Mage? Magic Engineer!

"Unit 2-101 ready!" "All units ready!"

The former technician—the Empire Army’s "Legendary Commander" from the Second Battle of Moncado Fortress—had been entrusted with a great responsibility. He was now in charge of all the Forbidden Magic Devices along the entire Helmut Defense Line.

The humble technician’s promotion to "Empire Skill Tyrant" had all the other tech grunts watching in eager anticipation. With a heart full of honor and excitement, he nodded. "Begin."

The Forbidden Magic Devices had already been iterated to their fourth generation. They no longer required the roar of a Steam Engine to start, their activation time was significantly reduced, and their duration was greatly extended.

The new model was powered entirely by a strange substance called "Dulled Transmuting Dust." It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. Even the "Empire Skill Tyrant" couldn’t figure out when the Empire Army’s logistics department had managed to acquire such a useful High-Energy Magic Power Source.

The final preparations were complete. The Radio Communication Skill went silent, replaced by non-magical radio communications reverse-engineered from the skill. As the devices along the defense line confirmed their status one by one, the Helmut’s "Wall of Sighs" system began its first full-scale test run.

"Have some mints. They’ll help everyone feel a bit better." The Casters felt the familiar discomfort. The "Empire Skill Tyrant" was experienced and had everyone in the facility with Magic Ability eat something to bolster their Spirit.

Meanwhile, the Magic Guild was in chaos.

"The lines have been cut!"

"Teleportation failing! Cross-border teleportation failing! Suspend cross-border travel! Shut it down!"

From the Guild’s Communication Room, they watched as the nodes in the Northern Continent went dark. Only a few routes transiting through Bayern, Istani, and the Lowland Duchy still showed as operational.

The Elder Council had anticipated the Forbidden Magic Devices going online, and the Guild quickly activated its contingency plan.

The Helmut Defense Line didn’t cover the entire territory. Its eastern end was at the Bayern border, and construction on the Western Line had stopped at the Black Forest. The first part of the plan was to add more transit points to cross-border communications to bypass the defense line. The second was to use the "Bayern-Valois" model to preemptively lay telegraph lines through the middle of the defense line. For simple text messages, if the sender permitted the Guild to view the letter, it could be converted and sent as a wired telegram.

...

「In a forest on the outskirts of Munich, Bayern.」

’Is it starting again?’ Martin saw Caroline and Andre were both present, along with many other Casters and Apprentices. The last experiment to resist the Forbidden Magic Device had ended inconclusively, and he had thought Rorschach had forgotten all about it.

Rorschach had conducted experiments inside the tower before, but that was no longer possible.

The previous machine was something he had cobbled together by hand after peeking at the device inside a fallen Airship. But after deepening his cooperation with the Empire Army’s logistics department, Rorschach had obtained most of the original version’s parameters and structure from the "technical requirements" in the bidding process and through the development of the power supply interface.

Basically, it was a "joint R&D" project. And if you stretched the truth a little more, you could say Rorschach had developed the fourth-generation Forbidden Magic Device himself.

In any case, there was now a long-duration device in the Bayern forest with effects no less potent than those on the defense line. The one he had previously cobbled together could be operated safely within the Magic Tower’s isolation chamber, but if the thing they were testing today was installed in the tower... not only would the Magic Tower explode, but the factory would probably go up with it.

"Let’s begin." Rorschach nodded, signaling to Martin that he could start the device.

The Casters all stood far away. Martin, whose very existence was the antithesis of Magic Talent, felt no discomfort at all. He was the perfect person to start it up.

Rorschach had also brought some Apprentice Mages from the Tower of Secret Techniques to participate in the test. It was their first time being initiated by the device. At first, they were skeptical, but once they truly witnessed the Domain unfold, they realized what it meant for a Caster.

It was, one could say, suffocation on a magical level.

Rorschach explained the improved version’s performance. "The closer you are to the device, the more severe the interference with Casting. You can try to cast Magic from a greater distance, but it will almost certainly result in failure." This effect was very different from the single-release version of the "Magic Tsunami."

Based on his own tests of the long-duration version of the device, a radius of about one thousand meters was an absolute exclusion zone, which could also be called a Death Magic Area. Extending out another eight hundred meters was a failure zone of severe interference, and beyond that was a disturbance zone. However, this was for a Great Mage. For ordinary Casters and unprotected Alchemy Equipment, the entire two-thousand-meter radius was an exclusion zone.

Rorschach was now just a few steps away from the device, and he was determined to try.

Even standing at the pinnacle of Casters, the familiar sensation remained unchanged. The docile, obedient Magic Power, which was normally like water or oil that could be drawn and shaped at will, had now turned into violently swirling grains of sand. Anyone who attempted to control it would suffer a backlash:

Imagine a sandblaster pointed at your face. In no time, the high-speed jet of "sand" would likely blast a Mage’s cerebral cortex smooth.

An extremely chaotic frequency... no, what the device emitted could be described as "pseudo-random"... Although Rorschach couldn’t cast any Magic either, he could still sense the state of the Magic Power distribution itself.

Magic is caused by Magic Power vibrating at a specific frequency. Magic Power itself is both particle and wave... Rorschach hoped to find a clearer perspective from which to observe it and determine its current state. This was fundamental to controlling it.

But this seemed impossible. At this moment, Mages couldn’t withstand the terrible environment within the Domain. Using Master Poincare’s machine to map the current waveform of the ambient Magic Power was also clearly impossible. The result would only be an overload.

It was up to Rorschach himself to find a perspective, to elevate his perception to a level that could encompass an extreme situation rarely seen in nature.

Rorschach just stood there, staring blankly at the operating device. He felt a bit nauseous and dizzy, and even his vision of the machine was starting to blur.

’Wait, is it my vision that’s blurring?’ Martin was nearby at the control console, waiting for the command to stop. Rorschach went over and asked him, "Hey, stare at this device with your own eyes. Do you feel like it’s blurry?"

Martin did as he was told. After a moment of hesitation, he said, "I think so..." He looked again and again, finally giving a definitive answer. "Yes, there’s an unstable double image."

"Good. Excellent." Rorschach’s praise left Martin confused. He watched as the Great Mage walked step by step closer to the device.

’Matter can also be a wave. I’m made of matter, so I can be dispersed... and still maintain myself after dispersal.’

Rorschach had experienced a similar sensation with Gaseous Form. Now, he tried to stop resisting. Not only did he let his own Magic Power surge along with the "violent storm" in the environment, but he also attempted to make his Material Realm body resonate with the Forbidden Magic Device.

Caroline and Andre were the first to stabilize themselves within the Forbidden Magic Domain and come to their senses.

They discovered that at some point, Rorschach himself had gotten closer and closer to the device, then his entire body dissipated into the forest, leaving no trace.

"Rorschach?" "Ror—schach—?"

A familiar voice suddenly rang in their minds, instantly calming their panic. "It’s alright. I’m here."

"You’re..."

"I’m distributed throughout this field. Hmm... it’s most likely that I’m located five steps away from the device, to the southeast. But I’m intentionally preventing my matter wave from collapsing, so you might not be able to pinpoint where I am."

They looked toward the spot Rorschach described and saw a faint shadow near the device.

Caroline quickly realized. "Rorschach, are you using the Communication Skill to talk to us?"

"Yes, it’s still unstable... but at least it’s a breakthrough." Rorschach’s voice was as calm as ever. "There isn’t enough Transmuting Dust loaded to keep the device running for much longer. Let’s end the first set of experiments here."