episode_0165

After the morning’s commotion, the Violets fell into contemplation. It wasn’t merely because the dining hall was wrecked and a bowl of french fries had been overturned.

“We’ve found new tables and chairs for now! There’s a hole in the ceiling, but I think we can fix that somehow.”

A minor issue arose when a beam suddenly shot out of their hands, but that much was something they could handle on their own.

Their friends also weren’t injured thanks to Daphne’s quick response. They were just a little surprised.

The problem was that even after much deliberation, they couldn’t figure out why it had happened.

“It’s strange. Why did magic suddenly activate without us preparing it?”

“It was out of control!”

We gathered and put our heads together to discuss. A heated debate erupted both inside and outside the Violet Network.

“Could there have been a problem with our training? Maybe our heads got messed up from practicing too much magic all at once!”

No. 50 voiced her concern. The Violets stirred at the unexpected possibility.

“Right, our heads exploded often enough even without this. It must have had a bad effect on us!”

“Gasp! So, beams might shoot out of our hands every day?”

As negative opinions were voiced, a sense of dread secretly crept in. The thought of uncontrollable magic beams shooting out of their hands at any moment was no different from an uncontrollable bomb.

“It looks like our bodies have changed strangely!”

“What should we do? Should we wear gloves on our hands? Maybe a Hand of Destiny could block it!”

“We’ve become mutants! No!”

Some startled Violets screamed within the network.

It was enough that No. 1, who had been quiet, had to step in urgently to calm them down.

“Everyone calm down! There’s no evidence that we’ve changed strangely or that there’s anything wrong with our bodies.”

I slowly regained my composure.

Come to think of it, being so terrified without any particular basis didn’t seem like a good attitude. The Violets felt a bit embarrassed.

“Then, why did magic suddenly activate from our hands?”

“Let’s sit down and think about it. Everyone, recall what you were doing, when, and where.”

We retraced what had happened during breakfast time.

Some were frying potatoes, while other Violets were maintaining their weapons or washing themselves.

And some Violets were…

“The explosives manufacturing team was cleaning the workshop, and the security team members were patrolling around the house. The training team was all asleep.”

“Not all of them, probably? Some woke up, ate, and went back to sleep… Wait a minute, this is a magic problem. Did the training team members do something? All trainees, raise your hands.”

The Violets in the network raised their hands high. The next moment, No. 15 frowned.

“Huh? Why didn’t we realize this earlier… Hey, No. 377! What did you do?”

“Ugh… Why are you calling? Wait, gasp!”

I realized what I had done. No wonder the monument I carelessly smashed had exploded so loudly; it must not have been an ordinary object.

“Ugh! I didn’t know it would cause magic! I thought it was just a prank someone set up in the network.”

Listening to No. 377’s protest, the Violets encountered an unexpected question. No. 972 asked, “…It’s true. Was there a monument like that?”

“I’ve checked all our memories, and no one has ever installed something like that.”

“That means it appeared naturally.”

We turned our heads. In the network sky, french fries were still flying.

On the network, scenes of delicious meals or interesting situations often appeared unexpectedly, and the scenery we were currently seeing was one such phenomenon.

“It’s too artificial to have appeared unconsciously.”

That’s right, if it were created by the influence of the unconscious, it would have resembled real-world objects.

One Violet offered an opinion.

“Let’s search inside the network. There might be something similar!”

That sounded plausible.

The Violets searched through the city within the network, meticulously checking their surroundings for similar-looking stone tablets.

After about an hour of real-world time, I and the others headed towards the plaza, each carrying strange-looking pieces of stone tablets from an alley.

“Found it!”

“One, two, three… a total of three.”

Viewed up close, the stone tablets resembled complex electronic circuit boards.

One tablet looked similar to No. 377’s memory, but the other two did not.

“What are these used for?”

“It definitely looks magic-related. It looks like the spell formulas that appear before your eyes when you cast a spell!”

No. 789 stepped forward, holding a hammer.

“Let’s try smashing it first! If breaking this was the cause, then a beam will shoot out of one of our palms with a *whoosh*, right?”

Saying that, No. 789 tried to swing the hammer. No. 665 barely managed to grab No. 789 just before the tablet was smashed.

“Wait, stop! If it’s real magic, wouldn’t it be better to shoot it with a staff? Let’s have me, in a secluded spot, hold a staff. Staves are made of materials that conduct magic well. They might attract magic like a lightning rod!”

That was a pretty good idea. The Violets who were playing on the deserted island quickly took out their staves and aimed them at the beach.

“Alright, then I’ll smash it. One, two, three!”

No. 789 swung the hammer and smashed the stone tablet. Mysterious, shimmering magic surged rapidly like fireworks towards the ceiling from inside the tablet. At the same time, I felt my magic being forcibly drawn away somewhere.

“Whoa! It’s just like in my memory!”

At the same time, No. 1002, who had been waiting on the deserted island holding a magic staff, was horrified. An unactivated magic circle appeared at the tip of her staff, and magic gathered and condensed.

“It’s real! It’s firing!”

Soon, a thin red beam struck the seawater. Steam rose with a *hissing* sound. The beam immediately faded, but all the Violets who witnessed the sight trembled with excitement.

“Th-this is!”

Indeed it was. Although its power and range were terrible, the magic beam that had burnt down the dining hall and shot out from the staff was none other than the melting ray we had so desperately wanted to master.

“It’s incomplete, but it was a melting ray!”

“Amazing!”

Suddenly, a thought flashed like lightning through my mind. Perhaps, in an unexpected place, we had discovered a breakthrough for our stagnant magic training.

After smashing all the remaining stone tablets, our conviction grew even stronger.

“It’s coming out! Wave of Crimson Flame!”

“Berserker’s Strike!”

Magic emerged from the staff. Small waves of flame rippled from the ground, scorching the sandy beach, and an electric orb shot out, bursting with a *pop*.

These were the spells we had failed at before!

The excited Violets chattered away.

“This stone tablet, its shape is strange, but it’s definitely a magic spell formula. If we have a lot of these, we can just *blast* magic without needing to calculate the spell formulas!”

This was a discovery of a magnitude similar to primitive humans discovering fire. Overwhelmed with emotion, we decided to name this stone tablet.

“It looks exactly like an electronic circuit. How about calling it a Magic USB?”

“No! This thing looks like an SD card, doesn’t it? From now on, this is a ‘Vision Memory Chip’!”

After a brief, lively discussion, we agreed to call this stone tablet a ‘Vision Memory Chip’. It was a name taken from the artifact we had seen in a previous adventure, the Vision Prism.

“If we just mass-produce these…” “We’ll be able to unleash a lot of magic without any preparation!”

The Violets dreamed, if only for a brief moment, of becoming Archmages.

***

Sadly, where we thought we had found a breakthrough, we encountered another obstacle.

“How do we make them?”

We struggled to reproduce the Vision Memory Chips we had seen in the Violet Network.

It was clear they were created during the process of magic training, yet we failed to recreate them.

Attempts to manufacture Vision Memory Chips led to two outcomes: either magic was perfectly cast, or simply magic power was wasted.

“It’s strange! Why aren’t they appearing!”

We put forth several theories. One Violet argued that Vision Memory Chips were products of the unconscious, and thus would naturally appear in the network during magic training.

Another Violet impatiently searched the network, claiming the memory chips only lasted for a short time, so they had to be found quickly.

“Aren’t they underground? There must be a memory chip mine here!”

“Idiot! There’s no ground in the Violet Network!”

They even went so far as to try mimicking spell calculations within the network, or changing the internal appearance of the network to a mine, a factory, or a magic training ground.

“Ugh! Why aren’t they appearing!”

When no answer came even after eating a late lunch, we decided to seek expert advice.

“Professor-nim, is there a way to store magic?”

During a break in a private tutoring session, an opportunity to ask arose, so I asked Professor Albert. The professor replied with a look that seemed to say, “You don’t even know that?”

“A way to store magic? Of course there is. Artifacts or magic equipment, for instance.”

“Not those. What I meant was, is there a way to store magic inside a person’s mind? The spell formulas, I mean. That way, you wouldn’t need to cast the magic; you could just retrieve and use it immediately, like a unique ability.”

The professor indicated a negative.

“Ah, so your question is, if you can prepare a spell formula beforehand, then store the completed spell formula back into a person’s mind and use it again, like taking money out of a wallet? To put it bluntly, it’s impossible. It would be faster to put cigarette smoke back into a cigarette. It’s no different from trying to solidify and store a flame in its original form.”

“But fixed spell formulas in magic equipment or barriers are different. You can keep using them just by injecting magic power, right?”

“Magic circles and various circuits in equipment have physical substance and are fixed. In contrast, human thoughts have no physical substance. Naturally, there’s no means or vessel to fix and contain ever-changing thoughts. By what means would you store a spell formula?”

The professor’s words were reasonable.

“Then how do skilled mages cast several spells at once? I thought they prepared the spells in their minds beforehand.”

“That’s a skill only mages proficient in computation can achieve. To draw a comparison to reality: a computer seems to do many things simultaneously, but in fact, it can only do one thing at a time. It’s just that its speed is so incredibly fast that to the human eye, it appears to be doing multiple things at once. It’s the same for mages.”

“I see.”

Even after that, I continued to ask the professor questions, but I didn’t gain any special clues.

“Creating a framework for thoughts and storing them? I’m not sure. The professor is right. Maybe we’re on the wrong track?”

“It might really have appeared by chance.”