Mage? Magic Engineer!

’Do Great Mages need to sleep?’

Rorschach recalled reading some self-cultivation classics that boasted about how one doesn’t need sleep when their spirit is full. ’In my book, overflowing is a physiological phenomenon, and not needing sleep is just called insomnia!’

In any case, he was an engineering geek who didn’t buy into any of that stuff. Even after arriving in this Otherworld, he was busy as hell every day and just looked forward to getting some rest late at night. There was no internet when he relaxed, and Rorschach wasn’t the type to appreciate the fine arts of singing and dancing. What else was there to do but sleep?

Though his physique had been enhanced, he still treated it like an old phone. When its performance was poor, it needed frequent reboots. Now, its performance was excellent, but he’d still restart it out of habit to refresh the whole system.

With his enhanced physique and this mindset, Rorschach wasn’t particularly bothered about waking up in the middle of the night. He just felt he’d had enough sleep and could start a new day’s work.

Rorschach walked through the silent corridors of the Mage Tower. An additional cloister now circled the main hall, allowing for more fixed Teleportation Gates to be installed. Lately, besides managing the school and teaching, Caroline had been spending most of her time tinkering with new links.

Many of the gates here were waiting to be connected. Not even Rorschach knew where they would lead in the future; he just let Caroline do as she pleased with them.

He found his workshop and pushed the door open.

He spread out the design manuscripts for the Starship, scribbling and sketching on them. With the success of the prototype, a great deal of experience and many lessons had been accumulated. The Tower of Secret Techniques was to be responsible for the main design work on the next ship to be launched, but Feuerbach had actually "outsourced" the job to Rorschach.

The workshop also contained a new, massive device. Its main body was a receiver, which ultimately connected to a Crystal Ball.

CRACKLE... POP...

The machine was emitting the sound of a received signal. Rorschach found it a bit strange. ’At this hour... who could it be?’

He turned a knob on the device. The Crystal Ball began to glow with an irregular light, flickering between dim and bright, and shifting through a myriad of colors as he adjusted the knob.

Finally, Rorschach found the right channel. The Crystal Ball immediately shone with its brightest light, projecting a remarkably realistic figure.

"Can you hear me? Hello, hello?" the figure asked, craning its neck and looking around.

’You can’t even see me...’ Rorschach sighed and, playing along, activated his own transmitter. He didn’t choose to open the channel for the other party’s Advanced Illusion, instead just transmitting his voice. "Master Kou Bo, I can hear you on my end."

"Ho ho, I knew you’d be awake, kid."

Kou Bo’s actions were still guided by his playful nature. His current illusion was even wearing red pajamas and a red-and-white pointed cap—not to flaunt his status as a Great Mage, but because, in his own words, the robes of the Tower of Forest were all green. To keep his work and life separate, he had deliberately chosen all-red pajamas.

The indicator lights and the Crystal Ball continued to flash. Rorschach made a few small adjustments, and another device user came online.

In about the time it took to drink an Energy Potion, nearly all the device holders had come online. The last one was Kano. He thought he hadn’t activated the communication and, hiccupping from drink, scratched his head as he fiddled with all the controls. In reality, a full-body projection of him had long since appeared in Rorschach’s workshop.

This new Communication System, which used Advanced Illusion as its terminal display method, was only in a trial run among the members of the Elder Council.

As if by some strange synchronicity, all the Elders were awake. And, by the force of habit as Great Mages, they had all gone to their own laboratories or offices, where they saw the experimental devices crackling and sputtering as they received signals.

An impromptu meeting of the 13+1 was thus unintentionally assembled.

In the end, none of them activated their full-body projections. Instead... at 3:05 in the dead of night, thirteen large, colorful 3D heads floated around the Crystal Ball in Rorschach’s workshop. The other Mages also realized something wasn’t quite right and modified the Spell Frequency of their transmitters, changing their appearances into various symbolic Illusions.

There were birds’ heads, beasts’ heads, and even a Rune. The representatives from the Tower of Light and the Tower of Darkness had both, coincidentally, chosen spheres of white and black, which reminded Rorschach of the symbols for "The Beginning and The End" that he had seen in the Supreme Heaven.

He himself was sporting a cartoon-style Labrador head, silently marveling, ’The very first avatars in the Magic World are already in full-color 3D. Nice, nice, nice.’

"I didn’t expect this to turn into a late-night chat... Should we conduct all our meetings like this in the future?" Kano suggested.

The sphere representing the head of the Tower of Light expanded and contracted as he spoke. "This device, like the Communication System, requires manual maintenance and has physical relays. It’s not secure enough, especially if it’s opened up to more people in the future."

"We could establish our own private channel..."

With the rapid advancements in Communication Spells and aerospace engineering in recent years, a new generation of the Communication System, integrating the best current technologies, had finally entered its trial phase.

Since the communication network’s Ground Stations suffered from frequent interference, Mages inspired by the Starship project came up with the idea of launching relay stations into the sky.

Thus, in the highest layer of the atmosphere, they launched "permanent high-altitude Airships," attempting to make them stationary relative to ground coordinates or cruise along fixed routes, thereby serving as new relay stations.

Meanwhile, supported by new technologies and theories like the Radio Communication Skill and spell-weaving theory, the method of communication had also changed. The old way of sending letters via Teleportation Array was called "Real Transmission." Now there was "Virtual Transmission," which manifested as an Advanced Illusion.

This wasn’t direct Remote Spellcasting. Instead, it extracted key casting elements, transmitted the crucial information via Communication Skill, and the receiving end would then analyze it to control a terminal Spell Array to complete the casting. This was an idea derived from the "Descriptors" in the Spell Cloud.

The Guild planned to launch more stratospheric cruising Airships and stationary Airships in the future, ideally making them unmanned and self-sustaining. Following the construction of the telegraph network, switching technology had also matured. All that was needed were periodic dockings between maintenance ships and the relay stations for dedicated upkeep.

"You want to do this, and you want to roll that out... you’re spreading yourselves so thin. Does the Guild even have enough people?" one Master pointed out a problem. "The Magic Guild’s burden is already heavy enough."

Rorschach replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Then train more people. A lot of these operations don’t even require a Caster."

"This is the wisdom of Mages, so it must be kept secret..."

"But this is technology! If it’s not used, it’s just a worthless secret," Rorschach retorted.

For the Mages of the Empire, Valois, and Bayern, it had become normal for ordinary people to participate in various projects. Whether willingly or not, these few Great Mages had at least accepted this reality, as seen in Bayern’s large-scale industrial complexes.

"The education level of ordinary people is also rising. The knowledge taught in many of these so-called ’University Colleges’ is enough to cultivate talent we can use. We’re going to be short-staffed everywhere in the future, so we might as well recruit more of them, regardless of whether they can use Casting or not." Kano couldn’t help but laugh at the end. "Besides, the Empire and the rest of us are already doing it." His gaze finally landed on the "White Dog" avatar.

Seeing that no one else raised any objections, Rorschach’s mind raced. ’I used to get so much grief over this exact issue. And now, the new tone is set in a single impromptu meeting. How times have changed.’

But his happiness was fleeting. Rorschach interrupted the discussion and brought up the matter that was unsettling him. "For all of us to come online at the exact same time... what an interesting coincidence. I myself was startled awake in the middle of the night, but I can’t remember why... Did this happen to anyone else?"

Unexpectedly, seven or eight of the other thirteen people had experienced the same thing as Rorschach.

Kano, who had only had a short nap after his night out, also realized something was wrong. "Everyone here is a Great Mage. This could be seen as an omen characterized by synchronicity."

"Are there any anomalies?" The more they talked, the more uneasy Rorschach became.

Kano recalled, "The Transformation Dust Layer Flow started flickering this afternoon, and the signal sphere released from the Starship was interrupted... But that happens occasionally. We would only activate the emergency protocol if we still haven’t heard back by tomorrow."

Kou Bo thought of something. "The National Guard reached the Oder River today.

"The communication node in Ovord went offline today; we’re trying to repair it. It seems to be a battlefield. Word is the specialist dispatched from the Imperial Capital’s Guild headquarters hasn’t responded, and the node is still down."

All of these were things that had happened from time to time recently and weren’t considered major anomalies. Guild nodes going offline during a war was especially common.

Suddenly, a ray of pale daylight pierced the night sky. Many of the Mages’ avatars turned to look, indicating that, like Rorschach, they were in rooms with windows.

’But it’s just after four in the morning... in the winter...’ Rorschach’s eyes widened as he double-checked the clock, making sure he hadn’t misread it.