Throne of Magical Arcana

Babel, in the Atomic Universe.

A cluster of dazzling light flew out of the space-time gate. Like a water ball rippling, it instantly lit up the magic circle, and the complicated lines and patterns in the air were now shimmering.

Meanwhile, the gate no longer looked gray and pale. Instead, it was now covered with a layer of dreamlike gloss.

The layer of light, which was like rubber, then protruded all of a sudden. A vague figure walked out. As the figure was becoming more and more clear, it turned out to be Lucien.

As soon as Lucien stepped out of the gate, its gloss was instantly taken off, and the gate collapsed to the ground into ashes. One by one, the shining lines in the air had also broken and became a pile of trash.

At this time, Lucien finally realized that Natasha was not the only one standing in the hall waiting for his return. The president was also waiting. Douglas looked quite anxious, which was rare for him, but not in a bad way. The anxiety was from his eagerness to find the answer.

However, Lucien was not surprised by Douglas’ presence at all. After what he just did, it would have been more perplexing if the president had not been here.

As for Natasha, her waiting was out of her care for Lucien and her own curiosity.

“How did you find it?” asked Douglas straightforwardly.

Natasha opened her mouth, but she did not want to cut Douglas off. She also had lots of questions to ask, like how far the sun was and how it existed. Compared to Douglas, she had plenty of chances to ask.

Lucien smiled, as it was so rare to see Douglas being so solicitous that he had forgotten the most immediate thing that he should have done after reaching top legendary. It looked just like a Fernando was living within him.

“A second, please,” Lucien said calmly.

A starry sky then unfolded behind Lucien, where a huge fireball was burning. The stars surrounding the big fireball formed the many mysterious patterns, while behind the fireball, there was a cluster of deepest darkness.

Against the sky, there were protons and neutrons forming into atomic nuclei. From time to time, they would drift, and sometimes, they would collapse. Together with the electrons, they formed elements. In the different sections where the elements gathered, there were different beautiful wonders, like the extremely cold liquid and crystals.

Light was flowing among the charged matters, and it was divided into portions, which reflected the nature of electromagnetic force, and it joined the “wind power” in the illusionary space harmoniously.

The edges of the entire world bent slightly, and beyond the edges, it seemed that there was something else that was connected to them, which enabled the changes in the cognitive world to affect the material world.

Seeing that, Douglas realized what he had forgotten, and he was a bit amused by himself. How could he forget this? After reaching the top legendary level, one should reflect the changes in his or her cognitive world to one’s own demiplane as soon as possible to make the demiplane resemble the dimension better.

As soon as Lucien unfolded his cognitive world, Babel tower started shaking fiercely, and the shaking was from the planet it was on.

The stars in the dark cosmos in the dimension suddenly burst out splendid light and became very real. And the star, which resembled the sun, was now on fire, and the intimidating and extreme temperature was also close to that of the real sun.

When the projection of Lucien’s cognitive world disappeared, Douglas finally asked, “How did you do this…?”

Lucien answered briefly, “Since it seems that our planet was insulated by something like a ‘fog’, the deepest part of the Boundless Ocean would go around and around. When we fly out of the atmosphere, we lose the observation of the planet at some point until we enter the universe. After that, we have to consider two things. One, does light also bend when casting through the atmosphere? Second, are other planets also being ‘trapped’?

“… So I combined the data obtained from the deepest part of the Boundless Ocean and an idea I once had, and thus revised the calculation of the coordinate of the sun. In the end, I finally found it…” said Lucien after a short pause.

“Long time ago, we did think of the possibility that the atmosphere might have changed the transmission of light and considered it a possible reason why we could not find the planets. However, after so many years, we still haven’t got a full idea about the secrets of the Boundless Ocean and the ‘fog’,” said Douglas.

The previous generations of arcanists were no fools. What Lucien just said had already been put forward years ago. However, they all failed to find the problems among the data and records. If it had been as easy as Lucien’s narration, those arcanists would have found the sun a dozen hundred years ago!

Therefore, the key question Douglas had to ask was how Lucien managed to find the problem in the data and figured out the accurate coordinate.

Lucien’s right hand climbed onto his chin and rubbed it. He responded with some hesitation, “I can’t be very clear right now. I think the ‘fog’ and the abnormality of the Boundless Ocean should both have something to do with the unusual abnormality in the space.”

Seeing Lucien’s unconscious movement, Natasha knew that Lucien was not hiding anything. Instead, his mind was indeed filled with questions.

“Something unusual in space… The bending of space shows gravity, and the gravity there does look strange… but…” Douglas murmured.

But he suddenly realized why Lucien was being so ambiguous. “You’re afraid my head is going to explode? It’s something contradictory to the general theory of relativity?”

Lucien rubbed his forehead out of a bit of embarrassment. “…Yes, there are some conflicts between the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. I’m more on the side of the latter, but I can’t be sure that I’m a hundred percent correct. My bold guess might mislead you, sir. So I cannot just burst out my own thinking recklessly.”

“You’re now sure about it. So I’d like to listen to it as I won’t let something uncertain shake my cognitive world,” said Douglas with a smile. “If you don’t want to be very clear, you can give me some hint, and I’ll explore it on my own. During the process, I can keep adjusting myself. So even if the final result does go against the general theory of relativity, my cognitive world wouldn’t collapse.”

Lucien nodded slightly. “A long time ago, I started thinking about why the planets can’t be spotted, but I was totally clueless until I opened the chamber and saw the mysteries.”

“The mysteries of immortality?” Douglas and Natasha both asked at the same time. They had never expected that this would have anything to do with the mysteries of immortality.

Lucien said seriously, “The missing of planets, the strange things about the atmosphere and the ocean, the gravity-less stars in Stars’ Grave, Furnace of Souls, and even the ‘real world’… They are all around the same question, so we have to see them all together.”

“Make sense,” Douglas agreed, but he soon got confused again. “If it’s like what you said, then the atmosphere should share the same peculiarity with the ocean, as their surroundings are not different by nature. But why when we were heading for the atmosphere, there was nothing preventing us from flying into the cosmos, yet when we were in the deepest part of the Boundless Ocean, we couldn’t go any further?”

Lucien answered seriously, “This is why I’m confused as well. I’ve built up a special math model for it, but it turned out that it was almost impossible for the math model to form naturally, although it did go into the strange dimension.”

“Impossible to form naturally… You’re saying… someone did it?” Douglas also became very serious.

Natasha also looked very astonished for a moment as her big silver-purple eyes opened big. Lucien’s words might mean something very terrible.

“Possibly. There might be someone really, really powerful there that we don’t know, who created the peculiarity deep in the ocean, but this is very unlikely because there’s no point, as we can always find planets with the data. Therefore, I suspect that it has something to do with the age of mythology. After all, we know very little about the age. The only one,” said Lucien.

The last time when Lucien risked his life entering the Temple of Spirits, he saw a library where lots of books from the age of mythology were stored there. However, at that time, he did not have enough time to copy them, and when he came back, the spirits had removed them.

Douglas nodded slightly. “Possible. Perhaps it’s preventing Maltimus and the abyss from coming to the main material world.”

“After the age of mythology, Silver Moon has also started pulling away from influencing the ‘ground’,” said Lucien. Then he took a deep breath and said, “To verify my guess, I’ll visit the Dark Mountain Range soon to see Mr. Rhine and see what he could get from the ‘Silver Moon’.”

“Make sure you’re ready,” Douglas agreed. “If the ‘Silver Moon’ doesn’t want to say anything, we’ll go back to the library in the temple again.”

Douglas smiled. “Give me the coordinate of the sun so that I can see it with my own eyes. After that, I’ll get ready to reach the demigod level.”

“Demigod?!” Both Lucien and Natasha were slightly shocked. Obviously, Lucien did not agree with Douglas’ plan.

“My cognitive world is basically complete once planets are found, and from my previous studies, I’ve figured out how to transform my status and reach the level of demigod,” said Douglas with the same facial expression. “I’ll replace the power of feelings with my own cognitive world and replace the power of faith with the corresponding real environment. I will overlap them and combine them together. In this way, I should be able to achieve the transformation and open the gate to become a demigod.”

Lucien knew that this was the most orthodox path for a sorcerer to become a demigod, but he insisted, “But sir, we can wait until we figure out why this method works and what a demigod is. We can probably find the answers within decades.”

“I know your confidence, but we can wait no more. Maltimus’ arrival and Viken’s power are big threats to the Congress. If the Congress can’t produce a demigod in the upcoming five years, we’ll all be in trouble. I’m not sure if I can do this, but I’ll still give it a shot.” Douglas smiled, as if it were someone else’s business.

“But…” Lucien kept on trying.

Douglas stopped him. “If you come up with a better method, I can still improve my foundation after becoming a demigod, and also…”

He looked out at the universe outside and said in the peaceful tone, “Also to me, the most intriguing thing in this world is to solve its mysteries one by one. The power that comes with it is just a complimentary gift.

“Even if I’ll forever stop at the demigod level, I’ll never regret it as I will have done my contribution to figuring out the truth of the world. I think I’ll be more than happy.”

“Sir…” Lucien did not know what to say.