[250] System Operation (3)
Shirone finally stopped his assault. Parallel circuits alone lost effectiveness, but when assembled into a mansion they produced an amplification no serial configuration could match.
On top of that, because the circuits formed a three-dimensional structure, the distribution pattern looked different depending on the observation point. That made it impossible to identify which six magic circles made up any given mansion.
It was like marking dots on a sheet of paper and drawing a square that anyone could see at a glance—yet once rendered three-dimensionally nothing could be distinguished.
"How about it, Shirone? Can you dodge this too?"
The moment Dante finished speaking, six Air-type magic circles shifted and locked Shirone inside a Pressure Mansion.
"Ugh!"
As Shirone felt the crushing weight along his spine, a bluish bolt began charging at the center of the Electric Mansion hovering above Dante's head.
When the powerful electric beam fired, the air where the charge passed blistered and burned with a sharp crack as the charges collided.
Wherever Shirone moved, the attack followed. The photon output from the Photon Mansion was tracking his coordinates in real time.
"Ah...."
Shirone's mind went hazy. This didn't feel like fighting a person. It was like battling an armed man-of-war bristling with countless weapons.
He rolled along the ground to evade the vertically plunging ice spear. The world spun as a burning crack scraped near the surface. He activated photonic magic and snapped his hips—and almost immediately an Atomic Bomb detonated.
Dante's overwhelming firepower left the students stunned.
"My goodness… what kind of magic is that?"
Mark couldn't make sense of it either. Even if Pascal handled parallel processing, something human was still controlling the whole—managing hundreds of magic circles was beyond human capability.
Iruki glanced at Nade. Nade wore a more serious expression than before; it looked like he'd already figured it out.
"Nade, say something. I honestly don't know."
"That's… an automaton," Nade said.
"Automaton?"
"An automated mechanism. You mesh a series of gears, move the first gear, and the last gear outputs a fixed result. It's a simple mechanism, but when you expand that process astronomically, tasks that look impossible become possible—like tracking Shirone's coordinates with photon output or swapping mansions at high speed."
Shirone felt the automaton's power firsthand. No matter how he responded, the automaton calculated and countered automatically. It was an impregnable fortress.
Though the base spells were simple, their amplification through mansions made them anything but basic. Shirone rolled to avoid the bombardment and frantically searched for Dante, but hundreds of magic circles buried him from view.
The floating circles felt like the gazes of a monster with a hundred eyes.
"Uuuugh!"
A chill ran down Shirone's spine as he frantically fired the Photon Cannon. The automaton reacted instantly. A Lightning Cannon, fully charged in a Bolt Mansion, fired a blinding beam that carved a line of light through space and popped the Photon Cannon like a balloon.
When the Lightning Cannon grazed his flank, that alone triggered anti-magic. As Shirone staggered, the automaton unleashed every spell it could employ. Countless magics—too many to count—razed the entire radius.
Having exhausted all available energy, Pascal gave a grotesque sound and stopped. As the smoke cleared, Shirone emerged clutching one shoulder. A moment later his knees buckled and he slammed down onto the ground.
"H-he's down this time."
One knockdown wasn't the only problem. A direct hit of anti-magic meant Shirone's durability had cracked, and that implied the end of the Immortal Function.
"Truly impressive."
Even Alpheas couldn't help but be awed. Parallel magic circles with Pascal and three-dimensional mansions boosting power—plus an automaton adding automation—Dante's system reached an artistic extreme in functionality.
To fuse information magic with an automaton—whoever did that was taking a challenge no ordinary pro mage could undertake. No matter how talented Dante was, this was beyond student-level achievement.
If it were possible at all, one assumption would have to be true.
"Is he using binary?"
Olivia remained silent, but Alpheas understood. Dante was definitely manipulating binary. The only tradition he knew that used a magic system built from ones and zeros came to mind.
"When did Dante learn the Dragon language?"
A smile crept to Olivia's mouth. If she was already convinced, there was no need to hide it any longer.
"What's so strange about that? Dragon-language magic is a binary system, but it isn't exclusively the dragons' domain."
"Humans can understand binary, yes. But wielding binary at the level of a language is a wholly different matter."
Alpheas suddenly realized.
"Could it be… innate?"
"At first I couldn't believe it either. But it's true. Like Shirone's insight or Iruki's servant syndrome, Dante was born with an information-processing talent."
Olivia recalled meeting Dante ten years ago.
At the time she was serving as head of the Royal Magic Academy when an invitation to tea arrived from Bashka's social circle.
The hostess was Bianca, the matron of the Airhain family. Six people gathered; except for Olivia, they were all married women.
The noblewomen sipped tea sent from across the sea and chattered away.
Olivia joined in only when the topic interested her, but the gossip inevitably turned to children.
Bianca sighed and said, "It's really awful. Our youngest son has taken a leave of absence and come home."
"Oh my, Dante was such a model student. Did something happen at school?"
Bianca shook her head with a dark expression.
"I don't know. He hasn't spoken lately. He came home with bruises on his face from saying he'd been in a fight with friends. From what I heard, several of them beat him up."
The noblewomen's faces flushed. The thought of their own child in such a state made their blood boil and hands tremble.
"You left it like that? You should go to the school and report it."
"I tried that. But what I heard there was shocking. Dante hasn't spoken a single word to his classmates. No matter how they tried to talk to him, he wouldn't even look. The homeroom teacher at first thought he'd lost the ability to speak."
"Goodness… could there be some reason?"
"No matter how much we asked, he wouldn't answer. In the end we felt like the sky had fallen in and just brought Dante home."
Olivia paused mid-sip. As someone without children, she hadn't been inclined to intrude, but one possibility occurred to her.
Bianca propped her chin on her hand and continued, "So we had him withdraw from school and brought him home. The worrying thing is he spends all day sitting in the garden staring at the ground. If we ask why, he won't answer. We can only watch helplessly."
The woman beside Bianca took her hand and said, "Don't worry so much. Dante's only ten. It's the age where thoughts become heavy. Noble children reach adolescence far earlier than commoners, apparently."
"If only that were all…."
Bianca's anguish wouldn't ease.
Dante had been a bright child and the family pinned many hopes on him. For such a precious child to cause such grief was unbearable.
The noblewomen offered comfort. Whether their words were entirely sincere or not, as mothers they deeply sympathized with Bianca's pain.
Olivia set her teacup down and muttered, "Overflow…"
Bianca turned to her. "Pardon? What did you say?"
Olivia hurriedly recovered. As a teacher she knew how dangerous it was to evaluate a child in front of parents.
But it was hard to take back words in a room where every eye was on her—especially with gossipy noblewomen.
She tried to play it off as nothing serious. "Ah, I thought it might be an overflow."
"Overflow? What's that?"
"Well, it's not common, but it happens when a child awakens at a young age. Not so much a physical symptom as a psychological one. Their familiar worldview collapses and they begin to see another world. They usually suffer extreme fear."
"Are you saying our son is ill?"
A cold sweat ran down Olivia's spine. If she answered wrong, she'd be marked in society and subjected to slander for a long time.
"No. It's not a disease. It's something that appears in geniuses. The Magic Academy has had children like that."
Olivia had no choice but to use a magical word that made any parent's eyes light up.
Predictably, Bianca exchanged looks with the others as if she'd heard something miraculous.
What could thrill a parent more than the news their child might be a genius?
Thanks to that, Olivia avoided humiliation—but she paid a price.
Bianca isolated Olivia from the other women and peppered her with questions like an interrogation.
Is Dante truly a genius? If so, in what field? How should she educate him?
Olivia gave various answers, but nothing definitive.
If it were so simple to diagnose, geniuses who suffered overflow wouldn't have such troubled later lives.
"Really, is our Dante truly a genius? Hmm… It certainly seems so. He's been exceptional since he was little. Genius children often get ostracized. That could explain why Dante didn't fit in with the others."
Olivia wanted to go home. She couldn't tell Bianca's face that it was only a possibility.
Before she could find an excuse to leave, Bianca pressed on.
"Could you… interview Dante for us?"
"What? Now?"
This time Olivia openly refused. She didn't want to act like a teacher at a social gathering.
If she interviewed him and he turned out to be unremarkable, how would she face the aftermath?
Bianca, known as a fox of society, couldn't be unaware of Olivia's feelings.
She rose, resolute, and asked again, keeping the best manners in front of the other noblewomen.
"Please. Olivia, you're head of the Royal Magic Academy. Surely you could discover Dante's hidden talent. He's in the garden of the annex."
Faced with that, Olivia had no choice but to accept. She sighed and stood, but she didn't forget to take out a safeguard for worst-case scenarios.
"All right. I'll do the interview. But don't get ahead of yourselves. If it really is Overflow, it'll take time and patient teaching."
"Yes, please, we're counting on you."
Olivia went to the annex to interview a student she'd never met.
True to their rank in Tormia's financial pecking order, the annex was as grand as any noble's villa.
The lawn smelled of spring and spread wide like a playing field, and beyond it lay a deep forest.
Dante sat at the edge of the woods. Olivia watched him from afar and sighed again.
Maybe, as the noblewomen said, adolescence had come early. But Olivia was convinced it was Overflow. It was a teacher's gut earned from twenty years of experience.