Mage? Magic Engineer!

Now, it wasn’t just the Great Mages who were wide awake. Some people continued to snore soundly, but others, highly sensitive to light, were roused by the ’daylight’ that pierced through the gaps in their curtains.

About a quarter of an hour after "daybreak," a knock sounded on the workshop door, followed by a muffled female voice, "Rorschach? You in there...?"

Kano’s projected image immediately perked up. "Whose voice was that just now? It sounded like Caroline to me."

"Listen here, kid. I don’t have any children of my own, and Caroline is like a daughter to me. If you dare..."

Rorschach immediately clarified, the words tumbling out of him, "I don’t know what rude and wild thoughts you’re having, but I’m in the Mage Tower’s workshop, not my bedroom. Master Caroline is a collaborator at my tower, so it’s perfectly reasonable for her to come find me here during an emergency, isn’t it?"

As he spoke, he opened the door remotely. "Please, come in." At the same time, he proposed to the Great Mages, "Let’s suspend the meeting for now. Since this anomaly has appeared, we should each gather intelligence on our surroundings. We can exchange information via messages later or hold another emergency meeting."

"As it should be." With that, Feuerbach was the first to log off. The others also disconnected one by one.

"I was just speaking with the members of the Elder Council. It seems the sky has lit up across the entire continent," Rorschach said as he ushered Caroline in. "The cause is still unknown."

He looked out the window. Everything had happened too suddenly. The abrupt switch to daytime gave him a surreal, otherworldly feeling.

It was as if the heavens themselves had declared to the whole world that no one was to sleep.

Hm?

His gaze traveled past the chimneys and towers rising unevenly from the mountain forests and skyline outside the window, and as he looked higher, a strange feeling suddenly struck him.

"There’s no sun, and no blue sky. Just a vast expanse of white," Caroline said, also strolling to the window.

A strange oppressiveness hung in the air... Staring at the pure, featureless white sky, one lost all sense of the heavens’ scale. Was it lofty and distant, or hanging low? With no point of reference, the uniformity became a kind of silent violence, conjuring images of being "enveloped."

Something was indeed enveloping the world, and humanity, so very small, was caught in the middle.

"I wonder if Andre and the others are awake... Please go and notify them." Rorschach thought for a moment. "For now, there are no other abnormalities. Have the night shift continue production. Have the safety department check the indicators on all devices, especially components involving Magic circuits."

"Have all Casters in the factory prepare for emergencies. Their priority is to monitor the Transmutation Dust Collectors. The Security Team should maintain order within the factory and the surrounding urban areas."

"Alright. What about you?"

"I... I’ll first go check on the situation at the three sites, then head up to the Boundary Land for a look. If this anomaly truly covers the whole world, there’s bound to be a reaction in the Symbolic Realm."

With that, Rorschach set off immediately. He made his rounds at top speed, choosing the coal mine on the outskirts of Kempson as his first stop. He had a hunch that if the anomaly was related to the Earth Mother Goddess, the deepest underground facility would be the most likely place to show problems.

The coal mining operation was still in the shallower seams. Several massive excavating machines were at work in the mine, their huge drill bits constantly chewing through earth and rock, producing raw ore that contained large amounts of Black Stone.

The abandoned, massive pit mine where the Steel Factory was located had taken nearly two hundred years and several generations to excavate to its current size. Now, the area and depth of the new mining zone were already catching up to the original great pit.

And it could go even deeper, thanks to more effective water pumps.

CHUG CHUG CHUG... CLANK...

When Rorschach arrived, he saw workers and engineers gathered around a water pump, scratching their heads in frustration. Normally, the pump would draw out percolating groundwater, which, when mixed with coal dust, was mostly a gray slurry. This time, however, it was spitting out a viscous liquid.

’Is it spitting out crude oil?’

He slowed his descent and walked slowly over to the pump. A foreman covered in coal dust saw the smooth-skinned young man approach and shouted, "Hey, are you an Apprentice?"

"Official Mage."

The people around him were slightly surprised. "They actually sent an official one this time." The foreman changed his form of address, though not to anything particularly respectful. "Look, it’s suddenly pumping out this oil. It’s black, sticky, and stinks to high heaven."

"Shut down the pump first; it’ll damage the machine." A sudden change in operating conditions was never good for machinery. After giving the order, Rorschach used [Mage’s Hand] to scoop up some of the oily black sludge. It surprisingly had the foul, fishy smell of algae.

He inspected it with [Arcane Vision]. A faint glow covered its surface. ’Something’s wrong,’ he thought, ’but I can’t be sure. Sometimes, crystals with deposited Magic Power in the slag can look like this too.’

The Apprentice who had actually been dispatched came running up to the mine, panting, "Sorry, I... I’m late..."

"Who are you?"

"Didn’t your pump team call me to handle an emergency?" the Apprentice asked, a bit annoyed. "I had to drag myself out of bed in the middle of the night to get here, and now you’re all playing dumb."

The foremen immediately stared at Rorschach with suspicion and alarm. "Then who are you?"

One of them suddenly remembered something from their safety training. "You’re not a spy, are you? Don’t move!" A wrench weighing several pounds was about to come swinging at him.

Rorschach was in his everyday clothes, and the just-woken Apprentice didn’t recognize him at first. But now he did, and his mouth fell open as he stammered, "He’s a Mage! This lord is... is..."

"His teacher, you could say." Rorschach put a hand on the Apprentice’s shoulder, cutting him off before he could finish. "We’re going to the bottom of the pit to check the water intake. Don’t start the pump again without my command."

With that, he grabbed the Apprentice, shot into the air, and then dived toward the bottom of the mine pit.

"Official Mages really are a different breed, huh? They can even fly." The old-timers from the pump team watched the two descend into the mine, clucking their tongues in commentary.

While holding onto the Apprentice, Rorschach asked, "The sky suddenly lit up ahead of time. Have you noticed any other anomalies besides that? Like the water here turning into oily sludge."

"N-no." The Apprentice thought for a moment, then suddenly exclaimed, "Ah! Wasn’t it you who lit up the sky with an experiment?"

’What? Do you guys think I’m friends with the sun or something? That I can just make it light up on command?’ Rorschach suddenly realized that the old-timers on the night shift were impossibly calm about the sudden daylight, just going about their business. ’Don’t tell me they all think I’m the one who turned on the lights?’

It wasn’t the night shift workers’ fault. First, the sky outside had instantly flashed into daytime, which looked an awful lot like Magic. Plus, Rorschach had a prior record of "calling the wind and summoning the rain." The old-timers put two and two together: ’Well now, could it be the Master is working his wonders again?’

’A perfectly reasonable deduction... my ass!’

Rorschach didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but on second thought, this was actually a good thing. At least the people in this area could accept the situation calmly, which would prevent panic and make it easier to handle what came next.

By now, they had reached the water intake. The fishy, algae-like stench was growing stronger, and more oily sludge was gushing out, threatening to engulf the entire mine.

The person in charge of the mine had also realized something was wrong and was organizing the workers and equipment to evacuate the pit.

At that same moment, strange phenomena were appearing all over the world, which was now enveloped in daylight.

In the northern Republic and the southern Empire, in particular, on a battlefield left over from the Great War, a group of wandering Gray Elves driving covered wagons and "treasure hunting" suddenly discovered that the remains of soldiers shallowly buried in a large crater had begun to stir.