Chapter 157: Chapter 149 – Playing with Dolls

*Bam!*

"Scarlet! I'm back!"

Even feeling her presence from outside, I still couldn't stop from flinching slightly as Orphne slammed the front door open.

It was a good thing that I had reinforced the frame and walls surrounding it a while back, or the door might have broken off its hinges after all the times this little fairy had done this. This was probably the only reason why Elli even tolerated such behaviour, as it at least didn't cause any noticeable damage to her home.

Then again, the fact that she had already yelled at Orphne repeatedly and she still shows no signs of stopping suggested that she had simply given up.

*Sigh*

"Welcome back. How did it go?"

"Perfect! I got 50 thousand pages!"

Putting down the magic bag she was swinging around in one hand, Orphne opened it up and handed me one of the white sheets.

"Hmm...looks good. Was there any complaints with the goods?"

"Nope! Everyone loved the stuff you picked!"

"Ah, that's good then."

I pulled out nineteen more pages from the bag, wrote a quick note on the corner of one than ripped it off and placed it back into the bag.

"Alright. Send this over to Peitho, and make sure she reads my note."

The note only outlined that I had taken these twenty pages and asked her to bill me later on them.

"Later! Later! What're you doing anyways?"

"Do you fairies never shut up?"

Across the living room table from me, Wayland the demon enchanter, spat out as he glared at the fairy.

"Nope! Never!"

But completely unphased, Orphne gave her completely honest reply, earning herself a heavy sigh from the older man.

"So? What is this?"

As excited as she looked, it was clear that the little fairy was clueless when it came to enchanting, as her eyes ran across the complicated series of magical circles and runes laid out on various sheets of paper on the table.

"Remember what I said before about working on that game we often play?"

"Oh yea! The fighting doll right? You're making a stronger one then? When can we play?"

"Well, rather than stronger, I'm trying to make one which anyone can use. So rather than me, you can face off against anyone who knows how to move one of these new dolls."

"Wow! Really? That's gonna be so fun!"

"That's only IF we can figure out all these problems."

"Yea, there's still all those."

Bursting our little bubble, Wayland huffed before examining one of the magic circles again.

The first step was making a doll which could move in the way the user wanted.

Using my past life as a reference, the obvious way was to preprogram a series of actions and then connect those to a series of command inputs. But after thinking about it for a short while, I was forced to throw away that line of thought.

It worked marvellously in games because you were either facing AI monsters with simple and obvious limitations or other players who played with the same limitations as you did. But to make a doll like this satisfying, only able to stiffly move according to a series of preprogrammed actions, no matter how numerous, wouldn't work. If facing off against a fairy, the fairy could just come up with something which broke all existing preprogrammed actions.

The solution was to figure out a way to allow the doll to move in any way its user desired, within the physical limitations of the doll itself at least.

At that, there was the possibility of using Earth's VR as a basis and have it simply imitate its user's actions. The main problem with that was that it would be limited by the area which the user could act.

The best way to do it was to use mental commands. If you could move the doll with your mind, then you were free to do whatever you wanted with your doll.

Frankly speaking, initially the idea felt ideal as I imagined it feeling the same as when I controlled the doll by infusing it with my shadow.

Reality was quite a bit different.

Or rather, making an enchantment which would allow free movement the mind wasn't working as cleanly as expected.

Wayland had some experience making tools which activated on mental commands, but they all had extremely limited sets of possible actions, like the power setting on a fan or intensity of a light bulb.

Allowing a doll to move in any which way through the same mental commands proved to be several magnitudes greater in difficulty.

The central problem was bandwidth.

The enchantments Wayland were used to using only had extremely limited bandwidth when it came to commands. So the enchantments he made was more than adequate for pushing through a single digit number. But what we were trying to do was like pushing through several thousand digits at once. The enchantment was quickly overwhelmed and everything broke down.

Improving this point was quite the ordeal, and the two of us have been working on it for quite a while.

The core issue was that it was difficult to just simply increase the bandwidth, as the data lanes took up space in the magic circles, which was needed for a whole assortment of other features, like translating those commands into actions which the dolls can perform.

For now, we were working on an intermediary magic circle which took the original data stream from the user, filtered and compressed that data into something which could fit through the data pipes on the doll itself.

But aside from that, there was also the issue of latency. The data stream itself wasn't fast, not nearly as fast as with a computer on Earth, and adding additional processing slowed things even further. Why the speed itself was low though, most likely was rooted in how the enchantments themselves worked. In theory they could be sped up significantly. Mana could be moved at extremely quick speeds when it was called for. [Light magic] was proof of that, as the mana being carried in the spells generally moved at the speed of light, or at least faster than I could perceive despite being able to break the sound barrier with my own body.

But it seemed like without any real need for such a feature like light speed transmission, progress on that field hadn't been made much in this world.

"Hmmm...how about we test this latest iteration?"

"Sounds good."

At Wayland's prompt, I took out a large disk made from orihalcum and placed it on the table. The disk had a magic circle engraved into its surface with a large mana crystal embedded in the centre. Several lines connected it to a second smaller magic on one side.

I went about making some small edits to the magic circle as per the designs we had made so far, while Wayland placed a small orihalcum doll on top of the large magic circle. The doll was only a torso with arms and head, including socket joints for the waist, elbows, shoulders, and neck, simplified with only a basic humanoid figure for the sake of making testing easier for such an early phase. Wayland proceeded to make adjustments to the magic circle which covered the majority of its torso.

"It's ready."

"Alright."

I put a hand over the smaller magic circle and stretched out my aura, touching and activating the circuit.

The mana crystal glowed deep purple, colour tied to the dark crystal we chose to use for no other reason than that it was the element closest connected to myself.

Normally the element chosen would be based on application, and for the movement of an earthly object would be closest connected to [earth magic]. But in this instance, my personal connection to [dark magic] due to my experience both with the magic itself and Claret, a dark spirit, that we decided that it had the potential to be even more effective. At the worst, it would be much less mana efficient, which wasn't a big deal for me.

[Dark magic] was capable of manifesting a similar effect to [earth magic] when it came to the moving physical objects.

With the magic circles fully infused with mana, I could feel a connection between myself and the little doll. Using nothing but my thoughts, I ordered it to move, according to an image projected from my mind.

A little slow at first, the doll's arm lifted up, jerking into a simple military salute.

Satisfied with this little test, I tried a more difficult image. The doll responded, moving with quick jerks, transitioning from its salute to a superman pose.

"Hmmm. Looks good. Try something even more complicated."

Giving the man a nod, I imagined a different pose.

With a slow stutter, the doll jerked, spinning its upper body to the side, leaning forward, before one arm thrust forward then the other behind and up, as if holding something. Finally, the head turned to look in the same direction as the right arm was pointing.

"Damn. It was supposed to do that all at once."

Rather than changing poses in one fluid motion, the doll interpreted my image and only did parts of it at a time, starting from the point closest to the base which received the magical signal and ending with the point furthest.

Not only that, but the doll took way more time to respond to my image than I liked, even for an early prototype.

"However, the movements themselves have increased in speed considerably. The changes to the encoding algorithm you've devised has been quite fruitful."

"Yea, I guess. But it's looking like we won't have any choice but to simply increase the bandwidth."

"Unfortunate. However, perhaps we can get the desired results by only doubling bandwidth?"

"You make that sound like it's easy."

"I fear that it is anything but. However, I do not intend to let my laurels rest until we find a way. For example, how about this part? If we substitute it, we can add an additional data lane immediately."

I looked down at the spot Wayland pointed. My face scrunched up at what I saw.

"Wouldn't that make the magic circle more fragile and prone to interference?"

"It would. However, we can compensate with an insulation formula placed outside of the circle."

"I see."

The demon had a point. While his proposed chance would cause the magic circle to become vulnerable to ambient mana, we could just create an insulating magic circle to protect everything.

"Hey wait a sec. In that case..."

His suggestion made me want to have another look at a few more parts. If we thought about changing the magic circle from a more fundamental level, ignoring the usual rules that dictated what was required to be included, and instead found workarounds which would allow the actual working circles to work at a higher capacity without increasing their size, then something more drastic might be possible.

"Yes?"

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"What if we tear out all of the protective and insulating parts of the magic circle? They make up quite a large amount of the circuit."

"Then the mana flowing throughout the circuit would interfere with itself, causing a total collapse."

"But what if we reshape it so that the signal could self reinforce, blocking out interference."

"Then you would single handedly revolutionize magic circles despite being an amateur."

(Sorry for being an amateur.)

But he did have a point. It wasn't reasonable for an amateur to come up with a revolutionary idea. At least any normal amateur.

My idea didn't come from an amateur, but an actual professional, even if I myself wasn't anyone who could remotely claim herself as one.

"Supposedly, certain data signals could avoid interference by running in two opposing directions side by side. Many of the sub-circles and runes can't be reduced in size, but the tracing lines can, and if we run them in both directions, can't they create a constructive wave that helps neutralize interference?"

The idea, from Earth obviously, was the twisted pair wire. A physical system where you pair up two wires from the same data line, and keep them as close together as possible. Twisting was simply the easiest and cheapest way to achieve this, but that alone negated the need of large and costly insulation. This simple change allowed phone lines to carry even more data across them than coaxial cable lines, despite being only a fraction of the size.

While both the application and even many of the fundamental properties were different, it was an idea which sought to do the same thing as the original achieved. I couldn't help but want to at least give it a try.

"Hmm...I suppose it is worth a try, at the very least. Very well. I shall make a prototype, though it will take some time."

"Ah, thanks. Actually making a magic circle like this from scratch is still way beyond me."

"It is a matter of experience. While you have the skill, you still lack the years I have, so it is not something to be ashamed of."

"Thanks."

Resisting the urge to lower my head, I gave Wayland a shallow nod as confirmation.

Elli had repeatedly reminded me of the importance of the dignity of a superior. As an elder, it was practically a duty to hold myself as a higher person over others. Privately amongst friends was one thing, as well as amongst peers like the other elders and chieftains, but when dealing with anyone else, she did press that it was better for me to be aware of the dignity which my position afforded me.

Though it really wasn't in my nature to act arrogantly like this, it was expected of me, so it was hard to simply dismiss such a line of thought.

"Hmm...Is this the thing you're trying to make? But it looks so weak. Won't it be boring to fight against?"

"Well, the idea is that when it's done, it'll be a fully moving doll like the one I normally use against you."

"Oooh! Can I use the doll too when it's done?"

"Huh? Well, I suppose. There shouldn't be any reason why you can't."

Though as to why she would do so rather than use her own body to do a match was a mystery.

"Then, I can control a doll and duel against your doll, right?"

(Oh yea, there's that application as well.)

I've been so focused on just making the thing work that I hadn't considered using a pair of dolls to fight each other. But if that ended up becoming the main usage, then it would become quite an interesting game that wasn't limited to fairies being one of the combatants.

Or rather, if we didn't go in this direction, then the crutch would be that it would require a fairy to be against the doll every time. Though I doubted there would be any shortage of fairies who would want to have a match, not everyone would want to play against a fairy every time, and the fairies would want to be on the side controlling the dolls here and there as well.

"Hmm...I'll see what I can do then."

"Yay!"

There was no guarantee that it would work, but at the same time there was no reason why it shouldn't. At worst, it would only make the system a bit more complicated and use up a bit more mana. Hardly a real problem when compared to actually making things work in the first place.

To be frank, all of this actually made me a bit excited. It reminded me of the days when I was trying to get my game done. But this time, I wasn't alone, and I didn't have any major pressure to get it done before my resources ran out.

This time, I was able to enjoy the process, and it was surprisingly fun.

My memories of the time when I was making my indie game was quite dominated by the desperation I was feeling in the latter months. I had forgotten just how enjoyable it was to make something, especially something so difficult.

And thus, I couldn't help but smile at seeing how excited Orphne was at the thought of the completed work. It would still be some time before we got to the point that the dolls could actually be used.

"Master~!"

A wobbly, uneasy voice called out from beyond the door to my room.

While I worked with Wayland, I had Claret babysit my little twins for the time being. They didn't need too much attention as they were too small to get themselves into trouble. Mostly they just needed someone familiar to keep them company and lightly play with them as, being vampires, they never slept so required constant monitoring to a greater degree than for any other race. Probably.

It wasn't like I was familiar with any of it, but since Elli said so when she had babysat for me, I had no reason to think it wasn't true.

It was starting to become time for Alicia and Fate to eat, so maybe Claret was becoming uneasy with how they were acting up?

"Master! Help me!"

As I entered the room, the greater dark spirit looked at me with teary eyes.

In front of her was Alicia and Fate, lying on my bed. They held one of Claret's hand, playfully sucking on her fingers.

(Aww, how cute!)

The very sight of it warmed me up as I stood at the doorway enjoying the sight.

"Master! Please! Alicia and Fate are eating me!"

(Aww, so cute! They're eating her!)

Supposedly, infants and extremely young children liked to put things onto their mouths as a way to explore, and seeing how they were bonding with my ever favourite familiar was so incredibly heartwarming. They were only about a month old, yet they were making such great progress already!

(Huh, wait, eating?)

Thinking about the weird wording, I concentrated my sight a bit. While it was slight, I could see mana flowing from Claret into Alicia and Fate.

(Wait, seriously?!)

In a hurry, I tore Claret's hand out of Alicia and Fate's mouths before giving each a light but sharp tap on the forehead. If I remembered right, newborn babies' skulls weren't fused so they were flexible. If I put in too much strength, I could easily do damage to their brains. Even if I could heal virtually any non-lethal wounds in seconds, I was wary of doing anything which could affect their development.

"Sorry Claret. Are you...?"

""Waaaah~!""

As expected, the two of them burst into tears at the sudden punishment. It was the first time I had done anything like that, so it was a given that they wouldn't take it well. But I couldn't let them think it was alright to eat people. Alicia would probably stop once her physical development reached the point that she was able to use her previous life's memories, but Fate didn't have such a backup to draw from.

I needed to take every precaution as early as possible, if even only for Fate's sake. And of course, I couldn't dole out punishment unequally, even if I was reasonably sure that Alicia would grow out of such bad actions in the future.

"You two! You can't...eat..."

But as I tried to admonish them verbally to reinforce the punishment, even if they probably couldn't understand me at all, my words caught in my throat.

As the two babies furiously cried out with tears running down their cheeks, if felt like a hole was being gouged out of my chest. I scrunched up my face, desperately trying to hold in my own tears, but the efforts failed to bear fruit as I felt cold wetness falling down my cheeks.

""Waaaah~!""

Alicia and Fate continued to cry, flailing around their limbs.

Because of me.

I made them cry.

It was for a good reason, but still, I was the one to make them cry.

No, even before that, they were crying, yet I wasn't comforting them.

Soon, I reached my limit and scooped them both into my arms.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry Alicia, Fate. It's mommy's fault!"

I hugged them as I bounced them up and down with my body, giving each kisses on the head over and over, stroking their heads with my hands.

Whether it was because they grew tired from all the crying or because I successfully calmed them down, the two babies quieted down to the occasional sniffle.

"Claret, sorry about that. Are you alright?"

"Yes Master. I'm fine."

The dark spirit gave me a smile, but there was a hint of unease in it. What had just happened must have been pretty traumatizing to her.

Just in case, I took a glance at Claret's status screen. And lo and behold, while it was only a little, she had lost some HP and MP.

It looked like I would need to be careful around any spirits when it came to these two, and thoroughly educate them on the subject of what was alright to eat and what wasn't.

"Here. Why don't you eat this and relax. I'll watch over these two."

"Thank you Master!"

It was earlier than usual, but I gave Claret one of her usual special mana treats. In fact, it as an apology, it was markedly bigger than normal as well.

Really, I was quite apologetic about the situation, but considering this spirit familiar of mine, she would probably refuse any additional apologies. It was better to treat it more like rewarding her for her endurance.

I could only hope that it wouldn't turn into some sort of bad habit for her while I was trying to prevent my two daughters from forming one of their own.

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