January 1999
The workshop lights flickered on as I stepped inside.
The room was cramped but dense with equipment. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with grimoires, catalyst jars, spirit crystals, and old notebooks.
At the center stood a reinforced worktable, carved with faintly glowing magic circles.
I set my bag down and carefully pulled out the sealed plastic pouch.
Inside, the golden fairy pulsed weakly.
"…Alright," he muttered.
I drew a containment circle on the table using liquid prana ink, then placed a crystal prism at each corner. Thin layers of bounded fields unfolded, forming a transparent cube of force.
I released the fairy from the bag and it drifted into the center of the formation, immediately restrained by invisible threads.
The creature twitched and faint strands of mana unraveled from its body, spreading outward like nerve endings.
I activated my circuits. Structural Analysis flooded my mind with layered information about the creature before him. The fairy was an assembled system with a spiritual core at the center and biological remains acting as an anchor. Mana channels were woven around it, forming a pseudo-nervous system.
The most interesting part was the tiny pulses of prana constantly leaving its body, vanishing into the air before he could properly trace them.
I frowned.
"…Signals?"
I quickly formed another bounded field, adjusting its parameters and tuning it to resonate with the fairy's frequency.
The air shimmered faintly. What had been invisible before suddenly revealed itself. Dozens of thin, translucent lines stretched outward from the fairy's body, spreading in every direction. They reached for the walls and faded. Each one dissolved before making contact, breaking apart into drifting motes of mana. It seemed like this creature was trying to communicate with their kin.
If there had been a core or even a proper command unit, something like Last Order, the creator would've had far less trouble controlling them.
I watched the faint mana lines flicker and collapse into nothing.
But these things aren't as unintelligent as they look. They can recognize human behavior, track reactions and adjust to social patterns. But the question is, how and why did it learn to do that? These familiars hadn't existed long enough to learn all of that on their own.
These things were half baked, leaving him more disappointed than anything.
After a moment, Kakine dispelled the additional bounded field. The lines vanished and I began putting away the catalysts and prisms I had prepared. If I was going to waste time experimenting, it should at least benefit me. My gaze shifted to a separate section of the workshop. Notes were pinned to the wall there, diagrams overlapping diagrams and spirals of equations intersecting with thaumaturgical formulae. I'd been sitting on this theory for weeks. Creating an artificial AIM Diffusion Field. If his original AIM field was tied to his personal reality… then perhaps it could be reconstructed through magecraft.
An AIM Diffusion Field was a byproduct of an espers personal reality when it was pressed against the world. You could compare it to an object and its shadow in simpler terms. If a personal reality was the core equation imposed on the world, then an AIM field was its shadow, the distortion pattern that spread from it.
AIM Diffusion fields are weak and only detectable by sensors, but they could also be measured and quantified. In theory, if I could recreate the distortion pattern artificially, I might be able to simulate the presence of a personal reality.
But the problem was the material I could work with. The closest thing I could use was a bounded field. A bounded field was the magus' method of isolating and redefining space magi layered artificial rules over a defined territory. Detection fields, concealment fields, reinforcement fields. Each one altered the "properties" of an area by imposing a crafted formula onto it. Trying to force one to imitate the other could destabilize the formula entirely and I might actually create something new altogether. As much as I was a prodigy in magecraft, the Clock Tower still possessed centuries of accumulated theory. Mineralogy. Field construction. Spiritual evocation.
Or maybe I'm looking at it all wrong. I'm still trying to put mystery into scientific terms, while the world is doing the opposite. The more we move forward, the more magecraft weakens. Maybe I have to look into magecraft as a whole and forget about my old way of learning. Should I go on the grand adventure of every magus and reach the root? Fat fucking chance.
True magic seems like a good reward but I honestly don't think it's the path I plan on taking. Actually no, I reject it entirely. Magi spend their whole lives trying to get there, and there are families that have spent centuries who haven't even glimpsed it.
So that option is automatically crossed out.
Maybe I should try creating other things from Academy City before I get to dark matter. Getting to a level 5's esper ability first thing would be rather troublesome and be a huge pain in my ass. It would be more practical to replicate smaller and simpler from Academy City. Establish a bridge between modern science and mystery first.
What would be the easiest thing for me to create through mystery? Maybe a railgun? Electromagnetic acceleration would be difficult but more manageable then something that doesn't exist.
Hell maybe I might even create my own version of last order. A fuck ton of Kakine clones to help me research material. Academy City had outlawed cloning technology entirely, but I don't even live there anymore.
Maybe I should also look into the origin as well? But the chance I could go mad and pursue it relentlessly without any hesitation. I think, I'll hold on that idea for now.
With that, I pulled a blank notebook toward myself, my pen hovering over the page.
I started sketching a design for a 'Processor-Type Familiar.' In Academy City, the Sisters worked because their brainwaves were tuned to the same frequency, creating a sub-conscious "net" that could process massive amounts of data. But most magi only use familiars for things like relaying messages or scouting which made them less useful.
I needed to create a sort of hivemind. I'll just use my own DNA map, but I don't have a cloning tank. I have clay and blood, but I'll have to do more research to get what I want. With that I stood up and walked to a shelf, pulling down a jar of high-grade alchemical clay, a vial of my own preserved blood and the heart and brain of a chipmunk. If I was going to create a network, the nodes needed to be linked to me biologically.
I began to mold the clay, but not into the shape of a human. Instead, I shaped it into a sleek, six-winged beetle, a mockery of the Rhinoceros Beetle 05 that had once replaced me in Academy City. I used the heart as the core and the brain so it can process its own thoughts.
After that I put down the rhinoceros beetle on the table and spent the next 3 hours preparing the environment. I cleared the central workbench and began laying down four distinct Bounded Fields, layered one inside the other like a Russian nesting doll.
The first was a Vacuum Field, purging the air to ensure no stray microbes or dust motes would contaminate the alchemical reaction. The second was a Stabilization Field, designed to lock the molecular vibration of the clay at a constant temperature. The third was a Prana-Filtering Field, which acted like a Faraday cage, blocking out the background "noise" of the world's natural mana.
Finally, I established the fourth and most critical layer: an Observation Field. It was simply a field where I could find any impurities within the creation, if any at all could get inside.
Then I bit my finger until blood flowed from it. With the tip of my bloody finger I began to etch runic patterns all over the thing's body. I was replicating an integrated circuit board, but they'd be more generators than magic circuits.
Then, I began to mark the creature with runic letters, layering them until they formed complex equations across its shell. The runes acted akin to a translator to bridge my intent with the world's mystery. Both the sun and the wind can be converted into energy in real time, so why not use the world as an internal reactor instead of burning my own od.
I modified the wings, etching them with a specific set of runes that acted like solar panels. In the center of its belly. I carved a "Suction" array, a small zone that worked like a vacuum for energy. Instead of air, it sucked in heat and light from the room, funneling all that raw power through the equations I'd carved into its shell and converting it into prana.
After I was finished I collapsed all the bounded fields at once. The air rushed back in, hitting the beetle like a physical weight. The white shell hissed as it met the oxygen, but the programming held. The six wings twitched and began to glow with a sharp, white-gold light as they started drinking energy from the lamps in the room.
I leaned back, watching it twitch. If he did it right then this creature should be able to take off.
"Fly."
The beetle's wings buzzed.
Nothing happened.
I frowned. I picked up the creature and examined the wing runes. The translation looked right. Volare. Latin for fly. Simple.
He set it down again.
"Fly."
Another failure, there was a slight tremor. But it didn't take off.
He sighed and grabbed his notes. The problem had to be in the translation layer. The runes were converting intent into action, but if the intent wasn't mapping properly to the physical mechanism...
He scratched out volare and tried ascendere which translates to "To rise".
Still nothing.
I scratched that out and wrote Evolare, which means to fly out.
Still nothing.
I picked it up again, turning it over in my hands. The wings were functional and they could move, but it still wouldn't fly. The heart, the clay and runes were all right but it still wasn't even hovering at the very least.
I inspected the brain and that's where I found my reason. I used a chipmunks brain and didn't fully incorporate a flight program into it. If I used a bird's brain or something similar this wouldn't be an issue but I specifically used chipmunks to save up material.
I set it down and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper. I spent the next hour designing a simple flight algorithm. Wing timing, lift calculations and balance correction. I translated it into runic scripts and began carving it into the beetle's underside, weaving the new equations between the existing ones.
When I finished, I set it down and stepped back. "Volare"
The beetle buzzed. Lifted. Hovered for three seconds. Then spun wildly and crashed into a stack of bookcases.
I rubbed temples and put my palms on my face. Gyroscope, I needed to add a fucking gyroscope to help it balance itself.
I spent like 6 hours carving shit into the beetle's shell and it started to look more like a circuit board with legs.
Finally, I set it down one last time.
"Volare."
The wings buzzed and the beetle rose smoothly, hovering at eye level. The six wings beat in perfect sync, glowing with absorbed light.
I smiled faintly looking at it. The beetle drifted forward, then back, then did a slow loop around the workshop. Its movements were stiff and mechanical, nothing like a real insect, but it was flying nonetheless.
I reached out and it landed on my palm.
My eyes burned and my neck ached from hunching over the worktable. I checked the clock on the wall, somewhere around 4 AM. I'd been at this for hours.
"Good enough," I muttered.
I waved my hand and the beetle descended, landing on the workbench. Its wings folded, the glow dimming as it entered standby mode. I stumbled toward the stairs, leaving the workshop exactly as it was. I'd clean up later. Right now, my bed is calling.
When I woke up, the sun was high up above the clouds. It was way too bright, at 7:30 in the morning.
I blinked at the ceiling for a moment, disoriented. Then I turned my head and saw the clock on my nightstand.
11:47 AM.
I stared at it.
That's not right.
I sat up, grabbed the clock, and checked again. 11:47. The red numbers didn't change.
School started at 8:30. I asked the servants to not wake me up personally because I figured I could wake up by myself, but look where I'm at now.
On the plate there was scrambled eggs with furikake, chicken links, and steamed rice. One of the servants must have left it out for me.
I dug in immediately, finishing it in ten minutes. The food helped. My head felt less foggy.
With that, I went back downstairs to the workshop to clean up my mess. There was material everywhere, blood, clay and dust all over the place. The workbench was covered in rune carvings and dried blood and my notes were scattered across every available surface.
I grabbed a trash bag and started with the obvious stuff, used tissues, empty jars, the chipmunk remains I didn't need anymore. The beetle sat on the workbench, watching me with its tiny gemstone eyes.
Thirty minutes later, the place looked brand new. You wouldn't even guess I was performing any experiments here, right?
Then a sudden ring from the telephone, hanging in the workshop. I stared at it for a second, then walked over to pick it up.
"...Hello?"
"I told you he wasn't at school," Touko's voice came through, sounding vaguely triumphant about something. Then, louder: "I need you at the office. Just some basic labor."
Kakine sighed. He really wanted to get back to work.
"How long will this take?"
"A few hours. Maybe less if you stop asking questions and just show up."
He glanced at the beetle one last time before answering. "...Fine. I'll be there."
Before hanging up.