kscans

Chapter 223 - Episode 17: The Universal Nature of Force

After returning to the lab from the sanctuary, I had Noel prepare a washbasin for me. When I was looking for something that would float, Fulsy brought me a wooden ball about the size of a ping pong ball.

I set the basin on the desk and filled it with water.

Then, I looked at the members who had gathered. Alfina, Maytyl, Fulsy, and Noel. They were likely the leading minds on this world's magical power.

As for me, I only possessed a half-baked knowledge of concepts created by the great minds of my past life.

"Hey, are you going to tell us what's starting already?"

Maytyl looked like she couldn't wait any longer. Having witnessed the failed magic crystal charging in the sanctuary, she probably felt like she was being made to wait for a treat. But for an amateur like me to explain, this kind of visual aid was necessary.

"The preparations are done now."

I placed a stand over the basin, straddling it, and put a small dish on top of the stand.

"I wonder what sort of talk will begin this time."

Fulsy was brimming with curiosity too.

"Um, it's about the mechanism by which a person with the aptitude creates magical power from a magic crystal, I suppose," I said while placing the wooden ball on the stand.

"It's, it's starting again!" Noel cried out.

What would she do if my hand slipped and I dropped the ball. I really hoped I wouldn't fall flat on my face before I even started.

"Since it's something you've thought of, Ricardo-kun, I'm sure it must be something amazing."

Alfina looked at me as if she were gazing at something brilliant.

"I'll have you know, what I'm about to explain isn't necessarily correct. I have no way of judging, since I can't use magic myself. I want you to understand that this is, as usual, just unconfirmed speculation."

"...The same as always, I see."
"That's right, it's just speculation. But it's always right."
"Ah, so the same as always."

I had a feeling the sorcery team wasn't listening to me. Well, it was a fundamental concept for all forces, so I thought it would probably hold true for magic too.

"First, 'force', and not just magical power, is composed of two things. The object that generates it, and the transmission of the generated force," I said.

Everyone fell silent.

"For example, a voice is..."

I opened my mouth wide and pointed to the back of my throat.

"It's a phenomenon where waves of air, created by a vibrating organ called the throat, are transmitted. It's difficult with invisible air, so I've prepared water here."

All eyes turned to the washbasin.

"This ball is the thing that generates the force, and the water's waves are what transmit it. First of all, to cause anything to happen, you need a source, you need energy. It's the same as not being able to buy anything without money. Like this wallet."

I took the money out of my own wallet and placed it on the desk. Next to it, I put the wooden ball.

"For the ball to generate waves in the water, the ball must possess energy. For example, a ball placed at the same height as the water like this has no energy. It's an empty wallet. So, it can't cause anything to happen."

I slowly floated the wooden ball in the water. Of course, no matter how carefully I did it, some slight waves were created, but I hoped they would forgive me that.

"But, if I store energy in the wooden ball like this..."

I picked up the ball with my fingers and lifted it. About ten centimeters high.

"By lifting the ball, I've stored in it an amount of energy equal to the work my arm did to lift it. It's the same as a little money going into a wallet because I worked. And when I release it..."

I let go of my hand, and with a pochan, the ball fell onto the surface of the water. Waves spread out from that point.

"That energy is transmitted to the surroundings in the form of water waves. The more energy the original ball has, the bigger the waves it causes will be."

I lifted the ball twice as high as before, to the same height as the stand. Then, I did the same thing again.

With a bashan, water splashed, and larger waves than before were generated. Fulsy and Maytyl, who were watching with rapt attention, got spattered with water.

"It is an obvious thing, if one were to say it. However, your talks of this sort are all the more frightening for how obvious they are."

Contrary to her words, Fulsy's eyes were shining brightly.

"That's right. This story is going to connect to the generation of magic, the most fundamental of all sorcery basics, isn't it?"

Maytyl swallowed with a gokuri. Neither of them seemed to mind being splashed with water.

"Yes, from here we move on to magic. In the case of magical power, the inside of a magic crystal is packed with these balls, so to speak. Beings that generate the waves of magic. Let's provisionally call the source that generates magic a 'magic particle'. Inside the magic crystal, these magic particles store energy to produce magic. In other words, this state."

I once again lifted the ball and placed it on the stand above the basin.

"Magic particles rarely interact with most things. In other words, for a person like me without the aptitude, it's as if magic particles don't exist."

I moved my hand left and right over the ball on the stand, being careful not to touch it.

"Like this. No matter what I do, no magic is generated. But, a person with the aptitude can interfere with magic particles."

I lightly poked the ball with my fingertip. The ball fell from the stand, dropped onto the water's surface, and generated waves.

"This is the phenomenon occurring inside a magic crystal. When a person with the aptitude stimulates a magic particle, the energy stored inside it spreads to the surroundings as a wave. This wave is magical power. Naturally, the higher the position of this ball, the greater the magic that is generated."

"So, that means a crimson magic crystal is at a higher position than a normal red one..."

"Or it's a wallet stuffed with a lot of money."

"It helps that you all understand so quickly."

I looked at my audience, half in amazement.

"Well, how should I put it. When you handle magic crystals all the time, you know. Hearing it put that way, I can't help but think that might be it. Especially when Vinder says it."

"I don't really get it, but I can tell that you're saying something amazing, Ricardo-kun."

Noel was keeping up too. Alfina was also trying desperately to understand, even though the topic was surely unfamiliar to her.

The source material for this explanation was, of course, electricity. To be precise, it was electromagnetism, one of the four fundamental forces of physics. The particles that cause electromagnetism are charged particles, the easiest to understand being the electron. And the wave that transmits electromagnetism is light. Light is made of photons.

When an electron vibrates, photons are produced. In my previous life, a light bulb would be an easy example. Electrons flow through the filament of the light bulb. When an electron inside the filament collides with it, that vibration causes the electron to release energy in the form of a photon. In other words, the energy the electron possessed is transmitted to the surroundings as light.

To use another analogy, an electron is like a sled heavily loaded with packages called photons. As long as it's running straight on a flat road, the packages don't fall off. But if the road becomes bumpy or it's forced to turn a corner, the packages fall.

To put it in economic terms, a passerby with money won't spend it on an empty street, but if the surroundings are lined with products that stimulate desire, or if aggressive touts are rampant, they will cough up their money. It's a feeling like that.

And this property, of having a particle that generates a force and a wave that carries the force, is common to all forces, not just electromagnetism. For electromagnetism, it's electrons and photons. For gravity, it's mass and gravitons. The strong and weak forces are basically the same.

Incidentally, the reason Hideki Yukawa became the first Japanese person to win a Nobel Prize was, I believe, for his great contribution to establishing this concept.

Then it's highly likely that magic is the same. In other words, there must be magic particles that carry a magical charge, and something like a magic-on, generated by magic particles, that transmits magical power.

"There was a hint. It's the mechanism of the Mana Charging Furnace. A state where all the magic particles inside a magic crystal have fallen, that is an empty crystal in the normal sense, its magic exhausted. So..."

I once again lifted the ball floating on the water's surface and returned it to the stand.

"If you hit it with magic and recharge the magic particles once more, it can generate magical power again."

I dropped the ball I had just lifted back up. This is similar to how water used in hydroelectric power generation falls to zero elevation, the sea, and is then lifted to a high altitude again by the light of the sun.

There was a hint. Being able to charge a magic crystal by hitting it with magic is like excitation in the case of electrons. In other words, just like with electromagnetism, there is a relationship corresponding to electrons and photons. I had arrived at the answer long ago, I just hadn't realized it.

"...Then, what happens in the case of a negative magic crystal?"

Maytyl swallowed hard with a gokuri.

"That's the crucial point. The story so far has been based on the premise that magic particles cannot leave the magic crystal. I think the negative magic crystal is the exception. In other words, the phenomenon that occurs when you bring a negative magic crystal and a normal magic crystal close together is not the movement of magical power, but the movement of 'magic particles'."

Normally when releasing magic, the magic particles remain inside the magic crystal. But when a negative magic crystal makes contact, the magic particles themselves move. Using the earlier analogy, magic particles fall from the normal magic crystal into the negative magic crystal. The magical power is merely a byproduct of that.

"So, you mean the magic crystal that touched the negative magic crystal has no more magic particles to cause magic. That's why when you try to charge it by hitting it with magic, it just passes right through."

"What about the reason why a normal red magic crystal released magic close to crimson, or a crimson one released magic close to purple?"

"That would be because of this."

I took the washbasin down from the table and placed it on the floor. Then, I dropped the ball from on top of the table. A large wave was generated.

"Bring me a magic crystal that's been depleted of magic through the normal method."

When I said that, Noel handed me a magic crystal. I touched it to the negative magic crystal. A faint light was produced.

"In other words, even a ball that has fallen to the same height as the normal basin will still create a wave if it falls to an even lower place."

If the stand on the table is positive, and the table is zero, then the floor is negative. To put it another way, the negative magic crystal attracts the magic particles inside a normal magic crystal. That's why the movement of magic particles occurs without doing anything. And the energy of that fall creates magical power.

Magic is without a doubt the fifth fundamental force of physics. I'm pretty sure there was a theory in the cosmology of my past life that universes could exist where the types or number of forces were different. But no matter the force, this principle is universal. In other words, when you think at the meta-law level, a common form emerges.

"So, with that said, I want to reconsider how to handle negative magic crystals based on what we've just discussed," I stated.

"Wait, something about the order of this is strange. This talk, it goes beyond just magic, it's about the fundamental nature of all, well, 'movement' in the world..."

"That's right. I don't know how to describe it, but out of everything I've heard so far, that gave me the biggest chill."

"My head..."

No, you guys are the ones giving me chills. Fulsy and the others can intuitively perceive magic, a "force" that acts in an extremely pure, easy-to-analyze way, yet they can understand it from my explanation.

Meanwhile, I, who was the same nationality as Hideki Yukawa in my past life, am doing my best just to give a rough outline of the general concept. This is my limit.

For example, I don't know what a magic-on, the force carrier particle that mediates magic, is like. It's a type of gauge boson that didn't exist on Earth, with an integer spin. Considering its range, it's probably massless and moves at the speed of light...

Yeah, there's no way I can figure it out at my level. Wave function? The Standard Model? To me, that's literally talk from another world, Earth.

"In any case, we don't have time, and I want to hurry to the application," I insisted forcefully.

"...What do you plan to do, specifically?" Fulsy nodded as if she had no other choice.

"When brought into contact with a negative magic crystal, the fluctuation in magical power is large. That means the path the magic particles take as they fall toward the negative magic crystal is rough. Magic particles only move from a magic crystal to a negative magic crystal upon contact. This means the distance magic particles can travel between crystals across the air is extremely small."

I spoke while remembering that the magic generation experiments using the negative magic crystal had depended on surface area.

"Even the fine irregularities between the two crystals can cause fluctuations. In that case, if we make both magic crystals touch perfectly, it's highly likely that the efficiency will increase and the generated magical power will stabilize. Do you have something like a file for shaping magic crystals?"

Magic crystals are beautifully shaped so that sorcerers can handle them easily. The negative magic crystal was just as it had been when dug up.

"Will this do?"

Noel handed me a golden file. I began to file the negative magic crystal. As expected of a tool made of magic metal, the hard crystal could be shaved as if I were using a plane.

I wiped the flattened negative magic crystal with a cloth and confirmed its glittering surface. Then, I brought it into contact with the flat surface of a normal magic crystal.

A flash of light, like from a camera, burst forth. Pika.

"So bright!"

Noel covered her eyes.

"If we do this with a crimson magic crystal, there's a high chance we can create purple magic."

I smiled as I said it.

If we could generate purple magic, it would be a step forward in developing the device to attract magic insects, our most important project. We wouldn't have to use Alfina's crystal.