Chapter 139: Sensory Manipulation

Guy was having some trouble in figuring out what exactly to "show" Marie through The Church's |Soul Imprint| functionality. In the previous demonstrations with his Student and Disciple, the task was much easier because he simply had to emulate the scenarios based on how they were perceived by the senses. What did the eyes see, what did the ears hear, what did the skin feel, what did the nose smell? These were easy questions to answer.

But, that was also where the problem lied. His task right now was to transmit everything he could perceive through his mana sense to Marie, yet how could he describe it in the first place? Sure, he could translate the information received through the mana sense that could be interpreted by his existing sensors, but what about the information beyond that, which couldn't?

This also brought up the question of sensory biases and how that would affect any solution he could come up with. It wasn't guaranteed that everyone would observe the colour blue the same way, so what guarantee was there that whatever Guy observed through his use of the ability matched Marie's?

This was an inherent disadvantage that people faced even back in Guy's previous world. In an attempt to address it, scientists ventured to develop standardised units of measurements that could describe data consistently regardless of the observer. For instance, two people may have differing opinions of the colour blue, but a spectral analysis of the light reflected by a blue surface can quantitatively describe the extent of its blueness. 

The standardisation of measurement has also been attempted in this world, albeit not to such a satisfactory degree as in Guy's previous world. That is, standard measures for length, time, mass, and temperature were ubiquitous, primarily because they were used regularly by the common mortal folk. However, for the more arcane and lesser-known quantities such as energy, force, charge, and so on, things got a little sketchy. Because these quantities were mostly observed by mages, there was a lack of sufficient standardisation - things were more subjective.

"My master defined heat on a scale of 1-100, where 1 is the heat of boiling water and 100 is the heat of the Sun's surface," for example - wholly subjective, and definitely not transferable.

Guy openly disdained the progress of technology in this world. Given that people had access to mana, a literal cheat-like existence, civilisation should have progressed to realms beyond what humans had achieved on Earth. Yet, even though the current civilisation had existed for at least twice as long as the one from Guy's world, they had accomplished diddly-squat.

It appeared as though the existence of mana had essentially created a brain drain. The set of people that were veritable geniuses largely intersected with the set of people that displayed great control over mana and showed compatibility with certain cultivation styles. As these geniuses gained strength and transcended their mortality, they grew detached from the mortals they deemed beneath them. For one they would outlive their loved ones, who tethered them to their mortality. In the end, they viewed mortals as a completely different species.

Humans advance through shared struggle. The geniuses that could push civilisation forward no longer struggled with the common folk, and thus did not have any motivation to oblige. Therefore, the mortal civilisations stagnated - but what stopped the mage congregations from leaping forward? The geniuses were all there, after all.

There is a common saying in Guy's previous world that, "One mountain cannot contain two tigers." As geniuses ascended, they inevitably clashed against each other at the peak in fighting for resources. By publicising advancements, one basically presented their hand to the world thus losing any advantages they held in a confrontation. No one wanted to do that.

Hence, the world stagnated. The status quo endured.

As a transmigrator, Guy felt obligated to change this. But, he also recognised that as a solo entity, he didn't have any power in the matter. Sure, he could play his hand like how most other typical transmigrants did from the fiction works in his past life. He could output a steady stream of modern devices into the world, amass a large amount of wealth and a steady power-base, live a gala life. But as an educator, Guy immediately recognised the folly of that endeavour, in that he was just one person. How much could one person accomplish? 

There was another common saying in Guy's previous world, "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man how to fish and feed him for a lifetime." His impact would be greater if he was the catalyst that evoked change from within, rather than an anomaly that brought change without.

But those were just Guy's distant aspirations. His current struggle was already giving him a massive headache. Ultimately, Guy hypothesised that since he couldn't properly decipher the data his mana sense captured, barring the once he could decrypt using his human sensors, Marie should also be experiencing the same kind of noise using her mana sense. So, if Guy and Marie were to isolate the decipherable data from the noise, the noisy data should overlap except for a single set corresponding to the mana waves that only Marie could observe.

After Marie was sucked into the darkness of the dark screen, her Teacher's calm voice resounded around her.

"Do you think you can isolate what you perceive through your senses?" Guy started. He then went on to describe exactly what he expected Marie to do, which she nodded doubtfully.

"I haven't tried it before. But I don't believe that it will be hard," Marie affirmed.

Although Marie felt like she was in a different place, she could still "sense" the same environment from before. It was like she was displaced and stationary at the same time. Therefore, using her experience she started to release her mana sense.

This time she didn't experience the same splitting headache that caused her to keel over. Weeks of excruciating practise had helped her build up an immunity. What level of damage did this self-afflicting practice inflict on her mind? She didn't know, and for the time being, she didn't care.

Marie had foreseen the need for manipulating the sensory data observed through her mana sense. After all, she had to somehow filter out the waves of fate from the background noise and to do that she needed a few proficiencies. With that said, she didn't face much difficulty filtering out the known sensory data.

"I'm able to do it," Marie signalled.

"Alright then. Prepare yourself. I will begin the transfer in ten seconds, starting now!" Guy declared.

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Marie immediately reverted to her hypersensitive state with her mana senses flaring. Without her hearing, smell, taste, sight and touch sensory data, she waited in anticipation.

Marie was in what could be described as a sensory deprivation chamber of her own design. The only thing stopping her from going insane at this point was the bearable pain resonating within her mind.

Then, suddenly, the pain in her head started to swell up at an accelerated pace. She realised that it was the onslaught of her Teacher's senses.

It was hard; the attack from the new influx of noisy data overtook her self-control and nearly caused her to lose consciousness. She quickly shook herself from her painful trance, grit her teeth and scrambled to action.

The filter Marie planned to use was by reflecting the noise transmitted into her head by her Teacher. She would then use the principles of superposition to overlay the noise which was originally in her head over this reflected noise, to isolate the waves of fate. It was a simple description on paper.

But how does one reflect unintelligible noise? It all came down to a matter of perspective.

Teacher Larks often told her that human senses are clouded by their perception of the world itself. We see what we want to see, hear what we want to hear. In essence, the human mind could affect what the senses capture. Using this reasoning, Marie wondered if she could implement this paradigm with her mana senses.

To an extent, she succeeded. Early on during practice, Marie bundled up the noise captured by her mana senses into an abstract package that she called a time-dependent function. In her mind, the noise turned into an n-dimensional function, where 'n' referred to the near-infinite dependent variables contained within the noise, which all varied with the independent variable: time. It was a flimsy implementation, yet for a short few seconds, it worked! Her mind couldn't physically fathom the n-th dimension, so the paradigm collapsed due to instability. It also gave Marie a massive headache, on top of the already existing one due to the constant abuse of her mana sense. But within that short duration, Marie managed to implement a reflection operation! She then proceeded to test this a few more times to confirm that it was legitimate.

She followed those steps at present and reflected the noise from Teacher Larks' transmission. As she did so, her mind started to physically and perceptively undulate under the stress. Marie even started to bleed through her nose and ears.

Immediately after she confirmed that the reflection was successful, she proceeded to convert her own perceived noise into a function. This operation exacerbated the situation further. Marie's mind was on the verge of a physical meltdown.

Without wasting another second, Marie quickly overlaid the two functions through a summation.

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Marie screamed as she was pulled out of The Church forcefully. Guy immediately rushed forward and straddled her in his arms.

"Marie!" He shook her lightly. He tapped her cheeks and brought his ears close to her chest. He sighed in half-relief after noticing that she was still alive.

"What happened?!" Grace rushed in. "M-Marie! What did you do to her?"

"I-I-" Guy stumbled on his words. He regretted everything. He shouldn't have gone through with it. He should have stopped her!

Grace rushed towards the unconscious girl and burst into panicked tears. She grabbed Guy by his collars and started to shake him in a fit, "You! What did you do?!"

Guy mumbled blankly. Around this time, others present at the orphanage started to gather as well. Markus and Jean looked concerned, although the latter didn't show it on her face. Dora was playing around in the woods, so she was absent.

Noticing Grace's agitated and near deflated state, Guy hoped to explain the situation. Just as he was about to speak, a forceful voice broke through the din.

"She's fine."

Guy turned towards the door and noticed an old man with a stick in his hands, gazing calmly at the unconscious Marie.

""""M-Mage Nara!"""" Everyone exclaimed in unison.

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