"What kind of magic is this?" The apprentice assistants knew perfectly well that Adam would never kill them, yet they still could not master their terror — especially once mana began clinging to the sky full of metal particles.
Adam did not answer. He dispersed his hold on the metal particles, then gathered part of them into a single metal mass, while blue-white current converged before him to simulate a gun barrel. As mana kept doing its work and Adam kept his control, the metal mass spun up and shot out of the barrel at high speed.
Adam was simulating a railgun — and it was not a success. With the theory still incomplete, his grip on the magnetic field and the various forces remained crude. The metal mass flew only a few dozen meters before breaking apart in the air. In terms of power it beat a lightning strike, but the preparation time was far too long. The gain wasn't worth the price.
Elliot and the others were blown staggering by the wind pressure of the pseudo-railgun's discharge. They watched in silence as the projectile tore across the sky and left a white vortex behind it, their hearts cold with fear. They could not imagine how horribly it would end if such magic struck one of them.
Adam stopped experimenting with the new knowledge. The value of what he had gained this time lay not in how much lethality it carried, but in the step forward in his mastery of himself. From now on, electricity as an element would no longer be wild and ungovernable in his hands.
The academy's law-enforcement puppets had already surrounded Adam. After presenting his identification and paying compensation, Adam nodded to the others and turned back toward the laboratory.
He left the assistants staring at one another, and after a while they scattered.
James and Frank did not go enjoy their vacation. Together they returned to the laboratory and found Adam in his office, apparently lost in thought. They handed him all the questions the assistants had raised about cultivating the Psychokinesis Meditation Method over the past months, which the two of them had collected and sorted.
Adam answered the questions one by one, absent-mindedly. The two of them understood that this was Adam multitasking; once they had the answers recorded, they could not help asking, Adam, what are you thinking about?
Adam suddenly fired an electric ball at them, and it very nearly punched through the psychokinetic barrier they kept up over their bodies at all times. They knew Adam would not do such a thing without reason, so they were not angry — they only looked at him curiously.
"How's the power?"
The two considered for a moment. By the magic power index, that electric ball should have been around ten points. "Not bad. It beats most low-level apprentice spells."
"And if mortals could use an attack of that level?"
They both started. "How could they? This is magic. A mortal's body can't withstand the corrosion of mana..."
"What if it could be done without mana?"
The two fell silent. They had never imagined such a thing. Mortals, knights — however powerful, they could not withstand a single blow before magic. But if they could wield a force equal to magic, what then?
James said hesitantly, "If what you're saying is true, then... I suppose it would be some threat to ordinary apprentices. Against a Mage, they'd still be ants."
Adam nodded.
He knew they were right: the gap between Mage and mortal was not the gap between strong and weak, it was a crushing of one order of life beneath another, and technology could hardly bridge it. He did not argue the point, only asked again, "What about like this?"
Current shaped itself into the image of a firearm, and he set up a test target. Bolt after bolt of lightning shot from the muzzle and struck the target; the reading climbed steadily from ten, rising until it reached the ceiling most apprentice spells could attain, and stopped there.
Then, facing the two baffled men, he said, "Power keeps rising, but the difficulty of use keeps falling. No knowledge required, no rune group to construct — just pull the trigger..."
"Is that really possible? A mortal without mana becoming stronger than an apprentice?"
Unease stirred in the depths of James's and Frank's hearts. They dimly grasped that if what Adam described could truly be realized — if an ordinary person who had never studied a meditation method could wield the power at the top of the apprentice stage — it would be a tremendous blow to the standing of Mage apprentices.
Adam was quite certain such a thing could happen.
The Mage World was built on magic. Its convenience and greatness made everyone naturally overlook the power of industry. Adam could already easily build a steam engine and every kind of gunpowder weapon, but the power and usefulness of such things were utterly negligible: any spell could do a steam engine's job, gunpowder weapons could not even hit a knight, and the achievements of Earth's first industrial revolution were completely useless here.
But the second industrial revolution was a different matter. After Earth's humans entered the electric age, their progress had come in leaps. If the mortals of the Mage World entered the electric age, it might not close the gap in high-end combat power — but it would greatly fill the vast gulf magitech had placed between mortals and Mages, and raise the worth of mortals.
If Adam could truly pull it off, he would surely reap enormous profit from it.
Adam's first test subject was Frank.
In recent years Frank's finances had improved dramatically, but for some reason he had not chosen to replace his mechanical body with a more complete and advanced model, and still used the original crude version. The power of psychokinesis as a medium meant his body no longer had to suffer pain day and night, but machinery driven by energy stones still had serious drawbacks.
The energy in an energy stone is of a kind similar to, but lower in level than, mana. Yet even though it is lower than mana, its corrosiveness is still more than a carbon-based body can withstand.
Apprentices with intact bodies bear mana with their spiritual power and in most cases keep mana from touching the body directly. Frank could not. His body was exposed to mana day and night.
Adam said to Frank, who lay inside the observation instrument, "Do you know your body has serious problems?"
Frank shifted his body awkwardly. "Mana keeps corroding me. If this goes on, I'm more or less going to die, aren't I?"
Adam nodded and brought up several images recording Frank's condition. "You're committing slow suicide." He pointed at one, where secondary-grade mana could be seen constantly invading his body's cells while also boosting their vitality; if the cells had been strong enough, a balance could have been maintained, but the nature of carbon-based life was too frail, and the cells had no way to withstand that squeezing. "Your body's rate of regeneration can no longer keep up with the rate at which it's being consumed. Keep using that mechanical body, and you won't live ten more years."
Adam pointed at another image. "Even now, your organs aren't as vital as they used to be, are they?"
Frank knocked on the instrument, signaling Adam to let him out, and then said without expression, "That's right. But I have no other choice."