Chapter 332: Chapter 329: Amateur Magic Enthusiast
The first time Rorschach saw it, his immediate reaction was, ’False advertising!’
’It’s fake. It has to be fake.’ After all, in his past life, deploying an AI with intelligence comparable to a Tower Spirit required computing power that far exceeded the limits of any personal computer. How could mere mechanical computation possibly compete with semiconductors? The number of transistors was in the hundreds of millions! And while the abandoned prototype Rorschach and the others had seen was admittedly the size of a building, its computing power was probably on par with a calculator from his previous world.
Even the most beleaguered engineering student from his past life would puff out their chest with pride when speaking of humanity’s crowning achievement—the microchip—or the glory of their profession, the computer.
Rorschach wanted to put down the manuscript, but he hesitated. This world clearly had Magic, and there was a ready-made example: the Tower Spirit.
Instead of the engineering schematics, Rorschach first read the inventor’s manuscript:
"At first, the Casters from the Tower of Storms were willing to cooperate. Their attitude was excellent, and they answered every question we had.
"But when we proposed studying the tower’s oldest and most central secret—the Tower Spirit—the Mages’ faces instantly changed. Fortunately, my assistant eventually managed to persuade a Middle Level Mage. It’s quite strange; I have no idea what happened between those two men last night."
’The inventor can’t use Magic?’ From these few words, Rorschach gleaned an interesting fact. His past life had amateur scientists, and now it seemed he was looking at an ordinary person with a keen mind and a deep interest in Magic.
There were many people like that—who wasn’t interested in Magic? But this inventor’s greatest assets were his inquisitive mind and... sufficient wealth and power. He had taken on an alias, the Apple Count, and had not only sponsored a Mage Tower with an enormous sum of money but had also organized his own research team.
To construct an intelligent Tower Spirit, the prerequisite was to integrate a Mechanical Body into the entire structure during the Mage Tower’s design phase.
This was easy enough to understand. Just like the automation system Rorschach had described to Andre, it first needed input terminals—in other words, senses—as well as terminals the Tower Spirit could take control of, such as Defense Arrays, Magic Lamps, and its own vocal components. The latter included specialized Communication Skill Magic Arrays, Bells, Automatic Clocks, and other such parts.
Once these prerequisites were in place, the next step was to create a core capable of intelligence.
Rorschach was a little surprised. All this information was in the inventor’s notes, which meant the Mages of the Tower of Storms had truly told their sponsor everything they knew.
In Rorschach’s opinion, however, it wasn’t so much that they were kind, but that the Casters of the Tower of Storms were arrogant enough to believe it was no big deal to share this technology with some rich Muggle.
And so, amazingly, Rorschach now possessed a "Guide to Building a Tower Spirit" written by a non-Caster.
Rorschach read on. At this point, the author’s notes read more like a memoir: "After I finally signed over three South County Manors, they agreed to demonstrate how to create intelligence for me...
"First, one needs Alchemy to forge a vessel for thought. During their demonstration, they removed the brain of a hound right in front of me, explaining that this particular breed was quite intelligent, equivalent to a five- to eight-year-old human child.
"The entire fresh, fragile organ was then placed into a container I couldn’t comprehend. It was a round metal canister covered inside and out with Magic Circuits. Then, they poured in scalding, molten metal.
"The Mages told me the process had to be done with extreme care. The original brain tissue would be destroyed, but its symbolic structure would be ’imprinted’ onto the Alchemy Alloy."
With the vessel complete, the final step was for a Mage to cast a miraculous spell called the Enlightenment Skill. They made extensive preparations, then began Casting on the metal sphere containing the dog’s brain... The author described it thus:
"White light gathered from an unknown source; I am certain it did not originate from the Caster... Once it had converged to a certain point, the light, as if tangible, wrapped around the Mage’s hands. He then guided it into the prepared vessel.
"According to the Mages of the Tower of Storms, this Magic is extremely difficult. If the same spell were cast on a pure Mechanical Body, it would require a Great Mage specializing in this field to succeed.
"Fortunately, the demonstration went smoothly. The spherical canister was placed inside a suit of armor, which then came to life. It could understand our simple commands and would attempt to follow them."
There was a strange feeling that came with being an expert analyzing a layman’s text. To Rorschach, this meant that directly using Enlightenment on a Mechanical Body could only be accomplished by a Great Mage specializing in the field. Judging by the difficulty, it had to be at least an Eighth Ring Spell.
The one the Tower of Storms had demonstrate for the author was likely a Middle Level Mage. The Enlightenment Skill he cast was a Sixth Ring spell at most, and the results seemed rather impressive.
"The Caster told me that the white light I saw might have been the substance of a Soul, and the metal canister with the processed dog’s brain was the vessel. The higher the vessel’s original intelligence, the smarter the new intelligence created by the Magic would be.
"I asked him then and there, where did this ’Soul substance’ summoned from thin air come from? Are we living in a world full of ghosts?
"He simply smiled and tapped the surface of the armor. But I had an even more chilling question that I didn’t dare to ask: How was the Tower of Storms’ own Tower Spirit, one almost indistinguishable from a real person, created?"
In Rorschach’s view, the Middle Level Mage had taken a shortcut. The dog’s brain was a crucial Casting Material; it was less about creating intelligence and more like re-animating a dead organism and controlling it. In other words, while the Sixth Ring version of the Enlightenment Skill had a pleasant name, it was likely a Necromancy spell.
Not that Necromancy was inherently evil, but the unidentified white light, the requirement of biological tissue, and the result being a puppet that obeyed the Caster’s commands... it was a spell that operated in a moral gray area, at the very least.
Legend had it that the Tower of Secret Techniques had made a Tower Spirit directly from a Dragon. They probably killed the Dragon first, then used this kind of Magic to create an intelligence that would obey the Caster. If the "vessel" was powerful enough—a Dragon’s brain, for instance—it might even retain memories from its previous life.
In the end, the inventor acquired the technology to create the "Iron Canister"—at least, the Alchemy his research team could master. However, he was a man of principle and refused to use the Necromancy version of the Enlightenment Skill.
He found Babbage, the designer of the Differential Engine, and had him design a core unit capable of performing all simple calculations. It was built by the most skilled watchmakers and had even more parts than the Differential Engine. As a pure calculating machine, it was the pinnacle of its craft.
Then, he actually managed to hire a Great Mage who was intrigued by this commoner’s wild fantasy, and had him use a Ninth Ring version of the Enlightenment Skill—one that didn’t involve deceased flesh.
"To have witnessed a Great Mage personally cast a Ninth Ring Spell... my life has been worth it! What’s losing the deeds to thirty sugar manors compared to that?"
’I was wrong... This guy wasn’t an ordinary person. He had a superpower—money. He knew only one spell capable of creating miracles: throwing cash around. It made Middle Level Mages and Great Mages alike scramble to please him.’
A miracle occurred. The "vessel" with the calculation unit as its core didn’t accept the "white light" they had seen before. Instead, it began to mechanically execute commands, just like a newly created Mechanical Body. The anonymous Great Mage was also surprised, but only to a degree. The machine couldn’t communicate with people like a true Tower Spirit; one could only feed it punched paper tapes, and it would spit out more paper tapes in return.
Previously, to perform a calculation, one had to input the raw data and then physically adjust the machine’s structure to determine the steps of the calculation. Now, one only needed to input two paper tapes—one for the data and one for the equation—and the Enlightened core could arrive at the result on its own.
"The farce is over, generous sir, and you, the gentleman who likes to watch machines do arithmetic." This was what the inventor recorded as the Great Mage’s final words before he departed.
Babbage and the inventor, however, were ecstatic with the result. Babbage proposed that they should modify the peripheral Magic Circuits. Since both the input and output were paper tapes that only the machine could understand, why not add more calculation and storage units to its periphery? They could create a machine capable of solving any mathematical problem.
