As we walked through the streets of the Capital, X and I mostly kept to ourselves. Outside of the duel that we’d had, the two of us had never really interacted directly with each other. Generally, Ash or Duke has been there to take on the role of middleman, and interact with both of us at the same time. Now, however, it was simply the two of us, with nothing really to talk about.
While we were walking, I took a look at the streets around us, at the effect that the riots had had on the Bazaar. Now, technically, the Bazaar was still ongoing, but for all intents and purposes, it was effectively canceled. Lining the streets, where a few days previously there had been rows upon rows of merchants, laying down towels and displaying their wares, there were now only the sides of the buildings, and the odd abandoned item that someone had dropped when they fled and left. Under normal circumstances, I would go through all of these abandoned items and see whether any of them were worth keeping, but for now, I had two really big things that I needed to focus on, and couldn’t afford any distractions.
I had undersold the danger a bit so that Ash wouldn’t be too concerned, but what I was planning on doing was absolutely batshit insane. She was comforted by the fact that the Royal Family hadn’t noticed me sneaking into their castle, and from that, she determined that whatever kind of magic I used to keep myself undetectable was something that they had no way of seeing through, but there were two major differences between the two situations.
The first difference is the fact that the Royal Family has a perfectly valid reason to not even consider the possibility that someone would sneak into their castle. After all, most likely the number of people outside of the Royal Family who could survive the sheer amount of soul damage that the castle inflicts on you can probably be counted on a single hand. If I hadn’t removed all of the Spectral Quartz from my soul beforehand, and if I hadn’t had a contract with Sophia that constantly grew my soul far faster than the common way of healing from soul damage, I wouldn’t have even been able to get close to the castle.
The second difference is that the day that I snuck in, it had been a completely normal day. Sure, there were riots throughout the city, but those had all gone according to their plans. All of the actually strong people who could potentially enter the castle that were involved in the riots, were members of the Royal Family, or members of the Royal Guard. This meant that the chances that the riots would end up causing their castle to be infiltrated were next to zero. However, today, they would have discovered the dead body of one of their members, and would likely be looking for the culprit. Not to mention that I was about to do something that would catch not just their attention, but the attention of practically the entire damn Kingdom. What did that mean? Well, it meant that this time, they’d actually be looking for me, and I had no idea what kinds of detection magic they could use.
The second thing that I needed to worry about concerned me significantly less, and would only be a matter of location and timing. I had to find a way for me and X to settle it without being noticed by anyone else, and catching the attention of the Royal Family too soon. After all, handling this delicate situation would probably end up a little…explosive. I had to find a way to both keep everything out of anyone else’s sight, as well as soundproof everything that was about to happen. I had X help me search for the right spot, with everything that we’d need to accomplish both.
Due to the risk of potentially being noticed, the best time for us to handle the situation was right before we ended up following through with the plan. After all, once I started, we would most certainly be noticed, so drawing a little bit of attention right beforehand wouldn’t actually end up changing all that much. This meant that we would need to wait until we got close to the center of the Capital, which was still a few hours of walking distance away.
I spent the time chatting with Sophia aimlessly, trying to relax a little bit and get my mind off of what was about to go down. If we looked too conspicuous, we might end up getting stopped by someone before we actually managed to set off the plan. This is something that I couldn’t allow to happen, and if it did, I could consider the entire mission a complete failure. I would have no way to talk myself out of being caught, brought before the Royal Family, and executed. Well, I would be able to slip out and into the subspace, but then I’d end up having to exit right into their waiting arms. How long would I have to hide before I could come out? Months? Years? Would they station a constant guard around the spot where I disappeared, ready for the day in which I returned?
The pair of us talked about nothing really all that important. We discussed her ideas on the homework assignment that I’d left for her and Duke. We talked about where I’d want to go once my current job is done, whether I’d head for mountains or beaches. We talked about when the moon would be in the proper phase on both of our worlds for us to finally get the measurement of how far away the moon really is, which would also tell us how big it is.
The next couple of hours were me explaining to her exactly how I intended to determine the size of the moon from its distance, and I’m not going to lie, this would be incredibly tricky. The general plan was that I was going to make a carefully measured ‘approximate inch’ of thread, and then use nine of them to form a 90 degree cut of a circle. I would then mark each ‘approximate inch’ on the end of that circle with 9 marks outside of the main 8. This would cause us to end up with 90 equal and individual segments, each representative of a 1 degree angle, essentially making a protractor.
From there, I would place the protractor down on a level surface, measuring how many degrees the moon covers from our position, as well as what angle the middle of the moon lays on. The angle between the bottom of the protractor and the middle of the moon, would tell us what angle we would need to end up in when we leave the planet’s atmosphere, in order to end up in line with the moon. The number of tallies that the moon covers, meanwhile, would give us the angle of the triangle that’s formed between the base of the moon and the distance between the moon and us.
For example, let’s say that the number of tallies that the moon covers is five. This means that we would draw an isosceles triangle, where the top angle is five degrees, and the bottom two angles are 87.5 degrees. Then, bisecting that triangle would give us two new triangles where the top angles are 2.5 degrees, one of the bottom angles is a right angle, and the other angle is 87.5 degrees. That bisecting line through the middle would then be our distance to the moon, or the adjacent line. Then, the line that runs opposite of our original 5 degree angle would be our opposite line, which would also represent the radius of the moon.
From there, we would only need to double it to get the diameter of the moon, which is really the only number that we need, since that’s the distance that Veronica would need to be able to stretch her binding magic to collect the whole thing. You may notice from the italicized words, that there’s a very convenient math tool that we could use in order to find it, namely sine, cosine, and tangent.
In this particular case, we would be looking for the tangent. Mathematically, it would look like this:
Stolen story; please report.
Tan(x) = opposite/adjacent
Which, if we put in the values that we know, would end up looking like this:
Tan(5 degrees hypothetically) = radius of the moon/measured distance to the moon
Then, once we rearrange it to solve for the value that we actually want, it would look something like this:
Radius of the moon = Tan(5 degrees hypothetically) x measured distance to the moon.
Now, whip out any old calculator, and you could solve this easily. The only problem is that I don’t have a calculator that can automatically calculate Tan(5 degrees hypothetically) for me. This means that I’ll have to do it freehand, which I have no clue how to do. Thankfully, tangent is a proportion that remains, no matter how large the triangle gets. What does this mean? Well, it means that I can make a smaller scale representation of this triangle, and from there, forcibly measure the tangent proportionality myself, using the lengths of the two lines as a basis. This won’t be perfect, and will end up in another rough approximation, but I’ll make sure to note all of my margins of error, and their compounding effects.
So far, the margins of error that I know of are as follows:
When measuring the distance to the moon, I will be relying on counting the sound of clicking coming from one of my enchanting devices, so while I’ll absolutely know how many whole seconds passed between the radio frequency light being emitted and its return, I will have to approximate how many fractions of a second it took, making my margin of error for that amount of time roughly a quarter of a second. This means that the margin of error for my distance to the moon is about 47 thousand miles.
When measuring the angle of the moon, I will be relying on handmade equipment and eyesight, and the correlating human error, which means that my margin of error for measuring the moon is one degree, which means that my proportioning of the radius of the moon to the distance measured could be off by about 0.01. Now, this doesn’t sound like a lot, but when dealing with such massive distances, it could take a calculated 10,000 mile diameter and add an extra 100 miles to it. And as I’ve mentioned to Sophia, I wouldn’t be surprised if the diameter of the moon that we’re trying to steal is closer to 50,000 miles, which would correlate to an extra 500 miles.
Altogether, we should factor in the potential for about a 1500 mile margin of error when it comes to my calculation of the diameter of the moon, so if I end up calculating it to 50,000 miles, Veronica will end up needing to be able to stretch her binding magic for 52,000 miles just to be extra safe. And when it comes to margin of error for calculating the travel to the moon, well, I have a few plans on how to make the probe that I intend to use to create the doorway to the moon be able to correct its course, so that won’t be too much of an issue, assuming that there isn’t a ludicrous amount of debris up in space, disallowing a clear line of sight.
As I went over all of this with Sophia, I felt myself grow calmer, my heart rate slowing down, the sweat on my brow ceasing its flow, and my thoughts growing increasingly less paranoid. It seemed like just another day, chilling in the subspace with my wife, teaching her all about the science and math stuff that interests me, and enjoying watching her face as she struggles desperately to keep up and pretend to be interested, especially seeing as she’s the one who requested I teach her about it so that she could be more involved in the process.
All in all, it was a pleasant trip for me, as X and I made our way to the central area of the Capital. Now that we were here, it was time for us to pick out the place for us to handle the little something that came up before I went up and kicked everything off. It was difficult to find an empty building here, as anyone who lived in the Capital would all try and move as close to the castle as they possibly could, in order to get the benefits of being just a little bit nearer to all of that Spectral Quartz. Not to even mention the social status aspect of residing closer to the castle. However, after about half an hour of searching, we finally found one. An empty house. I wasn’t sure if it was completely abandoned, or if the people who lived here were simply away for the moment, but all in all, it would serve our purposes splendidly.
I had X stand guard as I used magic to pick the lock and entered the house, then went around, using more magic to fortify all of the walls, and even cast a large vacuum barrier to prevent any sound from exiting this place, along with some light magic on top of the vacuum barrier that would show an image of the house as I’d originally seen it, so that nothing that happened inside would become visible. Now, the only things that neighbors might notice are any potential tremors through the ground originating here, although hopefully, they wouldn’t grow too curious and come investigating. After all, with what’s about to go down, anyone who comes close would risk getting caught up in it, and I doubt that Ash would be too happy with me killing random innocent citizens in the process of completing the plan to help them.
After I went through the first round of preparations, I sent a message to Sophia, asking if she had any advice, or if there was anything that I missed that I would need to take care of.
“I still think you should have told Ash about this. She really should know what she’s asking you to do.”
“Are you kidding? All that would have done is worry her unnecessarily. Come on, we’ve talked about this, I have everything under control. Will it be just a little more dangerous than I let on? Sure, maybe, but at the end of the day, you guys know that I’ll be fine. Besides, if she knew about this…all it would do is hurt her, and she’s been through enough, you know? Let me be cool just this once, and take care of the problem before it bites her in the ass.”
“I’m worried about this problem biting YOU in the ass Leo. Sure, you’ll probably be fine physically, but mentally? This will probably hurt you a lot, and you’ve been through enough too. I get that you have that whole, ‘I’m already broken’ stance, but even so, there’s no reason for you to shatter yourself even more for someone else’s sake.”
“This won’t shatter me Soph. You know that. There are only two people in this world who are even capable of hurting me in any conceivable way. This will just be another day for me.”
I walked out of the building once all of the preparations were complete, and thanked X for standing guard, bringing him inside so that we could take care of the problem that came up. The two of us barricaded all of the entrances, and pushed any remaining furniture over to the sides so that they wouldn’t get damaged. I then pointed out some walls, telling him that they were fortified, and pointed at others, explaining that I’d left them alone so that we’d have an escape route. I then told him about the first part of the plan, where I would fly out the information battery up into the sky, escorted by my two flying knives. The goal was to find the height at which the entire Capital would be able to best see evidence that the Royal Family was intentionally lighting the flames of Civil War.
“However, there’s one problem with this, as I’ve mentioned to Ash, and I’m sure she’s mentioned to you. When I have my maximum number of knives flying around, I can’t really pay attention or respond to anything in my surroundings, which means that your job,” I pointed to Lord Xavier, “Is to stand guard and protect me from our surroundings. You understand?”
Lord Xavier nodded gravely, and I reached into the subspace, pulling out the information battery, as well as two more flying knives, sending them out the window and into the air. I then walked to the middle of the room, and sat down, with X standing over me, watching. Waiting. I sent my three airborne devices higher, and higher, trying to look out and see the edges of the Capital from all around, as my senses of what was around me started fading.
I heard muffled words as my knives and the battery gradually climbed into the sky.
“.o. ..v. …. .it..s..d .al… a…….g … k….om .. in..t… ..b.l…”
Due to the nature of the Capital, it didn’t exactly form a perfect circle. Instead, it gathered around the mountain upon which the Castle was built, and from there, continued to stretch outwards. From the height that my equipment has reached so far, I could see the border directly across from the mountain, but not the border that stretched from the sides of the mountain. Perhaps this would have been easier if we had decided to cast the spell from the mountain top, but that would have been an absolutely terrible plan for soon to be obvious reasons.
“In a..ord..ce .it. the ..ws o. … k..gd.m, I se.t..ce ..u to de.th”
Finally, I was able to get the full scope of the Capital from the sky. I had finally found the correct height from which whatever I displayed would be able to be seen by everyone at the same time. Now the only issue was how to make it big enough and loud enough for everyone to properly understand what they were seeing. But before I could worry about that, I had to deal with the certain situation that had ended up coming about.
“M.y th. .ods ha.e mer.. on ..ur soul.”
A blade flashed, and penetrated into flesh. Warm, thick, red liquid flowed across the floor of the house that we were inhabiting, and a gut wrenching scream howled through the building, unable to be heard by any of the surrounding people or houses, and a bright flash of scarlet light seemed to consume everything, but likewise, could not be seen by anyone around. A perfect allegory for a meaningless scream into the void of an indifferent universe.