Sword of Dawnbreaker

Chapter 109: E=1.66

The first owner of the notebook was indeed that rogue mage, and he didn’t leave his name in this notebook either. Jenni only knew he was a dejected and eccentric senior that was shunned by everyone. That rogue mage came from the Violet Kingdom that was situated in the northern side of the continent. He was once a member of the human mages’ largest organization, ‘Association of Mystics’. But just as Gawain knew, his magic power was too weak, and he was ostracized. His research was considered unorthodox in the eyes of traditional mages, and he had an extremely miserable life. Finally, in order to treat his daughter, he left the Association of Mystics and entered the Anzu Kingdom. The notebook that Jenni had was one of the manuscripts that leaked out long ago from that rogue mage. It was highly possible that he had sold it cheaply to a mage from the Anzu Kingdom in order to raise funds for the trip.

Perhaps he only sold it for three copper pieces, or perhaps it was worth nothing, and he had merely given away a large pile of books and notebooks.

The second owner was also in the same miserable situation, and he could see from the implied meaning of the words that the rogue mage was conducting similarly ‘unorthodox’ research. It was obvious that he had conducted such research because he was also weak and had no hopes of promotion.

A mage that was having a hard time progressing in magic and runes had hoped that logic and mathematics would aid him in exploring the truth of this world. The rogue mage’s research on the universality and hidden rules of the runes had lit up a path for the second owner, allowing him to vaguely understand that even without powerful magic and individual strength, he would also be able to explore the mysteries of magic. But the second researcher wasn’t able to walk far on this path.

Perhaps it was to collect the funds for research or to validate a certain data in the notebook, this nameless mage had perished on an adventure. The few pieces of property that he left behind had been distributed completely, and this precious notebook had been transferred to the hands of Jenni’s master.

Jenni’s master didn’t become this notebook’s owner as he was an ‘orthodox master’ who treated this notebook with abnormal disdain. He didn’t believe that a bunch of calculations written by two low-grade mages would be able to reveal any truth. Furthermore, he believed that the second owner of this notebook had lost his life in an adventure because he believed the nonsense written on these pieces of scrap paper. The wretch that perished in the ruins had just proven the errors in the notebook.

As such, the master threw the notebook in a pile of trash outside the mage tower. It was then picked up by his ‘apprentice’ Ravencrest.

That so-called ‘apprentice’ was actually that great mage’s slave.

This phenomenon was very common among orthodox mages. They normally had two kinds of apprentices: real apprentices and apprentices that weren’t treated as human. The former would be individuals with a great talent for magic or individuals of high nobility. The latter would only be nominal apprentices in the mage tower but would actually be used as slaves and experiment subjects. Ravencrest belonged to the latter.

Due to his inferior magical talent and that he wasn’t from any prestigious clan, Ravencrest wasn’t valued in the mage tower. Even though he had an exceptional talent for mathematics and logic, due to his inferior spellcasting and rune-sensing abilities, he had been addressed as ‘retard’ or ‘freak’. The great mage barely taught Ravencrest some entry-level knowledge and had used low-cost magical drugs that would cause great sequelae and a ritual to forcefully push Ravencrest into an official mage. Afterwards, the great mage nurtured Ravencrest as a runemaster and planned for him to take charge of the drawing of magic circles and the production of tools.

It was also at that moment that Ravencrest obtained the notebook and became the third owner of the notebook.

After a few years, Jenni got to know Ravencrest.

Different from most of the ‘talented people’ that could enter the mage tower, Jenni was born from a family with low status, and she wasn’t even selected to enter the tower as a ‘mage slave’. She was a frail young lady from a poor village very far from the royal capital. The generations of her family had never interacted with any extraordinary figures, and it wasn’t possible for them to possess a ‘mage’s noble bloodline’.

She was able to enter the mage tower because her hometown had encountered a disaster, and her family was about to die from starvation. It was at this moment, her ‘master’ happened to pass by her village and wanted to ‘show his kindness in exchange for some experimental materials’.

Jenni remembered clearly that it was a windless yet very cold night. Her parents had gathered all of the children to draw lots, and the 14-year-old her had drawn the lot.

On the next morning, she had been pushed into the caravan of the ‘lord mage’ in order to exchange for enough food to survive: two bags of wheat.

She still remembered that the caravan had plenty of things stacked up. There were unknown herbs, animal specimens, rocks, metals, tree barks, a few children that had numbed expressions and were about the same age as her…

The caravan was filled with experimental materials.

The mage had used rations to exchange materials for experiments, and she was being brought to the mage tower as ‘experimental material’.

Afterwards, in the mage tower, she got to know Ravencrest, a mage slave who as an ‘apprentice’ had a slightly higher status than her.

Ravencrest was responsible for ‘feeding’ the experimental materials.

The children that were brought over from the same village were quickly put to use by that mage. At almost every two to three days, a child would be taken. Some would return alive; some wouldn’t. Even if they returned alive, they would quickly turn insane or extremely sick. Jenni was already aware of her fate, but she didn’t try to escape.

Because Ravencrest had been reminding her everyday: ‘never try to escape; it will be worse than death’.

Just like that, it was finally Jenni’s ‘turn to be used’. She was already unable to remember the exact details of that day as she was basically immersed in fear and chaos, but she had been blessed by fortune. When she was delivered to the experimental magic circle, she had been suddenly tested to have a weak affinity with magic.

She actually possessed talent for magic.

Due to the fact that she possessed talent for magic and because of her good behavior, Jenni had preserved her life and had been promoted to one of the mage’s apprentices. Moreover, she had the same status as Ravencrest who was a ‘slave apprentice’. She had also obtained a family name as the mage had casually given her the family name of ‘Perot’. In the human common language, her family name had the same meaning as the word ‘wheat’… It was because she was bought by the mage for two bags of wheat.

Escaping the threat of death, it was actually a great blessing for Jenni who was an experimental material. However, in reality, her situation had yet to step into the light. She had merely been promoted from a ‘thing’ to a ‘slave’, and in many situations, the two didn’t actually have much of a difference.

Back then, Jenni didn’t have the mood to consider such things as she was extremely glad to be able to continue living. Furthermore, she never would have expected she would be able to learn how to read and practice magic with the status as an apprentice mage (even though she was a slave apprentice). She started off with the hunger to learn that knowledge and had been studying, learning words, differentiating runes, remembering spells without rest. Soon enough, she realized that her interest and manner of thinking were similar to Ravencrest…

They became good friends that didn’t bother about the age difference. Ravencrest then excitedly revealed his treasured notebook to Jenni and started to explain the unbelievable findings that took root from mathematics and logic. The duo had feeble magical strength and were ‘apprentices’ who had never received a proper magic education. Thus, they had been absorbing the knowledge within the notebook and using that knowledge as a basis for their own worldview.

They were completely unaware that the use of formulas and calculations to research the truth was actually very unorthodox in the eyes of the mages who pursued the truth with the orthodox belief in individual strength.

On the other side, Jenni’s ‘master’, that powerful mage, had quickly realized that Jenni’s talent for magic was actually feeble and pitiful. This sickly person who climbed out from the experimental materials only had a tiny bit of ability to sense magic. With her spiritual power, she would probably only be able to master apprentice-class trivial spells in her entire lifetime and would never enter the ranks as an official mage.

As such, he immediately stopped his investment in Jenni and had an urgent desire to take back his investment. He gave Jenni a bottle of magical drug and a set of magic-circle blueprints. He had asked Jenni to drink the magical drug so that she could be forcefully turned into a grade-one mage before she started her practice as a runemaster.

Ravencrest, who had drunk the magical drug, had secretly stopped Jenni and proposed a bold suggestion. Why not believe the knowledge on the notebook and believe the formulas derived by the data in the notebook and attempt to control those runes without the assistance of magic and to use mathematics and logic instead?

Jenni listened to Ravencrest’s suggestion and had completed the magic circle at her level of apprentice mage.

That was probably the first ‘calculated’ magic circle in the world.

falsehood

Her ‘master’ didn’t reward her because of that and flew into a rage instead. He quickly found out that Ravencrest was the one who planned this ‘dirty trick’. Immediately after, he followed the clues and found out about the existence of the notebook. This near ‘betrayal’ behavior had enraged him because he believed that this book was full of nonsense and because some feeble and shoddy mage’s research had actually been able to entice two servants in his mage tower. This was an utter humiliation to him.

As the great mage’s anger was burning, he was preparing to destroy the notebook and to ruthlessly punish his two ‘apprentices’. At this moment, Ravencrest had stood out bravely for the first time to face the wrath of his ‘master’.

He had accepted the punishment alone, and as the cost to protect the notebook and Jenni, he had lost one eye, a quarter of his soul, and two tendons. He attempted to make the violent mage believe that there was value in preserving the notebook and to let his foolish apprentices continue to research. Perhaps there might be something worth investing in the notebook, and Ravencrest and Jenni could become the experimental subjects who would produce magic circles and runes according to the formulas recorded in the notebook. If it was a success, then all the credit would belong to the great mage, but if it was a failure, the mage would only be losing two experimental subjects.

Jenni’s master had accepted this proposal and allowed his two audacious apprentices to carry on the research, but the master had constantly mocked and criticized them. He believed that people who couldn’t even control high-grade runes would definitely produce worthless findings in rune research. It was as foolish as a serf trying to guess the menu of the king’s lunch. Without the ability to sense and control runes, how would one be able to tell the power of runes? With just calculations? Wasn’t it ridiculous?

But no matter what, Ravencrest and Jenni were finally able to continue the research on the notebook’s content. They had quickly discovered an obvious ‘fault’ in different magic-guided materials when conducting magic. This fault seemed to separate all the magic-guided materials into two intervals of ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. There was a mysterious constant that affected the two intervals of the magic-guided materials and would have an actual performance in the magic circle. It turned out that various magic-guided materials would affect the ‘output power’ of the magic circle. The anti-interference ability of the magic circle would depend on the arrangement logic of the runes and the relationship with the magic-guided materials’ positive or negative impact, and it was also influenced by a constant…

They then started to deduce this constant and were getting closer to the ultimate result. But before the eve of success, their master suddenly gave them a mission.

They had to visit a magic well that had lost control and reset the rune formation in there.

This was totally beyond their skills as runemasters, and the resetting of the magic well’s rune formation wasn’t even the specialty of a runemaster. This was a job for an official mage.

But the master’s order was absolute, and there was a remark that came after the order: “Didn’t you say all runes can be modeled after your formulas? Then go remodel that.”

Ravencrest accepted this order. He was very clear that the great mage had already lost his patience, and he wasn’t a person that could tolerate his servants acting freely. Hence, Ravencrest didn’t have a choice but to adjust the runes in the magic well. It would also allow him to verify the most crucial problem.

Jenni’s recollections were getting close to the end, and her tone was very calm. It was so very calm, as though it didn’t involve her. “Before Mister Ravencrest departed, he told me he would adjust those runes according to the first conjecture. If he returned alive, it meant E=1.29. If he didn’t return alive, it meant E=1.66… He didn’t return alive.”

Gawain looked down at the notebook, and the constant E recorded was in a brand new and delicate handwriting. It was written by Jenni.