Chapter 120.
PART 1.
James and Hatori have found a pair of broken mirrors, the same ones Hatori uses to talk with his parents. They are experimenting with it, and trying to understand how do they work. “So, this and this part are responsible for actually carrying the voice and visual feed to the other mirror, and this part is responsible for processing it.” James points out the runes responsible for these tasks.
“Hmm. that is a problem. Notice how they only work within the pairs?” asked Hatori.
“Yes, but I do think we can remove that part, and replace it with a generic one. that should let us call to any mirror.” Said James. “We’ll think about how that works later. for now, let’s try to get the basic version to work.”
“Fine. But tell me, why are we using mirrors for this?” asked Hatori, as he moved to another room to test whether their modification worked or not.
“Because mages like being fancy.” Said James. “Now, I’ll call you, and we’ll see whether our generic interface works or not.”
“Okay,” said James to the mirror. “Can you hear me?” he asked.
“Yeah, loud and clear.” Said Hatori from another room. “I assume you can hear me fine as well?”
“Yes. Go to Zeko, and show him. ask him whether he can see me or not.” said James.
“Yeah, everything is looking clear here,” said Zeko, when Hatori asked him to confirm.
“Good,” said James, disconnecting the call.
Hatori comes back, and they plan on how can they make other mirrors connect with each other without the pairing. “I think we can use numbers.” Said Hatori. “Assign every mirror a unique numeric identity, and use that to connect with each other.”
“We’ll need a way to input numbers then.” Said James.
Hatori and James pool their money together and buy five new mirrors. What they needed to do could not be done with the old mirrors they had already, so they needed some new mirrors. Hatori carves some runes on the mirror, which represent numbers 1 to 9, and 0. After that, they assigned a five-number long identity to each new mirror, and put these identities in their generic interface. After testing them, they share these mirrors among themselves.
“This is a really basic idea.” Said Hatori to Raven, who was curious about this new thing. “For now, there are no special features besides calling or receiving calls.”
“But it is still awesome!” said Shin.
“Yeah, we can talk with each other any time we like.” Said Josh.
“It’ll be a nice test to see the range as well,” said James.
James and Josh will be in the Academy, while Shin and Hatori will be on the move with their teachers. Raven will be in the castle, where his application has been accepted by the general. They all pack these mirrors before leaving Zeko’s house. Hatori has to take another mirror with him, to make sure that Zeko can communicate with him if need be.
Soon, Munshi arrives to pick up Hatori, and they leave. Zeko watches all of this worried, and feeling uneasy.
‘Dammit, get a hold of yourself. You’re not some worrying nanny!’ he berates himself.
PART 2.
Avinash arrives at the farm of Kishore Nanda, where he is welcomed by a man with a stocky build. “Welcome. You must be Avinash, right?”
“Yes sir.” Said Avinash, looking around. The farm is located outside of any city and town, the largest human settlement is ten miles away from here. the owner of this farm has a very soft voice, despite his strong build.
He notices the pen for larger animals and the hen houses. There are multiple of those. “Now, as much as I would like to offer you some time to relax, I really cannot do that. there is some work which has to be done immediately.” Avinash notices that the man is not lying, he is looking like he has recently returned from the field, and he is ready to go back there again.
“Of course, sir.” Said Avinash.
“Good. I do have some change of clothes for you. do not work in your normal clothes, because trust me, you will never be able to wear them back again.” Said Kishore with a smile.
Kishore observes the boy, as he comes back after changing his clothes. he expected a soft-looking kid, who had not done a day of hard work in his life. And to some extent, he got exactly what he expected. But Kishore did not expect Avinash to have such developed muscles. ‘It seems that the boy practices daily dueling.’ He thinks.
Dueling or not, he was expecting to handle a lot of tantrums. Kids who volunteer to learn from him often have a hard time, in a way, he is just as famous for his hard work and no-nonsense approach as Zeko. Many times, Avinash opened his mouth to say presumably that the work was below him since Kishore had forbidden him from using any magic. but the words never escaped his lips. Kishore approves of this. It is very important to keep your real thoughts hidden, instead of letting them come out through action or words.
Once Avinash cleans up, Kishore is waiting for him with the news of today. “I do hope you’re not tired, I was hoping to go through these events with you,” he said, pointing to the paper cuttings he has with him.
“I’m not tired yet.” Avinash smiled, he finally got what he came here for.
PART 3.
Raven enters the office of General Sundar, saluting just like his father taught him. salute must be perfect when you meet the general, his father drilled in his head repeatedly. Raven expected to find other people in the office, even though the general actually gave him this time, but the boy is surprised to find himself alone here with the general.
As Raven saluted him, Sundar’s hand shot up immediately in the salute of his own, without a conscious thought. “Welcome mister Raven. You do not have a military rank yet, so I cannot yell at you yet.” Joked Sundar. “I see your father has prepared you well before this meeting.”
“To be honest sir,” said Raven, “I’ve been seeing him saluting since my childhood. So, it didn’t take a lot of practice to get this down.”
“Indeed.” Said the general. He then picks up Raven’s records from his desk. “Tell me, boy, why do you wish to intern under me? your scores in other subjects are good enough, you could easily have gone in the Academic background. Though I do notice you are the champion of chess for the Academy, which you won after defeating the older and more experienced player.”
“Because this interests me, sir.” Said Raven. “Whereas going through an academic career, and not applying that knowledge sounds dreadful to me.”
The general chuckled after hearing that reply. He puts down the papers in his hands and leans back in his chair. “Well then. Here’s your first lesson. You are good with tactics, so you will be tempted to rely on them during a dangerous situation. However, during a war, tactics alone will not help you.”
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Raven listens, but the point does not make sense to him. After all, you do need tactics to win a battle. Sundar can understand Raven’s thoughts just by seeing his expression, so he elaborates his point. “Let me put this other way. amateurs look at tactics, and experts look at logistics.”
The general continues driving his point. “You see, tactics can only be successfully executed when your soldiers are not hungry, and wounds are healed. There are two specific advantages of better logistics. Supplies of weapons, troops, food, and medicine, and of course, bringing out the wounded soldiers. the first advantage is quite obvious, better movement of materials. However, the second advantage is indirect. If you can move the wounded soldiers out of the battlefield, they can survive, and potentially come back, and add their experience.” Explained general.
“Then their experiences can be carried to another battle, or we can put them in charge of other units.” Said Raven, finally starting to understand the point of Sundar.
“Indeed.” Smiled the general. ‘He seems to understand the theoretical point. I’ll give him a practical challenge to solve later.’ he thinks.
PART 4.
“Now, finding the unknown value has two steps.” Said Josh to the first-year students listening to his lecture. “For example, let’s find the value of x. when you have something like x = 12 / 3. If you divide 12 with 3, you get 4. Then it becomes 4 = 12 / 3. It makes sense, because you can multiply 4 by 3, and you will get 12.” Explained Josh. “Now, get used to this x guy. It is going to appear a lot in your future mathematical journey.”
The students laughed after hearing that. Josh is happy that his first lecture went so well. he never thought that explaining math to people could be so scary. It is one thing to explain the solution to a friend, but it is an entirely different matter to explain to some unknown people, who may or may not be looking for the slightest weaknesses.
The professor has tasked him with explaining to the first-year students some math because she believes you do not understand anything unless you can explain that to others clearly and concisely. Josh cannot dispute this claim, since he is forced to go over the basic stuff that he learned so long ago, and he is getting to improve his foundation even further.
PART 5.
Professor Amrita is feeling sad. Raven was her most promising student, and she was hoping that he would intern with her. She was looking forward to training him further. She does not resent him apprenticing under the general. There was a huge talk about this among the staff.
Some of the professors thought that he had no chance to get selected by Sundar, dismissing his win in the chess competitions as nothing. After all, just because you do well over the board, does not mean you are good enough to perform in the real world as well.
But Amrita disagreed. In her opinion, real world or on a board of a strategy game, you do need some real intellectual abilities to perform well. She is certain Raven will do well, no matter what the general throws his way.
“Professor, I have organized the documents by date, just as you requested.” Said Mira.
In the meantime, she has her own intern to look after. “Good. now, are you prepared to debate about the currency wars?”
“Yes, professor.” Said Mira, fired up for the verbal battle.
PART 6.
Elsewhere at the same time in the Academy, James is receiving an explanation of the human body from Slaughter. “In short, the human body is a machine in this world, run by the most complicated processor in this world.”
“There are many ways to break and fix this system, and you will learn all about it from me. hahahahahahaha!” cackles Slaughter.
James understands why he is named Slaughter. Surely that laughter warrants that name?
James also remembers his failure. He built a pair of artificial eyes for Hatori, which did not work because of a decaying curse. As soon as the eyeballs were implanted in his sockets, they started to decay. No one knows where this curse came from, and how to break it.
Hearing how grateful Hatori was despite his failure made James even worse about his failure, though, of course, he never told Hatori that. ‘At least I could offer him some mind protection runes to protect his mind.’ He thought.
He developed an extensive collection of defenses to protect his mind from external threats. He couldn’t let it remain open anymore, especially since he was subjected to a vile potion two years ago which imprisoned him within his own head. He still suffers from nightmares because of it.
PART 7.
Hatori sits in the self-driving car of Munshi. He wonders whether he can start a war back in his dimension with this car among the companies or not. he has to abandon any thoughts about starting corporate wars, as Munshi begins to lecture him.
“While you will notice these differences as we tackle different cases, let me explain the difference between souls and spirits.” Said Munshi. “Souls only exist among the living creatures, humans and animals alike. Whereas spirits are born from the chaos of the uncontrolled magic of the world. when a creature dies, the soul disperses in the universe, like water disperses in the sea. However, if the will is strong, the soul can remain together, and this is how ghosts are formed.”
“So, what exactly is the soul?” asked Hatori. “How it is formed in living creatures, and what stops other objects like a rock, or this car from having it?”
“Those are very deep questions. In a way, the entire field of necromancy is trying to answer them ever since we learned about them,” said Munshi.
“Okay, aside from researching spirits and souls, what else does a necromancer do?” asked Hatori.
“Well, we try to solve cases, where ghosts are causing problems, take care of troublesome spirits, and investigate crimes. While a lot of people think that we can just summon the soul of a dead person, things are never that easy. A lot of the time, we have to use the blood magic, and try to find what happened with that person in their last moment.” Said Munshi. “In short, necromancy does not solve every case.”
“What about spirits?” asked Hatori. “You said they form from the chaos of the uncontrolled magic. does that mean they can form anywhere? Even outside of this planet, and even potentially on other planets?”
“You are fortunate that I have a definite answer to this question,” said Munshi. “Yes, spirits can form anywhere, and even on other planets. However, you can’t summon a spirit from the other corner of the universe. It requires too much energy. You can use that energy much better instead of calling a spirit from the other side of the universe, which may or may not be strong enough to help you out.”
“Having said that, it is much easier, and common, to summon a spirit across from the world,” said Munshi.