Ch.1111 – Career Fair

Though there’s no inherent nobility in professions, societal preferences reflect the times we live in.

In some worlds, doctors and judges are treated as the highest professionals, while in others, military mages are considered the ultimate path to success, capable of reaching even imperial heights.

These were typically professions held by those with wealth, honor, and social influence in the public eye.

Doctors and judges could accumulate more wealth than other professions and enjoyed comparable prestige. Military mages were in a league of their own.

If you asked what the most respected profession is in this world, nine out of ten would answer:

Theoretical magic scholar.

Theoretical magic scholars existed in my previous life too, but they weren’t popular due to their eccentric nature, heavy workload, and meager salaries.

However, the situation in this world was completely different.

Digging deeper into the reason, it all came down to mana.

Unlike my previous life, mana here existed in a probability superposition state – both everywhere and nowhere at once.

It’s not a clear explanation, but think of it as borrowing from another dimension.

The realm where mana exists is called “Idea,” and to use magic here, one must first connect to Idea. Naturally, this process reduces efficiency.

Theoretical magic scholars are the ones working to improve this efficiency.

And that’s where the money flows.

Factories need mana, weapons need mana.

Mana boasts overwhelming efficiency compared to electricity and has become an essential element in modern industry.

People everywhere would pay fortunes for even a 1% or 0.1% increase in efficiency.

“Everyone, please hold your partner’s hand so you don’t get separated. Understand?”

“Yes!!”

In the second semester at Arabyul Elementary School, there’s a job experience fair visit for lower grades in late August.

About 500 students from first to third grade board the buses.

Since it’s within Seoul, the travel time is relatively short.

“Where should we look around first?”

“Anywhere, as long as it’s cool…”

Arin had already declared to me that she wanted to try every profession once.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested at all, but the heat was inevitably draining.

So we headed to the nearest Hall 2.

“Looks like we can learn cooking over there! NoName, do you like cooking?”

“Not really.”

I mean, you can survive just on mana potions anyway.

And I disliked eating because of the unique nausea I felt after consuming too much food.

Even in my previous life, I reluctantly ate food due to poisoning risks, and this life was no different.

“Hmm… where should we go then… you probably won’t like sports either…”

Boys rush over to challenge an AI goalkeeper in a penalty shootout.

It was a beautiful curved shot heading for the corner of the goal, but the robot goalkeeper springs out and mercilessly deflects the ball.

“There are too many people over there… I heard a famous Twissy streamer is coming today, so everyone’s going to see them. NoName, you’re not interested in that kind of thing, right?”

“Let’s go somewhere with fewer people.”

“Okay, I’ll look for a place!”

Dozens of children are lined up in front of the [InSert Catch-up Challenge! -Letterbox] booth.

Unlike most booths that use augmented reality, this one seems to have brought actual capsules for a proper virtual reality experience. That’s corporate capital power for you.

“Since you’re good at magic, how about trying the magician experience?”

“Magician” isn’t actually a profession. It’s like calling a researcher an “engineer.”

Well, it’s better than soccer at least. As soon as I showed a bit of interest, Arin dashed in that direction.

“Hello kids! Are there two of you for the magic circle drawing experience?”

Young adults in their twenties welcome us with friendly smiles.

Judging by their robes, they seem to be university students running a practical program as part of a club activity.

“Yes!”

“Then sit here, but be careful because the chairs are high!”

After Arin and I safely take our seats, we’re each given a stone tablet.

One female college student sits across from us, holding an identical tablet.

“Hello, what’s your name?”

“I’m Arin. And this is NoName.”

“Nice to meet you, Arin and NoName! My name is Dayeon. Today we’re going to write Light magic!”

Light magic is the first spell beginners learn.

It’s like printing “Hello World!” in programming.

The reason Light magic is taught first is simply because it’s the easiest, putting aside all the talk about it being the foundation of magic.

“But just Light magic isn’t very interesting, right? So we’re going to make mini fireworks!”

“Wow! Can I choose the colors too?”

“Of course! First, try putting your hand on the tablet.”

So this is a modern stone tablet.

In the past, magic circles were usually drawn on marble, but this was a type of artificially created alloy.

A cold sensation travels up my hand.

“Do you know the five stages of magic?”

“No! Please tell me!”

“The five stages of magic are recording-injection-activation-storage-casting. It can also be divided into three stages: writing-storage-casting, but today we’ll go through all five stages in detail. Shall we try it together?”

Arin slowly recites the five stages in rhythm with her.

“Would you like to try too, NoName?”

“NoName is a genius, so she probably already knows everything.”

“Oh, really?”

After that, Dayeon completely ignored me and focused on explaining everything to Arin one-on-one.

Well, I can’t blame her if she misunderstands a kid more than ten years younger acting like she knows more than others.

From a college student’s perspective, it must seem petty.

Actually, I was too lazy to respond to her enthusiasm, so it was better for me if she thought that way.

“Cast: Light! Wow, I did it! NoName, look!”

Yellow and white sparks burst in concentric circles above my head, emitting light.

Except for Dayeon helping with the mana injection process, Arin managed most of the procedure herself.

Plus, she seems to have chosen colors based on the first letters of our surname. It didn’t seem coincidental. Arin looks proud of her meaningful achievement.

“Hehe, isn’t it pretty? Make one for me too, NoName.”

Arin tugs at my arm. I can’t help it. I was definitely weak to children’s cuteness.

I learned the principle roughly by glancing at Dayeon’s explanation.

Every process was identical to what I knew, with only the “storage” process being special.

The reason for distinguishing between activation and casting as two separate processes was because of the fourth stage, “storage.”

The principle itself was closer to “linking” than storage, but it was named this way because the application method gave the impression of storing magic in a pocket dimension.

Even if a magic circle is correctly drawn, magic doesn’t naturally occur in this world.

An additional step is needed to convert an irreversible transformation into a reversible state.

While inconvenient, laborious, and time-inefficient, I actually thought this extra effort made this world safer.

At least it’s not a world where anyone can fire ice missiles just by copying a drawing.

Light magic consumes too much mana, so let me try something easier.

I draw an asymmetrical arc on the tablet.

Around it, I engrave the same pattern of arabesque synthesis formula I once taught Arin, filling in numerical rune characters before and after the operators representing my desired color, rotation direction, coefficient, and degree.

When I inject a tiny amount of mana, the arc spins around the vertical axis, transforming into a three-dimensional heart shape.

Then the inside fills with red light, floats up from the tablet, and reaches Arin.

“Cast: Well… I love you?”

With the casting, the 3D heart explodes into dozens of small heart-shaped sparks.

Even if we part someday, I should give Arin at least one unforgettable memory.

[I’m not an angel.]

[But… if someone who shares bread with us siblings every day in this hellish place isn’t an angel, then who is?]

[I’m someone who hates because your stomachs are festering, hates because you’re sick, hates because you’ve lost family to war.]

[Are you leaving?]

[The hero will come soon. The merciful hero will take care of you.]

[Don’t go.]

[I must.]

[Then please come back.]

[I can’t promise. Instead, I’ll give you this. It will be an asset more precious than a piece of bread. In our world, we call this compassion and hope.]

These useless memories surfacing must be due to my mood.

* * *

Stone tablets used once to activate magic cannot be recycled.

Objects used as mana circuits cannot function as magical pathways without going through a complex purification process, so they just need to be properly sorted and discarded.

Woo Dayeon, a theoretical physics major in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Korea University, was reminiscing about the little girl who had visited earlier that morning.

“Phew, that’s everything done until the last day. Dayeon! You’re coming to the dinner tonight, right?”

“…Huh? Sorry, I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

“I asked if you’re coming to dinner later. Don’t tell me you, who loves drinking, were planning to skip?”

“No, of course I’m going.”

“What’s that tablet you’re holding? You haven’t thrown it away yet? The recycling truck will leave soon. If you miss it, you’ll end up carrying that heavy thing all the way home.”

Subin, a fellow club member, recalled last year’s experience of forgetting to dispose of tablets and having to carry about ten stone blocks to the dinner venue.

“I was just thinking… geniuses really do exist.”

“Oh my, if our second-ranked student says that, what does that make the rest of us?”

“Want to see? Some Arabyul Elementary kids used this today.”

Subin takes the 1kg tablet with both hands to examine it.

“This is a rotation transformation matrix, right? We learned this from that bald professor in freshman year. Brings back memories. And what’s this?”

“A special form of the Baker-Campbell formula.”

“Baker what?”

“What do you think? Would you believe this magic circle was created by a first-grade elementary school student?”

“…”

“…”

“Stop teasing me! I don’t fall for those jokes anymore. How could a first grader… wait, really?”

“Yes.”

“No way! Can I take a closer look?”

Her name was NoName, wasn’t it? She was definitely an unusual child.

A small, pretty child who could pass for a kindergartener.

Her black hair, which reached her waist, was tied in low twin tails that swayed dramatically from side to side as she walked.

From the moment she arrived at the booth, the pale-faced child had been frowning with her eyes wide open.

Dayeon had thought she was just a bit arrogant, but now she realized it was just the strong impression given by her distinctive white eyes.

“Wow. She solved everything with Jacobian matrices, so the formula is only this long. This magic circle was more complex than it looked.”

Subin was right. But what shocked Dayeon most was when the child uttered the casting word at the end.

‘She definitely solved it without predetermining the casting word.’

When recording a magic circle, magic goes through the proper activation process by specifying variables and then confirming their values by repeating the variable names.

Why do we specify variables in the beginning?

Because it’s the easiest way to simplify the problem.

When solving linear equations, we can designate a variable like x.

But as we get older, we don’t necessarily do this because we can calculate the value through mental arithmetic after adding and multiplying a few times.

However, it made no sense to handle all those headache-inducing formulas without variable designation.

It essentially meant that at the moment of uttering the casting word, she had retroactively filled in the rune words corresponding to those characters.

An amazing procedure of writing variables after already knowing the answer.

If it were that easy, we’d see the bizarre phenomenon of people shouting “Ice Arrow!” in magic practice duels while shooting hot fire arrows.

It was truly extraordinary.

Dayeon acknowledged that she was intellectually superior to her peers.

Denying that she couldn’t have reached her current position through effort alone would be deceptive to some.

But there were beings who sometimes forbade comparison even with fairly talented students, like the current top student in theoretical physics, or the student council president senior who never lost first place in high school.

Comparing yourself to others only makes you unhappy.

In the end, only I can make myself progress.

Dayeon put aside her complicated thoughts, intending to spend today enjoying time with her club members.

“Dayeon! You need to take this! You showed it to me on purpose to dump it on me, didn’t you? Hey!!!”