Douglas Miller
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MiP Chapter 54: Discoveries
🕑 Added 2024-02-13 18:00:40 +0000 UTC<< First | < Previous | Next >
"Ok, I admit it, a keyword to siphon mana off of someone else's spell and use it for your own is a bust. No resonance at all." Carlos sighed and slumped over his knees.
Amber laughed. "It was kind of ridiculous to hope for something like that anyway. If it existed and people knew about it, wouldn't literally everyone be using it constantly?"
"Not against people who don't cast spells!" Carlos grinned cheekily.
"You oaf! You tried for a version that would work on non spells too, remember?"
"Yeah, yeah, laugh while you can. I'll find something that will work, and then you'll see." They both chuckled at that one.
Amber let her laughter die off, and sighed. "Will we, really? We've gone from level thirteen in a level seventeen area, to level fourteen in a level twenty area. They're speeding up, and we're running out of time."
Carlos let his head fall forward and rest in his hands for a bit. The bare metal of their cramped prison seemed more and more oppressive as time went on, and it had taken him a while to realize that the feeling was actually coming from the increasing pressure of ambient mana weighing on his soul. "...I don't know. But I'm not going to give up until it's over."
Amber leaned over and put her left hand on Carlos's shoulder. "Neither am I, but what do we try next?"
Carlos looked up and chewed his lip. "...Let me think. We've tried a few random guesses at things that would be useful, and that's gotten us nowhere but wasted time. Maybe things that can be deduced have already all been discovered, but that's by other people. We haven't learned them, and maybe we can re-discover something."
Huh. Re-discover. That reminded him, he was pretty sure this whole system of keywords and program-like incantations to cast spells was artificial, designed and created by someone long ago. Or by some group, more likely. So, if a group of powerful people intentionally designed a spellcasting programming-like language, what would they logically put in it? If they'd used the more intuitive variety of soul structures to do it, or mixed that with the way dungeons did magic, they could have put in almost any effect they could conceive of, but what would make sense that they should and would have put in?
He really wasn't sure. Judging by the keywords he already knew, there must be many simple effects, so primitive that they cannot be conceptually broken into even smaller and simpler pieces. That didn't really help, though; everything he could think of that might be primitive enough had the same problem of being useless against the power disadvantage they faced. He needed a different approach. What did he know, or what could he deduce, about those long-ago system creators? Could he imagine himself in their place, and figure out how they might have thought?
The makers of the incantation system must have been powerful. Incredibly powerful, to have created something that became effectively part of the world's magical physics. And those people, they had been dreamers. Altruists and idealists, they'd made their system to work for everyone. Anyone who studied and learned how could use it. People like that, with the power and ability to create such a system, if they had wanted it to be restricted then it would be restricted. There'd be a list of approved people, or maybe some token only they could make that granted access, and for anyone unapproved it just wouldn't work no matter how you tried.
So, consider a group of people who are designing a system for any random educated person to use. These people would have wanted to empower the world, enabling the masses to learn and use magic like they did. There didn't seem to be any hint of ideological leanings in the types of spells they had made possible; so far as he could tell, the only ideal that had made it into the system's design was that anyone could theoretically use it. In accordance with that ideal, they would have wanted everyone to have access to proper knowledge about it. And if they were smart, and surely they must have been to pull off such a project, they should have known that greedy powermongers would try to restrict and control access to that knowledge. To counter that, they had one tool. One ultimate, perfect, tool that only someone who could match their own incredible achievement would have any hope of restricting. And that thought gave Carlos an idea.
In Earth's history of computer development, a similar need to broadly disseminate knowledge had arisen, though with far lesser stakes and opposition. To satisfy that need, early software engineers had created and used several mechanisms of providing access to critical knowledge, and one of those mechanisms would have been perfect for this world's system of incantation spellcasting. If Carlos was right, then the keyword he was about to try to learn would be the holy grail of magecraft. It logically should be famously common knowledge if it existed, and it would have taken a strange confluence of events to bury knowledge of this particular keyword in the dust of forgotten history without losing knowledge of the entire system along with it. This keyword idea was certainly a long shot. But hey, he was desperate, and he doubted anyone who didn't suspect the system's artificial origins would have thought to try it. So why not go for broke?
Somewhat hesitantly, Carlos began forming a blob of solid but flexible mana that could take shape into a learned keyword. He thought of how Earth's version of this worked, the ways it could be used that would be applicable here. He worked at detailing the concept in his mind, and in a moment of thought about what else to add, he considered the other major factor in learning keywords: the actual word.
If the incantations system was artificially designed, then the words it used were most likely not arbitrary or random, but simply words from the system's creators' native language, and his comprehension aid had proven remarkably capable for translating between languages. If his deductions were right, it had even already demonstrated translation of that specific language every time he'd read a written incantation. It didn't work nearly as well for translating English into that language, but he had a feeling that was because the incantation language, as a programming-like language, lacked the flexibility and ambiguity needed for any translation to be "close enough". A translation into the incantation language was either exact, or did not exist.
A translation into the conversational language that the incantation language had copied words from, however, would have that flexibility to let his comprehension aid translate things into the closest match. His magical translation ability was also remarkably good at taking intended conceptual meaning into account. So, the closest concise way to take the concept he had in mind and express something similar to it in the conversational language in question... was a single word. That was a promising sign.
Carlos held the concept in mind, combined it with the word his comprehension aid had just translated for him, and pushed both of them together into the blob of mana he hoped would soon encode it... And there was resonance! Holy shit, he really was on to something with this! His heart started pounding with excitement, and his mouth curved into a broad grin, and he didn't notice either change. He was too focused on tweaking the concept, letting the resonance guide him in encoding the new keyword into his soul, just as he had so many times before. He finished, and this time he didn't need to assemble it into a larger combination to make a full spell. This particular keyword was a complete spell on its own, even without a semicolon. It had to be in order to serve its purpose as well as possible.
He turned to face Amber, his face beaming ecstatically. "I did it. See if you can learn this spell by sensing it!" Then he spoke a single word; a word whose translation into English was intimately familiar to countless Earth programmers who had experience with certain common command line applications.
`help`
Immediately, information was pumped into his mind from no discernible source, and his comprehension aid and other soul structures put it into a familiar form.
***
Universal Access Shared Interface to General Purpose Magic, version 3
Available verbal parameters of help command:
paraminfo
usage
commands
command
syntax
effects
effect
Use "help paraminfo" followed by a parameter to get detailed information about that parameter.
***
"YES!" Carlos yelled and flung his hands into the air in triumph, heedless of the metal ceiling close above him. His hands slammed into the ceiling, and he hastily brought them back down and shook them in an attempt to reduce the stinging pain of the impact. Despite the safeguard spells cushioning the impact it still hurt quite a bit, but he didn't care. So many of their problems in the last couple weeks had all boiled down to lack of access to knowledge about the incantations language, and now that huge omni-problem was solved. He would still have to put work into applying his programming skills, and judging by the complexity of the spellwork used to capture and contain them that would take a great deal of work, but he finally had the complete language reference he needed to do so unconstrained. It would have been nice to figure this out before being carried towards their permanent deaths in a featureless metal box, but that was just details, right?
Amber had flinched back from his sudden exclamation and movement, but leaned forward again. Both of her eyebrows were raised high. "I have no idea what that spell did, it was over too fast. What did you figure out? And how is it only one word, without even a `cast` instruction?"
Carlos blew on his stinging scraped hands a couple times before looking back up to grin at her again. "What did I figure out? Heh. Everything. I figured out everything."
___
It took several minutes for Carlos to calm down from the excitement of his discovery, and to explain just what it was that he'd learned. For a while Amber couldn't stop shaking her head in amazed disbelief. Carlos offered to try to teach it to her, but she declined. "Wait until we're out, back in Dramos, and you can send the concept mentally. I don't think I can really comprehend it right now, it's just too huge."
"Fair enough." Carlos nodded. "Then it's up to me to use it to find something that will help."
Just then, his introspector popped up an alert.
***
Mana compressed. Level 15 reached.
Synergy unification update:
Largest group of structures with total synergy: 10
Number of synergies in group: 45
Synergies to structures ratio: 4.5
Resulting synergies level required for unification: 15
Synergy unification completed!
10 soul structures unified into 1.
9 empty soul structure slots now available.
WARNING: Overall mana absorption and development efficiency decreased from 100% to 1% due to empty soul structure slots.
***
Carlos took a moment to take in the information, and when he read the last line he blanched, his face turning deathly pale. "No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no, no, no, oh god, this can't be happening, not now! Fuuuuck!" He started hyperventilating.
Amber stared at him and blinked a few times. She started leaning forward, then her mana compressed to level fifteen too, and she froze for several seconds. "Oh. Shit!"
Carlos swayed for a moment, but caught himself and started taking more intentional and regular deep breaths, trying to calm his racing heart. Maybe he should make a soul structure sometime to stop himself from panicking, now that he had nine free slots. It seemed an absurd abundance of potential, on top of what he'd already had. No wonder nobles were so powerful. This must be why Lorvan had been so cagey about what he called the second stage.
Suddenly faced with the prospect of designing he didn't even know yet how many more soul structures - would the new ones unify too, and at what point, and just with each other or also with the first unified super-structure? - he rebelled against the very idea of it. He managed to calm his breathing close to normal, then closed his eyes for a moment and wrestled a determined frown onto his face. Thus settled, Carlos opened his eyes and declared his intent. "No. I have spent enough time fiddling with hardware and leaving my true expertise of software to languish. I finally have the full reference documentation of the entire language, and I am going to use it. I will come back to this whole unification development... thing, when I have a proper repertoire of spells to use it with."
Amber just breathed quietly for a while, before slowly nodding. "I don't think I fully understand everything you just said, but I agree that we should learn spells and spellcraft before deciding what to do about soul structures. And you'd better get on with it already!"
Carlos nodded, and cast his new spell again. Interestingly, it did not require that its parameters be learned and encoded keywords. He just had to speak them, and the spell operated some kind of language recognition feature to determine its response.
`help paraminfo effects`
Information about how to use "help effects" poured into his mind. As he expected, it could be used to simply list literally every single effect the system had. That was probably an overwhelmingly long list, however, and he was gratified to find there were further options to search through various categories. He set to work, browsing through categories that seemed relevant for either bypassing or breaking - but bypassing was probably more viable - barriers.
The most promising possibility initially seemed to be teleporting, but he remembered the times they'd been teleported by a scroll or another mage, and he didn't think they had enough levels and mana to give a spell that much power. The level of the ambient mana pouring in ticked up again, and their rate of absorbing it had all but stopped. He cursed at the increased feeling of oppressive pressure, and tried to work faster. Were there specialty types of teleportation that used less power? He had analyzed all the magic keeping them contained by now, and he was confident none of it would prevent a teleport. If he could find a variant that was cheap enough and still did something useful, that could help.
Ah, yes, there was an effect that would teleport his magic. Not him, not even anything physical at all, but another spell or effect. It would, for the purposes of his mana and spells, make a connection between him and somewhere else that did not cross the distance between. It had some major limitations, including on the amount of power he could send through it, but it would let him sense mana outside their boxy prison despite the tuned barrier on it. In fact, thinking of mana sense, surely there were spells for seeing and hearing nearby areas, and he could combine it with those to get an eye on their captors.
Carlos dug through the effect categories again, and soon found something for perceiving light and vibrations with his mana. The system didn't actually give him the effect concept itself, just a written text description, but he was fairly sure it was designed to be combined with other things to interpret or display what it sensed. He suspected he might not have time to figure out how to make that work, but he hoped his comprehension aid could handle understanding the information directly instead. The ambient mana level ticked up yet again, to level twenty three, and he shuddered under the increased pressure on his soul with eight levels of difference in its density and power. It wasn't dangerous quite yet, but it was becoming extremely uncomfortable.
Putting those two effects together into a single spell proved tricky, until he realized he was being stupid and should just make separate spells for each. They crossed another zone, into level twenty four, before he finally finished that. He cast the first spell, to form a teleport-like connection for his magic to bridge a path around the box's wards, and didn't get to cast the second spell before something happened.
[CARLOS! I can sense you again!]
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===
I've had the discovery of `help` in mind as a climactic plot development since before I even wrote chapter 1. It's been a long road getting here, but the moment has finally arrived. I hope it's as exciting and enjoyable for you as writing it was for me! 🎉
Comments
Kyle
I got excited when I noticed Carlos starting to look for the "help" keyword, but I wasn't sure if it was going to be that or "man" since man is so much better.
RJD
Enjoying the story. I will cancel Patreon because I can't afford continuing but not disappointed in story.
Anthony Gerald Miller
I hope the Help files Carlos has found are better indexed than Microsoft's.
George
Sure, but have fun cracking the admin password.
George
Carlos achieves the next step to becoming the best mage in current history! Will this help him out of his current predicament? No, it will probably take too long to find a solution from the massive list of possible effects. Fortunately for them, it looks like I win my bet against no one that Purple gets through first. Now it's down to the adventurer team to tornado in and swoop to the rescue!
HoneydewHolt
can’t wait for sudo
zachava
RTFM
Darune Albane
And not knowing .. deadly
Isaac Boyles
Oh it's on now
Maurice Brown
I’m going nuts here! This is so fucking awesome!
Dan Chadwick
I wonder if the help menu includes elements of structure and synergies... in my imaginings I see this octagon with one point above and another below as a rough starting point and the Platonic and Archimedean solids as evolutions or potentially shells. Though I'm sure you have a firm grasp on where you want to take this progression, don't mind me interjecting... (would love to see a "Bucky Ball" iteration, just sayin')
Dan Chadwick
It's hard to imagine anyone outside of Carlos experience knowing what programming g even is! Now with the help command, he's got a toe up even on the royals... IMO
Scott Snyder
Up next for soul structures… github and copilot.
Douglas Miller
The company that makes IntelliJ also has similar IDEs for many other languages. For example, Rider for C#.
viperfan7
To be fair, I hate java with a passion
Douglas Miller
I've used Visual Studio too. In my experience, IntelliJ's autocomplete is better, getting the right suggestion sooner and more often.
viperfan7
Nice thing is, Visual studio and VScode have similar too. So handy. Like, I couldn't program without things like it
Jethro
Microsoft copilot soul structure
Douglas Miller
IntelliSense, the one clear and specific feature I can point to as a significant example of why IntelliJ is my favorite Java IDE. Aside from that, it's hard to say anything more detailed than "it just *works better*". I could think of examples all day long of ways it makes things easier, but each and every one of them is individually tiny and easy to dismiss. There's just so *many* of them that it adds up.
Douglas Miller
@Miroslav >How many structures would be outsde unified structure if one synergy was not established? One. If there's a set of 9 structures that have the maximum of 36 synergies within the set, then that set of 9 structures can unify, though it will happen later than level 15. If you're only missing 1 synergy out of the full 45 for your entire soul, then there are two different sets of 9 structures that can unify, but there's 8 structures of overlap between the sets and of course each structure can only go into one unified structure. Which one of the two possible unifications actually happens is effectively random, but it will be one or the other, not a hybrid bastardization of the two. There are ways to influence which unification happens when multiple possibilities exist, but such a situation is so rare that no one's had any motivation to even try to investigate it. Something like Carlos's debugger would allow outright choosing one.
meu 32
More like magic computer hardware. Carlos basically just created the hardware of a computer but focused toward magic rather than math, could probably still make a spell to do math for him though.
meu 32
Honestly that might be why the keyword was lost, It might have been intentional. Someone might have caused a calamity, or a sequence of people, and to stop it happening in the future the survivors decided to stop teaching the word.
Dan Chadwick
I think the help menu will be exactly the balm they need just now! Tweaking the inverse levitation trick to inverse the soul compression would be the sort of reprieve Carlos seems to be seeking! He's even got a soul structure already in place for it! Setup as an automatic optimizing regulator costing negative mana available for immediate use or further soul compression...
Dan Chadwick
I think the help menu will be exactly the balm they need just now! Tweaking the inverse levitation trick to inverse compress would be the sort of reprieve Carlos seems to be seeking! He's even got a soul structure in place fore it! Setup as an automatic optimizing regulator costing negative mana available for immediate use or further soul compression...
Josh
Ah, I see! I look forward to finding out how further unification and synergies work, between new structures and the one base unified structure.
Miroslav
How many structures would be outsde unified structure if one synergy was not established? One or two? If you remove one of structures the rest have full sinergies.
Nikhil Kshirsagar
Here’s my take on it There’s the zeroth stage which basically means the state you’re at when you’re born. First stage occurs at level 15, technically 16 cuz level 0 is also a level. Second stage would require orichalcum rank, full synergies and happens at level 31, technically 32. Similarly third stage at 64, fourth at 128, fifth at 256, sixth at 512, seventh at 1024. Considering Stage zero as infancy we get 8 stages in total. Every stage they might have to synergise with all 10 soul structures. Every stage will have one less soul structure than the one preceding it
John Snyder
Magic OSPF incoming ...
viperfan7
I know what soul structure he needs. IntelliSense He needs a soul structure specifically designed to auto complete his spell syntax. Hell, he needs a full on MDK, the magic development kit. He is the hardware, his first 10 structures are the kernel level stuff. Now to get the operating system going. HE COULD IMPLEMENT PURPLES AUTOMATOR NOW Hell combined with the help thing, he could make a spell that automatically determines the best effect to use against the target.
Connor Mcharg
To quote Lorvan on the subject of the second stage: “It will be largely self explanatory when the time comes, and there is no danger involved. I see no need to explain before you reach it.” …and yet, High House Carlos managed to find themselves in the one position where second stage was an actively detrimental development…
Sansvoid
It's exciting and enjoyable ... Weeeeee!
I'd guess next chapter might be Carlos defending against going further, city gang getting on the way, maybe something else, but the reckoning is 2 weeks to a month away... I want to read and read...
Douglas Miller
Moving soul structures around, *provided that you have an empty slot available*, is actually trivial, and even automatic. Carlos having the full 10, leaving no empty slot, is the only reason he had to exert any effort to swap a pair. It's only the incantations and spellcasting that Carlos thinks is designed and artificially created. The soul structures stuff all seems natural as far as he can tell so far. Orichalcum is the highest tier. Even after synergy unification happens, having all 45 synergies among the initial 10 structures is still a major advantage, because you don't have any structures that get left out of the unification still taking up space and likely being more difficult to synergize with for your new additional structures.
Jethro
As a programmer and IT this is awesome!
Josh
I find myself curious what position their new unified soul structure now occupies in the constellation of 10. Based on some information in a previous chapter, it sounds like most people (who don't have a debugger/introspector) can't move soul structures around once placed, so it seems relevant where the new structure starts out. I'm guessing that either it ends up in the top or bottom slot, or their new constellation is some shape other than an octagonal bipyramid. It's also interesting that 10 structures unified to 1, leaving 9 slots. We can reason somewhat from that. It probably won't be the case that they need to make *multiple* unified structures of 10 that in turn unify with each other (e.g. needing 10 unified structures of 10 each to make one doubly-unified structure of 100), because they don't have room to do that unless there's some new mechanic that's more complex than 9 slots being available. (For instance, somehow adding a center point to the octagonal bipyramid.) And since this magic system was designed rather than evolved, it *seems* unlikely that they'd need to unify 9 structures, then unify 8, and so on, resulting in 10 unified structures that themselves could have synergy and unify; that seems like a kind of asymmetry that the designers wouldn't want. So, I would hypothesize that *either* they need to make 9 new structures that synergize with their existing unified structure as a whole and thus have 45 new synergies, or they need to make 9 structures that synergize with their 10 existing structures and have 126 new synergies for a total of 171 (19x18/2). I'm also curious what the tiers above orihalcum are called. :)
Josh
Absolutely. And this is likely either completely undiscovered, or the house secret of a very very powerful house, and either way, it's not something they should share lightly. Sharing the knowledge from it would be much safer. At some point it may make sense to follow the same general principles as the creators of the magic system, and share the knowledge with everyone. But doing so is likely to cause rapid changes and upheavals in the landscape of magic, power, and existing structures, as well as potentially raising the threat of magical calamity (e.g. powerful amoral magic users or someone discovering an apocalyptic bug/exploit). And it can't be un-shared once shared. At the same time, anyone who learns that they know this is likely to want to restrict knowledge of it, for the same reason or for reasons of control and power, so they need to keep secret not just the mechanism but the fact that they know it, until they're ready to make sure that everyone has it.
Connor Mcharg
I know - but I wanted to make as big a deal as possible out of the fact that learning keywords is now a solved problem. Trinlen *does* have some cool spells to show them, and he's got experience programming specifically in this language, so he will still be helpful, but he's expecting to have students with *way* less starting knowledge.
Andrew Kellenberger
I was expecting debug, but this makes way more sense.
Douglas Miller
Eh, he'll still have things to teach them. The availability of complete reference documentation of real world programming languages does not negate the usefulness of teachers for those languages.
Dene W
i could happily read a chapter of changelogs.
Connor Mcharg
…poor Trinlen - all he had to teach them was a ton of keywords, some spells, and how to craft more of them, and now the students have become *the* masters of the first one, they've already mastered learning the second, and one of them was already a master of the third thanks to a bizzare coincidence. …on the bright side, he is going to florish so well under High House Carlos's wings.
Dame
Here is the next few chapters; Purple's preparations before the contact just now, what Carlos does while the guards get there, the guards traveling to get there, Carlos getting free (with or without the guards) also known and "Hell to Pay".
Markell
I can tell you exactly what happened: the same thing that happened on earth. “Who tf looks at the documentation? Just git gud scrub.” Whilst at the same time relying on the one senior member to fix their work because when are you going to need to use assembly language anyway?
13L00D13ANE
We can only hope. Or else Douglas is goin to jail for all these criminal cliffhangers. ;D
Miroslav
i hope next chapter is coming this saturday 😊
Chad Williams
Well it depends on how douglas chooses to torture us but i don’t think they can make it a few more chapters they are already getting into very uncomfortable territory with the ambient mana. I would assume conflict and conclusion should happen relatively quickly now that they have a location and comms restored
Beeees!
Help! The chapter is over and there's no more words to read. Tftc!!!!!
Brandon C
What? New soul structures possible? Looks like if it is based off of synergies, max cliques problem. Survive til the Calvary arrives and House Carlos is going to REALLY be a Orichalcum house! What are they going to call this hybrid structure? Magecraft?
Dene W
Or someone left in a complete set of batches to get new users a boost!
Dene W
It'll be fine. Platinum does not tarnish or rust over time
Dene W
And i look forward to seeing how it all comes to be :D
13L00D13ANE
But definitely not the last, my friend.
Dan Chadwick
The next surprize needs to be 'example'
13L00D13ANE
You, sir, are asking the *right* questions.
Brandon C
I am glad I got to platinum. Totally worth it! (This comment will not age well)
13L00D13ANE
YAY! Good job, carlos, and looking forward to how fast Lorven and Ordens can run. Oh man, is next few chapters are gonna be a RECKONING.
Douglas Miller
The precise details of Royal House Kalor's soul plan are a house secret, of course, but they do not use incantation spellcasting themselves. Whatever those details are, they are more akin to what Esmorana uses - structures for directly achieving certain effects, in Esmorana's case controlling air and wind, not for facilitating access to a rigidly formalized system that acts sort of as a middle-man between you and the end result effects.
Dummy
I wonder if the 'Help' command is a big royal bloodline secret. If they could understand the entire system of magic, then their high power would be explained. It might even explain why no one knows about it, because they don't want the information being spread around.
Dene W
That was a banger of a chapter. As soon as i could see how it was developing i had to stop myself skipping ahead! Now i await the true panicle of lost knowledge in magical commands: Sudo But do we now have batch commands? Help commands beyond those seen? Like maybe a commented list of example spells? Dev notes? Why version 3? So many fun questions! 'About'? 'Credits'? 'License'? 'revert'? Maybe all that high level mana could be teleported away just before contact? Maybe that mana itself could power it? 'Reflect'? Possibilities!
DittoMikko
This development is fantastic, I am on the edge of my seat for what happens next
Hayden Hodge
This is an insane development. Carlos just figured out EVERYTHING and he can add even more soul structures. House Carlos is about to be crazy….or dead I guess. But I really doubt they’re about to die.
Chad Williams
I love it and its completely different from what everyone was discussing or thinking would happen! I don’t envy you coming up with another synergistic soul plan though 😂. Also the cliffhangers are a crime you gotta stop!
Justin Drake
Tyftc
Markell
God damn this was a good chapter. Been waiting for something like this for a long time.
Chad Williams
I was the first here
