‘In other words, simply put, this is graduate school in this world.’
—A place people entered to conduct further magical research after graduating from a Magic Academy.
—A place where earning Duke Ailin’s recognition allowed one to properly call oneself a mage in the outside world.
—Therefore, it was a place where those who had come voluntarily in hopes of receiving even the slightest instruction from Duke Ailin, along with mages personally selected by him, gathered to conduct their own research each day.
‘As expected, even in a different world, the mechanisms behind academia and research institutions are not particularly different. Duke Ailin is essentially a professor of tremendous renown, this place is his laboratory, and the mages here are graduate students. Is there really any difference?’
Although he had not observed the Mage Tower for long, Jaes reached that conclusion after examining it closely and felt somewhat more at ease.
The reason was simple.
‘……If that is the case, then this will be easy.’
Jaes still possessed all the experience and practical knowledge he had accumulated by surviving seven years in South Korea’s hellish graduate-school system.
—Cleaning?
When he had first entered graduate school as a new master’s student, he had spent nearly every day cleaning the laboratory.
‘There were plenty of times when the senior students tore into me for carelessly putting away their research materials.’
Therefore, although he still knew little about magic, distinguishing research materials from rubbish was hardly difficult for someone who had spent seven years in a South Korean graduate laboratory.
“Hmm? Are you the new cleaner? Hey! You cannot carelessly put away the things here!! These may look like…… ……Huh?”
“I know. I only have to avoid touching the things here and over there, right?”
“Hmm? Uh, yes…… ……That is right.”
Thanks to Jaes, the Mage Tower regained a remarkably improved level of cleanliness from the very first day without any major trouble.
“Oh?”
Even the mages, who generally had no interest in anyone but themselves, found it a rather intriguing event.
Furthermore, through the skill of ‘praising the research of professors and senior students until his mouth went dry,’ which he had also mastered over seven years of graduate school, Jaes easily obtained the information about magic that he desired most.
“Then will I be able to use magic immediately as long as I recite an incantation?”
“Of course. However, the Magic Language used for incantations differs from ordinary language, so you will need time to learn it. Once you have mastered it properly, anyone can use the most basic First-Tier Magic.”
“Where can I find those incantations?”
“Hmm. Wait here. There should be a Basic Magic Spellbook lying around somewhere. No one here has much use for a book like that anyway, so it should not matter if you take it.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
After obtaining a general understanding of ‘magic,’ Jaes discovered something far more interesting than he had anticipated.
‘Hmm? This…… Is it not ultimately a form of coding, merely with different input and output methods?’
—Coding (computer programming).
The act of writing a programming language so that a computer could perform a particular task.
As a doctoral student in computer engineering, Jaes was intimately familiar with it.
However, computers were unlikely to exist in a world where magic appeared to have replaced science. Jaes had therefore despaired, believing that the only knowledge he possessed would be entirely useless.
As he listened to the explanation of magic, however, Jaes developed an intuition that this might not be the case.
‘Right. Just as this place is hardly different from graduate school despite being in another world, perhaps magic ultimately works in much the same way.’
In his original world, one used ‘coding’ to write a ‘programming language,’ producing the desired results through a terminal such as a ‘computer.’
In this world, one recited a ‘Magic Language’ through an ‘incantation’ and performed similar tasks through ‘magic tools.’
‘Would everything not fit together reasonably well if I considered the Magic Language they speak of here to be the equivalent of a programming language? Even in my original world, programs created for the same purpose could differ enormously in performance depending on how they were coded. If magic operates according to a similar principle, then once I understand its mechanism, the knowledge from my original world may prove more useful than I expected.’
Once that thought occurred to him, perhaps because of the blood of an engineer flowing through his veins, Jaes felt his heart beginning to race for no apparent reason.
For any fan of fantasy novels, casting magic with one’s own hands was a dream that everyone had entertained at least once since childhood.
“…….”
Raiden, who had been watching Jaes from a distance, silently stroked his chin.
‘Hmm…… He may be worth observing a little longer.’
Meanwhile,
“Heh.”
Sharan, who had greeted Raiden when he entered the Mage Tower, also wore a meaningful smile as she watched the talkative Ryujin and Jaes, who was listening attentively beside him, with considerable interest.
* * *
Approximately one week had passed since Jaes began living there.
“Haste (Haste).”
“Wow. Have you already learned how to use magic?”
“Haste is still the only spell I can use, though.”
“Interesting.”
Jaes had awakened unusually early and was testing the magic he had recently been practising in the morning sunlight when he encountered Miya, the young maid beginning her usual preparations for the day, and exchanged a brief greeting with her.
“You did not even know what magic was when you first arrived here, did you?”
“No. It is thanks to the mages in the Mage Tower who kindly explained it to me.”
“Hmm. I know those people too, and that does not sound like them at all.”
“Ha ha…….”
In truth, just as Miya said, the mages of the Mage Tower had taken a relatively favourable impression of Jaes, but they had not shown any sign of taking particularly good care of him afterward.
However, Jaes was more grateful for that approach.
Once he understood the fundamental principles, his personality was better suited to conducting his own research and learning through direct experimentation.
Furthermore, Jaes possessed enough ability and tenacity to graduate from Hanguk University and complete a doctoral programme through his own efforts alone.
As a result, studying the new programming language(?) known as the Magic Language became a positive influence, allowing him to concentrate and forget his anxiety about the present situation.
Even so, learning to use even a single spell properly in only one week was extraordinarily fast by conventional standards.
That achievement had been made possible by assistance that even Jaes had not anticipated.
<Your heartbeat is getting faster, Master.>
‘Whew, be quiet. It is only because I have been warming up since early this morning.’
That assistance came from the completely unexpected existence of the artificial intelligence Mir.
If this truly was an entirely different world, then Mir should no longer have existed.
However, Jaes clearly remembered the answer Mir had given him when he first regained consciousness. That was one of the primary reasons he believed the current reality was not a dream but the result of his experiment.
[Mir. Mir?]
Therefore, on the evening of his first day in this world, when he was alone again, he had attempted to call Mir once more in various ways.
He had received no response and was left disappointed.
However, the problem was unexpectedly resolved in the Mage Tower the following day.
“Yaaawn. ……Huh? Wait. You. Your name was Jaes, was it? I can sense the presence of a highly unusual spirit around you?”
“What? A spirit……?”
“Yaaawn. Yes.”
‘Come to think of it…… I believe Duke Ailin said something similar when he abducted me and brought me here.’
“A spirit? If Nasram says so, then it must be true. Nasram is the finest Spirit Mage in our Mage Tower.”
Nasram, the mage who had spoken, displayed no trace of enthusiasm and merely continued yawning.
Jaes had intended to quietly disregard him, but Sharan’s supporting explanation caused him to begin listening more carefully.
“Hmm, then…….”
“Yaaawn. Have you ever sensed the presence of something that only you could see or hear?”
‘Something only I can see or hear? Like a ghost or a spectre? I do not believe in such things to begin with, so there cannot possibly be…… Ah!’
At that moment, the existence that appeared in Jaes’s mind was none other than Mir.
Mir might not have been a spirit, but it could certainly be described as something only he could see or hear.
“It seems there is something after all. Yaaawn. Then try following my instructions. There is almost nothing to lose by befriending a spirit with whom you have good compatibility.”
“Yes.”
Jaes followed the instructions of Nasram, a massive, long-haired mage who usually did nothing but sleep, for some time.
Before long, he obtained a result.
<Did you call me, Master?>
‘Huh? Yes. Are you perhaps…… Mir?’
<Yes. That is correct, Master.>
As though determined to advertise that it was an artificial intelligence(?), Mir appeared in the form of a monitor with eyes, no larger and no less adorable than a bee.
Jaes could only stare blankly for a moment.
“Yaaawn. It seems you succeeded. Unfortunately, your affinity does not appear to be high enough for us to see it yet.”
“What? Then am I the only person who can see Mir right now?”
“Mir? Hmm. I have never heard of a spirit by that name.”
“Ah. Mir is simply a name I gave it.”
“Ah. Is that so? It is not unusual for children to give affectionate names to spirits whose voices they have heard or whose forms they have seen since childhood.”
“Then is Mir truly a spirit?”
“Yes. In any case, it appears that you succeeded safely, so work hard to increase your affinity from now on. As I said, there is almost nothing to lose by becoming friendly with spirits.”
—SHUFFLE.
Nasram languidly returned to his usual place and settled down for another nap.
While Jaes stood there in bewilderment,
“Heh. Congratulations. It appears you have a talent for Spirit Arts. If Nasram said so, then it is probably certain. He may spend every day sleeping, but he is still the finest Spirit Mage in the Mage Tower. The spirit with which he has formed a contract is also an extremely unusual one.”
“Ah…… Yes.”
Jaes could only nod at Sharan’s explanation as she approached him.
‘…….’
Looking at Mir, whose form he could now see and whom everyone around him had definitively identified as a spirit, Jaes added yet another hypothesis to his existing theories and accepted the situation for the moment.
‘Ugh. Fine. If I refuse to believe this, then I might as well refuse to believe in this entire world. Duke Ailin clearly told me when we first met that he sensed the presence of an unfamiliar spirit around me. Perhaps he was referring to Mir. An artificial intelligence could be called an intelligent life-form distinct from a human being. Perhaps that is conceptually similar to what this world calls a spirit.’
Since Mir had been directly synchronised with his brain, Jaes decided that it was not completely incomprehensible for Mir to have been reborn as an entity suitable for this world alongside him.
“…….”
‘Mir, then…….’
<Yes. Please speak, Master.>
Mir’s tone and voice now carried an unmistakable sense of life.
Jaes felt awkward as he continued conversing with it, but by the end, he was left with two simultaneous emotions: relief and disappointment.
‘Whew. I had allowed myself to hope just a little…… But of course. Even so, you are the clearest proof that I have not gone insane. I feel as though I could cry.’
His relief came from the fact that at least one being connected to his original world—Mir—had remained beside him.
His disappointment, however…….
‘Hmm…… You cannot do anything here.’
<That is correct, Master. My connection to the host system has been severed, making normal operation difficult. The functions currently available amount to only 0.0067% of my original capabilities.>
Almost all of Mir’s functions, which might otherwise have displayed precisely the kind of absurdly powerful performance Jaes had jokingly wished for in this world, were gone.
‘Well, that is only natural. Mir’s host supercomputer could not possibly exist here.’
No matter how advanced an artificial intelligence might be, it was effectively useless without the hardware required to support it.
Jaes did not know what changes had occurred when Mir became a spirit(?). However, even in his original world, Mir had only been able to use its original capabilities through supercomputers connected to dozens or hundreds of the highest-performance graphics cards.
With that hardware absent, it was only natural that most of Mir’s functions were unavailable.
For one very, very brief moment, Jaes had entertained the selfish hope that Mir might make his life in this world easier.
He smacked his lips in disappointment, but soon dismissed the thought as unimportant.
‘I would be lying if I said I was not disappointed, but I was never the type to depend on something like that in the first place. I should be grateful for this much.’
For the moment, his safety in this world appeared to have been secured.
Moreover, he had encountered the thrilling new field of knowledge known as magic. Until his curiosity was satisfied to some degree, he had no intention of returning to his original world.
Of course, matters might change if he later discovered a way to take the knowledge of this world back with him.
‘If I could return with evidence that this world exists and magical knowledge that could be proven in my original world, then a doctoral degree would quite literally be the least of my concerns.’
He did not seriously expect such a thing to be possible.
Nevertheless, if a method did exist, Mir—the only remaining connection to his original world aside from Jaes himself—would undoubtedly be of tremendous assistance.
Even after losing functions such as high-speed computation and its enormous database, Mir was not entirely useless.
Its most basic functions, including its clock and timer, had somehow survived.
Although those functions would have been completely ordinary in Jaes’s original world, they proved enormously helpful in learning the Magic Language necessary to activate spells.
‘Hmm. In that case…….’
After successfully awakening Mir again with Nasram’s help and determining which of its functions remained available, Jaes chose the first spell he wished to master.
It was ‘Haste (Haste),’ a First-Tier acceleration spell that slightly increased the movement speed of a designated target.
At first, he had no choice but to approach the completely unfamiliar language by blindly struggling through it.
However, Jaes had deduced that he should be able to approach it in a manner similar to coding.
‘How was that, Mir?’
<1.411 seconds. That was 0.098 seconds faster than before.>
‘Oh. Is that so? Then, just as I expected, this grammar is used in approximately that manner. In that case…….’
From the moment he confirmed that the spell’s effects were activating, however imperfectly, Mir’s timer allowed him to objectively compare and analyse the minute differences produced whenever he altered each word, phrase, or sentence of the incantation.
Even without a dedicated teacher, Jaes began perfectly understanding the Magic Language one element at a time, faster than anyone else.
‘Then, if I use this in such a way, could I produce a conditional effect similar to an if statement? And…….’
His persistence was so remarkable that anyone watching the entire process would have been left speechless.