Chapter 256 : Chapter 256
Chapter 256. Discussion
The moment Fulan stepped through the door and read the title of the booklet in Elise’s hands, she understood why Elise had sent Dylan to fetch her.
So Elise had taken a liking to this paper of hers. She had seen the value within it, which was why she had summoned Fulan so impatiently.
Surely the paper Fulan had written had impressed Elise so thoroughly that she had called her over in such a hurry.
Elise’s expression remained blank. Looking at the booklet in her hand, she showed no visible reaction at all as she casually asked,
“Is the name you use on the Mana Communication System ‘Laiyi’?”
“Yes.” Only then did Fulan begin to sense that something was off about Elise. Logically, if she truly thought the paper was excellent, she should not have been reacting like this.
Elise closed the booklet and said something utterly unexpected.
“Do you think Aether can be refined with your kind of mathematical method?”
Fulan froze on the spot. She had no idea how to answer.
First of all, she had clearly written in the paper that the mathematical method above was only a form of analysis. To put it into actual practice, one would still need other methods.
And more importantly, Elise had just brought up “Aether,” something Fulan had only learned about less than a day ago, yet Elise was already asking her about it directly.
That left her genuinely at a loss. She did not know whether she ought to admit that she knew about Aether, or pretend that she did not.
What if this was a concept only high-tier mages were supposed to have access to? Would saying anything now be inappropriate?
It was an agonizing question. This was not a problem that could be resolved through quantitative analysis.
It was a matter of choosing a side, and so even after her mind spun for quite a while, she still could not come up with an answer.
Fortunately, Elise did not seem to have intended to make Fulan answer such a difficult question in the first place. Elise simply said,
“Fulan, I think you should give up this idea of using numbers to calculate things. It is unrealistic.”
“Even if today you used this mathematical method to calculate the solution to Fireball, and even managed to create a highly meaningful mathematical tool—”
“I still believe this has no future at all.”
“The spell structure required to activate Fireball is extremely simple, so all you need to consider is the condition of mental power input.”
“But once you begin researching high-tier spells, what will you do when even slight mistakes in material preparation during casting can create enormous deviations in the final result? How are you supposed to describe a problem like that?”
“That is why I say you should give up this line of work...”
Fulan thought it over for a while before she finally managed to piece together the chain of reasoning that had led Elise to say all this.
First of all, Elise absolutely did not approve of her method of using mathematics to analyze spells. That much had been obvious from her utterly expressionless manner at the start.
And from Elise’s words, she clearly had little faith in mathematical methods. She was advising Fulan to devote herself to some other field and stop concerning herself with this one.
Only then did Fulan truly understand why Elise had called her here this time—Elise was placing herself in the role of an elder, thinking that Fulan’s direction had no real future, and so she had come straight out to persuade her to give it up.
It was perfectly normal for many high-tier mages to hold very different understandings of the same spell, or of the same magical principle.
Because once a mage reached the high-tier stage, advancement no longer depended merely on one’s capacity to study. More often, it relied on one’s powers of comprehension, cognition, and analysis.
Only then could one cast high-tier spells, and that was precisely why every mage’s understanding differed to some extent.
And now, Elise quite clearly did not agree with her method of using mathematics to analyze spells.
She thought it was sheer fantasy, something utterly impossible, something without the slightest future, something that had to be wrong from the outset.
That was normal. Even in Fulan’s previous life, every theorem that was later regarded as important had endured no shortage of doubts.
The reason those theorems came to be seen as important at all was precisely because they had survived the scrutiny of the vast majority.
So at this moment, Elise simply did not recognize the value of this paper at all, and wanted Fulan to stop researching this sort of thing.
Looking at Fulan, Elise had to admit that when she first heard about this paper, she had not quite dared to believe that Fulan had really written it.
Because Habos’s description of her had made one thing very clear: perhaps Fulan had many flashes of inspiration, but she lacked systematic researcher training and might not know how to properly summarize her own achievements.
With the paper on refining White Star Sand, Elise could still convince herself that it was largely Philip’s contribution.
But this one, no matter how she looked at it, proved that Fulan was indeed a qualified researcher. Many researchers did not even possess Fulan’s level of clarity in academic writing.
But that was not important. Compared with the other matter, it was far too unimportant.
Generally speaking, Elise seldom read these Selections. On the one hand, the things published in them were all the work of low-tier mages, which felt rather disconnected from someone like her, a fourth-tier mage.
High-tier mages like her had specialized exchange conferences where they shared their results and insights.
Even if quite a few of the mages at those meetings disliked her, they still shared their ideas there.
At their level, if they wanted to advance or become stronger, then the only way forward was to exchange ideas frequently with other mages.
Even if the regions under their control might never have anything to do with one another for generations, that honestly did not matter in the eyes of people at their level. What mattered was whether they themselves could make progress.
Although if she occasionally read these Selections, she might perhaps gain some new inspiration for her own spell research, there had never seemed to be any need.
This paper, however, had been recommended to her by Vernon, the First Seat of the Modification School.
When he learned that she had not read it at all, he had made a special point of telling her to take a look.
Even the commentary on the paper had been written by Vernon himself, and he had personally handed it to Elise.
At first, Elise had found Vernon’s gesture of goodwill baffling. Why had he suddenly sent someone over here saying that he wanted to stand on her side and Habos’s side?
Who would believe that?
Yet Vernon’s later actions truly made her realize that he might actually have been sincere.
Not only had he repeatedly spoken up for them at various Alliance meetings, he had even proposed that the Northern Society’s Battle Mage Corps help him retrieve that box.
All of that left Elise completely perplexed. No matter how hard she tried, she could not understand why Vernon had suddenly changed his mind. Was he not someone who had always firmly believed that the schools were necessary?
So why had he suddenly changed his nature and begun standing with them instead?
Only after Vernon had explained all of the above to her did Elise finally sort out the course of events.
Her guess was that Vernon had most likely taken a liking to the research in this paper and considered it highly valuable, but that the content was too sensitive, so he had no choice but to ally himself with Elise and the others.
Because mathematics involved the domain of another school as well—the Alchemy School.
For a very long time, only a small portion of the mages within the Alchemy School had chosen to use complicated mathematics to guide their experiments.
Even within the Alchemy School, that had always been an extremely niche branch. Because of the lack of mathematical tools, those mages often could not even find good ways to describe certain phenomena in their experiments.
And although that branch was still neither thriving nor dying even now, it undeniably belonged to the Alchemy School. It was an inseparable part of it.
So if Vernon wanted to research mathematical matters, he would most likely run headfirst into the Alchemy School’s resistance, leaving his work unable to advance at all.
Otherwise, after so many years, why had mathematics in this world still not undergone any qualitative leap? The Alchemy School had played its part in obstructing that progress as well.
Returning to the main point, mathematical research was a very niche branch within the Alchemy School, and Elise just so happened not to be a mage who studied that area.
She still remembered that back when she had been choosing a mentor, there had been a mage who studied mathematics and wanted to take her in.
But she had found all that mathematics too troublesome, and she also felt it had little practical use, so she had chosen a mentor in Miracle Alchemy instead.
And she had once heard her own mentor speak of those Alchemy School mages who studied mathematics.
“Those people are actually trying to refine Aether. What wishful thinking. We still haven’t even truly found ‘Aether’ yet.”
“Aether” was a theory proposed long ago by a fifth-tier mage of the Alchemy School.
He believed that within all matter in the Material Realm, there existed a substance called “Aether,” something capable of freely transforming into all matter, and that all visible matter was transformed from Aether.
“So long as we can refine pure Aether—even if it is only a single speck of powder—we will be able to glimpse the true essence of the Material Realm through it.”
Yet after that mage died, no one believed in the theory anymore, because the other alchemists felt that it simply defied common sense.
Only those Alchemy School mages who studied mathematics still stubbornly believed that Aether truly existed.
And when Elise had asked Fulan about Aether earlier, it had been because she wondered whether Fulan had been taught by some Alchemy School mage who studied mathematics.
But judging from Fulan’s reaction, her face had been full of confusion at the mention of Aether, and she had not even known what to say.
For the time being, Elise set those thoughts aside. She had already said everything she meant to say in order to dissuade her.
Though she did not think highly of this direction, if Fulan insisted on pursuing it, Elise had no real way to stop her.
So she turned to another matter.
“Your paper has caught the attention of the First Seat of the Modification School. If you do not want to attract trouble, you had better be careful when using that account.”
“If possible, I advise you to spend the Points on it, then open a new account.”
The impact of the paper Fulan had published was still fairly significant. After this, every time that author name published another paper, it would likely draw attention.
And in Fulan’s current situation, that kind of attention was not actually a good thing.