...
Place: Alexander's (new) Laboratory
Time: Midnight
Under the moons soft glow, the Leonandra estate was quiet, disturbed only by the footsteps of the roaming guards and the occasional snoring of their draft monsters.
However, it didn't explain the new appearance of an unusual noise, and if one tried to find the source, they would quickly arrive at the newly constructed lab, which was made for artificing.
Inside, dozens of mana gems illuminated the room, revealing the chaos within. Piles of gems cluttered one corner, metallic plates lay haphazardly on the floor, and healing talismans dangled from the ceiling. Once meticulously equipped, the lab had fallen into disarray under Alexander's relentless experimentation, just like all his other workshops.
He paid no mind to the disorder as he sat at his workstation—a large table, once intricately engraved by proud artisans, was now marred with scratches and burn marks. Those artisans would indeed weep if they saw what had become of their life's work.
Unfortunately for the artisans, Alexander liked the sturdy table and would soon order more since he wouldn't know how his latest experiment would proceed—the table was cluttered with metallic plates embedded with mana gems, a dangerous situation for the piece of meticulously crafted wood.
However, the boy endangering the table mirrored the disarray of the room—his greased hair tied back in a ponytail, his clothes torn and stained with ink and grime from his work—far from his noble appearance in court or during his passionate speeches.
The room echoed with the sound of his tinkering, accompanied by the rhythmic tapping of his foot to a tune from his past life, as his tail swayed comically on the floor, collecting dirt as it was used as a broom and metronome.
Alexander was too engrossed in his work to notice the time or the noise he made. For once, he could indulge in his obsessive tendencies without Lili's presence.
He couldn't help but enjoy the casual atmosphere, a pleasant contrast to the self-inflicted pressure he had endured.
Alexander had embraced a newfound sense of calm in the weeks since creating the necessary gunpowder for the Camp and his Grandmother. He could now focus solely on himself.
As such, he would experiment in his free time on whatever he found exciting and trained to his heart's content. Freedom was a strange and liberating thing, which he missed.
Even though he still had some responsibilities, he could entrust the bulk of his work to others, a trait his parents praised, knowing how difficult delegation could be for the talented.
Because of that praise, he didn't mention that he had, in truth, some difficulties entrusting his life's work fully to others, but he could alleviate it by the weekly status reports he received.
Those mentioned all his current projects and how they were going—schools were about to open, social work was exceptionally well received, the Temple and Healers Union healthcare project was successful, and he made money like there was no tomorrow with his mana products.
The train project was also progressing smoothly. Alexander's Father had connected him with skilled artisans and enchanters who were bringing his design to life, as his prototype was nothing but a rocket strapped to the top of a metal box on a rail.
The remaining details were being worked out, with Alexander leading weekly meetings to answer questions and brainstorm ideas. He overlooked too many things to count, and his blueprint was nothing but an idea. As an example, and a very embarrassing one, he forgot one crucial aspect—how to stop the train.
However, because even his parents saw its value, he was allowed to test it in a designated area in the Northern District, where it regularly malfunctioned and exploded, as heard by many—such was technological progress, one of too many noise complaints.
'Hm, I have at least the fundamentals covered—' He smirked as his ego swelled up, '—and it only cost me—' He chuckled in self-deprecation, '—uncountable sleepless nights and so much gold, I could buy a fucking city.'
Since Alexander started his projects, he had always felt uneasy. He wanted to create a world where everyone could have a better life. Still, one had to start with the fundamentals—education, mental care, social care, and infrastructure.
Having established and financed his initiatives, all he could do now was wait—at least a decade or two—for them to take root.
Hopefully, other territories would recognize their value and either adopt them or assist The Helping Paw in establishing subsidiaries, perhaps with the help of some tax incentives, as otherwise, he wouldn't be able to set them up.
Did he resent pouring so much gold into these projects while others would reap the profits? No, because he valued something much more—his reputation, which would spread through every city alongside his ideas.
Unfortunately, in a world where every ruler wields immense destructive powers, Alexander knew he needed strong connections and considerable strength to oppose antagonistic behaviors.
Fortunately, though, his influence and power were growing, and he anticipated strengthening these ties when the future rulers arrived for the exchange, scheduled in a few months.
In addition to strengthening himself, Alexander also needed his future allies to grow stronger and forge connections with each other.
While they were all of the same blood and were generally on good terms, it wasn't enough—he needed to improve his people so they could defend against the shadows he saw everywhere.
There was a lingering feeling of restlessness and anxiety gnawing at his mind. Unfortunately, it wasn't simply paranoia but the fear of the logical conclusions he deduced from the little information he acquired.
Others like him existed; depending on their intentions, they could instantly shatter his ideals. All it would take was for them to be born into a more powerful family with values he found abhorrent.
This constant fear drove him always to feel as though he was perpetually racing against unseen forces—ones that could emerge at any moment to impose a new world order.
Totalitarian ideologies repulsed him, whether secular or religious—especially those that had driven him from his country and killed his parents.
Whatever the threat, he couldn't afford to remain idle. That's why he continued to prepare for the future, even if it meant doing so more casually while he waited for his other projects to take root.
One of the measures Alexander had been preparing was something he had been contemplating for a long time.
His mood switched quickly to delight as he looked at what was before him, 'Look at these hideous cuties!'
It was a primitive calculator capable of adding numbers. While many dismissed the idea as trivial or even foolish when he explained it, Alexander knew better. They simply couldn't grasp the magnitude of what he was attempting.
"Waste of time? This is the future!" he screamed while alone in the lab, becoming more excited as he thought about it.
Computers, after all, were fundamentally nothing more than incredibly fast calculators. While his current creation would be slow and rudimentary, it was only the beginning. In time, it could perform billions of operations in the blink of an eye.
'The possibilities—' Alexander grinned stupidly, as he imagined how mana could accelerate calculations or even alter the fundamental ways a system processed information, '—if it is possible to recreate lightspeed conditions to travel into the future in spatial items, what is even the limit for a computer?'
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He imagined superstate quantum computing, where calculations could be performed across multiple states simultaneously, opening doors to practical AI development that might even approach the singularity.
Alexander blushed, getting excited as the ideas piled on top of each other, and he didn't know where to start. But as his eyes settled back on the chaotic assembly before him, reality quickly tempered his enthusiasm.
He frowned, 'Look at this mess—' he sighed, watching how his marvelous ideas burst one by one like bubbles, '—let's first figure out how I can add numbers automatically.'
Before him lay several metallic plates, each embedded with 32 mana gems sloppily welded into place. Different colored wires snaked around the gems, connecting them in a tangle that spoke more of trial and error than precise engineering—a specialty of his.
The wires were anchored to a metallic rod crudely embedded in a larger gem further down at the bottom, constantly emitting a glow.
On the opposite side of the larger gem, another rod protruded, wrapped with other wires connected to a different set of mana gems on a secondary metallic plate. This plate was more orderly, the gems arranged meticulously in rows and columns, resembling a digitized clock.
'What a fucking mess.'
The connections were barely stable, but it was only the start, a stepping stone to something far greater—the cradle of computing or a very horrific housefire.
The crudeness of the components wasn't by accident. Alexander deliberately chose the cheapest options, unwilling to waste too much gold on a simple prototype that could blow up every second.
He used fluorescent mana gems—highly cheap and largely overlooked. Because nobody could use mana, there was little demand for these gems, and few saw the value in mining them.
But Alexander saw their potential. Seizing the opportunity, he purchased two mines in the Eros Alliance territory and one in the Nine-Fire territory for a modest 100,000 average gold coins.
He knew that their value would skyrocket once mana skills became more accessible, enabling people to infuse objects with it easily. When that happened, these gems could be used as light bulbs with an almost infinite life cycle.
For now, though, their primary use was to be used in lamps for the wealthy. Each was built with a transformer that converted energy into mana, and, in his opinion, they were pretty overpriced, at 100 large gold coins apiece.
But Alexander had found a different use for them: he stored mana in the gems. They were exceptionally suitable for this purpose, serving as ideal storage units—a godsend for his calculator project, as he couldn't even imagine where to begin if he had to create storage components from scratch.
"So, let's hope it works better this time—" Alexander sighed, recalling his previous failed attempts, "—Well, besides wasting my time and embarrassing myself, what else do I have to worry about?"
He inserted a sliver of mana into the empty mana gem on the top right, which immediately absorbed it and glowed brightly.
"1."
Next, he added mana to the second gem on the left.
"3."
Alexander's first calculator operated on a binary system. The gems were arranged in rows of eight, starting from the top right and moving to the left.
Each subsequent mana gem represented a value of 2^n. When lit individually, the first gem represented 1, the second 2, the third 4, the fourth 8, and so on—each gem's value doubling as it progressed.
By combining them, the gems could represent different numbers. For example, adding mana to the first and second gems meant 1 + 2, totaling 3.
Lighting the second and third gems equated to 2 + 4, which added up to 6. If the first three gems were lit, they would represent 1 + 2 + 4, summing to 7.
Also, the gems didn't need to be neighboring to be combined. For instance, lighting the first and third gem represented 1 + 4, totaling 5.
However, these values weren't inherent to the gems but were assigned by Alexander. The gems held no intrinsic value. In practical terms, they were just some gems in four rows that lit up.
Yet, this was more than just a simple toy to learn how a binary system functioned. It was a calculator that should add numbers together, which he was about to do.
"Now—" He was full of anticipation.
When he lit up the first two mana gems on one of the plates, he touched the larger gem, which gleaned brightly between the arrays of smaller gems, absorbing its mana.
When the large gem became empty, the mana from the smaller gems started to flow through the wires toward the larger gem. Alexander then touched the rod protracted from the side where the mana came from, forcing the mana out through his skills.
The mana from the larger gem moved through the wires into the lower plate. After circulating through the gems multiple times, the mana began to sort itself in a specific pattern.
Not only did the mana gems in the corners illuminate, but all the smaller gems between them, too. As they lit up, they displayed a numerical value.
"2—fuck!" Alexander's right eye twitched in irritation, but he controlled his frustration, letting out a sigh. "—Well, where is the fucking bug now?"
Creating a simple calculator turned out to be a painstaking task—something Alexander couldn't help but think about sarcastically as he nearly grabbed one of the plates, tempted to disintegrate it out of sheer frustration.
The principle was straightforward: Alexander carved the insides of the mana gems, ensuring they could hold a specific amount of mana, which would correlate to a number when combined.
It was only possible because he discovered that by using [Mana Vibration] and [Mana Compression] together, he could manipulate the internal structure of the gems. These skills allowed him to compress or expand the space within each gem, enabling it to hold more or less mana as needed.
The faster the vibration with as little mana as possible, the more space he could carve out, making the storage for mana larger. On the other hand, the slower the vibration with as much mana as possible, the more mana he could add, making the mana storage smaller as his mana would be embedded into the gem itself.
As a side note, the gem's brightness was directly related to the amount of mana it contained—the brighter the gem, the more mana it held.
However, an unexpected side effect was that the gem would emit a short but intense burst of light if overloaded, essentially functioning as a flashbang. Narsiz had accidentally discovered this, blinding himself for a day—a true inventor.
Regardless of Narsiz's amusing accident, Alexander could create now mana gems that would hold specific amounts of mana. Then, he only needed a creative algorithm, and the mana would sort themselves out.
Fortunately, it also only worked because the mana gems behaved in a way he abused to create said algorithm. When connected, the gems never tried to distribute mana evenly, but they tried to fill as many gems as possible before settling in the one left with the smallest storage space.
It was a crude solution, but it was the best he could devise with the resources and knowledge at hand. A better way would be to use logic gates, but he would implement those later using the gem's intrinsic behavior toward mana.
"Okay, let's see—" he mumbled, frustrated as he began rechecking each gem, a finicky and tedious process at best.
Each gem's amount of mana was explicitly adjusted to work with his algorithm. Each number displayed by numerous gems should have a different amount of mana, forcing him to choose a mana value for some storage spaces that were hard to carve out.
As he worked for hours, his thoughts drifted away. He remembered that he was also criticized for something else, as some thought he had created something similar to a calculator.
They were referring to how he had modified the system window spell to display the optimal range for [Attributes]—something many found incredibly useful since it eliminated the need for manual calculations.
But that spell was only partially automatic and couldn't act as a calculator. It merely referenced a value. For example, if someone had X [Strength] at [Level] Y, the spell would select the corresponding value from a pre-constructed table Alexander had designed inside the spell's construct.
He had dozens of versions of it, tweaking it for all kinds of cases, but no calculations were involved, just pre-determined ways of taking a number and referring it to a value.
The spell in itself was not created to calculate anything. It functioned by overlaying a layer over the system window that displayed whatever changes the caster wanted.
However, mana didn't inherently understand numbers. The caster had to meticulously recreate the desired data from their window by literally redrawing it, using nodes and lines.
The pictures he created worked similarly, with lines and nodes of mana inside smaller constructs that used light to create visible colors and forms.
However, because of how it worked, the overwhelming complexity of his last system window drove him to start building a calculator. The construct had become enormous, requiring an Outer Circlish level of control to manage.
Fortunately, something great came out of it—Janina loved to play around with it, creating all sorts of pictures, which made her acquire a skill called [Mana Drawing], which Alexander didn't get for some reason.
'Hm—' Alexander suddenly came out of his thoughts when he noticed that he checked the last gem. He leaned back, looking at his messy but adorable calculator, '—I think I am done.'
After resetting his calculator, he injected mana into the first and second mana gems, lighting them up.
"3—" His smile broadened, "—let's see."
He quickly tested every combination he could think of, making the gems light up rapidly, with numbers appearing one after another.
"Everything works!—" He opened his arms as wide as he could. Though exhausted, he felt a profound sense of accomplishment, believing he had just created the first functional calculator.
Eager to test it further, Alexander quickly repositioned all the plates and infused them with mana, his smile morphing into pure madness.
"Now, for my magnum opus!"
He opened his normal system window and entered all his skill levels into it to calculate his [Level] and [Tier]. It worked perfectly, even though it was slow and laborious.
"Oh fuck yes... huh?"
He suddenly heard so many pings that it became absurd. A sensation of unimaginable joy overcame him, followed by a sudden loss of all his stamina. His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto the table, unconscious.
Alexander had pushed himself too far. His Mother had once told him about cases where someone leveled up rapidly, receiving powerful prefixes like [Absolute] or [Greater] in quick succession, which could strain the body to the point of unconsciousness. Apparently, it had just happened to him.
The system window: https://chiruschka.github.io/Supersum/chapter183.html