Chapter 13: A New Solution

After entering the RoK, Guy was now face-to-face with Mast's avatar. With an irritated growl, Guy started to vent his frustrations.

'Why can't you help me? You saw how hard I worked the past 3 weeks. I accomplished diddly-squat!' Guy complained.

(It's not that I am unwilling to help you. While you were busy, I looked around for possible solutions myself. But you see, there aren't any existing solutions in this world to your problem,) Mast soothed Guy.

Guy's eyebrows furrowed. He probed, 'But aren't you like a god? Can't you figure out a new method?'

Mast sighed as he replied, (World builders cannot innovate. Creativity and inventiveness are not within our capacity.)

'But you made the world I came from.'

Mast nodded, (If we're talking semantics, then I didn't make that world I birthed it.)

Guy was a little confused about the underlying meaning of that sentence, "What's the difference? birthing the world, making the world, they both sound the same to me."

Mast hummed as he thought of a suitable reply. (Think of it this way. Let's say my world is a tree. If I made the tree, that would mean one minute there was no tree, and the next minute there was a tree. Everything about the tree is known to me and controllable by me down to the tiniest of detail. In the future, I can change the tree whenever I want. On the other hand, if I birthed the tree, I simply planted the seeds for the tree and let it develop naturally. While I know all the tiny nuances of the tree's genetics, I cannot change it at a snap.)

'So it's like you wrote the basic code for your world, and you let it grow naturally?' Guy said to confirm his understanding.

Mast smiled and nodded, (That's the gist of it. World builders program the laws and truths of their worlds, and the world does the rest by itself. I don't control anything. However, what the inhabitants of my world create or develop, will naturally become available to the world builders themselves. In fact, in the past few weeks, I've been using a back door in this world to access the knowledge developed here. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything of help…)

Guy started to walk around the RoK as he pondered on the revelation.

As he strolled through the rows of shelves, he commented, 'Damm. So there's really nothing I can do huh? Well, at least I tried everything…'

Mast interrupted Guy, (Not everything), and pointed towards the previously locked section of the RoK, which held books from Guy's original world.

Guy raised his eyebrows while inquiring, 'What use are those book? They are related to my old world right?'

Mast affirmed in response, (They are indeed related to the rules from my world. But the programming for this world is actually much closer to mine than you realise. The only difference is the existence of mana. To be honest, I don't understand how elder brother managed to include such a cheat without causing his world to collapse. The amount of contradictions mana introduces to some of the interactions between the laws and rules of this world are unbelievable.)

Guy exhaled in amusement as he gently picked up one of the books from the shelf.

'Mast, how close were we to the rules and laws that you programmed into your world?'

Mast laughed as he replied, (If I'm being optimistic, I'd say barely 5%.)

Guy choked on his saliva, or at least his consciousness did. 'Only 5%?!'

(Come on now! You humans barely left your planet. Most of the rules and laws you formulated to describe my world were only half-baked. Given the rate at which you humans were progressing, I'd say maybe in 1000 years you all would have figured out maybe 10% of the rules of my world. But after that, things would become exponentially more difficult as some of the laws are interconnected. Ha! The %#*#% species were further ahead of you guys in that regard.)

Guy's eyes narrowed, '%#*#%? Who are they?'

Mast coughed, (They're an alien species. No point going into it now since you aren't in my world anymore…)

Guy gave Mast the stink-eye as he returned to reading the book in his hand. It was a science textbook at the elementary school level. Its contents were highly simplified and went into the core concepts that the more advanced theories were built upon.

As he flipped through the pages and immersed himself in some nostalgic thoughts, a drastic thought flashed across his mind.

'Wait a minute, let me get this straight! If we were to remove the existence of mana from this world, are you saying that it would be the same as your world?'

Mast nodded.

'Then what does mana do?'

(I don't want to get into too much detail because I don't think you will understand it. Mana in the most general sense acts as an exception clause. You know that gravity pulls masses towards each other, but with mana, it is possible to introduce exceptions to this rule. There are many ways to implement these exceptions, magic spells are one of them.)

Guy's eyes widened, 'That really is a cheat!'

Mast snickered, (I know what you mean. But after double-checking the programming, there are some parameters concerning mana that ensures that the world remains stable. For one thing, some rules and laws are more important than others. The law of gravity supersedes some piddly law like convection. So the amount of mana required to create an exception is proportional to the significance of the laws being undermined.

Furthermore, while mana can be influenced through some natural phenomena, a sentient will is important to manifest it. That is why the cultivation methods in this world augment the mage's will. By gaining insights and increasing their resonance with the natural mana, mages gain a better understanding of the myriad of ways in which mana can be used to circumvent natural laws. For higher-level mages, this becomes as easy as breathing.)

Guy resolutely closed the book in his hand as he asked one final question, 'Compared to humans from my world, how close are the sentient species in this world to understanding the natural rules and laws, excluding mana of course?'

Mast replied, (Less than 1%. The existence of mana makes it inherently more difficult to pinpoint the natural laws. With all the exceptions, the theories developed are extremely flimsy and filled with contradiction. And I would also add that the 1% cap is kind of flat across the board. Unlike in my world, the alien species here haven't breached beyond certain bottlenecks.)

'I know what to do!' Guy declared.

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Guy returned to the center of the RoK and began to filter out the shelves according to a set of search parameters. In the end, only the books on circle-based spells and ritual formation remained.

Guy pick up several books off of the shelves and laid them open on the floor. He turned the pages to the spells pertaining to the fire element such as |Fireball|, |Flamestrike|, and |Fire-Whip|, as well as and ritual formations that included fire element such as |Fire Infusion Array|, |Burning Field|, and |Fire Strike|.

Standing amidst the open books, Guy started to scan the magic circles and the formations.

Mast slowly approached Guy, who looked both excited and stressed at the same time.

(What are you looking for?)

Guy thought for a while, and answered, 'I'm looking for similarities and patterns.'

Mast was a little confused, (Why?)

'My hypothesis is that since mana and magic are used to introduce exceptions in the natural laws, the spells themselves must contain similarities that correspond to those instructions that apply these exceptions,' Guy explained.

Mast nodded in affirmation, but retorted, (If that's the case, then I don't think this will work. As you can see -) he spread his arms to encompass all the books in the library, (-there is way too much content to go through. It will take ages.)

Guy smiled wryly at that realisation. But then he proposed, 'Is it possible to turn the RoK into something like a time-dilution chamber. So that time moves much faster in here, than outside?'

Mast shook his head and replied, (I cannot mess with the flow of time. It is one of the laws that supersedes everything else. If I was to turn this into a time-dilution chamber, then my brother would no immediately.)

Guy collapsed into a squat and hugged his knees, 'What then? I can't afford to waste any more time.'

But Guy quickly thought of a solution, 'Although we can't speed up time, we can speed up my productivity.'

Turning to Mast, he proposed, 'Can you make it so that this computer has all the other functionalities from the PC in my world?'

Mast nodded and snapped his fingers, causing an explosion of particles to materialise above the computer at the centre of the RoK for a brief moment. Once the particles subsided, the computer had turned into the laptop Guy used to own in his old world.

(That is possible? But it won't have access to the Internet, since that doesn't exist here.)

Guy grinned and added, 'Can you also add a high-quality and high-speed scanner that can be connected to the computer?'

Mast furrowed his brows and complied by snapping his fingers again. This caused a familiar machine, that had an appearance of a scanner, to materialise next to the computer.

Guy sat down before the computer at the centre of the RoK and booted it up. While he began working, Guy started to explain his plan, 'As you said, it will take ages to go through all the intricate spells and formations to isolate the specific components. There's only so much work the human brain can do, right?

So what I'm going to do is to leverage the power of this computer- oh by the way, can you boost this computer's processing power and memory the PC from my old world was pretty basic because I couldn't travel with a gargantuan monster?'

Mast signed and acquiesced one last time by snapping his fingers.

Guy then continued his explanation, 'So I'm going to leverage the power of this computer and run an image recognition algorithm that takes in the spells' image and isolates similar shapes and designs. It's pretty basic.'

Mast smiled as he understood Guy's intent, (That's pretty smart.)

Guy smiled gloatingly and began to scan each of the books one page at a time.

Mast pondered for a while and said, (Since I know what you intend to do, I think I can make it a little easier.)

He snapped his fingers, and the scanner transformed into a plain grey box.

Guy nudged the machine and lifted its lid. Once opened, all he saw was an empty space.

'What does this do?' Guy asked.

(Place the book inside and close the lid.)

Guy did as instructed. He opened the lid and placed the book inside. Almost immediately, a series of flashes blinked through the sides of the box, and a pop-up appeared on the computer screen.

'It scanned the entire book in one go!' Guy exclaimed in excitement.

Guy looked around the library and exhaled with vigour.

'In those other novels, the main character travels the world, collects women, slaps face, annoys young masters, and does badass shit.

And here I am, digitising books.'

Guy raised his fists and exclaimed, 'Let's do this!'

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