I stepped back a distance and watched the two clash.
“Isn’t it fascinating? Light has no mass, yet it carries energy.”
As Doloren said, the reason the Grand Duke could not parry her attack lay there. The Grand Duke could not accept that light possesses energy while lacking mass.
Oh, mass! Oh, energy!
So is this that famous E=mc²? That’s not it. What Doloren fired was light, and that famous equation, surprisingly, cannot be applied to light.
Since light’s rest mass is zero, it obeys the slightly less familiar E=pc. Doloren exploited that. Seeing how well it worked...
‘She truly understands it.’
Of course, this doesn’t mean Doloren is employing magic by calculating every process like I do. That would be impossible without a Turing Machine. The magical foundation of mages in this world is understanding and belief.
Whereas mine is prediction. But it seems Doloren isn’t the only one beginning to grasp the situation.
‘If it had struck head-on, the isolated system itself would have collapsed...’
“I was listening closely, so why did you stop? Keep talking. I’m listening.”
Daat still looked perfectly composed.
‘So he’s understanding it while trading blows.’
As I sensed within the Grand Duchy, the man is truly a monster. All that experience wasn’t for nothing. Then Doloren spoke to me.
“...Isaac. Let’s swap.”
Huh? Already?