5 The Science of Magic

Kelmithus' Wizard Academy

10 A.M. Local Time

Month 5, Day 21, Year 237

Alpha Team

"Now, I must journey with your colleagues to the royal castle, so I shall leave your needs in the hands of my apprentices, Aranmithus and Scarnmithus."

"Call me Aran."

"Call me Scarn."

With introductions out of the way, Alpha team began to discuss the history of Gaerra. Alpha team was provided with books on magic and history, which excited the academics of the group. Jones in particular was interested in the various legendary items of this world, including mana diamonds and ancient weapons. It was revealed that many of these rare artifacts were once owned by the Axons, who left behind various ruins as their mainland was transported to another plane of existence.

Advanced magical technologies were lost as the Axons were banished. This situation is akin to the loss of Earth technologies in the past such as Damascus Steel, which required thousands of years of technological development to produce a viable counterpart.

As for the physicists of the group, they questioned Aran and Scarn about topics regarding magic. Evidently, the magic of this universe abided by a particular set of laws, much like the science of the Earth universe. The major difference between the laws of science and magic was the amount of laws; magic was less restricted than science, although some outputs of magic were restricted by scientific properties.

For example, a mage can conjure fire out of thin air, violating thermodynamics, but once he has released the fireball, the fire must adhere to scientific laws including those of thermodynamics and basic physics.

Such abilities are powered by mana, which can be siphoned from mana gems. These gems essentially acted as batteries for magic users, allowing them to draw energy from the rocks and cast spells using this stored energy. Some mana gems are more powerful than others, with the rarest and most powerful having been excavated from Axon ruins. However, these are carefully stored and are only used for study, as it is a top priority for many wizards across the globe to reverse engineer the techniques used in the refinement of these Axon gems.

Mana gems undergo a process of refinement that is similar to uranium enrichment. Like their scientific counterparts, mana gems have varying levels of stability and power output. Unlike the trend of atomic elements, where stability decreases as the atomic mass increases, mana gems become more stable as the density of magical particles increase. Mana refinement produces high quality gems, up to grade 20 in the Divinian Empire, which can convert up to 20% of the mass of the gem into pure energy.

When Oppenheimer and Tesla learned of this, they were dreadfully shocked. Thankfully, Aranmithus explained the energy equation of his universe, which is similar to Einstein's famous equation, but weaker by a factor of 1000. So, compared to atomic mass, the Divinians were only able to convert up to 0.02% of an atom's mass into energy. Still, this was troubling as it essentially meant that the Divinians were capable of producing weapons that were a tenth as powerful as fission weapons on Earth. Indeed, such capabilities were enough to rival the most powerful modern conventional weapons. Thankfully, the efficiency of the process was awful and the bomb mechanism that the Divinians have developed was not automated. Essentially, Divinian mages had to cast a long range spell to manually detonate the bomb. This feat required an insane degree of coordination between Divinian bombers and mages, in order to detonate the weapon at the optimized altitude. As such, this weapon was rarely ever used, and only used against monsters such as Epic Dragons and the Skitters, which were a peculiar bug race.

When asked about the capabilities of the Axons, Aran informed the scientists that the Axons were much more advanced than the Divinians. The only comparison he gave was that of the technology disparity between both sides during the ancient wars, over 5,000 years ago.

The Axon continent was located in a stretch of ocean to the far east of Eanif, isolated from the continents of the human and orc civilizations. The Axons were a race of bluish humanoids with peculiar mandibles, similar to that of a beetle. Having conquered and unified their mainland, they proceeded to invade the orc and human continents. Eanif was the first to fall, followed by the orc continents of the Obegs. The Axons ruthlessly cut through their enemies with mithril weapons, imbued with powerful enchantments. On top of this advantage, the Axons had a natural magical attunement rate of about 80%, which granted the Axon warriors considerable mastery over magic. The defending force was meek in comparison, armed only with iron weapons and struggling with a magical attunement rate of less than 40%. Of course, some outliers did exist, and these outliers were known as the legendary heroes of the time. These outliers boasted perfect magical attunement, and this single advantage allowed the heroes to pioneer a dangerous new spell, one that went down in the history books as the spell that banished the Axon Empire. Without reinforcements from their mainland, the Axons on the remaining continents were slowly eradicated.

Given this information, Oppenheimer and Tesla deduced that the Axons were most likely on par with modern levels of technology, using the technological levels of the Divinian Empire as a comparison. According to the information provided by the apprentices, the Divinian Empire has military capabilities akin to the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Without automated systems and advanced scientific knowledge, their vehicles performed as well as vehicles from World War 2, but their weapons capabilities were lacking, as firepower was reliant on magic. On the other hand, the Mekkans seemed to have respectable computing capabilities, similar to the 1950's. This led the scientists to estimate that the Axons had a technological capacity equivalent to that of early 2000's American technology. The Axons were most likely nuclear capable, and could potentially create grade 100 mana gems with ease, with 5,000 years of development.

American undercover operatives in Mekkan and the Divinian Empire would later corroborate these claims. Meanwhile…