Chapter 165

After the morning commotion, the Violets fell into deep contemplation. It wasn’t merely because the dining hall was wrecked and the bowl of French fries had been overturned.

“First of all, we got a new dining table and chairs! There’s a hole in the ceiling, but I think we can patch that up somehow.”

Sure, a minor issue arose when a beam was suddenly shot from someone’s hand, but that was the kind of thing we could easily handle on our end.

Thanks to Daphne’s quick actions, my friends weren’t hurt. They were just a bit startled.

The problem was that, despite pondering for quite a while, we couldn’t figure out why such an event had occurred.

“It’s strange, why did a spell go off so suddenly without preparation?”

“I couldn’t control it!”

We huddled together, brainstorming. A heated discussion erupted both within and outside the Violet Network.

“Could it be that there was a problem with our training? We might have practiced too much magic at once and messed up our heads!”

Unit 50 voiced her concerns. The unexpected possibility caused a stir among the Violets.

“Exactly! Our heads have been exploding often enough. That’s bound to have some negative effect on us!”

“What?! So does this mean we’re going to shoot beams from our hands every day?”

When the negative opinions surfaced, I couldn’t help but feel a bit frightened. I mean, who knew when an uncontrollable magic beam might burst forth from our hands? It was no different from having uncontrollable bombs.

“It seems our bodies have gone weird!”

“What do we do? Do we have to wear gloves? If it’s the Hand of Destiny, maybe we could stop it!”

“We’ve turned into mutants! No way!”

Some startled Violets screamed within the network.

Unit 1, who had been quiet until now, had to step up urgently and calm everyone down.

“Everyone, calm down! There’s no evidence that we’ve changed weirdly or that anything is wrong with our bodies.”

I slowly began to regain my composure.

Thinking about it, it didn’t seem like a good approach to panic without any real basis. The Violets felt a bit embarrassed.

“Then, what could be the reason that magic shot out of our hands so suddenly?”

“Let’s sit down and think about it. Each of us recall what we were doing at that time, where, and when.”

We reflected on what had happened during breakfast.

Some were frying potatoes, while other Violets were maintaining their weapons or washing up.

And some Violets were…

“The Explosives Manufacturing Team was cleaning the workshop, and the Guard Team Members were patrolling around the house. The Training Management Team was all asleep.”

“Not all of them, right? Some woke up, ate, and went back to sleep… Wait a minute, this is a magic problem. Did the Training Management Team do something? All trainees, raise your hands.”

The Violets in the network raised their hands. The next moment, Unit 15 frowned.

“Huh? Why didn’t we catch this before… Hey, Unit 377! What did you do?”

“Uh heh… Why are you calling me? Wait, ugh!”

I realized what mischief I had caused. No wonder the stone I had smashed without thinking had exploded so spectacularly; it must have been quite a peculiar item.

“Ugh! I didn’t know that would trigger magic! I thought someone had just played a prank and installed that in the network.”

As Unit 377 defended himself, the Violets were confronted with an unexpected question. Unit 972 asked, “…Is that real? Was there such a stone?”

“I checked all my memories, and no one has installed anything like that.”

“If that’s the case, it means it must have appeared naturally.”

We turned our heads. In the skies of the network, French fries were still flying about.

Sometimes, dishes we had eaten or fun situations would appear unexpectedly in the network, and the scene we were seeing now fit that category.

“It’s too artificial to say it appeared unconsciously.”

Indeed, if it were created due to unconscious influence, it would have resembled real objects more closely.

One Violet proposed, “Let’s search the network. There might be something similar!”

That sounded plausible.

The Violets carefully scanned the surroundings in the digital city for similar-looking slabs.

About an hour passed in real time, and they emerged from an alley, each holding oddly shaped pieces of slate as they headed for the plaza.

“I found it!”

“One, two, three… A total of three.”

The slate, up close, looked like a complicated electronic circuit.

One slab looked similar to Unit 377’s memory, but the other two did not.

“What could these be used for?”

“It definitely looks related to magic. It looks like a magic formula that pops up when casting spells!”

Unit 789 stepped forward, carrying a hammer.

“Let’s smash it and see! If breaking this is the cause, then one of us will shoot a beam from our palm, right?”

As he spoke, Unit 789 swung his hammer. Just before the slab could shatter, Unit 665 barely caught him.

“Wait, stop! If it’s real magic, isn’t it right to shoot it with a staff? Let’s have the staff ready, or it might draw in the magic like a lightning rod!”

That wasn’t a bad idea. The Violets playing on the deserted island hurriedly pulled out their staffs and aimed them at the beach.

“Okay, we’ll smash it. One, two, three!”

Unit 789 swung his hammer and shattered the slab. Mystical, shimmering magical power burst forth from it like fireworks, shooting rapidly toward the ceiling. At the same time, I felt my magical power being forcibly drawn out somewhere.

“Wahh! It’s just like the scenes from my memory!”

Simultaneously, at that moment, Unit 1002, who was waiting on the deserted island holding a magic staff, was taken by surprise. An unformed magic circle appeared at the tip of the staff, gathering energy.

“This is real! It’s going to fire!”

Soon, a thin ray of red light struck the seawater. With a sizzling sound, steam rose up. The beam immediately dissipated, but every Violet who saw that spectacle shivered.

“T-This is!”

Indeed. Although its power and range were poor, the magic beam that had shot from the staff after burning down the dining hall was none other than the Melting Ray we wanted to learn!

“It’s incomplete, but it was the Melting Ray!”

“Awesome!”

A thought suddenly struck me like lightning. Perhaps we had accidentally discovered a breakthrough in our stagnant magic training from an unexpected source.

After smashing all the remaining slabs, our conviction grew even stronger.

“It’s coming! Wave of Flame!”

“Lightning Strike!”

Magic fired from the staff. Small waves of flame lapped up from the ground, scorching the sandy beach, and electric orbs popped out and exploded.

These were the spells we had previously failed at!

Excited, the Violets chirped.

“This slab looks weird, but it’s definitely a magic formula. With enough of these, we could cast spells without needing to calculate the formulas!”

This was a groundbreaking discovery for us, akin to how primitive people discovered fire. Overcome with emotion, we decided to name this slab.

“It looks just like an electronic circuit. How about we call it Magic USB?”

“No way! Doesn’t it look like an SD card? From now on, this is called the ‘Vision Memory Chip’!”

After a brief chaotic discussion, we agreed to call this slab the ‘Vision Memory Chip’, taking the name from the relic we had seen in our past adventure, the Vision Prism.

“If we can just mass-produce this…” “We could unleash a ton of magic right away without any preparation!”

The Violets briefly dreamed of being Grand Mages.

*

Sadly, we faced yet another obstacle where we had thought we had found a breakthrough.

“How do we make it?”

We struggled to recreate the Vision Memory Chip we had seen in the Violet Network.

It was undoubtedly created during the magic training process, yet we failed to replicate it.

Our attempts to manufacture the Vision Memory Chip led to one of two outcomes. Either magic was simply released perfectly, or we just wasted our magical power.

“This is weird! Why can’t we make it?!”

We proposed several hypotheses. One Violet argued that since the Vision Memory Chip was a product of the unconscious, it would appear naturally within the network as we practiced our magic.

Another Violet hastened to explore the network, insisting that the memory chip must be maintained for just a short time and that we needed to find it quickly.

“Isn’t it underground? There must be a memory chip mine around here!”

“Are you an idiot!? There’s no ground in the Violet Network!”

There were even attempts to mimic calculations of magic formulas within the network, or to transform the internal landscape of the network into mines, factories, or training grounds.

“Ugh! Why isn’t anything coming out?!”

After a late lunch with no answers in sight, we decided to seek advice from an expert.

“Professor, is there a way to store magic?”

During a break in his private tutoring session, I had the chance to ask Professor Albert. He responded with a look as though to say, “You don’t know that?”

“A way to store magic? Of course there is. With relics or magical equipment.”

“No, I mean, is there a way to store magic in a person’s head? The formula, I mean. Then you wouldn’t even need to cast spells; you could just pull them out like a Unique Ability!”

The professor indicated his denial.

“Oh, I see. So, your question is whether there’s a way to pre-cast a spell, then take that completed spell and stick it back in someone’s head like putting money in and out of a wallet? To put it simply, that’s impossible. It’d be faster to stuff cigarette smoke back into the cigarette. It’s no different than trying to preserve flames in their exact shape.”

“But formulas fixed in magical equipment or barriers are different. As long as you infuse it with magical power, you can keep using it!”

“The magic circle and circuits on equipment are tangible and fixed. On the other hand, human thoughts have no physical substance, of course. There’s no means to constantly stabilize and hold a thought. How would one store a spell?”

The professor’s words were sound.

“Then how do skilled mages use multiple spells at once? I thought those people had magic prepared in their heads.”

“That’s just a skill that only mages capable of calculation can manage. To put it into real-world terms, it’s like this: a computer may look like it can perform multiple tasks simultaneously, but in reality, it can only handle one task at a time. It’s just that its speed is so fast that, to the human eye, it seems like it’s doing many things all at once. Mages are similar.”

“That makes sense.”

Even after that, I continued to pepper the professor with questions, but I didn’t gain any special hints.

“I get it, making and storing a mold of thought? I’m not sure. The professor’s right. Did we misjudge it?”

“It might’ve just come out by coincidence.”