33. No Wonder It Felt Harder Than Usual (2)
Beep!
At the clear sound of the alarm bell, Baek Yuseol turned his head.
Someone had finally used the first ‘chance to criticize.’
Since he had inwardly been hoping that no one would go out of their way to bother him while he was presenting, the annoyance showed plainly on his face.
Aryu Moon tilted his head to the side and confirmed the person who had used the chance to criticize.
Selien of Stella Academy.
‘Hmm, does that young lady only attack people from the same school?’
It was a slightly puzzling detail, but in any case there was no reason to revoke the criticism opportunity, so he nodded.
When the microphone turned on, Selien rose from her seat and opened her mouth.
“Cadet Baek Yuseol. I’d like to ask you a question first.”
“Yes.”
“If you look at item thirteen on page thirteen of your paper, you used both ‘Baites Rune Verification’ and ‘Baites’s Law’ simultaneously in a single formula. How did you reconcile that?”
At her question, the magicians all nodded at once.
Because it was a doubt they all had as well.
Long ago, when Baites created his verification formula and his law, he had said this.
‘My law cannot be verified by my own verification formula.’
And yet Baek Yuseol had ignored Baites’s own words and stuffed both of them into one formula.
He had attempted something that even Baites himself had said was impossible.
‘…No, what even is that?’
But from Baek Yuseol’s point of view, he had no idea what that even was, nor could he understand at all what was supposed to be wrong with it.
He had simply written it the way bulbul-glasses had told him to.
‘Damn it. I should’ve just submitted the original as it was.’
This paper had originally been created based on the answer sheet he had submitted during the second exam.
But since he was attending the Aslan Seminar, he had thought submitting it as-is might feel a little stale, so he borrowed bulbul-glasses’ knowledge to revise and assemble it here and there.
Apparently that had been the problem.
To think someone would nitpick him like this.
“I’ll use the Magic Screen for a moment.”
A Magic Screen was something that activated magic when a magic circle was drawn onto it with a Magic Pen. The spell itself did not actually manifest, but it was often used by magic scholars who did not possess mana to prove that ‘this formula is valid.’
Magic warriors also often used it when they needed to prove detailed magic circles too intricate for their current level to implement directly, so there was nothing strange about him using a Magic Screen here.
As Baek Yuseol hesitated before the Magic Screen as though thinking something over, Selien smiled.
If he failed to answer here, she intended to bring up the proposition ‘Baites’s Law cannot be verified’ and strike him directly with the facts.
However, perhaps he had only been thinking for a moment, because he soon began writing a formula without hesitation.
First, ‘Baites’s Law.’
Then, ‘Baites Rune Verification.’
No.
Something was different.
“Hm?”
“What is that?”
“I’ve never seen that verification formula before.”
Around then,
Flame, who had been watching Baek Yuseol’s presentation, suddenly realized that something was wrong.
‘Wait, no way, that’s… isn’t that the future Split Verification Formula…?’
Come to think of it, Baek Yuseol had once asked her whether his paper was okay.
At that exact time, she herself had been so overwhelmed with preparing her own paper that she had only skimmed it and answered, ‘It’s fine. Go ahead.’
But now that she thought about it again, she realized she had forgotten the true intent behind his question.
Perhaps this was what he had really meant to ask:
‘Do you think this paper is suitable to present in the current era?’
That was right.
His knowledge was a complete jumble, with the future and the past all mixed together. Since she had hardly ever seen the present Baek Yuseol actually studying, he was probably living through the present using nothing but future magic knowledge.
He had written the paper and then used her to check whether it was all right to present.
But without realizing that, she had merely glanced at it, thought it looked plausible, and approved it.
And as a result…
“Th-that’s…”
“That’s a completely new verification formula, isn’t it?”
“A method of verification where you split up the magic language piece by piece and recombine it…?”
“How…?”
This utterly absurd situation had come to pass.
After writing out the entire verification formula, Baek Yuseol put down a final mark and looked at Selien.
His expression seemed to say, ‘No problem, right?’
‘What is that…?’
Even Selien, who possessed knowledge on the level of a professor, had never seen a verification formula like that before.
She was badly flustered, but she forced herself to remain calm and asked,
“That verification formula… where exactly did you learn it?”
“Sorry? Where did I learn it? Well…”
Baek Yuseol was just about to say that he had learned it at school, but at that very moment he finally realized that something about the atmosphere was off, and hurriedly started making excuses.
“Uh, I just… the existing verification formula wasn’t checking things properly, so while I was writing the paper, I made one…”
“Hah.”
“Good grief…”
There were many people who wanted to say, How can that possibly make sense?
But what could they do, if it was true?
Since that excuse seemed to work fairly well, the magicians could do nothing but gasp in admiration and no longer nitpick him.
Selien, too, had her question completely blocked, leaving her with nothing more to say.
“…My next question.”
But this was not the end of the holes in his paper.
This formula had somehow been handled through a new verification formula, but would the next one go the same way?
“Cadet Baek Yuseol. Could you list the words in Rune Term T3 that signify wisdom?”
“Seol, Pa, Dok, O, Rin, Chen, Ku.”
“Then could you arrange the periodicity of the overlapping attributes of Protect mana?”
He thought they were asking some awfully strange things, but Baek Yuseol answered without complaint.
“CE, CO, SI, DE, BA, RI.”
“…You really do keep things memorized well.”
Since she had honestly not expected him to have memorized even that, Selien was a little surprised.
But that did not change anything.
“Then now, do you understand what the problem is?”
No.
Baek Yuseol almost answered honestly, but barely managed to keep his mouth shut.
“There is an error in your design formula. It violates the ‘Rune Binomial Law.’”
“Rune Binomial Law?”
Baek Yuseol asked back reflexively because he genuinely did not know, but Selien assumed he was merely asking her to confirm it once more, so she answered readily.
“Yes. The law that states, ‘Runes with different character counts cannot be binomially combined.’”
To explain simply, runes must always be formed by combining two words.
Like how, in Korean, ㅇ and ㅏ combine to form the syllable ‘아.’
But the runic language had pointlessly complicated rules on top of that. A one-letter rune such as ‘Seol’ or ‘Pa’ could not be combined with a two-letter rune such as ‘CE’ or ‘CO.’
And yet Baek Yuseol had ignored that fundamental law and written his design formula.
Could a formula like that possibly function properly?
It was total nonsense.
‘…So that’s what it was?’
Baek Yuseol stared hard at bulbul-glasses’ design formula.
Even looking again, he still did not understand.
‘But this thing says it works?’
After fumbling in thought for a moment, Selien said,
“Now do you see how flawed your design formula is?”
“Uh, yes, but…”
Baek Yuseol hesitated briefly, then put his pen to the formula he had written on the Magic Screen and drew a few lines.
“…Wouldn’t it work if I do it like this?”
What he had done was nothing special.
He had simply drawn mana severance lines as though cutting apart each letter, then inserted a binomial expression and joined them together.
In other words, in order to combine the runes ‘Seol’ and ‘CE,’ he had completely broken them down into their components—ㅅ, ㅓ, ㄹ, C, and E—and then recombined them.
“That does seem plausible, but…”
“But then the mana connections won’t be properly maintained…?”
“No. Look again. The verification formula above takes on the role of breaking down and linking each rune one by one, so it’ll activate without issue.”
“Huh, it really does?”
‘That… works…?’
Selien was left utterly speechless.
She had never imagined even this would work.
At this point, she began to wonder whether there was any meaning left in criticizing him at all, but once she had started, she could not stop.
Most importantly,
there was still one final, crucial hole left.
“…Remarkable. The new verification formula, and the Rune Binomial organization you developed through your own method, are truly excellent.”
Struggling to maintain her calm, Selien continued.
“Cadet Baek Yuseol. You do know about the ‘arrangement property of mana,’ don’t you?”
“Uh… yes. I think so. Probably.”
At those words, even the magicians who had been gasping at the new laws nodded.
Up until now, the earlier problems could have been considered almost cute.
Creating a new verification formula to solve those parts, and even applying Rune Binomial to it, was indeed a brilliant and prodigious idea for a seventeen-year-old magician…
However,
the real problem lay in the structural formula that formed the very foundation of that design formula.
‘Mana must always be arranged in series.’
This was a law that had never once changed since the day magic first appeared in the world.
‘Water falls from top to bottom.’
‘One plus one equals two.’
It was a law so basic it was no different from common sense itself.
And yet Baek Yuseol’s design formula had mana arranged in parallel.
No—could that even be dismissed as merely ‘unusual’?
To begin with, that could hardly be called a magic circle at all. It might be more accurate to call it nothing more than a drawing imitating a magic circle.
“So I’ll ask you. Cadet Baek Yuseol believes mana can be arranged in parallel, yes?”
“Huh? Yes.”
At that, Selien scoffed inwardly.
‘What nonsense…’
No matter how extraordinary Baek Yuseol was, this could not be allowed.
If mana could truly be arranged in parallel, then that would mean it was possible to activate multiple spells with a single magic circle…
That was no different from a dream realm even within the magical world. It had been researched for hundreds of years, yet no one had ever managed to prove it.
In other words, it was absolutely impossible.
“All right. Then could you show us?”
Pfft.
Someone who had noticed Selien’s intention to toy with Baek Yuseol let out a small laugh.
That person immediately read the room and fixed their expression, but there was no way such a sound could escape Baek Yuseol’s sharp ears.
‘No, what’s the problem this time?’
The atmosphere was becoming more and more ominous.
But he still had no idea what exactly was wrong, which only made his head pound harder.
In any case, after saying he would show them, he could not very well back out, so Baek Yuseol reluctantly gripped the Magic Pen.
As they watched him, the magicians all shook their heads as though dumbfounded or disbelieving.
‘What absurd nonsense…’
‘If you’re going to insist on something, at least insist on something reasonable…’
‘Tsk. His ideas really do seem ingenious, and he seems clever too, but he’s the type who got consumed by his own arrogance.’
‘What a pity.’
As the atmosphere grew heavier and more suspicious by the second,
Flame pressed a hand to her forehead and broke into a cold sweat.
‘That idiot regressor…’
He had absolutely no idea what kind of formulas he was and was not supposed to reveal right now.
Because his knowledge and memories had gotten all mixed together, he was simply blurting out formulas and laws as they came.
The verification formula he had already revealed would not appear until at least two or three years later, and the Rune Binomial Law was scheduled to appear around the same time.
And most decisively of all…
‘Mana Parallel Arrangement won’t come out until five years later!’
Honestly, the verification formula or the rune laws would not matter too much if they were revealed ahead of time.
They would not have enough impact to greatly affect the magical world. All they would really do was make building design formulas a bit easier.
But Mana Parallel Arrangement was a truly serious issue.
The simple but genius idea of inserting multiple spells into a single magic circle and activating them.
That law was destined to be announced later by the world’s greatest magic tower, the Full Moon Tower, and shake the magical world to its core.
But since Baek Yuseol was already drawing the magic circle in earnest on the Magic Screen, there was no way to stop him now, so Flame clutched her face and screamed inwardly.
In the end, Baek Yuseol completely finished the design formula, having applied Mana Parallel Arrangement without understanding what he was doing.
“…Huh?”
“Wait, what is that…?”
“What? That’s a joke, right…?”
Flash!
The magic circle on the Magic Screen board began to emit light.
The spell itself did not manifest, but the circulation of mana proved that this magic circle was correct.
Thunk—clang…!
A noisy sound rang through the lecture hall.
Selien had dropped the microphone onto the floor.
Baek Yuseol quickly covered his ears, but he could not fail to realize that something about the reaction was very wrong.
‘What.’
Not a single person
said anything.
As though they had lost their minds.
They simply stood there with mouths open…
staring as though enchanted by the design formula on the Magic Screen.
Only then did Baek Yuseol vaguely realize that he had committed a mistake of an entirely different order from before.
‘…Was I not supposed to solve this one?’
No wonder it had looked more complicated and difficult than usual…
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