LCD Throne of Magical Arcana

And here I thought he'd be hiding his arcana level completely. I wonder if he'll reveal his true arcana level, or just keep it at the same level as his circle level.

 

At least Lucien reveals something. Really every cultivating mc is the same. "I must hide my strength because...." I don't mean to complain, it has its place, it's just a tiring line of reasoning after awhile.

 

Once word gets out about this spell, its effectiveness is going to drop by quite a bit. Though I am curious if it'll start a new fad in researching animal biology and sensory organs.

 

It's nice that his spell wasn't deemed perfect. I wonder if they explained why it wasn't perfect though. I'm sure Lucien would appreciate the chance to improve it. Also wondering how many papers are going to wind up siting his. I expect it'll be quite a lot. Maybe even enough for him to hit second arcana before he hits second circle.

I wonder how they managed to perform the bat experiment so quickly.

 

I agree, it's quite nice that's he didn't do something perfect. In fact I quite liked the way the recent chapter were written, because even I as the reader wasn't thinking that would got so many point and invitation.
I don't think they explained why it wasn't perfect, the time frame is too short, but they may have an "info-sheet" something like thta:

Spoiler

power efficiency : x/10
complexity of understanding: x/10
complexity of casting: x/10
min time to cast: x sec

It's just an hypothesis, but since the congret of magic apparently has an efficient organization, it shouldn't be too difficult to put something like that in place.
Did they do it ? I simply thought that they looked at the process and result and tried the spell.

 

I would think Sound Wave would be the best choice. It's a specialist publication, so it's readers are much more likely to be people that will develop ideas based on the paper and wind up siting it. If he's seeking to maximize his profits, I doubt any of the others compare. Though I admit, the exposure from the active promotion by Common Arcana would be quite tempting.

I suppose it comes down to: does he plan to develop that infrared detection spell and publish it too? If so, he should definitely go with Sound Wave, since it'll limit exposure to some extent, thus giving him better odds of publishing his infrared spell in one of the other specialized journals. If the answer is no, then Common Arcana is probably better since people will draw inspiration from his work and extend it beyond sound waves, with a small chance of him being sited when they do. I expect the there's quite a bit of readership overlap as well, especially if we're only talking about the headlining articles in CA.

That aside, he should consider developing spells/wards that protect against Bat Screaming. They'd probably be worth quite a few arcana points, and would also be useful when he's trying to be stealthy himself now that even better versions of his spell will likely start cropping up all over the place.

 

I need moar chaps.

 

I completely disagree with his reasoning in choosing Common Arcana. If people learn of it, then he'll likely get nothing but crap offers in the future from people who just offered as fast as they could rather than actually putting any sort of thought into it. Since he's guaranteed to take the first offer, regardless of its quality, there's really no need for them to offer anything good after all.

 

I was kinda hoping he'd go with Lucien P. Evans

She really needs to work on her attitude. Everyone that comes through there has the potential to become someone who could kill her without facing any sort of consequences. There's no reason for her to go out of her way to give them a reason to do so.

 

If they really cared about making progress, then the library would be free, would allow a certain number of free checkouts based on arcana level, or would have a free section for new arcanists. Hording knowledge is one of the best ways to prevent innovation.

Also, what's stopping those same people that the librarian was complaining about from gathering up some money, sending in one of there number, then making a bunch of copies of the books and passing them around? At that point, you're simply punishing all the people who actually need to read the books and want to follow the rules while encouraging said groups to filter out potentially useful papers and books that they (or the person copying the books) disagree with, thus further limiting innovation via peer pressure.

Actually, why is he even borrowing books from the library? Shouldn't he wait until he's exhausted Douglas' library since his teacher status will grant him free access to it?

 

So how would anyone know that he hadn't independently developed the magic? He's already done that at least once that we know of after all. And how are people supposed to develop and improve magic if they don't have access to a wide range of spells? Also, how is he supposed to know which spells they legitimately have a right to sell and which ones they don't?

Isn't he afraid of connecting his sorcerer identity with his composer identity?

 

you sure have a lot of questions...

 

An explanation for why the library is not free is to encourage development and integration. Higher ranked, and therefore richer, sorcerers gain more access to the congress's resources like books. This encourages a person to publish papers and work hard to gain merits, return those merits for resources, and then get better which allows them to make better papers and work harder. It is a self reinforcing loop that encourages self development and integration into the magical community. This way mages cannot come in and read all the books and then not produce anything because there was no incentive to. It also works as a way for the congress to take money out of circulation, which helps prevent inflation, without giving out consumable resources. Although I really don't know the particular reason to why they keep knowledge behind a pay wall, It is not hard for me to imagine a society making people pay to learn like how this world makes people buy textbooks on topics that are fully covered online for free.

I am interested to see how Lucien plans to use his identity as the professor while in Holm because it should be next to impossible to accredit anything to someone not officially in the congress's records and people are likely to put a lot of pressure on him if he appears in person.

 

Who is Rogerio again?

 

Rogerio is a radiant knight who Lucien meet in Aalto and he also appeared with the high level sorceress/arcanist at the lake.

 

It seems like we have an arcanist who made radar. It is a shame that Lucien is studying the elements when he could do a ton of work for waves. I doubt it will happen, but I want to see him develop radio. The arcanist have been fairly consistently shown to be about the mid nineteenth century in terms of both math and science. With modern knowledge as a guide and magic as a power source, it should not be too hard to construct simple radios or new magic spells built on the principle of sending information with em waves. It would help if his library had a book on amateur radio transmissions.

 

I really just want him to start publishing a ridiculous amount of groundbreaking papers so his arcana level sky rockets.

 

He should view this as an opportunity to spend more time in K’s lab and/or study for that arcana test so he can officially obtain a level.

Why is he saying that he needs to catch the Will of Elements' eye? He's already been invited to join and he has that ring if he feels he needs to ramp up his importance. It's a bit late to hide at this point, so making a bit mess might actually make him safer.

He should take this as a lesson: Always cover as many possibilities as possible. That "grand arcanist" didn't actually create any of those spells and just pre-emptively stole credit for them. There's no reason he couldn't do the same.

Well, the problem with that is that he wants to make his name in Elements and Astrology. Neither of which have much to do with electromagnetism or light. Though I could see him delving into those fields to create an electron microscope once he's powerful enough to do so. It seems unlikely though since he needs to finish the periodic table sooner rather than later and having someone build the microscope for him would almost certainly result in the design leaking and someone else finishing the table before him.

Of course, if we look at the history of the table, it's inventor didn't know what a lot of the elements were. He just knew that they were likely to exist and left holes for them in the table, and still wound up in history books. That being the case, Lucien really doesn't need the table to be filled in, he just needs it to be properly arranged. If he can add an element while he's at it, then he'll likely become the darling of the Will of Elements, win the Holm prize himself, and rank up his arcana level to at least two.

 

I have to give more credit to the arcanist who managed to get more applications out of em waves than I would have thought. Radar and microwave heating. Also, what type of naming convention ever gives the rights to those who vaguely described a possible application and not the person who actually figured one out? At least, radio is still on the table. It does require a bit of inspiration over pure magical phenomena, so it is a little less surprising that it was not thought of by the arcanists.

Funny enough, Mendeleev actually did not put the elements in the the places we know today. He made a really complicated messy table. He also got some orders wrong because of the atomic number versus atomic mass problem. It really shows that the creation of the notion of the periodicity of elements is more important than the exact formulation of what those periods are. Although, I suspect that Lucien's paper will not get proper respect until it accurately predicts a new element. After that, he is likely to win one of those awards that were mentioned in the last batch of chapters.
Some more low hanging fruits of arcana papers would be black body radiation, discovery of electron, creation of chemical batteries, or discovery of helium. I don't think any of these have been done yet by the arcanist, but the last one might have been done since they would just need to use spectroscopy on the sun. Discovery of the electron seems like the best bet if Lucien wants to continue down the path of elements. It bugs me so much since a lot of science developed around their current level in the real world were waves.

 

I was actually referring to the person who came up with the table's "final" form. I know it went through several iterations before getting to the form that we know today, but even so, it's form (and the locations of most of the elements within that form) pretty much solidified long before it was filled in.

As for discovering electrons, I don't think he really has the budget for those experiments. He could postulate all he likes, but I don't think he could actually prove it with the resources he has to hand. As for what would work, it's hard to say without knowing what exists already. Personally, I agree with his choice of creating the table. It'll get him a ton of points and recognition while giving him a solid foundation to create many other things in the future. After that, he can start verifying the various equations and mathematical constants of chemistry and publish them. The recognition from those papers would likely be enough to carry him all the way to rank 7 or 8.

Of course, the downside to all this is that this research leads straight to splitting the atom. Just imagine a legend class spell "Hydrogen Bomb," or worse, if the spell didn't actually need such a high tier.