On the thirty-third floor of the Arcane Council headquarters, in a moderately sized room, sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, bathing the neatly arranged desks, chairs, and bookshelves in a faint golden glow that only enhanced the room's clean and orderly appearance. After bringing Lucian and Tampo back here, Fernando had received a letter from an old friend, so he told them to wait for the other students to arrive while he retired to a side room to read in peace.
"Mr. Tampo, thank you for letting me enter the Douglas School of Arcane Magic back then. Without that, my preliminary studies and research would have been hampered by a lack of materials and laboratory access." With no one else around, Lucian seized on the excuse of gratitude to break the awkward silence and strike up a conversation.
The middle-aged gentleman, refined and scholarly, pushed up his gold-rimmed spectacles and smiled faintly. "No need for excessive thanks. Any committee member who saw that application would have been curious enough to pull up your thesis — that's instinct for an Archanist. And to have your thesis receive such evaluations when you'd barely been exposed to Arcane Magic? As long as the Administrative Committee member had no personal grudge against you, they would have approved your application and asked the school to keep an eye on you."
"But Mr. Tampo, you also recommended my thesis to my teacher." Lucian looked around the room, which felt like part study, part small conference hall, and asked with some puzzlement, "I thought my teacher would take us to his demiplane magic tower for discussion."
Tampo maintained his smile. "According to the Supreme Council's regulations, the seven Grand Archanists must ensure that at least one of them is always present in Allentine, so they rotate on a five-year cycle. Oh, and we're all the teacher's students — no need to be so formal. Just call me Tampo. Your Archanist rank should already be around the fifth level, not far from my sixth." His gaze swept over the Archanist and Arcane Magic badges on Lucian's left breast, which hadn't been updated yet and still showed the fourth and third rings.
"About three or four more months for the Archanist rank, probably." Lucian did the mental calculations. When he'd left, his Arcane Points had been just over eight hundred and fifty. Since he'd saved time on the return trip, the entire assignment had taken exactly one year and one month. At roughly ten points per month from thesis citations and new Arcane Magic references, he probably hadn't yet reached the fifth level.
Tampo shook his head and casually pulled up a chair to sit down. "The role and status of the Periodic Table of Elements in elemental studies — I'm sure you understand better than I do, Lucian. This past year happened to coincide with a boom in atomic valence — the study of different elemental reactive states. As it gradually matured from a nascent field, a massive number of papers were published, and the Periodic Table is itself a manifestation of periodic laws. When discussing atomic valence, you simply can't get around the Periodic Table."
"From what I've gathered from reading the literature, your Arcane Points should have exceeded a thousand several months ago. That's made quite a few Archanists rather jealous. They've proposed to the Arcane Review Committee that foundational achievements like the Periodic Table should be subject to time limits, just like atomic weight data, formula constants, calculation formulas, and basic alchemical equations — knowledge that's used all the time. Otherwise, the rate of Arcane Point accumulation becomes unreasonable." Halfway through, Tampo deliberately paused, clearly intending to pique Lucian's curiosity.
Tampo specialized in explosion, flame, and high-temperature Arcane Magic — a high-ranking mage in the fields of thermodynamics and elemental studies. He hadn't joined any organization and, like the Storm Dominator, was a thoroughgoing member of the Council faction. He thought highly of Lucian as a genius in elemental Arcane Magic and was happy to cultivate a connection — particularly since Lucian hadn't yet produced any outstanding papers in Tampo's own specialty, the "Astrology" school. Lucian was widely regarded as a talent in the elemental domain alone.
"Did the Review Committee agree?" Lucian asked, playing along with Tampo's lead. At the same time, he felt genuinely happy for k — his main research direction currently was diving deep into atomic valence studies with Larry. The fact that this field was booming meant Larry's efforts were bearing fruit.
Tampo chuckled. "How could the Review Committee possibly agree? As more and more papers in every branch of elemental Arcane Magic cite the Periodic Table, future researchers only need to cite those papers instead. Unless someone intends to write a systematic exposition, after another two years, the Arcane Point returns Lucian's getting from the Periodic Table will drop off sharply and settle into a slow, stable trickle."
"That's fine by me." Lucian made up his mind to "revise" the Periodic Table at regular intervals, which would spike direct citations all over again. After all, the current version had deliberately left — or been forced to leave — numerous gaps due to the limitations of present-day research. Noble gases, for instance: given his own magical level and laboratory conditions, he hadn't been able to isolate them. But now everything was different.
The two weren't especially close, and given the gap in their Archanist and Arcane Magic ranks, their respective social circles were quite different. So the conversation gradually shifted to the hottest topic in elemental studies — atomic valence. After chatting for a while, a knock sounded at the door, and a young-looking, average-height man walked in. His face was strikingly gaunt, his cheekbones prominent, and his pale blue eyes held the clean, transparent quality of a summer sky shot through with a faint wistfulness. He looked more like a poet than a mage, but the badges on his gray suit's breast pocket brooked no underestimate: a black-backed Archanist badge bearing seven silver stars, a silver-backed Arcane Magic badge bearing seven black rings, an Archanist Review Committee badge bearing the motif of a single hand holding a Feather Pen, and a medal engraved with countless frost-crystal patterns.
"Lucian, this is Chloe, another of the teacher's students. He's a member of the Arcane Review Committee and an authority on molecular kinetics in thermodynamics. Currently he's attempting to study the Second Law from a deeper level using probability and statistics." Tampo made the introductions.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics had been formulated by Fernando and others to refute a certain proposal that had arisen during the Arcane Council's development. Once the "caloric theory" had been discarded and heat became closely linked with energy, mages recognized that objects release heat when their temperature drops. Many had believed it possible to extract thermal energy from the endless ocean to sustain the permanent operation of a Magic Circle, but that notion had ended in failure.
Tampo then turned to Chloe. "Chloe, this is Lucian Evans, who has just begun studying under the teacher. He's a recipient of the Holme Crown Award."
The fleshless cheeks of Chloe's face stretched into a faint smile. "Hello, Evans." He offered nothing further. After the greeting, he quietly settled into a seat off to one side, seemingly lost in his own world, having entirely forgotten that anyone else was in the room.
Not long afterward, two more seventh-circle high-ranking mages arrived. According to Tampo's introductions, the woman was Ashikana and the man was Lychee Carter. Both maintained appearances somewhere between youth and maturity, though compared to Chloe, their achievements in Arcane studies were considerably more modest.
Lucian had just exchanged greetings with them and hadn't yet managed a proper conversation when another urgent knock sounded at the door. That somewhat rude-seeming noise drew knowing, amused shakes of the head from Tampo and the others, and they rose to open the door.
A great dragon bearing transparent, lustrous scales appeared before Lucian's eyes. This was the first time Lucian had ever stood face to face with a dragon that sat near the top of the magical creature hierarchy. The dragon regarded Lucian with equal curiosity, then spoke in a childlike, tender voice: "I know you! You're the mage with the pretty ring!"
Its luminous gaze locked onto the Holme Crown ring called "Element" on Lucian's right index finger, and it couldn't tear its eyes away for a good while. "Can you give it to me? I'll sign a hundred-year servitude contract!"
"Averice, stop messing around." Tampo gave it an exasperated scolding, then turned to Lucian. "It's already sold itself once — selling itself again wouldn't be legally valid."
Lucian had been startled by Averice's bluntness, but Tampo's words let him quietly breathe a sigh of relief. Where on earth had this dragon come from?
Averice reluctantly withdrew its gaze. A shimmer of light played across its body as it rapidly shrank, then padded inside like a massive wolfhound.
"Lucian, it's a crystal dragon. The teacher found a dragon egg over fifty years ago, and it hatched from that. It's been studying Arcane Magic alongside the teacher and us ever since, and it has remarkable talent — far surpassing its kindred, who typically don't reach high-ranking status until adulthood. However, a failed Arcane Magic experiment some years back left Averice under a severe curse. It can't grow, can't shapeshift into any other form, and needs roughly another hundred years for the curse to wear off." Tampo introduced this creature who was at once Fernando's pet and one of his students.
Lychee Carter, golden-haired and green-eyed, noticed Averice circling Lucian relentlessly, its gaze never straying from that beautiful Holme Crown ring. He smiled and redirected its attention. "Averice, what have you been researching lately?"
"Oh, lately?" Averice replied with studied nonchalance. "Lately I've been sleeping in. Haven't done a thing."
Tampo bluntly exposed the truth. "Heh — it sold itself out of greed, and now it's being studied by someone."
Averice's arrival had enlivened the atmosphere considerably, and time passed quickly. Then Fernando emerged from the side room. The moment they saw him, whether it was Tampo or Averice, all of them straightened up at once, and the study fell silent.
Fernando dropped into one of the chairs, his usual roguish humor completely set aside, and spoke with great gravity: "As is our custom, we hold a monthly meeting like this one to share the progress of our respective research and raise any difficult problems for discussion." This was directed at Lucian.
"Today, I'll first read aloud a letter I just received from an old friend, so you can get a sense of how other Archanists view the current state of Arcane and magical development."
"This letter comes from the bearer of the Silver Moon Medal and the Frost Crystal Medal, a member of the Arcane Review Committee — Viscount Roland, **master." Viscount Roland was a noble of the Brianna Kingdom and had long resided there.
Fernando produced the letter and read aloud the key passages:
"...With the establishment of Lord Brook's classical theory of electromagnetism and its gradual refinement and extension to other domains, the entire system of Arcane Magic may now be considered essentially complete — a highly mature, refined, and elegant Arcane world, with Chairman Douglas's theory and Lord Brook's theory serving as its sun and silver moon, respectively."
"...In this world, all things are governed by laws — strict laws, intoxicating laws..."
"Though many laws remain undiscovered, unsummarized, and unapplied, and many phenomena still lack satisfactory explanations — we cannot yet grasp the laws behind them, nor the reasons those laws take the form they do — I believe their contributions will serve only as reasonable supplements to this Arcane world. They may be groundbreaking, revolutionary, even era-defining, but they too will belong to these two great systems, this wondrous world. There will be no more exceptions."