Chapter 192
The process of squishing all of the materials into an artifact was… complicated.
Alice watched in mute fascination as Demor started weaving together the three materials in front of her.
Alice had always vaguely felt that enchanting resembled coding from her previous world. Most enchantments resembled if/then statements from a code. Of course, there were plenty of differences between writing a code in a computer and making an enchantment, but Alice had always felt that they were outweighed by the similarities.
However, if creating an enchantment resembled the creation of a set of if/then statements, creating an Artifact was more like trying to create a human brain using metal instead of organic matter. Alice had assumed that Artifacts were nearly as rigid and ‘dumb’ as regular enchantments, but as she watched Demor work, she realized that wasn’t the case.
In fact, indications of this had already been right in front of her, she just hadn’t connected the dots. In Illvaria, the Artifact that controlled the canals of Southern Illvaria was comprised of ten different artificial magic seeds. Based on Demor’s description of how all of this worked, that meant that the Artifact had 10 mana globs and 10 ‘concept materials.’ In theory, that meant the Artifact could only have 10 if/then statements programmed into it. Demor had also mentioned that Artifacts often had supplementary materials in them… but even so, there was no way Illvaria’s canal artifact ran off of if/then statements.
The Artifact in Illvaria responded fairly intelligently to a wide range of scenarios. Based on historical records from the academy Library, Alice knew that the Artifact in Illvaria could handle most ‘normal’ disasters. If there was too much rainfall one year, the Artifact would handle some of the water and keep it from damaging towns. If there wasn’t enough rainfall, the Artifact would add in some more water to supplement the lacking rainfall for the year. The Artifact also controlled water erosion, to keep new river channels from forming, and did dozens of other things to keep the canals stable. The Artifact did hundreds of different things… and it responded to each change in real-time, without any need for further input from users or further information.
If every single one of those actions was broken down into if/then statements, how many instructions would that take? Tens of thousands? Millions? Alice had no idea, but she was sure that there was no way any material in this world could hold that many instructions. Materials that could hold eight instructions were already rarities. Finding a material that could hold millions of instructions would obviously be a pipe dream.
So obviously, Artifacts worked differently. After watching Demor create an Artifact, Alice had a better idea how Artifacts sidestepped this problem.
Artifacts didn’t use ‘if/then’ statements at all. Or at least, not in the same way a regular enchantment did. Based on Demor’s instructions and demonstration, Alice realized that Demor was essentially molding an Artifact into a concept. It was actually somewhat similar to the manaborn swamp the group had encountered on the way here. The Artifact had some sort of specific ‘instruction,’ and then it had a specific ‘concept’ that it followed. Alice suspected that the Artifact in Illvaria, for example had the instruction of ‘maintain’ or ‘stabilize,’ followed by an image of the canal network it was supposed to keep stable.