I Pioneered Scientific Magic - Chapter 535 (Patreon)

Chapter 535: How Many Dimensions Does Our World Have, Really?

"The sun?" Listening to Darren's explanation, Maka's face showed a trace of astonishment.

"Yes, it's a very large, self-luminous and self-heating fireball... no, it should be called a plasma ball," Darren boasted, flaunting the limited knowledge in his mind.

The astonished gazes of the natives brought him a strong sense of superiority.

The halflings around murmured among themselves, and Maka also remembered hearing this term in his tribe.

It seems that long ago, this world too had a sun, but Maka had never seen it—only understood from the sparse words of his ancestors that it possessed endless light and heat capable of illuminating the vast land, emitting light a hundred thousand times stronger than the glow of the luminous mushrooms in the forest.

Maka could hardly imagine what kind of force could fill the whole world with light!

You know, in this cold, dark foreign land, light and heat are precious resources.

Instinctively, Maka thought Darren must be lying, but he couldn't help feeling a bit hopeful, for these outsiders indeed demonstrated abilities beyond expectations.

For instance, they could conjure a soft, fluffy food out of thin air, and these people could manipulate flames, frost, and lightning, easily defeating powerful and dangerous magical beasts.

The high priest had once jealously stated that if the Moon Goddess were still in this world, they could certainly do the same things.

Of course, that high priest had been killed for resisting the outsiders, his body turned into an ice sculpture, and buried along with his followers.

The remaining halflings were quite stable emotionally, for in this god-forsaken world, the strong get everything, and it was only too clear that the weak had to submit.

Years ago, when the temperatures in this foreign land weren't so low, this area had several tribes, and raiding, enslaving, and fighting were common occurrences.

Maka had no reverence or faith in that Moon Goddess, Diana, for the tribe had never ceased their sacrifices to her since his birth, yet that goddess had never cared about their fate.

Perhaps, as these outsiders had said, she had indeed fallen!

A dead god naturally no longer held any value, not even offering a faint hope.

"You mentioned that chairman Lynn... is he also a god?" Maka couldn't help asking, in his understanding, a god was the most powerful existence, the root of all miracles.

"No, he is a wizard, the most powerful wizard!" Darren corrected him,

"Wizard..." Maka repeated the somewhat awkward term, which didn't exist in his tribe's language, so Darren used the common language of the Eternal Continent.

Maka etched this foreign term deeply in his mind; in his view, a wizard represented a powerful force, as mighty as a god.

"Since you can create a sun, could you..." Maka hesitated for a long time before he finally said, gritting his teeth. "Could you make one for us too?"

If this world had a sun, perhaps everything would be better?

At least they wouldn't have to worry about light and heat.

But years of surviving in this foreign land made Maka understand that there were no free favors; he struggled to think of anything they could offer in exchange.

Because the very existence of his tribe hung on the outsiders' whim, theoretically, their lives belonged to them too; using the outsiders' own things as terms of exchange was not something Maka could do.

"Wait, there's also faith! As long as you help us create a sun, we will offer you our belief!" Maka suddenly thought of this and said firmly.

The freedom of thought was the only thing they possessed; since the Moon Goddess needed or liked their worship, perhaps the wizards would want this too.

After all, they always prayed during successful hunts; now, it was simply a matter of changing the object of their worship.

"Wizards don't need faith..." Darren shook his head, rejecting Maka's offer, and then spoke again.

"You just need to... well, work hard. As long as you make enough contributions, making a sun for you is not impossible..."

Darren kept painting a rosy picture for the halflings, although in his view, it wasn't exactly deception.

Before heading to this foreign land, Darren had heard that the council was planning to build solar furnaces in all the major cities to provide a continuous source of energy.

If these halfling brethren could indeed make significant contributions, he felt the council might actually build them a 'sun'!

With Darren's constant encouragement, Maka and the others began to fantasize about what life with endless light and heat would be like, and many halflings became even more interested in the world beyond the time-space gate that Darren described.

Compared to the dark, silent, and dangerous land filled with fierce beasts and undead, Darren's world seemed like heaven.

As the hal

flings discussed animatedly, Raphael had already received a message, and the scouts who had gone out to explore the outside world had returned.

Several dark bats flew in first, followed by the alchemist Tiek and a small team of halfling sentinels.

Tiek's face was full of worry, but he didn't speak; instead, he couldn't help but look at the gathered native halflings.

Raphael immediately understood his meaning and silently unfolded his domain to envelop them, instantly completing a soundproof barrier.

Tiek then spoke urgently. "Master Raphael, the situation outside is grim. A large number of undead are gathering here!"

"What happened? Could it be that our position has been exposed?" Raphael's expression changed slightly. Although he had anticipated that Tiek would bring bad news, he hadn't expected it to be this dire.

Yulande immediately scanned the native halflings present.

He suspected that these people had leaked their information.

Although Raphael had controlled this settlement and had psychic wizards set restrictions in each of their minds, it clearly wasn't safe enough, as their opponents were best at manipulating souls.

"No, I don't think they are here to capture us."

Tiek shook his head, as the undead hadn't directly surrounded them but were aimlessly searching the area, seemingly ready to dig three feet into the ground.

"Could it be that the frequent opening and closing of the time-space gate has been detected..." Yulande speculated.

Raphael was also considering this possibility; each time the time-space gate was opened, a significant amount of magic flowed into another world, like diverting a small stream from a large river. Although the loss was slow, it could indeed be detected.

"How far are they from us now?" Raphael asked gravely.

"Less than fifty kilometers," Tiek replied. "These undead are searching every possible place. I even saw a dragon flatten a small hill to make sure there was nothing inside."

"Four days, at most four days, and they will find this place!" Tiek added.

Although the search area of the skeletal soldiers was expanding, the tireless undead would eventually find them.

Raphael frowned and thought for a long time; this was undoubtedly the worst possibility.

"We must find a way to divert them, to delay as much as possible the time these undead find the time-space node." Raphael declared decisively.

During his stay in this foreign land, aside from subduing this halfling settlement and having them gather intelligence, Raphael had also done quite a bit, such as setting up an alchemical array near the time-space node in the valley to block sight and magic detection.

But Raphael didn't think his arrangements could deceive those damn skeletons; the opponents would undoubtedly not hesitate to level every place they could find.

So the only way was to attract them to another place.

Because the flow of time was different in the two worlds, each day they delayed was like gaining seven days!

However, this also meant they had to face a vast, powerful, and dangerous legion of undead.

"Let's send someone back to report the news first," Raphael sighed, then looked at Yulande, Tiek, Ivina, Darren, and others, not speaking but letting them choose who would go and who would stay.

Returning meant survival; staying was almost certain death, as they would have to go as far from the time-space gate as possible, with a slim chance of making it back.

"Ivina, you go back and report," Tiek suddenly said. She was the youngest here and deserved this one chance at life.

However, the girl shook her head; the moment she joined the foreign land exploration team, she was prepared to sacrifice.

The others remained silent, and a heavy atmosphere immediately enveloped the encampment.

"Then let's decide by drawing lots!" Raphael finally decided. This was the fairest way, and there was no need for further argument.

...

In the magic kingdom, inside the newly built magic tower, Victorio, who had just returned from the northern border with intelligence, was interrupted by a shocking piece of news before he could report.

"What did you say? Althok... turned into a probability cloud?" Victorio almost spit out the tea he had just drunk, looking incredulously at Lynn and others as if they were telling a ridiculous joke.

"Although I don't want to believe it, it seems that this is indeed the case..." Aurora shrugged, recounting everything they had seen in that laboratory in the land of wizards.

An entity that was both consolidated and separated, Victorio could not recreate such an image in his mind...

Bizarre... That was the only word to describe it!

"Is this still magic?" Anthony was also stunned; like Victorio, it was his first time hearing this news.

Harof and Aurora were also pondering this issue. Since they started researching the microscopic world, the common knowledge of magic had been torn to shreds, and the world seemed to be becoming more and more bizarre.

"There's nothing strange

 about it, it's just the sense of disjunction that arises from looking at higher dimensions from lower ones," Lynn interrupted the conversation, flipping through a book written by Althok about elemental spirits.

"Higher dimensions?" Harof and others looked over, surprised by the new term Lynn introduced.

"Exactly!" Lynn nodded. "Perhaps it would be more intuitive to express it in arcane mathematics."

"For example, you can imagine zero dimensions as an infinitely small point, and one dimension as an infinitely long line, having only the concept of length, two dimensions as a plane, composed of length and width..."

As he spoke, Lynn raised his right hand, and under the surge of magic, an imperceptible point appeared in front of everyone, then changed from a point to a line and then to a plane...

"So the third dimension is a cube with length, width, and height?" Aurora immediately understood.

This was the concept of the coordinate system in arcane mathematics; each additional axis represented an added dimension.

"What about higher dimensions? Where would they extend from?" Harof asked, puzzled. Length, width, and height were accounted for, so from where could the fourth dimension extend?

"Could it be time?" Anthony suddenly spoke up.

According to Lynn's explanation, dimensions are something invisible, untouchable, omnipresent, and theoretically infinitely divisible, with time undoubtedly corresponding to every point.

Moreover, like space, it could be warped and affected by gravity...

Lynn didn't respond, tapping the table lightly with his hand. Regarding how many dimensions the universe has, whether the fourth or fifth dimensions exist in any particular state, even the researchers of his previous world's federation couldn't come to a precise conclusion, leading to significant disagreement.

For instance, the renowned Einstein had proposed the four-dimensional spacetime theory, suggesting that the universe was composed of time and space, with a time axis added to the ordinary three-dimensional space's length, width, and height framework.

That is, a three-dimensional static universe and a four-dimensional dynamic universe.

However, many of the federation's researchers didn't accept this and proposed an interesting hypothesis: if their current universe contained two-dimensional beings who could move freely in two-dimensional space and also perceive the passage of time, would their scientists directly consider time as the third dimension?

So, many advocated distinguishing spatial dimensions from temporal dimensions, studying dimensions purely in terms of mathematics and spatial concepts. The famous string theory even suggested that space has as many as eleven dimensions!

After seeing Althok's state, Lynn was even more convinced that space had more than three dimensions, because apart from the time dimension, it was now confirmed that there indeed exists a fourth spatial dimension!

-----------------

Table of content - Next Chapter >>>

• You can access publicly available chapters of "I Pioneered Scientific Magic" right HERE.

• Your invaluable feedback and ratings mean the world to me. Please take a moment to rate this novel at Novelupdate.

• You can also check out the other Novels I'm currently translating by clicking HERE.

• If you come across any mistakes within this chapter, kindly notify me in the comments below, so that I can make the necessary corrections.