Throne of Magical Arcana

On the top floor of a magic tower in Douglas Magic School.

Sitting in the classroom for senior apprentices, listening to Vilnia’s Basic Elements, Chely’s mind wondered a bit. Basic Elements was part of a series of courses introducing the apprentices to the world of elements.

Chely heard that both Heidi and Layria had now become real arcanists with their more than ten arcana credits.

“…This is all for today’s introduction of the ancient element theory. Now let’s move on to the contemporary system of elements built upon Her Excellency Hathaway’s atom theory. What is an atom? An atom is the smallest unit in the world, that cannot be further divided. Each kind of atom is an element, and the properties of different atoms vary. Atoms can react with each other and thus create all the matters in the world. Atom theory is also very important to courses including Potion and Alchemy.”

“If I had arrived at Allyn a year earlier and graduated, I would not have to waste my time here listening to things that I already learned a long time ago. If that was the case, right now, I should be woking in Mr. Evans’ Atom Institution and putting my hands on the wonderful arcana experiments to become an arcanist.” Chely was a bit upset, feeling that she was wasting her life. So far, she still needed to pass the basic arcana test first.

Vilnia’s course continued, and she was happy with the positive attitude that the senior apprentices showed—they were well aware of the importance of learning arcana and magic, as their study was directly related to power and status.

In fact, very rarely did senior apprentices get kicked out of the school in the past many years.

“I’ve brought you some pure elements. Take a look at them first and then get to know their properties and the corresponding alchemical reactions through conducting experiments.” Vilnia took out some bottles and turned on the magic circle, turning the platform into an alchemical operation desk.

Teachers in lower-level apprentice classes rarely talked so deeply about the nature of elements but made the apprentices recognize the elements, know their basic properties, remember the equations, and the teachers mainly focused on developing the students’ hands-on skills.

Chely’s thoughts were drawn back by the dazzling light that burst out of the magic circle and she saw that Vilnia was holding two bottles of elements in her hands, “These are the two kinds of carbon element of two different structures. Atoms make up elements, and carbon is the main component element of the human body…”

Looking at the two bottles, one contained small crystals of diamonds and the other had opaque small pieces shimmering in the metallic light of dark grey, Chely was deeply shocked, even though Lucien had told her about this before.

In Chely’s eyes, the difference between the two bottles was like that between an angel and a devil.

The young apprentice slightly looked down at her own beautiful hands and it was hard for her to imagine that the pieces inside of the bottles were the main component element of her body.

Turning around and looking out of the window, Chely saw the world full of lots of things going on: the tall and lush trees, the birds, the sky… She was still having a difficult time convincing herself that the world was in fact made by the tiny, indivisible atoms.

…

In Atom Institution.

Lucien had improved the magic circle for creating the vacuum environment, so he started to redo the experiment.

After confirming that the cathode rays were always deflected in the electromagnetic field, Lucien took a deep breath and began to adjust the magic circles for creating the magnetic and electric field.

After a while, he had finished recording the data, and his mind began to calculate the charge mass ratio of the particles in the cathode ray.

Unlike the great tension that Lucien felt when he was calculating Planck’s constant, this time Lucien was as calm as a machine. Without being affected by the noises coming from the different corners of the lab, Lucien figured out the answer very quickly:

“The charge-to-mass ratio is… 1.76 ×1011”

Bang!

Lucien’s meditation world suddenly changed again! The light spots representing the many elements quickly grew bigger and they started to revolve in a mysterious manner.

This was the electrons!

The existence of electron could destroy the misbelief that atom was the tiniest unit in the world! The micro-world was far more complex, wonderful, and bizarre than the arcanists could imagine!

…

In the monastery in Rentato.

A pastor in training, after hearing the cardinal Abidal’s words, asked confused, “Your Excellency, then why the Lord wanted to create atoms?”

“Daniel, that’s not what you should ask. The Lord must have a reason!” scolded Abidal severely.

If it had been in the later period of the War of Dawn, Daniel would have been sent to the inquisition already!

Seeing that the other pastors in training all looked a bit nervous and terrified, Abidal softened his voice, “The indivisibility of atom shows the divinity of the Lord. It shows the Lord’s ultimate power over the world. And those so-called arcanists can never understand this.”

All the pastors in training were listening to him respectfully.

Abidal nodded with a triumphant smile. Those common pastors did not have to know more than this, since if they dug deeper, it would easy for them to step onto an evil sorcerer’s path, and thus they were very likely to be devoured by the sacred light.

That was why the church was not affected at all by the recent theory put forward by the Congress that the energy was actually delivered in portions. The clergy did not care whether the form of energy was continuous or discontinuous, after all, the energy came from the Lord!

…

From the trajectories, Lucien had found the wonderful magic symbol which could help him with building the order of the elements, but the symbols system was still not complete.

Although he roughly knew what the symbol was, Lucien did not force himself to change his cognitive world right way because he had to first finish the process of assuming, reasoning and verifying.

Despite the fact that the two constants were the same, Lucien could not take everything for granted based on his knowledge learned from the Earth, or very likely, his head would explode if anything unexpected happened.

The practice was the sole criterion for testing the truth!

After memorizing the magical symbol, Lucien redid the experiment by changing the composition of the metal and the low-pressure gas used in the core of the cathode magic circle.

…

In Radiance Church in Holm.

Cardinal Philibell was holding the message from The Holy City, Lance, and read, “It has been confirmed that Fernando’s new student, Lucien Evans X, is the musician, Lucien Evans, who ‘died’ in Aalto. Sard has sent several night watchers and they’re on the way to handle this.”

The Lord of Storm, as a grand arcanist, has always been one of the Church’s main focus. As his student, the attention that Lucien got from the Church also increased. Soon, his background information was all clear.

“Is he the Lucien Evans who wrote the Ode to Joy?” Vaharall asked in an unbelievable way, “Is he a psycho or something? Does he have two souls—one’s an angel and the other’s a devil?”

Varantine looked rather cold, “What do you mean? Are you saying that he’s an angel trapped in hell?”

“There’s a possibility. His assumption on the form of energy shocked many senior-rank mages and almost destroyed them, which is way more impressive compared to the achievement of the most of the night watchers and red-robed cardinals,” said Philibell in a half-joking way, “Anyway, the musician has died. The musician will never come back again.”

“So we’re not planning on killing him?” Varantine was being very aggressive.

Philibell shook his head, “He’s not yet that important. We’ll talk about this when the night watchers arrive.”

…

It was already deep night when Lucien finished all the experiments. He had decided to live in the office tonight so he could finish developing the paper on the experiment.

“It has been proved by the experiments that all the negatively charged particles produced under different material conditions have the same charge-to-mass ratio no matter if the particles are brought by the cathode or produced in the tube. This suggests that many substances, in fact, contain the same particles…”

“…Its charge-to-mass ratio is about two thousand times that of the hydrogen ions in the electrolyte.”

“… Through rough calculation, we can find that the mass of this particle is about two-thousandths times that of a hydrogen atom…”

“… As we all know, the atoms consisting of Hydrogen are the lightest and smallest, which makes Hydrogen the first place on the periodic table. Then how do we understand this particle?”

“Is it a new kind of ‘atom’? Or something else?”

…

Around eight o’clock in the morning, Fernando was pondering about a problem in his study.

At this time, he saw Lucien, who arrived half an hour earlier than usual.

“Sir, I’ve conducted a series of experiments and developed a new paper. Please take a look at it,” said Lucien with a casual smile.

Fernando knew that there was something in Lucien’s smile. He took over the pile of paper and saw the title,

“The Finding of a New Particle”

The look on Fernando’s face became more serious. He started to read the paper very carefully. After a long time, Fernando looked up at Lucien’s face without saying anything.

“… Yes, sir?” Lucien felt very insecure being stared at by Fernando’s red eyes.

Fernando rubbed the corner of his eye and smacked his lips.

“I think you’ll demolish the world one day.”