On a cloudy evening, in the calm part of the city, a bakery is having its last customers. Within such a big pastry shop, a single staff is present and working. With a notable reputation, Johann is a modern gentleman who has intellect as well as a fair amount of mana, works in his bakery alone as well as being a writer in his free time. After serving the last customer, Johann closes the door of his shop and patiently waits for his experiment to finish baking.
Upon getting the scent of cinnamon, a man walks into the closed door of the pastry shop. “Oh! It is locked”, says the man, disappointed. Upon hearing his door being bumped, Johann quickly comes to the commotion. At the door, he sees his friend frantically searching for the doorknob. William – a blue-collar worker at a mine with a very inventive mind – Johann’s clumsy best friend. Letting out a sigh of relief, “Call me before you arrive, mate. If I did not hear you frantically bumping my door with your suitcase, you would not be able to taste the experimental cinnamon rolls I am making”, says Johann, popping up his bakery’s doorknob that was hidden away inside the door.
Seated inside the closed bakery, Will receives the cinnamon rolls his friend promised. Taking a bite out of the hot pastry, he puts it down onto his plate. “How is it?”, Johann asks, showing a worried reaction and taking a bite himself. “So, this is what people call a cinnamon roll. I have never had one like these before; it tastes oddly soft, like it has vanilla in it”, says William, surprised but amazed. Relieved, “It is the new technique I am trying out. Proofing the dough in a contained temperature and integrating the ingredients into the dough after proofing makes the texture less bitter and translates the taste much more into the final product”, says Johann, proudly explaining his expertise.
“Here, catch! It is a fine-tuned battery I am working on. Give it a try and connect it to your furnace”, says Will, giving a small cylinder to Johann. Upon applying the battery to the furnace, the thing glows bright blue. “It is a supposed pacemaker. The lines we use have small hiccups in the flow of mana. But that thing relieves the gaps by storing and or releasing excess mana and then using the mana when needed for a repair of the flow”, says to the curious Johann. As Will finishes his explanation and sees the battery once again, it has turned bright crimson and seem ready to burst. “Johann, get back!” shouts. The battery explodes, or rather short circuits, and leaves the building powerless. “You good, man?” asks Johann, lighting up a candle by sparking the center with a snap. “See if your conduits have power to them. You use my high-performance conduits, right? They store quite a bit of power in them, even after a power surge” says William, more worried about the building than his well-being. Inspecting the conduit line, Johann finds none of them having any power.
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As Will explained it, after switching the launcher route, the battery was inserted the wrong way. When the cylinder was inserted into the circuit, the supposed function was funneling the flow of mana into a uniform line. But when it was inserted backwards, it gathered the mana charge from every available source to one powerful surge, until it fried the intake, and the launcher shut the flow.
“Well, that was a hot mess. Where were we?” says Will, sipping tea from a cup. “I was going to ask your day. After all, yesterday’s explosion at the consulate building involved mining grade explosives” asks Johann, putting his cup down on the table. “I do not know, man. My lowly supervisors did not spill a drop of the truth. But all is good; they said it was not from our mine. Not like there were any material evidence of the explosives used anyway. The prediction was made because of the explosion radius and the power” says Will, quite annoyed. “I hope authorities catch the culprit. If they do not get caught, the integrity of the 2nd Reich would soon fail and the thousand states will erupt into another war, just like the HRE in the last century” says Johann, worried. “I wish so, too. But seeing from their action taken against me, I would say, they are useless. For quite a lot of years, I have evaded them. But the culprit has a huge list of atrocities on his tab and cameras exist everywhere so it will not be so long until they find them”, says Will. As the deep night falls on Northern Germany, the meeting between the friends near its end. Before his leave, Will raises a toast, ensuring the advancements in the search and research.
Later that night, the terrorist reveals himself as the masked figure “Li”. Hijacking a TV broadcast, he rants about the “modern racism” which discriminates those, not by their ethnicity, but by their magic and mana. “The ruling class makes people think in their own bubble as they further their own personal gain. But sometimes they create chaos among the commoners to entertain themselves – feasting on people's sorrows and feeding their thrill deprived minds” he says, in a Russian accent, before the broadcast gets abruptly halted.