Chapter 187: Developing the Paper
Translator: Kris_Liu Editor: Vermillion
“Yes, I have some interesting ideas about a unique magic that I improved on my own,” Lucien smiled and nodded casually, “so I’d like to develop a paper out of it.”
“You know arcana?” questioned Eric directly, as he could never believe that a young man who just started learning arcana could come up with any research results, no matter how talented this person was.
Lucien totally understood why Eric was this surprised, since no one from his original world would come up with any meaningful research outcome after studying a subject for a bit more than a month. Therefore, Lucien explained politely, “I cannot really regard my ideas as part of arcana, honestly speaking, but I just feel that the mechanism that I applied in improving this spell can be interesting. Of course, I also don’t know if this is something that already exists.”
Although Lucien knew that he needed to show his strength and talent sooner or later to earn more opportunities with a certain group or organization, as a newcomer, with very limited knowledge of the congress, Lucien had to stay humble and careful first.
When he made clear the current knowledge level of the congress and the progress of researches in different schools, Lucien still needed to do magic experiments on his own to verify whether the knowledge that he brought from his original world still worked the same way here, but after that, it would be time for Lucien to really show his capability.
Of course, in addition, the research results that Lucien was going to publish in the future must be released following a scientific order, or many sophisticated sorcerers would possibly realize that Lucien was more than a genius, but actually a freak, and alien! Then great danger would for sure come to Lucien before he could obtain enough power to protect himself.
Hearing Lucien’s explanation, Eric’s facial expression relaxed a bit, “I see… but what I have to remind you is that, if your research outcome is based on some ancient magic beliefs, the outcome from the board might disappoint you, since many of these ancient beliefs have already been overthrown by arcana.”
“It does no harm to give it a try, right?” Lucien grinned.
“I guess…” answered Eric with much doubt, “Then, when do you want to submit the paper?”
“I can do it today,” said Lucien seriously.
“What? Do you know we’re off at six? There’s only eighty minutes left.” Eric felt very surprised again.
“No problem, Mr. Eric.” Lucien was very confident, “I already developed the draft following the format of Arcana. Eighty minutes is enough. By the way, Mr. Eric, may I ask again if I should be the one to send my paper to the journals?”
Seeing Lucien’s determination, Eric handed him a roll of parchment and said, “Yes, when a paper passes the board’s review, the author needs to send the paper to the journals on his or her own. Since the congress doesn’t allow one to submit the same paper to multiple journals, you gotta be careful with the journal you choose. The more influential, the better. Anyway, we can talk about it after your paper passes.” Eric ended the conversation, “You can go to that room. I still have more matters to deal with.”
…
In the light blue meeting room, surrounded by a few magic circles, Lucien was busy with developing his first paper in this world.
“The Application of Sound Wave in Magic Sensing: An experiment investigating the flight of bats.
“Bat; Hearing; Organ; Sound Wave; Sensing.
“As Mr. Douglas once argued, there are so many seemingly common phenomena in this world that we tend to ignore in daily life, however, in fact, there are lots of great secrets hiding behind them.
“Everyone knows that bats can easily fly and hunt swiftly in the dark, but not many ever tried to investigate why they are able to avoid obstacles at night when they fly.”
Lucien was very familiar with the format. Direct and clear—that was what Lucien wanted to achieve.
The reason Lucien decided to submit the paper developed out of the apprentice spell, Bat Screaming, was that the theory behind this spell was quite independent from the current arcana knowledge, and could be drawn upon the tradition of ancient magic system, which was studying assorted magic creatures’ structure and power to develop and improve spells, and the only difference in Lucien’s paper was that Lucien was now studying an ordinary creature.
Compared to merely submitting a spell, the benefits brought by submitting a paper were undoubtedly greater.
Although Lucien never really did this experiment, based on his knowledge, it was not difficult for him to make up the research methodology and statistics.
In his paper, Lucien set up several groups of controlled experiments to investigate how bats could “see” in the dark.
After ruling out the possible answers including bat’s eyes, wings and hair by conducting these experiments, Lucien came to the final step.
In his last group of control experiment, Lucien, in his paper, set it up by disturbing the investigated bats’ ears and their organs in their noses and mouths. According to Lucien, this time, the bats could not fly properly in darkness anymore.
Therefore, Lucien drew the conclusion in the end that bats used their ears to receive sound waves produced by the organs in their noses and mouths to detect objects when they flew at night, but not their eyes to see.
Following the experiment, Lucien reported how he improved Homan’s Oscillation and thus created this new apprentice spell—Bat Screaming.
In the end, Lucien explained that because of the complexity of the structures of a bat’s organs, he needed to use a real bat’s brain tissue as the tool for casting the spell.
After carefully going through the whole paper again, Lucien analyzed the apprentice spell, Bat Screaming, on another piece of parchment and explained how to use it, as a new spell to be submitted to the congress.
When Lucien stood up after finishing all of the work, he took a glance at the clock and found that the whole thing only took him less then half an hour. He was quite confident that no similar research had been done before him in this area, since when he was teaching Annick, Heidi and Layria basic arcana, he never encountered anything similar to this.
Opening the meeting room’s door, Lucien saw Lazar, who was walking back and forth in the corridor.
Hearing the door opening, Lazar turned around fiercely and asked, “Mr. Eric told me that you’re writing a paper, are you?!”
“Yes, but nothing big. I’m just introducing how I improved a spell,” Lucien said casually to Lazar. “When you were improving Lazar’s Burning Hand, you also wrote some papers, right?”
“Yes…” Lazar answered subconsciously. “But this kind of paper, you know, following other people’s ideas and making improvements… often cannot pass the board’s review. In most cases, you can only earn points with the new spell submitted.”
“I know. I’m just trying.” Lucien smiled and shrugged.
“I see…” Lazar nodded, “But wait… As a beginner in arcana, you can already improve spells? How’s this possible?”
Lucien answered, “Come on… Ancient sorcerers also need to make improvements.”
Lazar made a long “hum”, and nodded seriously, “Then, Evans, I suggest you do not have too much expectation on earning any points with the paper.”
As Lucien was saying, he knocked at the door of Mr. Eric’s office. Lucien and Lazar walked in the office together, and handed the paper to Eric.
Eric took a look at the long parchment in his hand, then nodded, “I can tell that you’re very prepared, Evans. By the way, which field does the magic belong to, may I ask?”
“Sound wave,” answered Lucien short and clear.
Eric put the two rolls of parchment into two folders, and then he took a quill and wrote down “sound wave” in one side of each of them.
Putting the two folders in the cage, Eric pulled the bell again.
White light instantly covered the cage, and when the light disappeared, the folders were already gone.
“About thirty minutes later, we’ll know the result.” Eric sat down again, “But I suggest you do not have much hope, Evans.”
…
On the fifteenth floor of the tower. In a spacious office.
There were many bells ringing here. With the appearance of the complicated magic circles, many folders showed up out of nowhere.
There were no people in this office, just a pair of arms in the air picking up the folders.
“Element, to, Mr. Ravendi, Mr.Gaston.”
“Necromancy, to, …”
With some kind of machine talking, the arms put the folders back into the magic circles following different orders.
According to the rules of the congress, members of the highest council could not join Arcana Review Board, but they could be invited as special consultants when a paper was beyond the board’s knowledge.
For common papers, there were usually two committee members reviewing and judging a piece of work independently and then an average score was drawn. If there was disagreement, a third committee member would be involved. And if the problem still could not be solved, a small meeting would be hosted.
“Sound wave magic… to Magic Exchange Office first to make sure this is a new spell, and then to Mr. Garfield and Mr. Jeffrey.”
“The paper based on the same spell… then, to Mr. Garfield and Mr. Jeffrey directly.”
The lights were flashing in the office.
