Chapter 10 – From One Thing to Another
09-10 From One Thing to Another
After returning from Kunlun Island to Hourai Island, Jin was thinking about Fritz.
“Master, the prototype Magi Jammer is complete.”
Then Ann came along to inform him. Jin changed his focus.
“Alright, let’s test it at once. Let’s see. Reiko, sorry but could you be the test subject?”
“Yes, gladly.”
And so they tried pointing the Magi Jammer at Reiko and activating it.
Its shape was roughly that of a cube, with one of the sides having a sort of a parabolic generator device attached to it.
“How is it?”
“I do not feel anything in particular.”
As it interfered only with casting, Automata like Reiko or golems like the SP weren’t affected movementwise.
“Alright, in that case try using some magic please. I suppose something like a [Light Ball] would do.”
He chose a magic with no attack component, namely the [Light Ball].
“Yes. …[Light Ball]. …Father, I cannot cast it.”
“Alright, it’s a success!”
Despite reciting the chant, the accompanying Trigger’s Magic Energy completely vanished like mist. Therefore no magical phenomenon got cast.
Jin and Reiko together with Ann examined the effective range.
They found that apparently the effectiveness rapidly decreased with distance. The effectiveness was approximately inversely proportional to the cube of the distance.
They wanted to increase the current output by 50 times to make it useful for practical use.
“Hmm, I wonder if it’s the effect of the Ether in the atmosphere? It’s difficult to make a large-scale one…”
Because the jammer would be useless if it wasn’t active continuously, its Magic Energy consumption was also large. The effect of the prototype cube with edges about 30 centimeters long had a maximum range of ten meters at a 60-degree angle.
“Seems like the range would be too low even if loaded onto a Falcon or something and used from the air.”
If it flew 10 meters above ground it would work fine, but that would cause many other problems.
“What’s the next step…”
Jin was thinking.
“Even if it was used intermittently…”
Suddenly he realized it.
“That’s it! Intermittently!”
“Father?”
“Reiko, Ann, please give me the prototype.”
Jin rewrote a part of Control Core that managed the generator device. Simultaneously he thoroughly re-examined the Magi Formula and attempted optimizations.
“Alright, let’s try testing it now.”
And the test’s results. The effective range became two times larger than just now.
“It works!”
“Father, what did you do? I understood that you optimized the Magi Formula, but…”
Reiko asked, and Jin explained.
“Yeah. I made it run ‘intermittently’ and I used the Magic Energy saved doing that to increase the output. It seems to have a synergistic effect.”
Basically, it was made to run for 0.2 seconds and then rest for 0.4 seconds so the consumption was be reduced to a third. And that portion was used to increase the output when it was running.
0.2 seconds was plenty enough for the jammer to work, and the stop time of 0.4 seconds wasn’t enough for anyone to completely finish a chant, that’s gist of it.
In addition, inserting pause times allowed for increasing the running output. You could maybe compare it to electric current which can momentarily surpass the rated value of a resistor.
“As expected of Father.”
“Master, that’s amazing!”
Reiko and Ann praised Jin highly.
“Alright, with this the prototype Magi Jammer is alright. Let’s entrust the development of this thing too to Laojin and the Smiths. They can determine the optimal intermittent timing.”
As he had built the Smiths, Jin’s responsibilities were substantially reduced. Accordingly Jin could devote himself to research. Right now time was precious.
“Alright, now let’s think of methods to dispel spells like [Hypno] and [Seduce].”
Jin thought that this was the most important thing right now. Supposing that Elsa’s elder brother Fritz was affected by [Seduce].
No, beyond that, what if the leaders of the countries currently causing war were affected? The Unifilers were liable to do that much.
Jin was urgently thinking about what measures to take against hypnotic magic. For that, Ann’s knowledge was vital.
“Ann, what do you think? Can you think of any dispelling methods?”
“Yes. To put it in a single word, it’s a ‘shock’, but…”
“As before, huh…”
The weak thunder-type magic [Stun] did dispel the spell from Rucall whom he met at the ancient ruins.
He said that to Ann then,
“Master, that wasn’t [Stun], that was [Shock].”
She gave a reply.
“Eh?”
“It was identical to the lightning-type magic [Shock] developed before the Great Magic War.”
“I-is that so.”
Thinking about it, because he had analyzed and put to use the Rod of Paralysis Beana had used, it wasn’t strange that there was another magic that was used as its model.
“There is another magic known as [Paralyze].”
“Eh?”
As Ann said something very curious, Jin’s interest shifted there.
“It’s a weak lightning attack with a peculiar waveform. The waveform is…”
Most likely it was a magic that had the effect of paralyzing the nerves. That was Jin’s guess.
“I see. Not just the waveform, the intensity too is important after all. But it doesn’t seem difficult to use.”
For Jin, it was simple to use it to make a Paralyzer.
It was in the shape of a pistol, and shot out a lightning attack at the pull of the trigger. The reason it could transmit through air to reach the opponent despite the voltage being low it was likely because of magic.
He made it able to switch between emitting short shocks and continuous shocks. Like this it would be effective even against large crowds.
However, on Hourai Island this weapon wouldn’t be effective against anyone but Jin. Because Reiko and the golems wouldn’t be paralyzed by it.
But as there was no way he’d test it on himself, he postponed the test firing until the time he once more confronted the Unifilers.
For the time being he also made ones Reiko and his private SP golems, and decided to have them test it if the occasion rises.
“Alright, now let’s once again build a device that dispels hypnosis using [Shock].”
He began writing the Magi Formula for the [Shock] magic which too was in Ann’s memories.
“But this really is quick to do with a model to follow, huh.”
It’d be quick even without one, but no one told him so.
In under 30 minutes the prototype was completed. Its shape was the same as that of the Paralyzer. Sometime in the future he’d probably make something that could swap between [Paralysis] and [Shock].
“There’s no one to try this on either, huh.”
And so he decided to leave the inspection of this too to Laojin.
Then Jin started considering methods of the Titans’ deployment.
The Titans were most suitable for demonstrations of force, but their weakness was that carrying them out from Hourai Island took too much time.
For example, the place where the current conflict lies is about 600 kilometers away, and going there even on Falcon-1 would take an hour. Maybe he could make this take around ten minutes instead, Jin set his goals.
And that’s where the receiverless Warp Gate would come in.
By sending them out using this, even if there was some measurement error in the location it would be much faster than flying them in all the way from Hourai Island.
However, the problem that they couldn’t come back followed.
And then Jin once more began pondering.
Reiko was a little concerned about Jin as she had a feeling he was in a hurry.
And because of that, leaving thinking to Jin and Ann, she decided to go to the other room to have a discussion with Laojin.
“Reiko-san, what can I do for you?”
“Laojin, I’m a little worried about Father. I feel like he’s been somewhat in a rush these past few days.”
“Indeed. There’s not much of the sense of enjoyment from before, is there?”
“Mh-hm. In my opinion, it’s because of the Unifilers. In addition, I wonder if he’s not fretting over the war.”
“That seems to be the case. I feel that My Lord thinks he must take care of everything by himself.”
“Even though neither the war nor the Unifilers are Father’s responsibility.”
“Because most of My Lord’s knowledge has been transcribed to me I know. My Lord thinks that it is evil to not act when he has the power to.”
“Father is not evil!”
“I think so too. But My Lord really worries about that.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“Thinking about it normally, if both the war and the Unifilers were to disappear My Lord’s worries would disappear too.”
“I see, that’s indeed true.”
“Having said that, even if for instance they were annihilated using [Laser] My Lord would probably not be happy.”
“Certainly…On the contrary, Father’s worries would increase.”
“Difficult, isn’t it.”
The faithful subordinates, nay, the children had such a discussion without Jin knowing it. He had finally thought about ways to make use of the Titans, and now on top of that was considering how to execute those plans in practice.