by Sato Tsutomu
"Is that so......"
By the time students reached the second semester of their second year, Foundations of Magic class would progress to Applications of Magic. This class started with concepts surrounding "Counter Magic" — magic that nullifies opposing magic — which was what Suzune was explaining right now. Normally, this was something that was taught during the first semester of 3rd Year, which was why Azusa wasn't familiar with the subject. That being said, to hear the term "Counter Magic" and not be hopelessly lost, Azusa's knowledge was broad indeed.
"However, this is still a worthwhile theory."
Azusa's emotions bounced between zealous and gloomy. Suzune smiled at her in a gentle and comforting manner.
"To cancel magic the moment its effects manifest, I believe this is the correct approach."
"That's true. Because of the need to rewrite the activated magic, the necessary interference strength becomes a vicious cycle."
Following Suzune, Mayumi also supported Azusa's theory.
"No one has proposed this until this point, but if a new magic can be activated the moment the currently active magic is stopped from affecting the phenomenon, then there shouldn't be a need for stronger interference strength...... Given that the target is flying in the air, the delay between magics must be reduced to zero, so if a Specialized CAD was used, then in theory the next magic should be activated before the target starts dropping......"
Mayumi seemed to be muttering to herself, then abruptly made an "Eh?" sound as she turned her head.
"But if it's just removing the effects of magic, shouldn't someone have attempted this long ago? In the end, this is like working with 'Zone Interference' after the fact."
At Mayumi's question, Suzune pulled up the search function on the public workstation located in the Student Council Room.
"Give me a second...... Last year, England attempted a massive experiment based on the same conceptual design the President spoke of. They wanted to use 'Post-Event Zone Interference' to create a practical Flying-Type Magic."
Suzune swiftly located the news articles on magic that contained the information she wanted.
"Then, the result was?"
The inquiring voice was a little high pitched — likely caused by the excitement bubbling out of her, which proved that Mayumi was still a high school student beyond all doubt.
"Complete failure. According to the report, in comparison to the normal situation where magic is repeatedly used, this method only served to increase the demand for interference strength at a geometric rate."
"......Is that so......"
At Suzune's report that so betrayed (?) her hopes, Mayumi drooped in disappointment.
"Did they cite a reason?"
"No, the article wasn't that detailed. President, why do you think it happened?"
When asked by Suzune, Mayumi pointed her index finger at her chin and let out a "Hm!" sound as she considered this.
"The previous magic should've stopped functioning by then...... Tatsuya-kun, what do you think?"
The reason Mayumi had asked Tatsuya was to buy time for her to organize her thoughts.
She didn't actually expect him to answer.
"The English experiment provided by Ichihara-senpai has a basic conceptual error."
Thus, Tatsuya's decisive answer completely caught Mayumi offguard.
"......Where is the error?"
Astounded, Mayumi was barely able to ask her question. Neither boastful nor proud, Tatsuya calmly began his explanation.
"Magic Sequences that have not fulfilled their ending requirements will naturally fade with time, but will remain with the target Information Body. When a new magic nullifies the previous magic's effects, the previous magic looks to be canceled, but in reality is merely being overwritten."
Mayumi, Suzune, Azusa, and even Mari were now staring at Tatsuya outright, but Tatsuya remained unmoved by the pressure of their gaze. He remained expressionless and his tone did not change in the slightest.
"Let's assume the previous magic is called Magic Sequence A, while Magic Sequence B is used to nullify the other one.
With the activation of Magic Sequence B, Magic Sequence A loses its phenomenon effect ability. However, even if Magic Sequence A loses its effect, it still remains with the target's Information Body.
Both Magic Sequences A and B are still acting on the target's Information Body, it's just that only the effects of Magic Sequence B are visible. Just as Ichihara-senpai said, Magic Sequences can only affect the Information Body and are unable to affect one another. This is true even in Zone Interference. Unless the original Magic Sequence is itself nullified, using Counter Magic would yield the same result."
"......So the English experiment used unnecessary magic that was not part of Flying-Type Magic?"
Tatsuya nodded his assent to Mayumi's question, then continued his explanation.
"In other words, every time you make adjustments in flight, you would rewrite the Magic Sequence again. In order to maintain flight, the extra rewrites would pile on, so of course you would rapidly hit the upper limit for phenomenon interference ability. The English scholar who designed this experiment must have been mistaken on the nature of Counter Magic."
The portable terminal that Tatsuya wore in his breast pocket chose this moment to start vibrating, signaling the first warning bell for the end of the lunch period.
"Miyuki, let's return to class."
"Yes, Onii-sama."
Miyuki, whose back was to them the entire time, rose immediately upon being called.
Her voice, expression and movements were just as gentle and graceful as usual.
Hence Mayumi, Suzune, Mari, and Azusa hadn't noticed.
Couldn't have noticed.
When Miyuki had been seated before the workstation, her back was ramrod straight with pride, and her fingers fairly danced across the keyboard in pleasure.
◇◇◇
The preparation meeting for the Nine Schools Competition held in the Club Management Headquarters was suffused with a nervous aura from the onset.
Students with outstanding performance in the events would receive extra credit for their classes. Just for being one of the official participants, students would receive no homework, extra days off and guaranteed straight A's.
Not only did this apply to participants, but to the students selected as engineers as well.
Thanks to the school putting such a high emphasis on the Nine Schools Competition, the students selected as the representatives for the Nine Schools Competition received such incredible rewards. Thus, it was unsurprising that the competition was particularly fierce for the last few slots on the official roster during this meeting.
—If Tatsuya had been merely a bystander, he would probably have viewed the mixed feelings of the surrounding students in a compassionate light. However, he was there as a candidate with a giant target on his back, so he could only depressingly keep himself from sighing aloud while praying for this circus to end quickly.
It was not that he was wholly uninterested in the Nine Schools Competition.
The desire to measure one's personal skills against other Magicians (saplings) of similar age was markedly different from the hunger he experienced while staying in his father's lab and the subsequent desire to bring about practical upgrades to CADs, but Tatsuya still had that much left in him.
Tatsuya was "constructed" to have less emotion than the average person, but he was still at that headstrong age, so no matter what value his peers assigned him, he wasn't shriveled enough to completely not care.
However, at the same time he had to deal with the pride, jealousy, vanity, disgust, and other related emotions in this meeting. That was what truly filled him with melancholy.
Separate from his thoughts — of course — the seats in the conference room were gradually filled. When the last seat was occupied, Mayumi stood before the chairman's podium.
"Then, let's start the selection meeting for the Nine Schools
Competition roster."
The meeting for upperclassmen, club leaders for the various participating clubs, Student Council members (Miyuki remained on station in the Student Council Room) and the Club Management Group members who received the internal notification that they were possible candidates for participant or engineer slots officially began.
Tatsuya sat with the various candidates in the visitors section to the side,
Any organization that exceeded a certain size would naturally contain bigots that swiftly identified Tatsuya as an outsider.
As expected, not long after the meeting began, someone asked what a 1st Year Course 2 student was doing here.
That certainly did not imply that no one looked upon Tatsuya kindly.
There were actually a surprising number of favorable opinions.
The upperclassmen differed from the 1st Year students in that they knew Tatsuya was a special Course 2 student in addition to being a formidable asset to the Public Morals Committee.
Despite this, there were still more opposing than supporting, often in the form of negative emotions rather than objective logic, which caused the meeting to deadlock and waste more valuable time.
"In summation......"
Suddenly, a solemn voice dominated the conference room.
The voice was not particularly loud, yet all the squabbles quickly died away as everyone focused on the speaker.
Juumonji Katsuto, who had hitherto remained silent, cast his gaze across the room before starting to speak:
"In my opinion, the problem lies in that everyone is unfamiliar with what level of skill Shiba possesses. If so, the most efficient solution is to submit that to a live test."
The spacious room was dead silent.
This would bring about a simple and effective result that no one would bemoan, but because of the risk involved, no one had dared to propose this course of action.
"......That's not a bad suggestion, but how do we go about it in a practical manner?"
"Simply having him perform a maintenance right now would suffice."
Mari broke the silence with her question, to which Katsuto provided a simple answer.
"Allow me to be the guinea pig."
The CADs currently on the market must be intricately synchronized with their respective user after maintenance.
Even if ten Magicians used the same model, there were ten different methods to adjust their CADs.
The Activation Sequences provided by the CAD would be directly absorbed into the Magician's subconscious domain.
In other words, a Magician's mental state was completely defenseless against their own CAD.
Recent CAD models were equipped with a function that improved Activation Sequence processing, but at the same time made it easier for them to affect the user's mental status.
If there was a problem during maintenance, not only would magic efficiency decrease, other side effects would include discomfort, headaches, dizziness, vomiting, or even major harm such as hallucinations or mental scarring. Thus, the higher the CAD's capability, the more skilled the maintenance needed to be.
For Magicians, voluntarily yielding their CAD to be maintained by an Artificer whose strength was unknown posed a substantial risk.
Even if it was Katsuto's own suggestion, his willingness to offer himself as a test subject showed considerable courage.
"No, I was the one who recommended him, so I should take that role."
Mayumi immediately requested to take responsibility likely out of a sense of duty, but from another perspective, this likely implied that she didn't wholly trust Tatsuya, which was something that Tatsuya easily read between the lines to his discomfort.
"Wait, please let me do it."
That being said, the fact that Kirihara was willing to pinch hit caused Tatsuya considerable shock — the mettle displayed by this man was certainly comforting.
The school's CAD maintenance facility open to faculty and students was located in the Technical Skills Building.
However, this time they weren't using the preset maintenance devices in the Practical Skills Building, but bringing the mobile maintenance devices used in the Nine Schools Competition to the conference room to conduct their test.
The CAD in question was also one that qualified under the regulations of the Nine Schools Competition.
Seeing as how the pre-competition preparations proceeded so smoothly both in materials and procedure, the continuously delayed selection process was a particularly glaring issue.
Tatsuya sat before the maintenance device with Kirihara on the other side — but the two of them couldn't see one another. The members of the Student Council and various clubs leaders crowded around Kirihara.
The first step involved activating the school device, a process where many malicious gazes were focused on Tatsuya's hand movements; but Tatsuya was long accustomed to working with much more complex devices than the school device, so this was a procedure he could have completed flawlessly in his sleep. He adeptly completed the preparations and adopted a poker face to ward off the abhorring gazes.
"My task involves copying Kirihara-senpai's CAD schematics onto the competition-use CAD, making any necessary adjustments without changing the Activation Sequence, am I correct?"
Tatsuya once again verified the test's contents.
"Yes, sorry for bothering you."
Tatsuya on seeing Mayumi nodding shook his head slightly. Not nodding, shaking.
"......What is it?"
"I wouldn't advise directly copying the schematics onto a different model CAD...... But there's nothing for it, so let's put safety as the first priority."
"?"
Mayumi wasn't the only one dumbfounded. "Copying CAD schematics" was a simple task that occurs when users changed machines, so many people were also wondering why Tatsuya viewed this as a problem.
However, the Technician Team centered around Azusa knew exactly why Tatsuya asked this question. The team members either nodded slightly in agreement or smirked as they prepared to enjoy Tatsuya's performance.
Tatsuya didn't say anything else and plunged into the maintenance.
First, he connected Kirihara's CAD to the maintenance device.
The schematics replication process was semi-automatic, so there was no way to gauge the difference in skill here.
However, Tatsuya didn't just dump the schematics replica directly into the calculation device of the competition-use CAD, but stored it into the processing area of the maintenance device, a move that caused quite a few people to raise their eyebrows.
Next he measured Kirihara's personal psion oscillation nature.
Following Tatsuya's instructions, Kirihara put the headset on his head, then placed both hands on the examination board.
This was also normal procedure; if this was an automatic maintenance device, the steps required were to connect the CAD then read the psion waves and the process would automatically complete itself.
Generally, students that used the school devices for personal maintenance would adopt that precise procedure.
On the other hand, not relying on automatic maintenance and manually making minute adjustments to the CAD's OS showed an engineer's true strength.
"Thank you senpai, you can take it off now."
Tatsuya indicated that the measurements were concluded and Kirihara removed the headset.
Ordinarily, the next step involved connecting the CAD that needed to be modified, then making any adjustments beyond the automatic recommendations. This required a preset CAD to be prepared in advance, then copying all the data onto the destination CAD.
Just about everyone in the audience thought that Tatsuya messed up the procedure.
As if to prove this point, Tatsuya stared at the monitor without moving a muscle.
However, he didn't give off the air of someone who was hopelessly lost because of a misstep.
His gaze was focused to a terrifying degree without giving a hint of that unsteady feeling.
"Uh?"
Her voice let out an awkward sound that was wholly incompatible with her youthful image.
Tatsuya was completely unaffected by this interruption.
Mayumi and Mari didn't dare to ask what was going on, so they both came to Azusa's side to look at the monitor — and were barely able to contain their gasps.
The monitor didn't display the expected measurement results and graphs, but was filled with character strings scrolling across at high velocity.
The two of them were only able to pick out a few numbers here and there, but their eyes were wholly unable to keep up with the scrolling pace.
The numbers abruptly came to a stop.
Roughly a few dozen seconds had elapsed, which was less than 5 minutes since Tatsuya started staring at the screen.
After the character strings stopped scrolling, Tatsuya immediately plugged in the competition-use calculation device and swiftly started hitting the keyboard.
Many windows started opening and closing.
Only Azusa noticed that one of the opened windows was the original document with the recorded measurement results, while another window was the original document that contained the replicated CAD schematics on the maintenance device.
Very few people recognized how insanely advanced the procedure unfolding before their eyes truly was, since the majority of the audience was held spellbound at the unheard of speed at which Tatsuya was hitting the keyboard. Even so, Azusa believed that the truly astounding part was the technique Tatsuya displayed when he was directly reading the nature of the psion oscillations from the original document.
With that method, the engineer could perfectly allocate the resources within the parameters of the calculation device to best suit the measurement results reflected in the maintenance device. This was a completely manual process wholly independent of the automatic processes provided by the system.
Before Azusa's gaze, the settings temporarily stored in the work area were steadily being rewritten in a flash.
The original document still remained on the main screen, but Azusa was barely able to detect the modified settings.