Near what had once been the Valley of Death — now completely vanished — Fernando, Hathaway, and Bigner hovered in the sky, gazing down at the devastated landscape. The horrifying scorch marks left behind by the extreme temperatures and the enormous crater allowed them to estimate the heat and destructive power of the explosion.
"If this truly was an explosive form of magic, then could the sun itself be a planet undergoing this kind of explosion ceaselessly?" Bigner asked with a sense of melancholy loss.
It wasn't that he was hostile toward "fusion explosions" — rather, the thought that the sun, which held such a significant position in the Astrology School of magic and in the Star Map of Destiny, had finally shed a layer of its mystique and revealed part of its secrets left him, as a Prophet, with an unavoidable sense of wistfulness.
After Fernando had killed the demigod lich, Bigner had not departed in a rage. After all, by Congus's reasoning, two living Grand Archanists were clearly more important than one dead Legend-rank mage. And if one disregarded Congus's justification entirely and considered only the Council's regulations, then Fernando had done nothing wrong.
Perhaps people had always forgotten that the Storm Tyrant had strictly adhered to the Council's rules — forgotten that his impatient and volatile temperament wasn't limited to academic debates, forgotten his legendary class and his title — until he had struck suddenly. Only then did Bigner feel it was perfectly natural: this was exactly the kind of behavior one would expect from the "Storm Tyrant." And so he had accepted the outcome with a bitter smile.
Fernando shook his head. "Strictly speaking, it wasn't an explosive form of magic. I didn't find any residual traces characteristic of traditional explosive spells here — only pure energy release, unimaginable temperatures, and so on."
He had deliberately added "traditional" before the Elemental School's explosive spells, clearly considering this to be an entirely new form of explosion that approached the mystery of how the sun radiates light. Following this path, the Light-Dark and Electromagnetic Schools could be partially incorporated into the Elemental domain.
"Mm." Hathaway nodded lightly, concurring with Fernando's conclusion.
Bigner, the Prophet who was not particularly proficient in the Elemental domain, let out a sigh upon hearing this. "I can't imagine that Lucian Evans could create such magic, but I have a vague sense of an era shifting. Perhaps from this moment onward — no, from the moment Lucian proposed the Quantum Energy Theory — Arcane Magic has entered an age that is wondrous and unfathomable, yet terrifying at the same time."
At Bigner's words, Fernando and Hathaway showed no outward expression, but from the look in their eyes and their silent, contemplative attitudes, it was clear they were pondering the matter deeply. One could never afford to dismiss the words of a Prophet lightly.
Just then, two figures flew in from the distance. Fernando's hand, which had been clenched in a tight fist, quietly relaxed. He straightened his face and barked in a stern voice, "This time you were absolutely impossibly foolish — someone tampered with you and you didn't even notice! You were forced into a Planar Gate like a helpless lamb! Next time you're this careless, I'll be collecting your corpse — no, not even your corpse will be found!"
Lucian was greeted by the long-missed roaring storm of his teacher's voice. Seeing his teacher's expression that was nearly on the verge of bristling beard and glaring eyes, he felt a wave of fond nostalgia and quickly admitted his mistakes.
"Granny, how did you get here so early? We thought it wouldn't be until evening or even the dead of night." Natasha often heard Lucian recount his teacher's "roaring," and upon witnessing it firsthand, she watched with amused interest, planning to commit the scene to memory for future teasing. But after a moment, for reasons she herself couldn't quite explain, she couldn't help but change the subject.
Hathaway looked at Natasha, her expression softening considerably. She said mildly, "We killed Congus and came through the Planar Gate he had set up."
"You killed Congus?" Lucian was both shocked and elated. He had been worried that the "Eternal Blazing Sun" might not be enough to fully kill Congus, who possessed a phylactery, and that he might escape — leaving endless trouble in the future. He never expected his teacher had already resolved this problem.
Teacher and the others must have withstood enormous pressure.
"He deserved it!" Fernando declared, entirely in character. Then he reined in his "bristling and glaring" expression and said with a half-smile, "What's the story behind this magic of yours? That illusory sun we saw the other day must have been your doing as well, right? And what about the Silver Moon and that entity from the Undead Plane?"
"Teacher, you saw that too?" Lucian had never expected that his teacher, so far away, could have witnessed it as well. This meant there had been a crucial missing link in his earlier deductions — the world was far more complex than he had imagined.
Hathaway stood quietly to the side and interjected at this point, "Everyone saw it. It's a legendary spell derived from New Alchemy?"
As someone currently immersed in the study of New Alchemy, she was more perceptive than anyone.
"Yes. While researching atomic decay, I discovered certain phenomena and drew numerous conclusions. After I first killed Congus, everything came together. I received World Feedback, gained the embryonic forms of two legendary spells, and triggered the phenomenon you witnessed. Later, with the aid of the Silver Moon, I completed and released the main body of the 'Eternal Blazing Sun' — or 'Atomic Fusion,' as it truly is." Lucian chose not to reveal Special Relativity or the mass-energy equation, instead framing his explanation through the experimental phenomena encountered in New Alchemy.
The derivation of Special Relativity was actually not difficult. Given the current level of the Magic Council and its accumulated foundational achievements, anyone who could overcome the entrenched conventional views could propose it within a few years. But it was precisely those entrenched views that made Lucian dare not show the paper to his teacher just yet.
If the wave theory of light and the particle theory of light were respectively the foundations of different schools — components of world perception and Meditation techniques — then one's views on time and space formed the most fundamental "common sense" of every Archanist's understanding of the world, derived from everyday, intuitive experience that one never questioned. For instance, even ordinary people had the sense that time flows quietly onward, unmoved by anything.
For every Archanist, then, the concept of absolute, independent, mathematical time was the foundation of their worldview and their philosophy of life. They generally believed that the ninth-circle spell "Time Stop" merely froze certain areas and slowed actions, not truly manipulating time — a glorified version of the Slow spell, nothing more.
What Special Relativity overturned was not the mass-energy equation but the concept of relative space-time it introduced. It seemed to tell people that time was a function of speed, dependent on matter — a disruption no less seismic than the storm caused by Quantum Energy Theory. At the same time, its proposal marked the end of "Aether."
In any case, the early research into fission and fusion did not require the guidance of the mass-energy equation, so Lucian kept it concealed for the time being, planning to gradually ease his teacher into accepting it.
With this thought, Lucian silently repented in his heart: "Every time there's a groundbreaking theory, Teacher is always the first to bear the brunt of it. I really am terrible to him. Hmm — but fission and fusion should help him reach the next level, shouldn't they?"
Fernando asked with gravity, "Fusion? And the other one is fission?"
The atomic decay discovered so far was clearly fission, so he posed the question with barely concealed excitement in his expression.
"Fission releases energy — fusion does as well?" Hathaway asked, cutting straight to the heart of the matter. In her delicate, refined face, those silver-violet eyes glinted with a trace of fervor.
They had entirely forgotten that they were in territory controlled by the Church, forgotten that the horrifying, monstrous "Big Ivan" explosion had just occurred here. They simply hovered in the sky, absorbed in a discussion of atomic fission and fusion.
Natasha had been "educated" by Lucian on the subject before and listened with great interest, occasionally chiming in. Bigner, the Prophet who was utterly unfamiliar with the Elemental domain, found himself dizzy and confused from the conversation and simply took up a sentry position nearby.
After giving a rough overview, Lucian said, "Teacher, Lady Hathaway, the fusion explosion should have alerted Valorhin to the northeast. We should leave this area first — these matters aren't something we can wrap up in a short discussion."