Episode 26 Perseta’s Pendulum
It is a simple principle.
What happens if you tie a leaky ink pot to a long string, pull it taut, and let go?
Naturally, the ink follows a steady pendulum motion and draws a single line on the ground below.
But what if you set a disk beneath it and rotate the disk?
The ink still moves in a straight path and drops a single line. Yet because the receiving disk is rotating, the trace on the disk looks like a flower or a star. The straight line seems to drift sideways as if it were turning.
Perseta’s pendulum worked on precisely that principle.
However, a plane takes quite a long time to complete one rotation, and there were variables such as how far the current position is from the axis of rotation, so at first Perseta’s pendulum seemed to show no change at all.
Vwoong-
A few mages, tense as they watched the pendulum, prematurely loosened their shoulders and spoke.
“What is this? Nothing is changing.”
They were right, as far as they could see. Perseta’s pendulum moved through the air leaving a light-green trail as if drawing, but that light-green trail appeared to hold a perfectly straight line.
“See? As if a plane would rotate.”
“Ha ha. If the plane were rotating, wouldn’t we all be seasick?”
Those who had been chastised by the sage earlier kept quiet, watching for cues, but the rest spoke freely.
They thought it was safe now.
If you boast you will prove something and then fail, no one can fault others for laughing.
However, the one who spoke up this time was not the sage.
“Be quiet a moment!”
A fair number of scholarly mages withheld rash judgments and kept their focus on Perseta’s pendulum.
They knew: if we are speaking of the rotation of a vast plane, then no matter how large the pendulum, its movement would not be obvious at a glance.
Vwoong-!
And at last…
“It—it turned!”
One mage thrust out a finger and cried in shock.
All eyes followed the fingertip.
“It’s real!”
Indeed. The tip of what had seemed a straight line now showed a slight widening. The center of the pendulum’s motion still looked like a single line, but its end had widened slightly like a fan.
“It’s turning!”
Some mages hurriedly pulled out watches to time it; others opened notebooks and began to sketch.
No one could deny it now. With each passing moment the light-green trace could clearly be seen to drift and turn.
“B-beautiful…”
Someone murmured.
Several mages nodded in agreement.
“That is… the rotation of the plane…”
A clear tendency was visible now. Perseta’s pendulum was not merely circling.
Detached from the plane, it now lifted its head in a direction different from the ground.
The path was slowly rising, seeming to form a kind of sphere.
What is more,
“The pendulum’s speed changed! Why is that happening? It’s subtle, but it speeds up, then slows down. Shouldn’t a pendulum’s speed be constant? Why would…?”
A mage holding a watch muttered in alarm.
“D-did he use magic?”
“What magic! Can’t you sense mana? There’s no mana at all!”
The pendulum simply swung, yet inexplicable phenomena kept occurring.
Sage Sienel Mirsa stared at Perseta’s pendulum as if she would smash it, muttering ceaselessly.
“Does the plane’s axis of rotation exist in a higher plane than ours? If so, does that mean space, even time, are merely axes on a single framework…?”
She did not know that Perseta watched her, eyes full of delight, as she, struck by an immense intellectual shock, drove her inferences forward like one possessed.
But still, dimwitted mages remained.
“W-well… curious, yes. But is that all?”
“R-right. How would knowing the plane rotates be any help to magic…”
But fools were not the only ones here.
A number of mages, eyes reddened, shouted.
“Don’t be idiots! If the plane is rotating, it becomes possible to compute trajectories for ultra-long-range projectile spells!”
“You mean you don’t understand what a revolution this is for spatial-magic coordinate calculations? Honestly, I wish fools would shut up and get out.”
Those speaking were all eminent figures in the field.
Rebuked openly by such people, no one dared continue grumbling.
Some still found no meaning in Perseta’s pendulum, but if they did not want their ignorance exposed, they could only keep their mouths shut.
They strained their sluggish minds, trying to grasp what had them so excited.
Yet none of their fervor matched that of Sage Sienel.
Over her more than 130 years in magic, a question that had piled up, layer upon layer, was crumbling in this very moment.
While other mages busied themselves deriving applied formulae to adapt the discovery of rotation to magic, she alone grasped something even more fundamental.
A vast great-awakening, at last sweeping over her after more than a century.
“W-wait! Wait! Mage Perseta! If this world truly is rotating! Then! Perhaps…! The center of this world is…!”
A mage finally reached an answer.
Her wrinkled face shone with the zeal of a girl.
At last she was about to speak one single truth— that in fact the Human World is not the center of the cosmos, that the Mana Sun is the center.
“Shh.”
Perseta raised his index finger to his lips.
He whispered softly.
“Honored Sage. That is mine.”
He had no intention of letting the core idea of his book, <Celestium>, be revealed first by another’s lips.
“H—ha… ha ha… Then. Then truly…”
Sienel Mirsa slumped as if all strength had gone out of her body.
“Master, what’s wrong?”
“Are you ill?”
Her pupils Al and Jin hovered behind, worried, but she merely waved a hand as if annoyed.
“You foolish disciples. Be quiet.”
In her mind, the world was being redrawn.
She set the sun at the center, arranged the Human World and all Mystic Worlds around it, then computed their paths— and compared them with <Almagest>.
“Ah…”
At last, hot tears rolled from her eyes.
The truth she had longed to know all her life… who could know the heart of one who reached it today?
“What do we do? Master is crying!”
“She really looks sick. Check her. Is she feverish?”
Forgetting even her disciples’ fussy hands patting her, she wept without end.
And there was one more who came late to the truth.
Salinelle D’Metzi.
The moment he heard the sage’s words, he shuddered.
“T-the center of the world…?”
It flashed through his mind, the questions Perseta had been throwing him.
Why do the five Upper Realms not follow <Almagest>’s predictions? Why does the Doppler effect appear differently?
“Because… the five Upper Realms do not orbit the Human World… but the Mana Sun? The Mana Sun at the center, then the Divine, Demon, Beast, Myth, Nether, and Human Worlds, in that order…?”
That explains why the signals from the five Upper Realms are sometimes absurdly strong and sometimes absurdly weak.
It is perfectly accounted for without positing special laws that apply only to the Upper Realms.
“Then it’s explained! Why the Upper Realms never stray beyond a certain distance from the Mana Sun— the problem of maximum elongation is solved. There’s no need for the strange assumption in that only those five realms move back and forth along a straight line between the sun and the Human World… So… <Almagest> was wrong! It was wrong from the start!”
All was optical illusion.
All of it was illusion!
Mistakes born of trying to gaze at the wide cosmic planes from the small world called the Human World!
Salinelle was stupefied.
So this was it.
This was Perseta’s secret…
But he too did not know that Perseta only watched him with pleased eyes, like an adult watching a child take its first steps.
In truth, Perseta felt very good. Already two people had reached the core of <Celestium>.
Now it was time to bring more mages up to that point.
The other three books he had prepared:
<Prinkipia> <Leratibitet> <Quantigeom>
To launch these even by providence, a shift of thought called had to be in place first.
A small yet vast transformation was to shed self-centered thinking and view this great universe with an objective gaze.
Thinking that at last the first step had been taken, Perseta felt a little better.
Only a little, though.
What he had felt today was, for the most part, frustration and irritation.
In the murmuring great hall, Perseta spoke again.
“Now, I believe we have sufficiently proven rotation. Next, I will explain why the Mystic Worlds seemed to have receded.”
Every mage’s gaze turned to Perseta.
“To state the conclusion first, it is because the Human World’s axis of rotation has changed from 500 years ago due to precession. The coordinates of each Mystic World as projected onto our plane’s sky have been completely skewed.”
“!!!”
Had Perseta said this at the outset, their shock would not have been great.
They would have thought it plausible, but baseless.
But now that all had seen proof of rotation with their own eyes, the impression was necessarily different.
“And I have computed how the axis has tilted relative to 500 years ago. Which means, following these calculations, we can reproduce the magic of that time when the Great Age of Magic dawned.”
“Gah!”
“Urk…”
Strange groans sounded.
Even the foolish mages now understood.
How great this discovery was.
If true, Perseta would stand tall as a greatest mage alongside Ptolemaios, author of .
“I will announce the results of the calculations at once.”
Perseta stated the angular deviation, then, back-calculating from it, announced the new coordinates of the Mana Sun and the Mystic Worlds.
A commotion like a beehive dropped into the crowd rolled through the mages.
“Wait… if I apply the formula now—”
“M-madness…”
“It works! It works!”
Whoooosh—
Into the great hall surged a massive tide of mana.
Hundreds of years had passed since they had been unable to draw infinite power from the Mana Sun.
Yet in this moment all the mages, as if awakened, were exuding tremendous mana.
This was the proof.
Irrefutable proof that all of Perseta’s inferences were true.
“Now then, I have something to say.”
All stared at Perseta, dazed.
Perseta slowly folded his arms.
His broad sleeves swayed.
His hair stirred.
His gaze was keen as a blade.
Overwhelmed by something in the air, all held their breath.
For before them stood no nameless mage.
Under the pressure, as if a giant loomed over them, they could barely breathe.
Perseta’s lips opened slowly.
“Since I have given you the results in advance, now discover for yourselves why the results come out that way. I will allow you to discuss with others. In any case, find the answer.”
The mages’ shoulders flinched.
Discover it?
This was like…
“Yes. In one week, we will have an exam. Those who do not pass will leave the forum as is.”
An exam?
He was telling them to take an exam?
Even the dullest among those gathered were, in their own regions, persons of some renown.
Their work was to keep disciples, teach them, assign tasks, and give exams.
Yet Perseta was saying:
If you want the next knowledge, take an exam.
“I had intended to proceed straight through. But today you disappointed me. Therefore, you will have to change my mind with your exam results.”
Every mouth fell open.
Salinelle, Principal Ignacio, Sage Sienel— all were flustered and felt a strange guilt.
Arms folded, Perseta looked over their faces one by one and knit his brows slightly.
“What are you doing? Time is passing.”
Snap!
Flap, flap, flap!
Scratch, scratch!
The first to move was Sage Sienel.
She immediately pulled a notebook and quill from her magic pouch and began calculating like mad.
That was the start.
With a sage beginning to study, what mage would dare do otherwise?
Even complaints had to be swallowed.
Rumble!
Flap, flap!
Scratch, scratch, scratch!
Over a hundred mages all at once pulled out books and pens.
All buried their heads and began to study.
Hum- Vwoong-
Above their heads, Perseta’s pendulum swung like the bob of a clock.
The exam was in one week.
Leave a Reply