Titan's Throne

Ignite, Chain and Condense: The Medici Conundrum

The goal had been set. To create a new spell that allowed him to feed off Kenshin's curse, but there was a problem. Bastian simply did not have enough knowledge of magic. Neither did Kenshin. Under the instruction of Bastian, immediately after the first war council meeting, the Falsified Daughters were tasked with gathering all the books they could about magic and magic theory. This order baffled them but orders were orders. Thousands upon thousands of books were delivered to Bastian over some time. War was looming, the knowledge was there, and what was only left was how to process it all.

'I need a way to store process and transfer knowledge, like a computer...a computer?'

During his earlier research, before he had come up with pressure magic, Bastian had come upon a piece of knowledge that was deemed useless by most but was incredibly valuable to him. After the small computer idea entered his mind, it would not leave, prompting him to look for a small book available in almost every mage's collection of basic magic.

It was a small book. On the book was an odd shape that looked like a fusion of a circle, square and triangle. There were only 3 words in the title.

'The Medici Conundrum.'

Gianluigi Medici was a famous Magic Theorist of the Coiling Dragon Empire. He had created many spells and techniques, but none more well known, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say none were more infamous than the Medici Conundrum.

What Medici proposed was simple to explain. Certain magical abilities put a strain on the mental and spiritual processing abilities that warriors and mages had. Hence his idea was to have the burden of knowledge processing, storage and transfer passed on to an intermediary spell. He was well respected due to his previous works, but alas this theory was disregarded.

Not only did Medici fail to create such a spell, but he also wasted too many years trying to complete it while neglecting his cultivation. He created four powerful magics meant to work with the computer matrix but without completing the core matrix it was all pointless. Medici had hoped that someone in future generations would complete his life's work, but the task proved to be too difficult. Medici himself disappeared toward the end of the Coiling Dragon Empire. The Medici Matrix, as the spell was known, gradually sunk into the annals of history.

The four powerful subsidiary spells were still quite useful, but the missing core matrix made them unusable, hence many theorists tried to create another matrix while some dared to improve upon what Medici left behind. But there was little success in this regard. Nevertheless, Magic Theorists did not give up and broke the Four Great Medici Spells down into smaller parts resulting in thousands of weaker variations that still influenced modern magic. This is why The Medici Matrix is so valuable.

Four earth-shattering spells were rendered useless because of a lacking core matrix that could store, process and transfer large amounts of data. This was the Medici Conundrum.

Bastian looked at the Medici Matrix and realized a core aspect. The mathematics of this world were far too simple and crude. Not to mention that there was nothing that came even close to a computer. But on Earth things were different. Bastian was a programmer and maths was his staple as a theoretical physicist. What was a great conundrum to him only required him to research and fuse two different systems. After many hours of research and effort, a few days before the war Bastian had completed the matrix. He arrived next to a bookshelf within the Cole Family compound library soon after resting his mind. This section had been filled with the books Bastian wanted to use.

Bastian calmed himself and focused on his Yuan. He pulled it from his Dantian and circulated it according to the pathways in the spell matrices. The Yuan was then guided to his finger.

"Accendo."

Small orange embers of flame ignited on each of his fingertips as his hand made a claw shape. The five flames we small but they burned brightly. An odd feeling of warmth and purity emanated from them.

"Catena."

As soon as he spoke the second chant, small chains made up of fire travelled between the embers and connected them. The five embers now looked to be part of a circle of flames that started to rotate clockwise. But Bastian was not done. The circle of flames left his hand and floated in mid-air. It had completely turned into a smooth ring of fire made up of a single chain that revolved nonstop.

"Accendo."

Three new embers appeared on Bastian's hand from his ring finger, middle finger and index finger.

"Catena."

The previous scene repeated itself, except this time it was a triangle. The embers formed the three-pointed edges of an equilateral triangle made up of a flaming chain. The triangle did not rotate like the circle but it was stable and still.

"Accendo"

This time, all fingers except the thumb produced embers.

"Catena."

The embers are chained and combined to form a square. The square chain of flames rotated in the opposite direction as the circle, anti-clockwise and placed itself next to the triangle that was in the middle.

"Denseo."

Ignite, chain and condense. These were the three chants for setting up the Matrix if one was a beginner. Bastian had abandoned the original language used for the chant and used Latin from Earth instead. He knew quite a few words and found them very useful for creating chants. He didn't know how the words were pronounced but he could read and write them. That was enough, he wanted to create his pronunciations. After all, this was Bastian Smith, everything he did had to have a bit of madness to it.

This chant caused the three shapes in the air to compound upon each other, creating an odd shape It looked like a triangle drawn on top of a square that was on top of a circle. The edges of the triangle and square popped out at different ends while certain parts of the circle's perimeter would be the boundary in other parts. It was a simple yet complex shape that housed many mysteries within. The three flaming chains weaved and interlinked to form a new complete whole.

Bastian smiled as the flaming Medici matrix floated onto the back of his hand and embedded itself into his skin. Many spell matrices were already embedded into him but he had left plenty of space for future additions. Such as this one.

This was not as simple as creating flaming chains and bringing them together. Each of the chains had countless small runes embedded on the surface, acting as a programming language, which is what the original matrix lacked the most.

Once the matrix was done embedding itself, the Medici Symbol appeared on his palm. Bastian smiled as he activated the Matrix. The three shapes of the Medici Symbol started to move. The circle and square rotated in opposite directions while the triangle vibrated in place. An orange light with a red tint spread from Bastian's hand and slowly encompassed the whole room.

Book after book within the various bookshelves started to burn, turning into small motes of light that entered the symbol on Bastian's palm. Bastian had his eyes closed during the process but he could not help but snicker. If he did not have the confidence to survive Ambevilius' death game before, he now had the confidence to destroy it, so long as he could reach the Fusion Realm. This was the confidence gained from possessing a Spiritual Computer.

That day, two things happened;

Curse Symbiosis went from fiction to reality, and one of the most difficult theories in magic studies had been proved right.