Casual Heroing

Chapter 160: Magical Theory

We are deep into the night. I don’t know how late exactly. And it’s not like knowing would change anything. We are on it. We are so damn close.

Let’s start with something that might have been a little confusing for you. My first assumption while creating gamma rays was that Light Magic would have a wave-like behavior. What does that mean? Well, gamma rays are electromagnetic radiations. They are photons that run very fast. I mean, it’s not that easy. But yeah – you get the point.

Now, if gamma rays are not particles – and we know that – it means that they could be generated directly in the form of [Light]. Why? Well, we supposed that Light Magic was not particulate. Therefore, as long as you accelerated [Light] fast enough, it would become a gamma ray. Again, not exactly. Just bear with me.

Lord Juler and I had tried to mix and match electromagnetic waves made of [Light] – again, not 100% sure what we were doing – to accelerate them. Or just to fuck them up bad enough to create X-rays. From there, the idea was just to amplify the process enough to produce gamma rays.

Turns out we were doing it all wrong. I got a suspicion from the book we just read. As he was explaining the weird nature of [Light] magic, I realized that I had always considered the magic as a wave. I also ran a couple of experiments to confirm that. And, man, even though I hypothesized that magic existed in a different dimension and stuff like that, I still didn’t think of the most likely option.

It was simple.

Elegant, almost.josei

Magic is its own particle.

That explains so many things. You remember the shielding experiment to block [Light]? It was the one before my head almost exploded from all the research. Long story short, magic has non-physical properties. However, it can influence the world, obviously. It interacts non-linearly with itself. By ‘non-linearly,’ I mean that you cannot quantify or qualify its behavior in any single category. It’s an asymmetrical law, something that doesn’t follow its tenets until it enters the real world.

What?

What does that mean?

It’s simple.

Magic only starts behaving physically once it enters the realm of things. If magic turns into fire, it can be extinguished by water. But even then, not all magical fire can be put out by water or the lack of oxygen. So, is this new law true? Well, it depends. Fire is basically a very high kinetic movement, right? What if you create an intrinsic forcefield – not exactly, but you get the idea – and use it to repel the external influences that would impede the self-propagating agitation of the particles?

Sadly, even though Lord Juler is now obsessed with the idea of asymmetrical behavior, we can’t prove anything. Yet. It would require a massive team of [Mages] running experiments non-stop for who knows how long. However, once proven… I don’t know. Again, it’s magic. There’s only so much we can know. But if my new theory is true, it means that there’s no one perfect casting method. Even my way is just ‘restrictive.’ That’s why this discovery would be massive. If magic really behaves asymmetrically until it reaches the ‘real’ world, it means you can conjure magic however you want. If you could conjure magic by eating grilled ducks and you were a master at it, you would become an [Archmage] – most likely a [Duck Archmage].

However, this is just a collateral discovery. It’s not something that directly influences the radiation. By ‘this,’ I mean the fact that we could conjure magic from duck-eating. I believe I could have very productive discussions with some [Shamans]. Why? Because if I’m right, there’s a massive empathetic element that goes into creating magic. If I’m right, spell matrixes could be mere lines in the mud. Why need them if you can just scoop the mud up with your hands? Well, again, this is all conjecture.

Now.

To us.

If magic does not need to change its pre-reality to any specific form, we can simply try to reproduce gamma rays. We don’t need to find ways to accelerate [Light] to insane speed and spew gamma rays from our butts. We simply need to create a pre-reality that fits an outcome that poops out gamma rays.

Do you know how the stupid hat improves visualization and a thousand other things? It also helps retrieve information from your brain. And even though Lord Juler believed that it would only help with processing power, it actually gives you a better memory. Not surprising. The brain is quite complex, and things often end up in a different place than what we had planned for them.

If I think of my spells as electromagnetic waves, or even better, particulate rays, I can do great stuff. Why? Well, thanks to the hat, I remembered an experiment where they produced gamma rays through. Let’s review for a second how you usually obtain gamma rays – mostly through radioactive decay. So, you would put something like an isotope of Cobalt into your machine to create a gamma knife. Also, cosmic rays, and I have been thinking about them a lot.

To be fair, cosmic rays are what triggered this epiphany about magic.

Why?

Cosmic rays are high-speed electrons or protons that collide with random stuff and generate high-energy waves like gamma rays. And here, my trail of thought gets a bit metaphysical and hard to follow, be warned. If Light Magic is the manipulation of stuff that brings to radiation – meaning that manipulating any radiation, ionizing or non-ionizing, is a thing of [Light]… Then magic itself can only be made in particles. Why? Because if it were not, parts of this class would be impossible to access. Not even Lord Juler, the [Supreme Archmagus], managed to produce anything that would give us real results for the guide or the gamma knife. And based on this very empirical finding, I firmly believe that magic has its own particles and that these particles can create gamma rays if used properly.