Hearing the thunder, Lucian raised his head and looked out the window. In the dim pre-dawn light, fine rain drifted through the air — night had quietly given way to morning without his noticing. He turned off the Magic Circle and the alchemical apparatus, then picked up his white porcelain teacup and walked to the window. He pushed open the window — no longer protected by a Magic Circle — and fresh, humid air rushed in. Spring was in full bloom, invigorating and brimming with vitality. Another beautiful day.
His mind turned to the theoretical framework of "New Alchemy" sitting on his desk — a collection that could almost be called a dozen papers rolled into one — and to how he had introduced quantum concepts into the internal structure of the atom. Lucian drew a deep breath of the delicious fresh air and murmured half-sighing, half-mocking to himself: "The Great Head-Exploding Era has arrived." This new field would be more bizarre, more unfathomable, more contrary to human intuition than every previous revolutionary upheaval in arcanist history, and the challenge posed by that "cat" would be nothing short of a mental storm.
…………
Inside the Electromagnetic Kingdom, magnet after magnet collapsed and vanished. Currents abruptly disappeared. Arc after arc dissolved into a sky full of electric serpents, which, together with a colossal bolt of lightning that threatened to destroy everything, slammed down upon the earth and struck the magic tower, piercing its transparent defensive barriers layer by layer.
"Is it going to be destroyed? Master..." Barret stared at the violently shaking view beyond the window, spotting black cracks forming in the space around them.
Suddenly, currents from every direction converged, and in an instant coalesced into a thick electric serpent. It coiled upward around the magic tower, opening its maw to swallow the descending bolts of lightning, its body swelling to the absolute limit.
The serpent detonated — silver-white fireworks bloomed across the sky. Invisible, intangible electromagnetic waves, whether visible to the naked eye or imperceptible to it, manifested in their totality, filling the entire demiplane like the rise and fall of tides.
The waves broke apart in the middle. They fractured into countless small segments, yet their overall shape still formed the pattern of a wave.
This strange spectacle had barely manifested when, before Barret could react, it dissipated like smoke in the wind — unable to withstand the force of reality — and stopped abruptly. Everything returned to its original state. The Electromagnetic Kingdom stabilized, but ruins and decay hung over every corner. Less than ten percent of the magnetic fields that could still conduct electric light remained intact. In some places, heart-wrenching void-black holes had appeared.
A long, weary sigh accompanied the scene.
"Master..." Barret blurted out once more. He understood perfectly well that a legendary mage's demiplane was the external projection of his Cognitive World. If the demiplane had become this devastated, one could only imagine what state his master's Cognitive World was in.
Still wearing his wig and gold-rimmed spectacles with impeccable neatness, Brooke descended the stairs. His face was an unhealthy shade of dark red. He shook his head. "I still can't incorporate the Light Quantum Hypothesis into the wave framework..."
"The experimental results...?" Barret asked instinctively.
Brooke's tone was somewhat somber. "Though I had some psychological preparation, seeing that every experimental result perfectly confirmed the Light Quantum Hypothesis was still difficult to accept. My Cognitive World wavered. Afterward, I attempted to comprehend the hypothesis and merge it with wave theory, to reconstruct my Cognitive World — but I couldn't find a way in."
Despite being no longer young, Barret's expression was one of panic and worry. "And your Cognitive World, Master?"
"Shattered and solidified." Brooke pressed his fingers to his temple, an air of weathered weariness about him.
Expected, yet impossible to truly believe. Barret looked even more devastated than Brooke himself. "Doesn't that mean you'll be stuck from now on? That you'll never advance again?"
"Yes." Brooke, by contrast, remained calm and composed, even shaking his head with a touch of self-deprecating humor. "I should thank the limitations of our experimental conditions and the journey to search for that mysterious space. If I had been able to conduct experiments on the spot when I first saw Evans's Light Quantum Hypothesis three years ago, my Cognitive World would have collapsed outright, and the Electromagnetic Kingdom would have been utterly destroyed. And if that had happened in Allente, it would have annihilated half the city. Fortunately, these few years of gradual understanding and the feedback from various experimental results have kept me from being obliterated entirely."
For someone whose Cognitive World had partially solidified and projected outward to create a demiplane, its collapse was no longer confined to oneself — it would also affect the surrounding Prime Material World. So Brooke's claim that he could have destroyed half of Allente was no exaggeration. And this was on the assumption that Allente possessed one of the world's most formidable Maze Wards. Had it happened in Lontart or Altor, the entire city — along with nearby towns and estates — would have been utterly annihilated by the ensuing electromagnetic storm.
"Damn Evans!" Although Barret knew rationally that this had nothing to do with Lucian, emotionally he couldn't help it. He spoke through gritted teeth, seething with anger.
Brooke waved his hand dismissively, his face having shifted from dark red to pale. "If what he insisted on was an absurd theory, I would have fought him to the bitter end. But the experimental results have initially confirmed his Light Quantum Hypothesis — which means the one who's wrong is me, not him. I was too stubbornly attached to the wrong path. Should we really blame the world for not existing in the form we want it to?"
Even with his Cognitive World shattered and solidified, Brooke remained unflappable, maintaining his gentlemanly bearing and even cracking jokes — not a trace of rage or scorn. He and Fernando were fundamentally different types of people, yet what they shared was reverence for the unknown and passion for arcanist knowledge.
"But..." Barret's face was still a tangle of anxiety, concern, and resentment. Just a few hours ago his master had been perfectly fine — how had he been so gravely wounded as to be permanently stalled?
Brooke walked to the living room window with his hands clasped behind his back and gave a short laugh. "For me, this is both despair and hope, both a blow and an opportunity."
"Hmm?" Barret didn't quite understand.
Brooke extended his right hand, spreading all five fingers. "Setting aside whether the
"Master, doesn't that mean every Pope has reached that level?" Barret asked, puzzled.
Brooke coughed a few times. "For my purposes, a Pope who ascended through the power of the
"That's true enough." Barret nodded.
Brooke gazed out at the devastated remains of his Electromagnetic Kingdom, his voice calm and measured. "Ascending from the pinnacle of the Legendary realm to the 'quasi-god' level is an astronomically difficult thing. From ancient times to the present, only the Pope has managed it. Even geniuses like the Sun King
Barret quietly breathed a sigh of relief. That was right — even with a shattered Cognitive World, his master remained a peak Legendary powerhouse, standing at the very summit of the world alongside the three rarely-seen "quasi-gods." And even without the damage, advancement had seemed impossible anyway.
"But this shattering and solidification of my Cognitive World, though it seems hopeless, may well be an opportunity." Brooke's voice dropped lower. "Through this experiment, I've seen the enormous flaw in wave theory. Once I can thoroughly understand electromagnetic waves — understand why they exhibit the properties of both waves and particles — that may be the moment my Cognitive World reconstructs, and I break through the pinnacle of the Legendary realm in one leap."
Watching his master, who had just suffered a devastating blow yet still radiated an intense drive to push forward without the slightest trace of dejection or despair, Barret felt the same reverence he had when he first became Brooke's student. The master had mentioned geniuses like the Sun King
"Master, should the experimental results be published?" Barret thought of the practical matter.
Brooke nodded. "Publish them."
"But..." Barret feared a mass head-exploding incident.
Brooke sighed. "I am the founder and one of the chief architects of wave theory, so even after three years of gradual exposure, my Cognitive World still shattered and solidified. Other mages, exposed to information from all sides for only three years, would be seriously injured at worst."
"But there are still the extremely stubborn ones," Barret said, still hesitant.
Brooke's voice turned cold. "Those stubborn enough to still blow their own heads off after three years would have done so after thirty years anyway. Stubbornness has entered their cells. The march of arcanist and arcane magic development will not wait for them."
"Lucian Evans — if he wants to become a Grand Archanist, he'll have to climb a staircase built from shattered skulls, milky brain matter, and fresh blood. Sometimes, that's crueler than actual war." The last large-scale paradigm upheaval had been brought by Brooke himself.
"Then I'll help you organize the paper, Master. You can write the introduction." Barret felt a chill run through his body.
Brooke nodded lightly. "Go ahead. I'll rest for a bit, then run another experiment."
"What experiment?" Barret asked, confused.
Brooke gave a self-deprecating smile. "Since the Light Quantum Hypothesis matches the experimental results, let's treat light as a particle for now. A particle shouldn't have only energy — it should also possess momentum. Considering the relationship with wavelength, I intend to use the newly discovered X-rays to bombard the electrons in various substances and see whether a change in momentum can be observed."
"Who would have thought I'd end up busy trying to prove particle theory."
…………
Inside Roland's magic tower.
Manuel and the others waited anxiously. Near dawn, the tower suddenly sounded a piercing alarm.
"Laboratory accident detected. Calling master, calling master..."
"No response. No response. Opening laboratory doors automatically."
The alchemical life-form's cold, detached voice rang out.
Manuel and Diana exchanged a glance — they seemed to realize something — and rushed toward the laboratory at full speed. They burst through the open door and beheld a scene they would never forget for the rest of their lives.
A body in grey mage's robes lay on the ground, headless. Milky white and vivid crimson spatters covered every surface — the walls, the experiment table, the sheets of paper, the transparent energy shields of the Magic Circle — all of it. Occasionally, fragments of shattered bone were visible through the stains. On the chest hung a badge bearing nine black rings on a silver background and nine silver stars on a black background, along with the Ice Snow Medal and the Silver Moon Medal.