Melody of Mana

The next few days of classes were fairly standard. Well, everyone was stressed as all getout, and there was only really one major point of conversation, but beyond that fairly normal. Magical Materials finally got to some really cool things. We started talking about the various parts of magical animals and how they could be used. Turns out most monsters were chock full of mana, and once you got their bodies you could use them for a whole bevy of different things. The fact that they had mana in them, and were able to conduct it meant that they could be used to improve the efficiency of magical items by leaps and bounds.

My work on getting weather magic down was progressing, albeit slowly. I could get most basic things working now, slowly building up winds and water, but the growth rate was abysmal. It would take forever to get to nice huge storms. It was enough for Professor Endel though, who came by to check on my practice a few times. I was even thinking about lightning now, but I wanted a safe way to practice that before I tried to make any.

It was around this time that I was called to the dean's office. It was a simple enough thing, but when I arrived there I met with him and both Rooke and Hern. The three of them were sitting around the dean's desk, conversing lightly as they waited for me. Another figure was there, one that I recognized. The royal servant Emil sat nearby, waiting as well.

"Greetings Alana, please sit down." Dean Lorrae motioned to an open chair near Professor Rooke.

"Is something the matter?" I looked between the gathered men a bit nervously.

"Not as such, but we do have some important things to discuss." The dean said, looking down at me from his spot. "Though I doubt you will be pleased with it. As you know we are at war." I nodded at the dean's statement as he continued. "As such our country needs every advantage that it can get. Mister Emil here is a representative of the royal family, one who has been placed in charge of acquiring potentially useful information."

"We've met. Am I to assume that he wants information on core building?"

The man himself smiled. "Quite so. It is my understanding that you have no issues sharing it, if you were to be properly incentivized?" The way he said the last bit nearly sent a shiver up my spine. I didn't know if he was actively trying to be threatening, or if it was just force of habit at this point, but he could certainly scare most people with ease.

"I... do not. What is the proposal?"

In answer the man produced a rather sizable sack of coins. I could hear the metal jingling as they rubbed against each other. While it was interesting, money was not really a problem I had most of the time.

"We are willing to offer one hundred gold pieces, with additional monies possible if it turns out that the information is of military use." That was a... sizable amount, enough for me to retire on with no further questions. That said, I could make sugar, which was basically a money printing machine.

"Money is nice, but there are other things which would be more welcome."

"Such as?"

"Safety and privacy. Regardless of how things with this war turn out, I honestly want very little to do with it. I can use the gold, but I'd rather be left alone, than much else. So whatever amount you offer has to come with promises that you won't go bandying my name about."

"I can agree to that easily."

"And the rest of you?" I gave a look to the three teachers, Hern in particular.

"I don't know why you would think..." He began.

"Because you've been pestering her about this for some time you dolt." Rooke cut in. I really wanted to give him a high-five, but he probably wouldn't understand what that was and this truly wasn't the time.

"I would also like to not be bothered about other things I decide to research until such time as I'm prepared to reveal them publicly." Since most of the things I was looking at at the moment would probably never reach that point this was an important clause.

There was a series of nods and while I doubted that it would hold up forever, but buying myself a bit of peace while I was still in school was worth sharing this little tidbit.

"Alright, let's hear it then." Hern in particular seemed excited.

"What do you know about how the core works?" I asked. "Rather, about how it understands things on the basic level."

"It uses a series of inputs that are either on or off to give a particular output. Through some effort it is able to tell that parts of it are doing basic math as well. Certain series of inputs are giving known outputs. Its internal workings and the like are still a bit unclear though, particularly when it comes to more complex interactions." Rooke rattled off. That was pretty good all things considered.

"So... yeah, it's always doing math, for everything. The math it's doing is a bit different though, hmm..." I had to take a few moments to think about how best to explain.

"Alana, we understand math, please get on with it." Hern said.

Buddy, I've seen your math classes and you guys don't even know about imaginary numbers. Seriously, most of what you know could be found in The Elements, and a bit of basic algebra.

"Fine, it's converting logic statements into math and then solving them. That's the basic trick as to how I made so much progress. I didn't bother visualizing each connection, but rather thought of them in terms of the statements they represented."

"What?" Dean Lorrae looked at me as if I'd just said something incredibly silly.

"It's easier if I draw it out..." Within a few minutes I had diagrams drawn for the group. The professors looked like they were nursing headaches. There was also Emil, who was going over each bit with a fine toothed comb, and Dean Lorrae, who was laughing like a madman.

"So... it's not that everyone didn't know what these pieces were doing, rather that you were just thinking of them as... or, not, and and the like?" Rooke was massaging the bridge of his nose.

The pieces that I'd drawn out to explain were well understood. They already knew that if in one of these you put in a yes, and the other a no what the answer would be. The only change that I'd honestly made was converting them into Boolean logic, which wasn't a big one, but was a shift in paradigm. It was also like pointing out that you could see your nose if you tried, but that you just ignored it most of the time.

"It's obvious. I can't believe that you made us jump through so many hoops for this Alana." Hern said.

"I'm unsure whether to be proud or irritated." Rooke added as he opened his eyes to look at it again, only to go back to rubbing his nose.

"Is it useful?" Emil asked, squinting at the diagram like it had personally offended him.

"To a bard? Certainly, changing the way they conceive of this would have the same effect it had for Alana here and massively speed up the growth rate of their core. To a wizard... probably not as it is, though it is a new way to think about the cores and how to use them. If we do more research about it we might gain some insights." Dean Lorrae wiped tears from his eyes.

"I'll take that as a tentative yes then. How many bards do we have that this could help? If it speeds up magical item creation..."

"There are perhaps two hundred or so bards in the country that are capable of making magical items. If you decide to teach all of them it will speed it up a bit, but in my opinion it will be mostly useful for growing the core inside one's self. Making a copy for an item is rather more fast than building your own." Hern pointed out, he seemed to be the most versed on this kind of thing.

"That's rather disappointing. Well, you don't win every time, but at least that's something." Emil packed up my diagrams and a few notes that he'd made before pushing the bag of money over to me.

I smiled at him trying to move it into my lap only to find out what I should have already known. Gold is heavy. "Thank you."

"I can't believe you're actually paying for that, or that we even needed it at all." Hern grumbled.

"It is important that the royal family keep it's agreements to the letter. While the information wasn't what I was hoping for it is useful, and if there are any more useful insights young Miss Alana gains I hope that she will share them with us in the future." He smiled at me.

My best guess was that he was wagering that I'd come up with some more helpful shifts in thinking. The things I'd shared with them, like the flamethrower and this weren't something that was impossible for them to know, but just weird for them to think about. A lot of important things were like that though, they were things that were easy to find out, or kind of obvious, but that nobody really pointed out to others or used.

I had to be careful here, and consider my actions. I knew that it was often very minor changes in thinking that ended up having massive changes to fields, but some of that also took a lot of time. If I restricted myself to very few, and very minor insights then it was probably fine for now, I just needed to act with care.

Relativity was a good example of how a minor shift in thinking had a big ripple. Einstein's tram ride while looking at a clock was a perfect showing. Had he seen anything that someone else hadn't? No. Did he have access to some unusual information? No. Did his minor change in thinking have a big effect? Absolutely.

I wanted to avoid things like that, at least for now. The fact that this society was still thinking about a lot of things in a rather medieval way while I was thinking like someone from a much later society made that hard though. I had no idea what minor things might make big changes, and that meant that I needed to stop and consider everything that I said that wasn't just parroting what they were telling me.

I was dismissed. It seemed that those four had been going over a lot of other information as well. My impression was that Emil was here to coordinate with them on research they were doing personally and what they might do for him and his part in the war effort.

I returned to my room to put away my money. While I did that I went over the things I'd learned from the core so far. These were things that I knew I would be holding back. I felt the need to learn them so that I could use them for my own gains, but the idea of sharing them with others was right out. It would probably be advisable for me to not use them at all until I'd graduated and this stupid war was well and over.

I sighed in relief as Emma was about some other business. It gave me time to hide my gains and lay down to enjoy a bit of personal studying. I looked over the small command sequence I'd written out, a brief and simple setup for a lamp. After a bit of prodding I'd even managed to get one of the older students to show me how to set up an on/off switch. It would all fit into a small package that I was currently considering materials on.