As important as he considered his role as a teacher, Kir had other things to worry about as he left the Academy grounds. For one, his desire to revolutionize the world starting with Norneau necesitated a lot of work in his free ti during the day, to say nothing of his midnight activities.
This evening, he hoped to finally solve the problem that was plaguing his desire to bring mass-transportation to the city. Which ant eting the two people he’d roped into his project.
One was Moshui, a part-elven magical tattoo artist who also did enchanting work on the side. She was obsessed with spell efficiency and delighted by new concepts and magics, and Kir provided both in generous amounts. Her other obsession was tiny food, which is why Kir set up any eting with her at The Mouse’s Portion, which was a little hole in the wall bakery run by a pair of mousekin who specialized in tiny versions of food.
The second was Enumasam, and technically Enumasam’s husband as well. The premier independent blacksmith of Norneau, Enumasam was a man of passion who pursued perfection and novelty in equal asure. He was the creator of Kangetsu, Kir’s sword, and the present forms of Bri and Dar, Kir’s revolver rifle and pistol respectively - though Kir had rged Bri with Kangetsu. While Enumasam handled the physical paraters of Kir’s present project, his husband Goro did the math on costs and harried Kir for paynt, given all the ti he was taking away from Enumasam’s blacksmithing work.
"I’m seeing how it’s starting to co together, but at this point it’s not a problem with the material, but the spell. It’s too complicated," Enumasam said while eating a dainty little cupcake.
"It needs to be complicated in order to be efficient," Moshui argued back. "Air carriages waste way too much mana because the spell on them is basically ’Fly however the driver can think of.’"
"But if a lot of people are going to be using this, won’t it pay for itself?"
"You need to visit the outer city more often, most people won’t be able to afford a small silver just to get across the city. And then there’s the students."
Moshui and Enumasam had been going at things for quite a few minutes after Kir joined them. anwhile he was busy staring at a triple-broken set of shards made of equal mixes of chromium, cobalt, and nickel - or as Enumasam dubbed it, kiralloy - the toughest material on Ayther even without additional enchantnts... and Kir’s first contribution to the material sciences of this world.
"One plate of bacon cupcakes for you, Mr. Nasumi," one of the mousekin servers said as she slid a tray of cupcakes onto the table. Each of the little treats had a strip of bacon sticking out of it like a sail, cooked to perfection with a slight crunch.
Moshui was easily distracted. "Oooh, is that new?"
"Yes they are," the server smiled.
"I’ll take three. No four!" She looked at Kir expectantly and he nodded. He was footing the bill for the al after all.
With a bit of food in him, Kir felt human enough to ask, "How complicated are we talking here?"
"Well... I think you’re looking at spells to get the desired effect. And spells to inhibit the over-effects and stacking. Who knew getting a gear to spin forever could be so complicated?"
"Not forever, just as long as there’s mana in it."
"Right. You want the spell to vary in power based on how much mana is in it, which ans a spell to put mana in and one to pull it out, but most people don’t learn that kind of fine control."
"And teaching them will get expensive if the engine falls apart with the slightest mistake..." Kir acknowledged. "Not to ntion dangerous."
"I just can’t see how we can get it to work. It’s almost as complicated as contract magic," Moshui sighed.
"Contract magic?" Kir asked. He’d made a study of enchanting under the lens of material sciences, but had yet to study contract magic with any seriousness. In truth, given how close the subject was to Oath magic, Kir did not enjoy rembering...
"Yeah. Almost nobody has a mind that can do it, which is why Guilds and governnts snap up a contract-capable mage imdiately. As far as I rember, you set up a ton of clauses and work them into a system sustained by mana between multiple people, with one contract holder who can undo the whole thing. There’s, like, two people in the Guild and Chancellor Lumin who can be sourced for that sort of thing."
Enumasam had an epiphany. "Can’t we just do that with this then?"
"Contracts don’t affect physical objects. They affect people. That’s why we have enchantnt magic," Moshui sighed in frustration.
Kir wracked his brain for a solution.
Stacking clauses... that sounds almost like programming!
He had mories that would let him program, but there were no computers - not on Ayther at least, though he suspected Heaven of having sothing like them. But if contract magic was like programming... then maybe all he had to do was write the "contract" on the object itself. Or at least a source for how the object should behave...
"I think I have it!" Kir suddenly said, interrupting yet another argunt between Moshui and Enumasam. Why do artists fight so much when they get together?
"Go on," Enumasam said, sitting back.
"What is a contract if not a relationship between ’if’ and ’then’?"
"Uh..." Moshui sounded.
When he realized neither of them had an answer, Kir continued. "If sothing exists in reality, then by extension it is manipulable by other real objects. That’s essentially how gears, hamrs, everything works. You have a source of impulse and a reaction..."
By the ti Kir was done explaining, both Enumasam and Moshui were silently contemplating the implications of what he was saying.
"I’ll try to learn contract magic for this. I think I have the right idea," Kir concluded.
"It might be too complicated for flying though," Moshui stated. "The more clauses are in a contract, the more risk of clashes and loopholes in the magic. Besides, who the hell would you make the contract with?"
"The city," Kir answered, a devious smile on his face. "As to not-flying... we could start by putting so wheels on it. Just make it a self-moving ground vehicle."
"That’ll be a bumby ride on these streets," Enumasam snorted.
"Then I’ll just and so suspension and get the city to smooth out the roads," Kir shrugged.
"Oh, well if you can do it..." Moshui shrugged.
"I can. Because I happy to know "the city" herself."
*
"Absolutely out of the question," Chancellor Lumin, whose family helped found Norneau and the one who ran the Academy said when Kir presented his plan to her the next morning.
The reason Kir said he "knew the city" was because she said she was the city. And in a way she wasn’t wrong. "May I have an explanation?" he asked. He was standing in her office, still in his illusion because the walls had ears, especially now that the rest of her manor comprised the Academy’s dorms for teachers and students alike. Those that weren’t living outside the Academy, that is.
"It sounds frivolous. People have legs, they’re perfectly capable of walking if they can’t ride or hire an air carriage," she snapped back. "I told you to report experints you wanted to conduct. Not outlandish plans to reshape my city."
"Well I don’t bet small," Kir pointed out. "And think of it this way: How many hours does a person lose if they walk from the lower districts to the middle?"
"Maybe one if they’re unlucky."
"No, they lose more than one. That’s because they have to travel and then maybe rest at their destination, and only then start their work. And if they don’t get that rest, they lose ti and productivity for every mistake they make. And if they injure or sicken themselves, then that’s even more lost."
"Now imagine you could reduce that trip to a quarter of an hour or less. How much more productive would people be if sothing carried them across the city, placed them near where they needed to go, and then carried them close to ho? Students transported en-masse would be on-ti for class more often. Less susceptible to distraction on the road..." Kir thought of Bailey coming in bruised and bloodied. He’d reported it to Lumin but she only told him to care of it however he saw fit.
"And you’re saying that your device will help all that?"
"Yes, at least eight of them could revolutionize travel within Norneau." Kir answered. Eight was the number he ca up with after noting that there were two main streets that stretched perpendicularly to the walls, and one major lengthwise street for each of the city’s hemispheric districts - of which there were four. He’d left out the Fourth District except for the main streets because it was still under a lot of construction thanks to the influx of beastkin residents. "I just need permission to study the Contracts sections of the city and Academy libraries, and ti to develop this new type of contract magic."
Contract studies, it turned out, were quite forbidden to research, and usually only those with a mind for law or a proven record as a lawyer or judge would ever study it in the hopes they could perform the magic. That was because magical contracts could be easily catered with fatal clauses, and the ambiguity of linguistic understandings had a tendency to wind up activating such clauses.
It didn’t help that in most cases of legally-minded individuals such people didn’t study magic after the elentary basics, and so the reason contract mages seed so rare, at least to Kir, was that society simply wasn’t structured in a way to produce them. People with the right mind for it let their magic wither on the vine.
Hopefully the sa would not apply to what he was starting to think of as "Programmable Magic," since he wanted to keep it as close as possible to enchantnt magic.
Lumin chewed her lip, which she did sotis while thinking.
"Fine," she spat. "I expect a monthly report. And you show your prototype contract to before anyone else. Oh, and pay a visit to the docks tonight. Rumor has it soone’s been setting out a blue light."
Kir grinned, then nodded at her final statent. "I’ll have it for you this weekend... and don’t worry about the docks."
"You ask the impossible," she waved a hand dismissively.
He left with one concern though, and that was that Kiryu had decided to remain entirely silent on the subject-
"I was just wondering how long it would take you to figure out, Kid," Kiryu said as soon as Kir’s thought resolved.
"I’d appreciate it if you helped out sooner rather than later," Kir replied with a wave of annoyance.
"And give up watching you struggle? For the record I hated writing in Stackless Viper and I know for a fact you’re going to reinvent that shit because it’s the only programming language I really knew. So have fun with the mories."
"Shady bastard," Kir thought.
"You want my help, you gotta do sothing for ."
Kir knew Kiryu well enough by now that he could guess what the man wanted.
Goddammit.
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