Throne of Magical Arcana

As they spoke, Lucien picked up this issue of ‘Elements’ and glanced at the title, only to discover that the author was one Telaviv that he did not know. He was a level-four arcanist and fifth-circle sorcerer.

“He’s perhaps a newly-promoted sorcerer. Only such young people could’ve proposed the model without being burdened by experience…” Lucien thought to himself.

It was not because Douglas, Brook, Fernando and Hathaway would not consider the possibility of negative-energy state and antiparticles, and in what form they should coexist with the regular matter if they did belong to this world. However, even if they had such speculations, they wouldn’t propose it recklessly but would wait until antiparticles were proved.

If they ever proposed a similar model, the only reason would be that the model would contribute to the discovery and confirmation of antiparticles and negative energy; it’s obvious that ‘vacuum ocean of negative energy’ would not.

In his paper, Telaviv, the strange arcanist, proposed a ubiquitous, all-pervasive ‘ocean of negative energy’ based on the properties of the microscopic particles.

According to Fernando, electrons would always fill the ‘orbit’ whose energy level was the lowest. Since negative energy was lower than all existing energy levels, it was obvious that electrons would leap towards that direction. It’s like a building’s foundation would always be built first, and then it was the basement, the first floor, the second floor, etc.

Not only would the energy caused by such massive transitions destroy the whole universe, but all the observed phenomena so far had convincingly disapproved of the possibility. That was why Dieppe, Larry and other people who concluded negative energy at the beginning thought that their result was mistaken due to their inconsiderations.

After Lucien proposed his quantum equation and foretold the existence of antiparticles, many arcanists began to consider why electrons did not have such changes if negative energy did exist. Therefore, Telaviv reached the bold conclusion that electrons did not ‘advance’ towards the negative level according to their ‘natural instincts’ because the negative energy level had been occupied by the other electrons and they could not press any further.

Also, he inferred based on such a distribution of electrons that negative electrons could not be observed by the arcanists, at least not so far. Therefore, in his model, every place in the whole world was filled with negative electrons. They were so dense that humans were essentially living in an ‘ocean of negative energy’. Even the vacuum was the same. There were no real vacuums!

Therefore, it was a ‘negative ocean’ that ‘drowned’ the universe and boasted ‘infinite energy’.

However, negative electrons could be activated. After they transitioned into observable, regular electrons after absorbing energy, a hollow would be left inside the ‘negative ocean’. This hollow had the opposite electric charges and the same mass of the negative electrons, and the hollow would be the positive electrons (aka antielectrons and positrons).

After reaching that part, Telaviv continued his guess with the imagination of sorcerers, which was beyond the ‘Dirac sea¹‘ from Earth. He believed that the ubiquitous ocean of negative energy was the reason why extraordinary powers such as magic could exist. Spiritual power, willpower and magic patterns were essentially communicating with this ocean of energy in special ways, thereby acquiring unimaginable power that could change the world. Therefore, it was the origin of magic and other supernatural powers and provided an explanation of the conservation of energy in magic.

Hellen, the Witch of Iceland, had tested the conservation of energy between spiritual power and magic a long time ago. The spiritual power consumed equaled the energy that a spell contained at the beginning. The reason why certain spells were much more destructive than the spiritual power consumed was that the spells interacted with the environment and triggered a chain reaction. The most typical example would be ‘Eternal Blaze’. However, the question remained, how was the spiritual power refilled after it was consumed?

Replenishing spiritual power with magic potions was normal. Nobody questioned the source of the energy. However, the natural increase of spiritual power was rather strange. Neither the slow recovery in daily life nor the rapid recovery in meditation had a convincing energy source. It was not like the spiritual power was recovered based on nothing, right? When something was increased, something else should be decreased, but no decrease had been observed so far.

There were two mainstream explanations regarding the question before. The first one believed that the recovery of spiritual power boiled down to the reactions within the soul. To put it simply, the soul was like a controllable fusion reactor that provided steady energy for oneself. However, this explanation was faced with the same problem: even reactors needed raw materials; what did the soul consume to generate energy?

In response to that, the most ‘romantic’ grand arcanist, Oliver, proposed a model that looked legitimate: what the soul consumed was ‘itself’. When ‘itself’ was entirely consumed, it would be the end of one’s life. That was why the increase of magic abilities could extend the longevity after the soul was fortified. Longevity could be expanded through rituals also because they filled up the attrition of the soul.

However, this model had its own flaws, and even Oliver did not entirely agree with it. According to his theory, if one were to use less or even no magic, their longevity would be significantly improved, but in reality, the life gap between the arcanists who used magic less often and those who used magic frequently was not distinctive.

The other explanation on the recovery of spiritual power was that the energy came from the ‘truth of the world’, and ‘meditation’ was a way to connect the soul to the ‘truth of the world’. It could be confirmed by the fact that sorcerers could receive feedback from the truth of the world while the other classes couldn’t.

As to where the truth of the world was and how the energy was transmitted, it would be a different problem.

However, it could not explain why knights and magic creatures could also recover on their own, unless they were also connected to the ‘truth of the world’ but somehow could not receive the feedback of the ‘truth of the world’.

Because little progress had been made on what the soul and the ‘truth of the world’ were, the two mainstream explanations were mere hypotheses that were not supported by any theory or formula.

Telaviv’s model of negative energy, on the other hand, described a ubiquitous ocean of energy and explained the recovery of spiritual particles in the most straightforward way based on the Lucien equation as well as the verifiable negative energy and antiparticles.

‘Meditation’ was the communication between the soul and the ocean of negative energy. Because it was ubiquitous and boasted almost infinite energy, the soul could absorb energy from it to recover the spiritual power. The feedback of the ‘truth of the world’ would cause certain changes in the cognitive world that intensified the communication with the ocean of negative energy.

By the same logic, the model of negative ocean explained why certain polymorph spells required enormous energy to sustain but little energy to be triggered at the beginning. After Lucien proposed the mass-energy formula, the studies on those spells resulted in suspicion of the conservation of energy. However, Hellen devised a spectacular experiment that the non-conservation of energy in the general sense did not exist.

The model was so significant that Telaviv appreciated the Congress of Magic, Mr. Atom Controller, Lucien equation and the hypothesis of antiparticles emotionally after finishing the main part of the paper. He also nicknamed his model of negative energy as ‘spring of magic’ and ‘supernatural ocean’.

“This is a paper of great significance. It marks that we have a whole new direction to study the nature of magic…” Lucien browsed through the paper and remarked unbiasedly.

Under the magic lamp, Heidi asked, her eyes glittering like crystals. “Master, do you acknowledge the model?”

“Acknowledge? How can I acknowledge a paper that does not have experiments and phenomena? His ideas are very innovative and have given us a new path that may explain the nature of magic, but it remains to be seen whether or not it is a wrong path. Everything has to be based on math and experiments.” Said Lucien with a smile.

Although he knew that the model had been abandoned on Earth, he was not in a hurry to disapprove it.

On one hand, Lucien was exploring in the mist himself. The more he studied the microscopic domain, the more he realized that it must be the fundamental reason for the differences between the two worlds. As for which specific part caused the differences, it still required future explorations. Therefore, he could not disapprove it just because the theory was proven wrong on Earth but had to do so with his own experiments and deductions.

On the other hand, Lucien also hoped that the model could inspire the arcanists to consider more about the essence of magic. For a long time, the studies on the essence of magic had been mired in difficulties. Most arcanists had lost their interest in that. Instead of considering why there was magic, they simply devoted themselves to the creation of new spells and the modification of existing spells, hoping that the reason would reveal itself as they went deeper on their respective path. After Lucien proposed the observer effect in the microscopic domain, their methodology seemed correct.

“Our teacher is right. It’s only a possible model, but with the model, the quantum state, the quantum superposition and the observer effect do not seem necessary to explain the essence of magic.” Deep in thought, Layria said in a daze, which made Heidi chuckle. Was she implying that their teacher’s ‘observer effect’ was wrong right in his face? Well, Annick and Sprint must be happy about it. Their appreciation of the paper was all over their faces.

Lucien smiled. “This can only explain the recovery of spiritual power. It cannot explain why the ocean of negative energy is communicable or why there are a myriad of different spells. That’s probably the category of the observer effect, the quantum state and the quantum superposition.

Annick and Sprint did not have any theory to explain those questions. Therefore, even though Lucien could tell that they did not agree with him, they did not propose any argument.

“Are there any other papers?” Asked Lucien casually while he kept browsing the journal.