As he spoke, Lucian took the latest issue of *Elements* and glanced at the headings, finding an unfamiliar name—Travis, a fourth-level Archanist and fifth-ring wizard.
"Perhaps a newly promoted wizard—only someone that young would be unencumbered enough to propose such a model..." Lucian mused to himself.
This wasn't to say that Douglas, Brooke, Fernando, and the rest wouldn't consider the possibility of negative energy states and antiparticles existing—and how, if they truly belonged to this world, they might coexist with ordinary matter. Rather, even if they harbored such conjectures, they would not rashly put them forward, instead deliberating carefully and waiting for antiparticles to be confirmed.
If they were to propose a similar speculative model, there would be only one reason—that it would help discover and confirm antiparticles and negative energy states. And clearly, the "Negative Energy Vacuum Sea" was not such a model.
In this paper, Travis, the unknown Archanist, started from the fundamental properties of microscopic particles and proposed an all-pervading "Sea of Negative Energy States" that filled every corner of existence.
According to the principle Fernando had put forward, electrons always occupied the lowest available energy level first. Since negative energy states were obviously lower than all currently discovered energy levels, electrons would naturally transition in that direction. Setting aside the fact that the energy released by such a massive transition would destroy the entire universe, every currently observed experimental phenomenon provided strong evidence against this—precisely why those who first derived the existence of negative energy states, such as Dieppe and Larry, regarded it as proof that their reasoning had been insufficient and their conclusions erroneous.
After Lucian proposed his quantum equations and predicted the existence of antiparticles, many Archanists, adopting a provisional assumption of its truth, began to ponder why, given the existence of negative energy states, electrons did not "transition" in that direction. And so Travis arrived at a bold conjecture: the reason electrons did not "advance" toward negative energy states according to their "instinct" was that those states were already completely filled by other electrons, leaving no room for them to go further.
Furthermore, based on this pattern of electron distribution, he deduced that negative-energy electrons were unobservable by Archanists—or at least, unobservable with current means. Therefore, in his model, every corner of the world was packed with negative-energy electrons, so densely that it was as though we lived within a "Sea of Negative Energy States." Even a vacuum was no exception—true vacuum, in the absolute sense, did not exist. This was a "sea of negative energy" that "submerged" the entire universe, possessing "infinite" energy.
But negative-energy electrons could also be excited. When one absorbed enough energy to transition into a normal, observable electron, it left behind a void in the "sea of negative energy"—a void possessing the opposite charge and identical mass to that electron. This was the positron, the anti-electron.
At this point, Travis displayed a true wizard's temperament by continuing to speculate boldly, going beyond the content of Earth's "Dirac Sea." He believed this all-pervading "sea of negative energy" was one of the reasons magic and supernatural power could exist. Spiritual power, willpower, and magical patterns essentially served as means of connecting to this "energy sea" in a special way, granting access to inconceivable, reality-altering power—thus providing the energy source for all manner of magic and supernatural abilities. This also offered a line of reasoning for explaining energy conservation in magical phenomena.
Long ago, Helen the "Ice Witch" had already quantitatively verified the conservation of spiritual power and magic: the amount of spiritual power consumed equaled the energy originally contained in the spell. The reason some spells ultimately produced destructive effects far exceeding the reduction in spiritual power was that, during their actual reactions, they interacted with the surrounding world, triggering chain reactions—the most iconic example being the "Eternal Blazing Sun." But the question remained: from where did consumed spiritual power obtain its replenishment?
Using magic potions and similar aids to restore spiritual power fell within the normal scope—no one questioned the energy source for that. But the natural growth of spiritual power was rather puzzling. Whether it was slow regeneration or rapid recovery through meditation, a convincing energy source was hard to establish. Spiritual power couldn't simply recover from nothing, could it? If there was growth, there ought to be corresponding depletion, yet no such phenomenon had been observed.
Prior to this, the Magic Parliament had offered two mainstream explanations for the phenomenon. The first held that spiritual power recovery originated from the soul's own reactions. In the simplest terms, the soul was equivalent to a magnetically confined fusion reactor, providing reliable energy for itself. But this explanation faced the same problem—even a fusion reactor needed fuel. What did the soul consume to produce energy?
On this point, the most "romantic" of the great Archanists, Oliver Constantin, had proposed a model that appeared to fit the observed phenomena: the soul consumed its "own essence," and when that essence was fully depleted, life came to an end. This was why improving magical power and strengthening the soul could slow aging and extend lifespan, and why various rituals could prolong life—they supplemented the consumption of the soul's essential nature.
But this model had its own flaws, and even Oliver himself could not fully endorse it. According to his theory, if one used as little magic as possible—or none at all—then one's maximum lifespan should increase dramatically. Yet in actual observation, Archanists who used magic rarely and those who used it frequently showed no fundamental difference in lifespan.
The other mainstream explanation for spiritual power recovery was that energy originated from the "True World," and "meditation" was the method by which the soul connected and merged with the "True World." This could be partially confirmed by the fact that wizards could receive feedback from the "True World" while practitioners of other disciplines could not.
As for where the "True World" was located and how energy was transmitted through it—those were separate questions.
But this explanation could not account for the fact that knights and magical creatures could similarly recover their expended energy—unless they too were "connected" to the "True World" but, for some reason, could not receive its feedback.
Because the fundamental questions of what the soul and the "True World" actually were remained unresolved, both mainstream explanations stayed at the level of speculation, unsupported by theory or formulas.
In contrast, Travis's "Negative Energy Vacuum Sea" model, building on Lucian's equations and using the antiparticles that could be found as its basis, described an all-pervading energy sea. It explained the question of spiritual power recovery in the simplest and most lucid manner possible.
"Meditation" was simply the soul connecting to the "Sea of Negative Energy." Since it was omnipresent and its energy was virtually infinite, the soul could naturally draw upon it to replenish spiritual power. As for the feedback from the "True World," it occurred because the theory aligned more closely with the world's reality, causing the world of consciousness to undergo corresponding changes and instantly strengthening its connection to the "Sea of Negative Energy."
Similarly, this "Sea of Negative Energy" model also explained why certain transformation spells required enormous amounts of energy overall, yet their initial activation demanded very little. Especially after Lucian proposed the mass-energy equivalence formula, research into this category of transformation spells led some to directly question the law of conservation of energy—but Helen designed a brilliant experiment that proved no violation of energy conservation in the general sense actually existed.
The implications of this model were so enormous that, upon completing the body of his paper, Travis was overcome with emotion and unabashedly thanked the Magic Parliament, thanked His Excellency the "Atomic Controller," thanked Lucian's equations, and thanked the antiparticle hypothesis—affectionately calling his "Sea of Negative Energy" model the "Font of Magic" and the "Sea of the Supernatural."
"This is a paper of great significance. It marks a completely new direction for Archanists' research into the nature of magic..." After skimming through the paper, Lucian offered his measured assessment.
Under the glow of the arcane crystal lamp, Heidi's eyes sparkled like little crystals. "Professor, do you endorse this model?"
"Endorse? It's a paper without experimental or phenomenological evidence—what would I endorse it with? His thinking is simply very novel, offering us another possible path toward understanding the nature of magic. But whether it leads us astray or not remains to be seen. Mathematics and experimentation have the final say." Lucian smiled as he spoke, and in full knowledge that this model had already been discarded on Earth, he did not rashly refute it.
On the one hand, Lucian himself was exploring through a fog. The deeper he studied the microscopic domain, the more he sensed that the root cause of the differences between the two worlds lay somewhere in it—the specifics remained to be discovered through future exploration. He could not simply believe this model wrong because Earth had proven it so; he must refute it through his own experiments and derivations.
On the other hand, Lucian also hoped this model would inspire the Archanists, prompting them to think more deeply about the nature of magic. For a long time in the past, research into magic's essence had remained stagnant and difficult, causing the vast majority of Archanists to lose interest in the subject—focusing instead on studying the nature of the world, creating new spells, and improving existing ones, hoping that eventually these paths would "converge." After Lucian proposed the observer effect in the microscopic domain, this approach had seemed to be vindicated.
"What the Professor said is very true. For now, this is only a possible model—but with it, the question of magic's essence seems to no longer require quantum pure states, superposition, or the observer effect," Reilya said thoughtfully, a somewhat vacant look on her face, which drew a burst of laughter from Heidi. Wasn't this essentially saying the Professor's "observer effect" conjecture was wrong? Indeed, Annick and Sprint would surely be delighted—they had practically worn their regard for this paper on their faces.
Lucian chuckled. "This model can only explain the source of energy in the nature of magic. It cannot explain why we can connect to the Sea of Negative Energy in the first place, or why an enormous variety of different spells can appear. And that perhaps falls within the domain of the observer effect and quantum pure states and superposition."
On this question, Annick and Sprint had no alternative theory to offer, so even though Lucian could see they were not convinced, no argument arose.
"What other papers are there?" Lucian asked casually, continuing to leaf through the journal.