Magic is Programming

B2 Chapter 22: Breaking Limits

"So… This feels awkward, but we would… rather not have you watching us while we continue examining these." Carlos managed not to chuckle nervously, but his hesitations and strained smile still showed his apprehension clearly.

Crown Mage Felton gazed calmly at the recently-ennobled high lord in front of him as he considered the request. "You engaged in considerable antics in my presence already without a care, so I doubt you ask merely to hide embarrassment. You mentioned before that an unspecified house secret would help you analyze these. Are you requesting privacy in order to use that house secret unobserved by the Crown's servants?"

Carlos raised an eyebrow, then nodded and released most of the tension in his muscles. "Astute deduction. Yes, that's exactly it."

Felton nodded in acknowledgement. "Very well. How long should I remain absent, and should I take your royal guards with me?"

"Until evening, around dinner time would be good, though we'll probably want to move again before then. And yes."

"We can find your new campsite easily enough, and the adventurers with you are more than capable of protecting you from any native dangers of this area on their own. I will return for the evening meal. Good day, Lord Carlos, and I hope you learn something of good use." Felton bowed shallowly, then turned and walked over to Lorvan.

Huh. That was surprisingly easy. Then again, Lorvan has made a point of respecting house secrets in the past. Carlos shrugged and watched Felton briefly converse with Lorvan, who soon called Ordens to join them. While waiting for them to leave, he idly checked for other detection and analysis enchantments in the borrowed royal guard armor. One for analyzing aether drew his attention, and he activated it, focusing on Amber and the area around her. A translucent visual depiction of the nearby aether flows appeared, overlaying his normal vision through the helmet, along with written notes of some specific details.

Level 16 ambient mana background.

Dungeon zone.

Absorption vortex.

Absorption efficiency: 100%

Absorbing structures: 9

Rate amplified by dungeon: 400%

Resistance from dungeon: 0%

Carlos laughed. "I'm sure that 0% resistance from a dungeon for absorbing its aether would provoke all kinds of consternation from a lot of people, but keeping that one secret is a lost cause by now."

Amber chuckled and nodded. "Yes. Besides, that information doesn't give any clues about how to do it." She glanced over to where Felton and the guards had been. "That flare of mana felt like a teleport, so I think they're gone. Time to start." She sat down and shifted around a bit for comfort, and the two hard points in her soul almost imperceptibly softened. She pointedly switched to telepathy. [Okay, I'm trying to disguise myself as one tier lower. What does the scan say?]

Carlos dutifully activated the soul analyzer again. [That worked. It's reporting tier 9 and tier 8 "unified structures." Greater changes could be more difficult to hide, though. Let's try disguising as just all basic structures.] He followed his own suggestion and watched the analyzer's output change as Amber followed suit. His own mana sense felt her soul dramatically soften, feeling just like he remembered from before their first merge. The analyzer's report was not so reassuring, however.

Adult high noble soul, in development.

Level: 16.

First stage.

Basic structures: 10

Archetype probabilities: Mage 92%, Mystic 8%.

Anomaly detected. Disguise likely.

Active pulse encountered hard points.

Deduced unified structures: 1 to 4

Deduced tier: 8 to 10

Active pulse? Carlos frowned and triggered it again. Huh. It's so brief and light that I can barely sense it, but the analyzer does emit a directed pulse of mana and aether. Kind of like radar or sonar. It reminds me of that ritual examination that Lady, uh, whatever her name was, did to verify that we had a new adamantium-rank soul plan. He paused and cocked his head. Come to think of it, if the Enchanters Guild can make something this sophisticated, what's stopping them from making an item to automate those inspections? Is the guild holding out on everyone? Why? Or do the nobles just not trust them for that?

Amber's telepathic voice interrupted his speculations. [Good thing the guards aren't here to see that result. Any ideas for fixing it?]

Carlos nodded immediately. [Yes. We already planned to add something to fake the results in case we ever have to go through another detailed ritual inspection. I think the way this detected the disguise works the same way as that ritual, just less thorough, so the same soul structure should fool this item too.]

[Alright.] Amber took a deep breath and closed her eyes. [Then… I suppose it's time to actually do that.]

Carlos looked her over quietly. She was fidgeting a lot, and her breathing was unsteady. He leaned forward to put his right hand on her knee and made his mental voice as gentle as he could. [Hey. I understand you're nervous. I even understand why you're nervous. That's all okay, but we need to work through this. And remember, if this doesn't pan out, if it turns out that we can't fool high-end tools about how many soul structures we have after all, we can just undo it. This is reversible for us. We can undo it before Felton and the guards return, and no one will ever know.]

Amber's fidgeting hands stilled, then she put her left hand on Carlos's hand on her knee and held it there. She opened her eyes and looked back at him, then looked down at their clasped hands. She looked up again, blushing shyly. "Could you… keep your hand there while we do this?" She paused and suddenly released Carlos's hand, slumping with a resigned sigh. "No, never mind. I'm being weird again, aren't I?"

Carlos solemnly picked up his chair, carried it to Amber's left, sat down again, and put his right hand back on her knee, right where it had been. "Amber, please believe me on this: Wanting reassurance, comforting, and emotional support from someone you trust is normal, not weird. If anything, I'm gratified that you trust me enough for my touch to be that kind of comfort and reassurance. Now, go ahead and take hold of my hand again all you want, and let's do this. Alright?"

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Amber quietly nodded, put her left hand on Carlos's hand again, and closed her eyes.

Carlos watched as her breathing evened out, then gently squeezed her knee and got to work.

Okay, first time adding to an already-merged superstructure instead of making something separate. I have to match the existing structure's level, so I need enough Level 16 essence. Fortunately, I already siphoned some off for the purpose from the new mind-oriented structures when they hit that point. Start moving that essence into place, and… Shit! Carlos swore as the essence he'd been trying to form into a new structure almost violently snapped out of his grasp. Most of it was pulled back into the Level 16 superstructure he'd been using to store it, and most of the rest scattered to all his other soul structures, forcefully shoved out of occupying the same overfull region as the existing superstructure.

He unobtrusively gave Amber's soul a brief look. He didn't see any signs of such a disturbance in her efforts at the same task, but he wasn't sure any external signs would be noticeable for him anyway. I'll give it one more try on my own before interrupting her. Alright, what went wrong, and why? My efforts got disrupted by the forces that prevent two soul structures from sharing the same region. That's prevented for the already-merged structures by their synergy links, but the new one I tried to add didn't have those yet. So… I need to build the synergy links before I build the structure they'll link to? That seems tricky and kind of backwards, but maybe manageable. There will be 9 of them, and I can do 3 parallel minds at a time. I hope maintaining them without a structure on one end for long enough won't be an issue…

Carlos ended up making a barely-there miniature placeholder just to serve as a synergy attachment point, grown from the joined ends of the first 3 synergy links to minimize any risk of it being ejected, but the process was easier than he'd worried it might be. The synergy finder and synergy applier came in handy for that. Good thing I made them kick in automatically whenever applicable; I wouldn't have thought to invoke them manually for this. Now, let's try forming the actual structure again.

About two and a half hours after he'd begun, it was done. He shook himself and stretched, working out some kinks from having sat motionless for so long, but kept his right hand exactly where it was the moment a slight resistance to his movement reminded him of why he'd put it there. He looked to his right and saw Amber smiling at him. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting long."

Amber's smile brightened a little. "Only a few minutes. So, try it again?"

Carlos started to nod, but stopped and reconsidered. [Actually, let's see what happens with no disguise, first. Just to be thorough.]

Amber hesitated, then shrugged and let her soul's true appearance show again for the analyzer to see.

Adult high noble soul, in development.

Level: 16.

Second stage, advanced.

Unified structures: Tier 10, tier 9.

Basic structures: 8

Archetype probabilities: Mage 92%, Mystic 8%.

Carlos raised an eyebrow at the result, while Amber stared in confusion. [Well now, that's interesting.]

Amber looked at him. [But- but how? It got the tiers exactly right the first time, so how is it missing that they're both tier 10 now? Can it detect the precise tier or not?]

Carlos grinned. [It seems that whoever designed this thing put some of their own knowledge about what's possible into the logic of what it displays. I'd bet that if we studied the runes thoroughly enough, we'd find something that checks for a second tier 10 and "corrects" it to the closest the designer thought was actually possible.] He paused. [Or if they're more open-minded than that, maybe there's some uncertainty involved, and something too different from what they expected would get through to be displayed anyway.]

[I… see? I think?] Amber stared at the unexpected misdetection a moment longer, then shook her head. [Regardless, shouldn't we try the disguise again now?]

[Yeah. We can revisit that mistake later, if we have time.] Carlos reinstated the disguise on his soul, making sure to include the new scan falsifier as well, and Amber followed suit.

Adult high noble soul, in development.

Level: 16.

First stage.

Basic structures: 10

Archetype probabilities: Mage 92%, Mystic 8%.

"Yes! It works!" Carlos fist-pumped in excitement.

Amber just let out a sigh of relief and finally let herself relax. When Carlos settled down and started adopting a meditative pose again, she interrupted him. "Shouldn't we move to the next area before continuing? We're almost done leveling our soul structures to the level of this spot, and I think Ressara is ready to move on, too."

Carlos blinked, then nodded sheepishly. "Yeah. Let's call for the move."

Carlos focused on examining the contents of his soul and their arrangement, completely ignoring what was going on around him. His other mind was handling the details of packing up camp and getting ready to fly, leaving this mind free to tune it all out and focus on the issue at hand: how exactly to make an 11th structure fit in the soul-themed superstructure, and how many beyond that might be possible.

I stuck the 10th structure in a spot that just happened to be open, but I don't see any other single open spot that I'm certain is big enough on its own. I'll have to organize this to consolidate the empty space. Currently, there's 10 structures just kind of jammed together, all jumbled haphazardly. I think it started as just the arrangement of the regions they were in before they merged, and then the region boundaries forced things to move until they all fit.

So, what are the constraints I'm working with? Do I need to consider the synergy links? Carlos experimentally tugged on a thread of essence that formed a synergy link. It resisted his pull at first, but then he focused his intent on lengthening the thread, adding essence to it as needed, to allow moving it. The thread began to move easily, and he looped it all the way around another structure twice without issue, then put it back to how it had been. Apparently, synergy links are not a meaningful constraint, so I can just ignore them for now.

That leaves the question of how closely I can jam the structures themselves together for tighter packing. Hmm. Carlos cautiously pushed two adjacent components of the superstructure toward each other, while giving their synergy links enough slack to allow it. They moved easily at first, but only a very small distance before resistance dramatically ramped up. Okay, so tightening the packing won't help much. He paused and did a mental facepalm. Wait a minute, packing! This is a sphere packing problem! Duh! Okay then, I could try to do the math first, but why bother when there's no downside to making reality do it for me?

He took hold of the pair he'd tried pushing together, then grabbed a nearby structure that was at an awkward angle. He gently nudged the third structure and rotated the first two until they formed a perfect equilateral triangle. There was another structure that was offset just a little from making the group a proper tetrahedron, or triangular pyramid, and he shifted that one into place too. He continued, packing each structure into the compact arranged triangular grid of a standard sphere packing solution, like a pyramid of baseballs piled up.

When all 10 were arranged, he had two layers. 3 structures in the top layer formed a triangle. The 7 in the bottom layer formed a hexagon, with one in the center. Carlos considered the dimensions of the pile and of the region it had to fit inside. Obviously no room to expand the hexagon layer. It's so close to the edges on all sides that there's not even room to expand the triangle layer on top. The region gets narrower toward the top, too. If I move the whole thing down… Nope, the hexagon's outer edge hits the boundary before I'd get enough clearance to make the top a second hexagon.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

That bottom area below the hexagon, though… That's where all the consolidated free space is, and there's room for a whole other triangle there! We can pack thirteen structures into these things!