Chapter 213: ~Chapter 72~ Part 1

What's up with underground chambers? Or rather, why did my life have so many of them? Why did we even have this many underground facilities on a volcanic island? Was that even safe? Were we just a small earthquake away from being flooded with lava? And that's just a 'mundane' concern; what about the supernatural ones? Should I start getting worried about being invaded by the mole-people? Could mole people even live on a volcanic island in the first place? Wouldn't they get fried by the magma underground? Maybe they were fire-moles? Should I start looking into things that were super-effective against fire-types?

These, and many more thoughts of their ilk kept running through my head while I pretended to listen to the bearded middle-aged man on the pulpit talking about the new advancements his research group made in the field of applied kinetic battery enchantments. He was standing at the bottom of a large underground hall shaped like a semi-circular Greek theater with dozens of rows of seats surrounding the stage in the middle. It also had a domed ceiling with branching beams protruding from its surface in a shape that reminded me of an enormous stone snowflake.

However, said ceiling was currently hard to see due to a giant, semi-transparent three-dimensional projection floating over our heads. There was a tiny version of the same shape in front of the speaker, and whenever he manipulated his piece, the large one over our head also moved in accordance. In short, it was a fairly rudimentary and simplified representation of an enchantment, which was read by a magitech device in front of the presenter's podium and then projected it for everyone to see. In layman's terms, it was a big, fancy hologram, and everyone present could apparently read it.

If the hushed whispers around me were to be believed, it was bleeding edge magitech they considered quite amazing. From my perspective, it was like looking at a terribly compressed image of a famous painting photocopied over a dozen times; sure you could recognize what it was supposed to be, but it was kind of cringe-worthy. It was a sentiment the people behind me apparently didn't share though.

Speaking of which, I was currently sitting in the front row, and I was surrounded by about three hundred freaking artificers filling out the rising rows of seats behind me. They all looked about at imposing as one would expect experts to be, even if a tad placeholder-y from time to time. Worse yet, they were all dressed in formalwear ranging from dapper suits to straight-up white-tie tuxedos, which coincidentally made me feel just a little bit underdressed for the occasion. It was a good thing I was well prepared and not at all nervous by the prospect of stepping in front of all of these people, otherwise all of this would give me cold feet. Thankfully I wasn't nervous at all. Really, I wasn't. I was totally calm. Seriously.

"Hey, Leonard?"

I nearly jumped out of my seat when a certain brown-skinned Arch-mage lightly poked me in the side. It was only because she hit my funny-bone though. I wasn't tense or anything.

"What?" I responded with a hissy whisper, at which point she tilted her head towards the stage.

"Meister Repousser is, like, almost done. It's going to be your turn soon!" She flashed a toothy smile at me and added, "Gosh, I can't wait to hear your presentation!"

"That makes one of us," I grumbled, and true to her words, the tall, handlebar-mustachioed man on the podium was already in the process of wrapping up his lecture. Sahi let out a giggle at my expense and faced the stage again, her eyes still sparkling with anticipation. It was a good thing I wasn't cracking under the pressure or anything, otherwise her behavior might have been throwing more fuel onto the fire.

As for why I had her sitting next to me, it was due to being a guest of honor. I mean, not her, but me. Though again, technically she was also one, but it's beside the point. The first row of seats was not only reserved for VIPs, which I ostensibly was due to Gowan personally vouching for me, but the seating itself was also hierarchical. Because of this, a palpably uncomfortable Lord Grandpa was sitting in the chair right in front of the podium, Sahi was on his immediate right due to being his peer (though, on paper, she was here as Saahira's representative), while Gowan was seated on his left due to being the senior artificer of the School and the organizer of the event. Which, by extension, meant that I had the fourth most important seat in the entire hall. Once again, it was really lucky that I wasn't already nervous or anything, or else this might've put more pressure on me or something. 

In the end, the Frenchman on the stage finished with a small bow, and once the obligatory applause died down, the amicable local artificer took his place.

"Thank you, Meister Repousser," Gowan addressed the man about to leave the stage. "Your findings were most enlightening as usual. I wish you the best of luck in the future." There was another small round of applause, after which the French artificer promptly left the spotlight and took a seat in the front row. More than a couple of seats away from me, meaning he was at least seven or eight steps beneath me in the symposium hierarchy. Oh boy…

In the meantime, Gowan waited for everyone to quiet down before he cleared his throat to get their attention again.

"For our next speaker, please allow me to introduce you to a young yet brilliant friend of mine. I'm sure you must have already heard of him, as he made quite a name for himself as Critias' famous Chimera Slayer. Please extend a very warm welcome to Leonard Dunning."

The moment he finished, the whole hall erupted with a cacophony of hushed whispers that became even louder when I stood up and picked up my bag. My legs required a moment to steady me after sitting for so long, so in the interim I took a deep breath and steeled my nerves.

This is it, Leo. No need to fret. You have spent two whole nights cramming the fundamentals of an entire field into your head. You are entirely qualified to stand in front of all of these people and lecture them.

…

Why did I think accepting this invitation was a good idea again? While I pondered that question, my legs carried me to the stage and, following the bearded artificer's prompting, I took my place behind the podium and placed my bag beside the projection stand. It was only then that the answer came to me: I accepted this opportunity because I had a lot to gain from it. I wasn't here for fun. I came here to make connections and get access to as many artifacts and enchantments as possible, as they were my cleanest and most promising way to interact with the supernatural stratum of the world. Doing so was crucial for understanding what made this Simulacrum thing working, so I had to do my best to impress the people here, or at the very least appear competent enough to the point where they would be willing to let me look at their stuff in detail.

In other words, I needed to shock and awe everyone here, or failing that, at least bamboozle them into submission. To do that, I had three tools at my disposal: my reputation, my novel understanding of enchantments, and good old refuge in audacity. I could do this. Or at least that's what I have been telling myself over and over.

"Good evening…" I began, my voice automatically amplified by the arrays on the stage, and wanted to say 'ladies and gentlemen', but then I belatedly realized that aside from Sahi, there were exactly zero other women in the hall. Was that because artificers were an insular club of men, or rather because these guys were probably not supposed to be that important in the grand scheme of things and the Simulacrum just copy-pasted a bunch of them to fill up the seats? I couldn't say. I didn't really have the time to ponder about it either, so after a short pause I continued with, "… everyone. I'm Leonard Dunning, and this is my first time speaking in front of such an illustrious audience. Please go easy on me."

That comment earned me a few chuckles and simultaneously lightened the atmosphere a little, which told me I was on the right track. I internally debated whether I should go with an overconfident or a humble approach, and it seems like a made the right choice.

"As I'm sure you are well aware, I'm not an artificer by trade, but I do dabble in the craft in my own way." After priming the audience with that, I reached into the bag by my side and took out one of the items within. All of these were minor, mostly useless enchanted items I received from Mike in the past, and since I've already analyzed them to my heart's content, I decided to rewrite them for illustration purposes during this presentation. "However, I do have a few ideas I would like to talk about, and hopefully I can provide a new perspective. I would like to title this presentation…"

At this point I paused on purpose as I put the first item, a battered pocket watch, onto the platform. A second or so later, a series of projections appeared overhead, drawing everyone's attention, and after using a decidedly retro-futuristic dial to move them around a bit, they finally settled in their intended orientation.

"Please debug your enchantments," I stated, with the projected enchantments forming the same words.

I intended to pause here for a beat before moving on, but the silence was unexpectedly broken by a pair of enthusiastically clapping hands. When I glanced over to the source of it, I found Sahi applauding me with a pair of practically sparkling eyes. I thought she would stop soon enough, but instead, to my shock and confusion, Lord Grandpa also began to slowly clap his hands with a strange mixture of discomfort and astonishment on his face. Since he was clapping, now Gowan also found it pertinent to follow suit, which soon caused a cascading reaction as the whole hall began applauding, leaving me more than a little flabbergasted in the middle.

At last, after a solid minute, the situation finally calmed down and I got the opportunity to take the watch off the pedestal. When the Scottish artificer showed me this device the day before, and I came up with the idea of putting some random enchantments together to form words, it was just a fun little idea I thought would give my presentation some flair. It was pretty much the enchantment equivalent of ASCII art. How exactly was that worthy of standing ovation?

Anyways, I quickly pocketed the item on display and faced the audience again.

"Thank you, you are too kind. So, as the title of my presentation implies, I wish to talk about something I've noticed in a number of enchantments I worked on: the importance of debugging and proper commenting and annotations." This time the response to my words was a vacant silence, so it was time for a demonstration. "To better understand, allow me to show you an example."

Saying so, I placed my second item, a folded-up switch knife onto the pedestal, and a couple of seconds later, a new magical hologram appeared over everyone's heads. It was a faithfully copied version of the enchantment on the dragon-slaying spear, or rather, a fairly big chunk of it. It was still enough for my purposes.

"As you can see," I began as I used the dials to point out various parts on the floating amorphous blob on display, "This is part of a weapon's enchantment. Looks functional, isn't it?" It was a rhetorical question, but I still received a couple of nods from the seats. "Well, just because it's functional, it doesn't mean it's not an unholy abomination of terribly mangled arrays slapped together. For example, look at this spot. That's an entirely superfluous recursive effect array that only exists to give the weapon a glow when another array triggers, except it doesn't work because there is a syntax-bug in the link between these two parts. In other words, if the original creator of this enchantment actually cared enough to debug their work, they should have either fixed the error or removed this part entirely to clean up the end product. Any questions?"

That was another rhetorical question, yet to my surprise, the brown girl in the front row immediately raised her hand high into the air. We locked eyes for a second, and she looked really insistent, so I used my good hand to point at her.

"I'm not, like, an expert or anything, but," she said, and as she did so, the enchantment of the stage automatically amplified her voice too. "Can you actually do that? I mean, if you removed that part, wouldn't the strengthening array, like, interfere with the central control array and, like, totally melt the whole enchantment?"

"Um… no?" I answered by reflex, and she looked understandably unsatisfied by my answer, so I elaborated, "You just have to take rearrange the arrays in a way they don't bleed into each other. It's similar to putting together an electric circuit."

"I have to agree with the 'young lady'," Lord Grandpa backed her up, much to my annoyance. "In my understanding, such manipulation is exceedingly hard after the initial engraving process had finished, and it would not affect the final efficacy of the enchantment in question."

"You see? This kind of attitude is the problem," I declared with a frown. "Saying that it's 'good enough' is the bane of progress. You say there is no change in efficiency? Well, let me demonstrate."

After proclaiming so, I immediately put a finger onto the knife on display while simultaneously plunging my Phantom Limb into it.

"First, let's just remove this part." The same time as I said that, I made a flicking motion with my other hand, and a second (which felt a bit longer to me due to jumping back and forth between the enchantment and the outside world), the offending redundant array disappeared from the overhead display, earning me a few shocked gasps in the process. "Now that it's gone, you can see that these interlocking parts now have a gap, so let's remove that. Then we interchange these two parts, then change the trigger-conditions on this one, and presto."

It was only at this point that I noticed that, aside from Gowan, the entire rest of the audience was giving me absolutely blank looks. That didn't last long, as they soon turned increasingly more flabbergasted the more they looked at the model above; still a mess yet incomparably cleaner than before. I expected that something like this would happen once I showed off my ability to manipulate enchantments on the fly, but the silence was a tad nerve-wracking all the same.

"So, now that we are clear on this, let me show you a couple more examples."

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Following those words, I proceeded to spend the next half an hour showing bits and pieces of other enchantments I have encountered in the past and then discussing where they could be improved. There was another sample for the spear, a few pieces from miscellaneous items, a part from the Magiformers, and I even threw in a segment from the control module of the Chimera-puppet for good measure, and just to see if Lord Grandpa would recognize it. By the way, his face blanched when he saw it, I was pretty sure he did, but then again, his complexion was pretty bad from the beginning, so maybe I was just seeing things.

At last, I reached the final sample of my presentation, and one I picked on purpose to pique the interest of a certain annoying but potentially useful Arch-magess present. As such, I cleared my throat to build some tension before placing a small, golden plaque onto the projector stand.

"And last, but not least, I wish to present you an example of the kind of enchantment I consider to be something to strive for. It combines elegance, efficiency, and a self-explanatory design that is both coherent and functional," I declared so and then waited in deafening silence for the hologram to show up. It didn't. I waited for several seconds more, and only when I was about to try again when the demonstration showed up, except instead of the enchantment in question, it only displayed a giant smudge of colors. "Huh? We are apparently having some technical difficulties."

I picked up the plaque and placed it onto the platform again, but after waiting for it to 'load' in again, we were all greeted with the same result. Seeing my distress, Gowan quickly made his way to the stage and took a closer look at the problem. I let him fiddle with the dials and glowy retro displays for a while (it was his magical machine, after all), which was made slightly more uncomfortable than necessary by being in the crossfire of several hundred gazes.

In the end, the vaguely Scottish artificer let out an embarrassed noise as he directed a hesitant question at me.

"If I may ask, what kind of enchantment did you want to show this time?"

"It's a piece of an old array that I took from a Japanese sword that used to house a soul," I told him frankly and in a way to make sure the audience could hear it as well. "Why, is there a problem with it?"

"It is embarrassing to admit, but the fault doesn't lie in your item, but the Atmospheric Magicule Virtualization System."

Ah, so that's what this thing was called. More importantly though, I couldn't help but raise a brow at his admission.

"Is it broken?"

"No, thankfully not. The issue seems to be that it simply cannot display the enchantment. It is apparently too complex for the system to handle."

"That can't be right. I mean, yes, it is a fairly dense enchantment, but not by such a huge margin." Gowan only shrugged his shoulders at my comment, apparently as stumped as I was. For a moment I considered cutting this bit out of my presentation, but I have spent more time transcribing this one enchantment than the rest of them combined, so not showing it would make all that time and effort wasted. Not to mention, doing so would have been really anticlimactic now that I went out of my way to pique Sahi's attention. In other words, I had no choice but to take action. "Can I take a look at the machine?"

His body language told me that Gowan's first reaction was to tell me 'No', but after a few seconds of consideration he stepped aside and allowed me to step up to the dials. He didn't really have to, as I had no inclination to play around with those, but I gave him an appreciative nod all the same and, without any further ado, I placed my hand onto the device.

Long story short, a subjective age later I managed to inspect every nook and cranny of the enchanted magitech projector, and it only took two more subjective ages to discover the exact nature of the problem. For the record, I would have probably been able to do so much quicker if there were proper artificer comments and annotations on the arrays telling me what they did and how they worked, but then again, if those things were common, I wouldn't have been giving this presentation in the first place.

"Ah, I get it now," I whispered under my breath when I took a short break. "Apparently the resolution of the device just isn't high enough to display this one."

My comment was met with a few uncomprehending blinks by its creator. I really wished I could explain it to him, but then again, I didn't fully understand it myself, only that by tweaking a few settings here and there and twisting a few arrays would fix it. So I did just that.

Not a moment later, the chaotically flickering display turned off, and then a long second later is turned back on to reveal a considerably clearer 3D image.

"There you go. Much better." I flashed a smile at the artificer by my side, yet he remained rooted in the spot and staring at the magical projector in front of him. I waited for a while for him to leave, but he seemed unwilling to do so, so I shrugged it off and returned to the topic at hand. "As you can see, this is an enchantment that is not only meticulously debugged, but it is well annotated. This part is particular…"

In the end, I spent about ten more minutes discussing the arrays I copied off the outer shell which used to house Ichiko within Onikiri, but for some reason my audience wasn't nearly as interested in the topic as before. In fact, they were getting a little unruly, some of them going as far as to openly whisper between each other. As such, even though I still had a lot to talk about, I decided to cut things short.

"And in conclusion, I think I have demonstrated the merits of proper debugging, optimization, and annotation. Any questions?"

The moment those words left my mouth, the entire lecture hall exploded into a torrent of noise as practically the entire audience jumped to their feet and vied for my attention, often quite loudly.

"Please, gentlemen! Calm down! One at a time!"

My shouts, further amplified by the stage, finally calmed the room for a moment, which I used to point at a random person in the crowd. When he realized I was looking at him, the man's face immediately lit up and he exclaimed, "Meister Leonard! I have a niece your age; may I introduce her to you?"

"… That wasn't an enchantment-related question," I pointed out, only for another voice to nearly overwhelm my own.

"How shameless can you be?!" the mustachioed man who had a presentation before mine thundered in pure outrage, and it took me a second to realize that he wasn't talking to me, but to the previous speaker. "Meister Leonard, please pay no heed to such crass old men! Trying to openly tempt someone like that! Absolutely shameless!"

"Um… I guess, but…"

"On an unrelated note, have you ever considered moving from the island? If you were to visit our Paris School, the oldest and most prestigious School of the entirety of Europe, if I may add, I can promise full accommodations and your very own research facility!"

"Talk about shameless!" a third overwhelming voice joined the fray from the mouth of a tall, wiry gentleman from the back. "Trying to entice a young talent away from his home with such paltry promises? Meister Leonard, I implore you that you ignore that lout! If you ever wanted to do proper research, come to our New York School! We might not have the history of Paris, but with our money, you can buy everything else!"

"Errr… Gowan? Help, please?" I pleaded under the pressure of the torrent coming my way, but when I glanced to the side…

"Fascinating."

… I found the local Meister completely enamored with the recently modified projector. In other words, he was not going to be too much help. Okay then, let's look for the next best thing.

"Lord—"

I got exactly that far when it came to addressing the seat of the Arch-mage, with its occupant conspicuously missing. Not only that, but the seat next to him was also empty. I quickly glanced around, trying to ignore the increasingly louder crowd swelling around me, and before long, I caught a slender brown hand disappearing behind the frame of the main entrance of the hall. I immediately far-glanced over to their side and found myself looking at Lord Grandpa dragging a loudly protesting Sahi along the corridor leading out of the hall and towards the security station.

"I can not believe you actually shouted you wanted him to marry you," the old man complained while trying to unscrew the cap of a fancy tin canteen with one hand.

"Unhand me, you wizened badger! What is the point of being young if I can't even do that! Quick, let me go before he gets honey-trapped by one of those bastards!"

"You also want to entice him!"

"Yes, but it's for his own good! And mine! But mostly his!" When it became apparent he wouldn't let her go, the girl switched gears and set her foot against the ground in an attempt to keep the old man from moving while simultaneously accusing him, "Don't act like it's none of your problem! How could you be so careless to allow such a genius to appear in front of those old sharks?! You should have stopped him, or told him not to show all his cards, or something!"

"Do I look like I am in a position where I could do any of that?" Lord Grandpa scoffed back before he took a long sip from his canteen.

He also said something else after that, but I couldn't hear it, as it was at this point that I cut the Far Sight due to the frenzied crowd of artificers leaving their seats and closing in on the stage. For a moment I contemplated Phasing away, but with this many witnesses, I doubt I could pull the 'I was an illusion and wasn't in the room to begin with' card. Not to mention, escaping now would have jeopardized the whole point of coming here and trying to make connections with these people.

At the end of the day I vacillated for too long, and the crowd more or less surrounded me. I spared one last glance at Gowan, and while he apparently finally awakened from his daze, he was just one man against the tide. At last, I resigned myself to my fate, and with a quiet, "Well, this didn't go as I expected," I let the wave of rabid recruiters wash over me. 

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