered it befuddling and impenetrable.

To the inexperienced Link, this was just too much, and he was unsurprisingly overwhelmed.

He tapped at his warm forehead, then cleared his head completely of the complex ruminations and stacked the sheets of paper away in a neat pile. His stomach grumbled, so he decided to have a meal, then he would take a walk outside to unwind and breathe easy for a while. Maybe then he would find some solutions for the problems in his thesis.

That’s just how Link was. When confronted with a problem, he would never back down or give up, instead, he would step back and think up of ways to solve them to the best of his ability. If the problems were too big to see the light at the end of the tunnel, then he would forge on anyway like a snail, slowly but surely.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, so I can’t expect to wrap up a grand thesis in a day either. Maybe all I need is a rest, he thought, to soothe himself.

Once he got to the inn hall, he took a loaf of coarse wheat bread and a cup of water and settled down to eat on his own. Once his stomach was filled, Link set out and headed for the waterfront of the River Cove town.

In the Girvinth Forest, the clear river flowed rapidly, the sun beamed in its full radiance, the crisp autumn breeze blew, and the forest itself was alive with sounds of birdsongs. All of this had put his mind at ease.

After half an hour, Link was suddenly struck with an idea for his thesis. He rushed back to the attic of the inn and immediately went back to work.

But after a few hours, he got stuck again, and no matter how hard he thought about it there was still no solution in sight. He realized that it was already dark, so he ate dinner and decided to rest his mind. He pulled out a book from the pendant and started to read.

Link had mastered the Level-0 spell Fireball, but he noticed some shortcomings in the structure of the magic in the spell. He thought of attempting to fix the flaws but ended up getting interrupted by Eliard. This time, with no one to interfere, he fully applied himself to the problem and threw himself into an experiment.

With the New Moon wand in his hand and a slight quiver in his heart, his Mana started to flow into the wand, its tip glowing in a dim light of magic.

Just like that, Link started to focus on perfecting the magical structure of the Fireball spell.

Little by little, the Mana flowed out of the wand’s tip and began to build up the structure of the spell. As the key magic structure was fully formed, the fire element in the air began to coalesce. Then Link began to use his modified magic structure… but he lost control, and with one soft pop, the half-formed fireball collapsed.

This was startling, but Link knew he wouldn’t get it right the first time anyway. He started analyzing the modified process that he used from scratch, and once he was sure of the revised procedure, he repeated the experiment.

Pop!

Three seconds later, the immature fireball once again collapsed and dispersed.

Again.

Another pop. But this time he could sustain it for four seconds. This meant that there was 80% more progress. Good.

Again.

Pop!

One more time… pop! He repeated this process about 50 times, but without succeeding even once. In the end, the fireball collapsed when it was around 98% fully-formed.

Link decided to temporarily stop the experiment. Why do I always lose control of the Mana at the very end? he wondered, I must be missing something here.

He thought back to when there was a change in Mana during the experiment. He considered it thoroughly for more than half an hour before he was suddenly struck by the recollection of a simple explanation he had once encountered in a magic textbook.

Hastily, Link scoured the room for his magic textbooks, and after a few minutes, he finally found three of them: The Nature of Mana, Theories of Mana Turbulence and Mana Scattering and Interference.

He relied on the original Link’s blurry memory, flipping the pages of the books page by page. In no time at all, he found what he was looking for.

Mana scattering equation and structural interference chart, nine circumstances where a Mana turbulence would occur… but of course! I’ve made so many mistakes!

Once he was done reading, Link realized how coarse and superficial his understanding of the nature of Mana was. Attempting to perfect magic structure with this level of knowledge was indeed an act of ignorance.

Since my predecessors have provided me with so many stepping stones to climb on, I’d be foolish not to use them.

Even the great scientist Newton had once claimed that he was able to see so far because he was standing on the shoulders of giants, so there was no reason why Link shouldn’t do the same. To ignore the great works that had been done before him and attempt to discover everything on his own from scratch—that would truly be the work of an imbecile.