The breeze was cool yet refreshing, the sky vast and the clouds spread wide — such was the golden month of Allenthat.
"Which is exactly why October in Allenthat is my favorite time of year…" Committee of Affairs member Tampo held his cup of black tea and stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, gazing at the scenery outside.
He sighed appreciatively, then turned, pushed the gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose, and said to his student, Condon: "You knocked once and let yourself in — must be something urgent?"
Tampo was an easygoing man, genial toward friends, students, and subordinates alike, and not one to stand on ceremony. He therefore didn't berate Condon too harshly for barging in without invitation.
As he spoke, he folded shut the mission report on his desk — standard Committee of Affairs protocol. Even if it was his own student, anyone who wasn't cleared to see it shouldn't.
This particular report was the one Katrina had submitted. Because she had investigated the "antecedents and consequences" of the "demon worship incident" with crystal clarity, the report had attracted no particular attention in the mission queue. The high-rank mage on duty had flipped through it casually, deemed the facts solid, marked Katrina's mission as complete, and filed the report away in the archives.
But Tampo himself had taken the "demon worship incident" quite seriously, because it bore a certain resemblance — yet was fundamentally different — from a series of events in recent years across Londart, Kookss, the four Channel nations, and the northern coastal corridor: summonings of ancient devils, the worship of Devil Dukes, and so on.
So, once he had cleared the tasks on his desk, he had pulled the report out, intending to conduct a detailed analysis and comparison — to determine whether a Devil King had truly begun to cultivate the power of faith, or whether some other motive was at play. Most importantly, he wanted to ascertain whether this incident was isolated, or whether it complemented the string of events within the Mage Council's domain, thereby helping to identify the hidden "death-bird" orchestrating it all.
Unfortunately, from this report he could only glean the fact that a Great Knight had bolstered his strength through demon worship.
"Still, some of the details are far too coincidental — but the principal party is thoroughly dead, and so much time has passed that further investigation is essentially impossible. Am I supposed to descend into the Abyss and ask the 'Lord of Darkness,' 'Did Viscount Andre really worship you?' Or seize 'Deathstorm' Ninir and make him confess exactly what he saw in Viscount Andre when he took him on as a student?" Tampo rested his right hand over the report, his index finger tapping lightly.
Across from him, Condon was a lean, tall young man with hollowed cheeks, his skin "burned" a dark reddish-brown as though he had spent far too long in the sun. A fashionable monocle sat over his right eye. His voice came out in a rapid patter, like rain drumming on leaves: "I'm sorry, Teacher. After I knocked, the door swung open a crack on its own — I thought you were letting me in…"
Tampo knew his student's impetuous yet honest character well, and asked with puzzlement: "The door opened by itself? Did I not latch it?"
"I don't know. Uh… I ran into Affreith in the hallway, and it looked rather pleased with itself…" Condon suddenly recalled something.
Tampo winced involuntarily: "…Never mind it. What is it?"
Some time ago he had struck a wager with Affreith, confident that a mage approaching the Ninth Rank could not be fooled by Affreith's illusions — especially within Allenthat's Magic Tower. The terms were simple: if Affreith could steal any item from his office without anyone's help, Tampo would have to open the treasury and let it pick out a great many gemstones. It looked as though… well, at least this way he could relax his vigilance a little.
"Teacher — Lord Evans has submitted a paper titled 'Determinism, Self-Awareness, and the Root of Magic.' It constructs a model of the nature of magic. There are still many unresolved questions, such as why arcane patterns can help connect to the 'true world' and what underlying principle they conceal — but it opens a brand-new door for our research into the essence of magic and supernatural power. Today, when someone happened to discover this paper in the Archanist Library, it caused an immediate sensation…"
Condon seemed somewhat excited, and his naturally impetuous personality turned his words into a gale-force gust that left Tampo barely able to keep up: "Stop, stop — give me the paper first!"
For a high-rank Archanist, reading the actual paper was far easier than listening to an excited summary.
Condon handed over the paper. Tampo glanced at the submission date and said with a mixture of surprise and understanding: "Submitted three days ago? No wonder it hasn't appeared in Arcane or Arcane Magic…"
Generally speaking, so long as a Grand Archanist's paper possessed a certain degree of value, no journal would refuse it — in fact, they would scramble for it. But Lucian published almost exclusively in Arcane, Nature, and Elements, occasionally contributing commissioned pieces to the Monthly Archanist. A paper of this importance would certainly not escape Arcane's notice, and given that it addressed the nature of magic, the Arcane Magic journal would obviously not let anyone else publish it either.
He continued leafing through the pages, frowning slightly at the opening sections — determinism looked to be on shaky ground indeed.
But as Lucian's argument unfolded, his frown gradually smoothed away entirely. He pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up repeatedly, murmuring: "The observer effect isn't entirely absurd… The idea that the material foundation is not 'solid' — that's a novel formulation. But if that's truly the case, why is everything perfectly normal in the absence of magic and supernatural power? Does it all come down to that mysterious transition from the microscopic to the macroscopic level… Hm, Lucian has thought about this too… Weak observers and strong observers…"
He became wholly absorbed in the paper. Even though it had not yet been corroborated by any experiment or phenomenon, and the "observer effect" was rejected by the Mage Council's mainstream, its internal logic held together and almost felt as though it described something real.