Chapter 35
Details
“That’s right, Princess. You had mentioned something about wanting to create a spell that could scan books and create copies in your mindscape."
Sylvia asked rhetorically.
“Of course, that was before you surprised me with the creation of a nascent rune.”
The maid stated, her bafflement still completely clear in her voice.
“Is it really that much of a big deal?”
Mary asked the maid, at least partially interested in how common high-level runes were in the world.
“It’s an extremely big deal.”
Sylvia stated with ironclad confidence.
“The world system calls them level five runes [Average], but in reality, few people are ever knowledgeable enough to create runes of that level; even merely learning them can be difficult.”
Mary frowns.
If it was so difficult to create an average-level rune, then why did the Akashic record call them "average" in the first place? A naming convention like that was misleading at best.
Mary, once again seeking a second opinion, diverted part of her attention to her second mind and initiated a private conversation.
‘Perhaps the existence of otherworlders skews the expected knowledge of the world’s inhabitants. Or maybe someone has successfully managed to secretly hoard a great deal of information that would otherwise help with rune creation.’
{Why not both? It depends on the true nature of the akashic record, doesn’t it? Does discovering new, currently unknown knowledge increase the threshold required to reach each individual level, or does it reveal higher, currently unknown rune levels?}
Sylvia, on the other hand, continued her explanation, unaware of the concurrent discussion the princess was having within herself.
“Of course, creating a power five rune is much easier than creating a level five rune, and the difference in effort required is incredibly significant.”
The maid revealed this information, surprising the half-listening princesses temporarily.
{If you think about it, it’s not overly surprising that power is much easier to accumulate than knowledge.}
Mary's second mind concedes to the maid’s point, causing Sylvia to smile joyfully.
“Right. Becoming powerful in this world is relatively easy.”
The former B-ranked adventurer outrageously claims, her face smoothing out into an almost sarcastic deadpan. The battle maid was apparently ignoring the advantages that she had enjoyed due to inherited otherworldly genetics.
“All you need in order to gain power in this world is time and determination.”
She firmly states her theory, this time with a greater degree of honesty.
“After all, if you’re willing to descend into the dungeons and kill monsters for a living, then you either die young or become strong.”
“The problem is that most people die without becoming strong.”
Mary finished for the maid.
“Is that it?”
Sylvia's sarcastic deadpan transforms into a knowing smirk, and then she nodded.
“Exactly that.”
{So, a nascent rune is, in reality, very exceptional then?}
The maid shakes her head, seemingly dismayed by her princess's continued misunderstanding of what was, to her, a clear explanation.
“No, what I mean is that it’s essentially unheard of for someone to create a level-five rune.”
The maid announces something unbelievable, to the princess's abject surprise.
If creating even an average-level rune was unheard of, then how could such a rune be considered average? Clearly, Mary thought to her second mind, there was something very strange going on in the world’s mage guilds.
The question she had was whether that strangeness indicated an obsessive tendency to keep secrets or something else.
“To put this into perspective for you, as far as I know, the only people who have ever created nascent-level runes are either heroes from another world or they are one of the few once-in-a-generation geniuses that occasionally show up. I’m talking about the sort of person who even at a young age is practically fated to be acknowledged as an archmagi, and to make things even worse, those archmagi are themselves often hero descendants.”
“And then there’s us, who created such a rarely seen rune while we were still a baby.”
Mary finished, and a degree of realisation about what she had achieved finally began to dawn upon her.
“Exactly. Even under normal circumstances it would be an outrageous achievement.”
Mary blinked in confusion; her circumstances couldn’t be called normal. She was a reincarnated soul from Earth, a so-called hero. By most standards, she was quite unique, so what might be the underlying issue here?
Sylvia looked at Mary with confusion and exasperation, inwardly certain that her princess had all the information necessary to understand the point that the former adventurer was making but for whatever reason simply wasn’t connecting the dots.
At her maid's look, Mary pauses and attempts to consider the situation again but continues to not see what she is being told.
{We created a [Mind] rune.}
Mary's second mind stated in realisation, finally understanding what the maid had been trying to convey.
{We already know that the mind is a complex subject; that’s why Alexander had to spend so many years on Earth learning even the basics, and by this world’s standards, the basics of Earth are the cutting edge.}
The second mind begins to explain.
{But that’s the point, isn’t it? Most people who successfully create a nascent rune, they’ve probably dedicated themselves to a relatively basic concept. The fire rune for instance, and there is nothing at all basic about something as complex as the mind.}
Mary nods firmly, finally understanding the problem. After having the problem practically spelt out to her, Mary finally understood; she had essentially reached for the sky and succeeded, whereas most people on Terra stay in the dirt yet still fail.
But that raised a new question that the princess could not help but ask.
“Isn’t it even worse than that then? Considering that we could create a nascent [Mind] rune, that is a complex and poorly understood subject, even by the standards of Alexander; on the other hand, I would be shocked if we couldn’t create at the very least an average-level [Fire] rune.”
Sylvia visibly restrains a twitch at the sheer certainty in the princess's voice; the newborn baby has stated something that would be heralded as the life achievement of some of the greatest of the world’s mages.
Distantly, the maid wonders to herself if her common sense is going to survive the coming years or if it will get invariably twisted by being near her otherworldly princess.
“It’s actually much more likely that we could go far beyond level five for something like [Fire], perhaps even as high as eight or nine; fires are after just basic chemistry.”
Sylvia twitches again, becoming more determined to ignore what she privately believes, or maybe even hopes, is her princess boasting.
{Well, let’s move along to figuring out book scanning. I suspected that we’ll be creating several high-level runes in our immediate future anyway.}
The maid suppresses a sigh at the absurd sentence and instead moves to physically hug her princess for comfort.
Mary looks at the maid in confusion as she is being squeezed and sends a question to her second mind.
‘What’s with her?’
{She’s just having her worldview properly shattered.}
The second mind answers in amusement.
Mary sighs in exasperation and chooses to ignore the oddity.
“So then how do we construct a spell that can copy books?”
The princess asks the room, or really the second mind, somewhat rhetorically, since experience says that Sylvia is unlikely to have an answer.
“In the end, should we first be creating a [Copy] rune?”
{I think that we should specialise the spell into book duplication, just to make sure that it goes well. I know earlier I suggested that we would want a generalist spell that could scan copies of any physical object, but at the moment, what we want to duplicate are books. Expanding the spell can be done later after we have a better understanding of magic.}
Mary frowned at the reverse course, having not expected her second mind to change its mind, but after a moment, she appreciated the logic behind it. Thus far they had been capable of creating runes rapidly; in fact, the real problem had been applying the appropriate logic to the spells.
“We should also create a [Book] rune then. That would leave us with a spell matrix of [Copy] and [Book]; it would result in our first true multi-rune spell instead of the half-hearted versions we’ve been making thus far.”
Mary stated that they had been using [Ambient Mana] less for its ability to help manipulate ambient mana and more as an onboard energy generator.
{Yes, we will be constructing our first proper multi-rune spell, but we need to use a [Mind] rune as well. If we use [Copy] and [Book] alone, then we might end up trying to make a spell that attempts to create actual physical copies of the books instead of the mental ones that we require.}
The second mind corrected her primary consciousness, even as she agreed with part of the logic involved.
Sylvia twitched again, having silently listened to the otherworlders' deliberation, and chose to interject with some of her hard-won adventuring experience.
“Dungeons can use mana in some sort of way to create physical objects, not just the monsters that inhabit them or the mildly space-bending properties of the dungeons either. They can create, seemingly completely out of raw mana, valuable enchanted equipment or even a seemingly endless number of mineable materials.”
Sylvia explained to the princess another aspect of the world that seemed strangely game-like.
Mary looked at the maid with a blank look on her face; nearer to the start of her new life, she had concluded that this world was not entirely dissimilar to Earth, and then something like this got mentioned. Sometimes, the more the princess learnt about the outside world, the more it sounded like some deity had played a video game once and decided that it needed to be real.
‘Apparently magic can be used for genuine matter generation after all.’
Mary whispered in disbelief directly to her second mind.
{We’re not trying that for years yet.}
The second mind all but ordered her main body in answer.
{In fact, I’d prefer to study the process used by a dungeon first before we even try to do such a thing. Or at least, we should wait until we get more acquainted with mana before trying to break reality like that.}
She finished in a firm, almost chiding tone.
“Dungeons are often treated as a sort of mine, albeit one that will fight back and kill the miners far more actively than a more traditional one would.”
The former adventurer continues her redirection unabated by her princess’ unheard mental whispers.
“In fact, the most valuable dungeons on the continent are actively fought over by their local kingdoms, but only a few dungeons are valuable enough to warrant fighting over them.”
“You see, very few dungeons contain Mithril that is both safe and easy to mine.”
“Energy to matter conversion is something that appears in science fiction on Earth often enough. Many fantasy realms also have it to some degree.”
Mary concedes.
“But while energy might just be another form of matter… I don’t think we’ll be trying that any time soon.”
Sylvia blinked in momentary confusion before letting out a bark of laughter.
"Sorry, princess, I didn’t mean that you should try. I was just trying to tell you that it is possible to use magic to create things. The discipline is called 'conjuration' after all.”
Mary nodded, unsurprised by the familiar name drop.
“But conjuration is almost always temporary.”
The maid reveals something that Mary had partially expected the moment she heard the disciplinarian's name.
“Dungeons wouldn’t be valuable for their matter creation if a mage could just create as much mithril as they wanted, after all.”
Mary finished the explanation for Sylvia, causing her to smile.
“Yes, exactly that.”
{So, we’re in agreement then? A three-rune spell, [Book]-[Copy]-[Mind], or do we err on the side of caution and add a [Scan] in there too?}
Mary frowns at the late addition. Was having a [Scan] rune together with a [Copy] rune redundant? The more runes that they added to the spell, the more expensive it would become to use.
“There is also the matter of what degree of power we should be aiming for.”
The princess stated considerately.
“Should we aim for the limits of [Least] or do we push on into [Lesser] power?”
Mary aimed a question at Sylvia, who might know the answer.
“What would the effects of power be on runes like that? Do you know?”
Sylvia frowns thoughtfully, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. She begins another, this time somewhat halting, explanation.
“The effects of power can vary greatly depending on what the spells’ purpose is. For a spell that’s aim is to create mental copies of books, well, the answer to that is obvious: power will affect the quality of the copy.”
Mary grimaced, having expected the answer, but privately she had wanted the true reality to have been something else.
{We’ll need to push the power limits then. A five-rune spell, [Book]-[Scan]-[Copy]-[Mind]-[Ambient Mana], each rune will need to be the highest power we can currently create.}
The second mind interjected with what she perceived as instructions; although it would increase the time required to make copies of all their mothers’ books, quality was not something they could approach half-heartedly.
“By far our largest spell yet, then. Do we want to add any extra modifiers to the runes, or should we leave that for another time?”
Mary feels the second mind frown in thought for a moment before shaking its not-entirely-metaphorical head.
{We can try that later, maybe when we want to compress the number of runes in the spell? If you think about it, [Scan] and [Copy] could be made modifiers of [Book] as an example, couldn’t they?}
“Adding complex modifiers can vastly increase the difficulty of rune creation. Your suggestions might not be contradictory, but you will find that the time and energy it takes to create a rune increase exponentially the more modifiers you add to it.”
Sylvia interjected with some additional magic facts.
Mary nodded, having expected something to the effect.
“Then that will have to be a future project, for now...”
Mary cut herself off to sigh wearily at the dull work ahead of her.
“I’ll be spending the next several hours creating all of the needed runes if I’m going to be exhausting my mana each time; can you start working on constructing the logic we’ll be using for the final spell?”
{Of course.}
“In that case, I’ll push all of them right to the limit.”
Said Mary with a degree of grim determination, preparing herself for a level of tedium that even Alexander rarely had to experience.