novelraw #241 - Section 241
#241 - Section 241
In the blink of an eye, Shana had already received the Empress Award and become this year's Industrial Star.
Despite Shana's disguised appearance being very young, in the field of "faith," even the old fogeys of the Arcane Society had to respectfully call her "Teacher Gabriel" and ask her about things they didn't understand.
After all, she used to be a six-winged angel. Even though she no longer possessed divine power, she understood the conversion of faith power and divine power better than ordinary mages.
Shana ran an independent research institute, pursuing projects that were completely whimsical and based on her interests. She collaborated with the two major magic academies of Aodu and the Arcane Society to jointly advance explorations in cutting-edge fields.
After the award ceremony, the Eternal Night Empress, acting as the host, explained to the guests and live-streaming audience the reasons for Shana's award.
Many people were initially just casual onlookers, but when they saw the Eternal Night Empress personally introducing this beautiful young lady's invention, they immediately perked up.
What was Her Majesty's status? As the empire grew stronger, fewer and fewer technologies caught her eye.
During the first Empress Award, she was full of interest. In the second, her emotions were stable. In the third and fourth, she simply presented the awards, at most offering a glance of encouragement.
Miss Gabriel's invention was the first Empress Award winner in the past three years to be personally introduced by the Eternal Night Empress!
"It's over, it's over! This woman will be unstoppable in the future?" Tom said with a look of utter despair.
Jerry looked at him with disdain. "So you, you shameless bastard, actually have your eye on the Empress Award winner?"
"I have eyes that are good at discovering beauty."
"You're just a shameless bastard!"
After bickering for a while, the two fell silent, captivated by the Eternal Night Empress's introduction.
Shana received the Industrial Star for her outstanding contributions to the "Divine Power Plant" project.
This was a research project she collaborated on with the Arcane Society. The material they studied was an arm that the Eternal Night Empress had torn from the Avatar of the God of Nature.
It looked like just a roughly carved wooden stake, but it was a genuine Avatar of a God.
This single avatar was many times stronger than Afu, who was constantly growing with the support of the Fearless Space.
However, the empire had never found a way to utilize this avatar. They couldn't just carve it into a shield because it was hard, right?
And even if they did, not many people could use such a shield.
This avatar also contained remnants of the God's vast will. Not to mention touching it directly, even approaching it could lead to being assimilated into a wooden person by the God of Nature.
The God of Nature didn't have any malicious intent to harm people; it was just that its own power was too great, and the "brainwaves" it unconsciously emitted would have serious effects on ordinary people.
As the empire's research into gods deepened, especially with Shana providing many key theoretical foundations, she led the way in successfully finding a way to utilize this avatar of the God of Nature:
It was actually very simple and crude: just burn the wood directly as firewood and then boil water to generate electricity.
Of course, nuclear reactors could also be compared to this. Even if it was a fusion reactor, it might still just be boiling water.
The difficulty lay in the fact that the boiler for igniting this avatar's limb was difficult to build, and the ignition method was also very complex.
After more than a year of research, Shana's team finally found a way to induce the faith power in this avatar's limb to be released stably and controllably, converting it into a huge amount of heat to boil water.
The conversion efficiency was extremely high. Just a finger-sized piece of the avatar's limb could supply the entire capital city of Arcane for fifty years.
"Moreover, before the first Divine Power Plant was built and operating stably, Miss Shana had already led the team to overcome the technical difficulties of recharging the divine power avatar. They only need to collect unconsciously generated beliefs to extend the avatar's usage time and provide the empire with a continuous source of energy!"
The Eternal Night Empress looked at Shana with a smile, her gaze truly filled with satisfaction.
Her naughty child had grown up!
Shana maintained her smile, still looking very nervous, trying to minimize her presence.
In fact, she didn't want to be stared at by the Eternal Night Empress all the time; she even wanted to escape!
The empire's first five-year plan was nearing completion, with significant increases in various industrial and agricultural outputs, as well as many breakthroughs from scratch.
Correspondingly, the Eternal Night Empress's strength was growing once again.
Shana dared to bet Roger's dog head that Her Majesty had definitely touched the ceiling of strength that this world could accommodate.
As for how her strength would grow after that, that was a secret that Shana couldn't know. Anyway, it was very terrifying.
Listening to the Eternal Night Empress's introduction, the others looked at Shana with a mixture of disbelief and admiration, giving this beautiful and charming young woman a thumbs up, recognizing that she definitely deserved the contribution of Industrial Star.
"This is really a good invention. The empire will never be short of electricity again!"
"And it can provide unlimited electricity with just faith. Is it the legendary perpetual motion machine?"
"Don't embarrass yourself. It's written in 'Intermediate Magic Theory' that faith power consumes the energy of the plane's origin, which cannot be regenerated. It can never be perpetual."
"Oh, is that so? That class was so difficult and boring that I actually fell asleep. So does that mean gods are parasites that plunder plane resources?"
"You're just realizing that now? That's why Her Majesty drove all seven gods out of the empire!"
"If we could one day kill a god's true body, the empire would have more energy and could build super fleets to conquer other planes!"
Everyone discussed animatedly, quickly moving from current technology to discussions of the "Arcano-Fantasy" genre.
This was a new term that had emerged in the Azure Vine Empire in recent years, referring to novels, games, and films that were based on magical theories but showcased many magics that did not yet exist in reality, yet gave people the feeling that they could be realized, creating a sufficient sense of realism.
The Arcano-Fantasy genre was very popular in the empire because everyone's lives were changing rapidly and they were full of beautiful fantasies about the future. Ordinary people especially liked to see the future worlds constructed by those Arcano-Fantasy masters.
The Eternal Night Empress went to rest, and the real host of the ceremony came on stage, handing the microphone to Shana: "Let's invite Miss Gabriel to talk about her expectations for the future development of the Divine Power Plant, shall we?"
Thunderous applause erupted from the audience.
Shana's expression was a little strange. She had been a technical otaku for the past few years, and her social skills had deteriorated rapidly.
Suddenly, countless expectant eyes looked over, and she only felt absurd...
I'm an undercover agent, I'm a spy, and you people of the empire actually have expectations for a spy?
"Our current main focus is, on the one hand, to increase the power limit, and on the other hand, to get rid of the dependence on divine avatars and achieve the direct utilization of faith power through magic crystal machinery!"
She subconsciously blurted out her true thoughts, drawing a super big pie.
If she could really do what she said, wouldn't that mean that everyone in the Azure Vine Empire could use faith power through machinery...
Everyone as gods?
Everyone looked at Shana with increasing excitement.
This was a very Arcano-Fantasy scene, but it was also a scene that the people of the empire believed could one day be realized...
Shana didn't expect that her bragging would cause such a violent reaction. She returned the microphone to the host and, after getting permission, ran back to the backstage in a panic.
But speaking of which, if that technology is really realized, when the seven gods find this place to hunt her down, facing an ocean of 400 million people blasting them with divine power...
It would definitely be super interesting!
ps. The typo bonus event is over. As of yesterday, you caught a total of 23 bugs, so there will be 23 bonus chapters.
6 chapters have been repaid so far, and the remainder will be cleared this month.
Chapter 217: Tassica Reveals Her Cards
On this day of the Empress Award ceremony, in addition to the Divine Power Plant, there were two other inventions and discoveries worth personally introducing by the Eternal Night Empress, namely this year's Theoretical Star and Military Star.
The winner of the Theoretical Star was Sir Isali Newton, who already had a Theoretical Star medal, and Mr. Galilei, the chief consultant of the Arcane Society, jointly won the award.
This time, she and Galilei successfully predicted and calculated the existence of "Negative Magic Essence," theoretically guiding practice, and finally successfully extracted Negative Magic Essence in the already annihilated void plane.
Although that peculiar magic basic unit between particles and waves only existed for a few microseconds, the empire currently has no way to preserve Negative Magic Essence, let alone utilize it.
But this is an absolutely heavyweight breakthrough in the magical theoretical world.
The confirmation of Negative Magic Essence makes the empire's magical theory puzzle more complete.
Many previous hypotheses are no longer hypotheses, but solid foundations on which more new research directions can be developed.
The Eternal Night Empress was obviously well-prepared, using descriptions that even monkeys could understand to popularize the knowledge of positive and negative magic essence to the empire's audience:
Magic exists in this world, but what exactly is magic? Mages have been exploring.
Initially, mages divided magic according to earth, water, fire, and wind.
But as they studied magic and explored more planes, people discovered that magic also had more attributes such as shadow, smoke, and dust.
And magic can be further divided. This most basic unit that mages once thought of is composed of "Magic Essence."
Although in a normal environment, even the magic consumed after releasing magic cannot be decomposed into Magic Essence.
But mages' creativity is infinite. They constructed very extreme environments and destroyed them through various violent means.
Finally, under collisions with sufficiently high energy levels, they observed Magic Essence that was more original than magic, removing its mysterious veil.
Through a series of studies, mages have confirmed that the different attributes of magic are the different numbers and combinations of Magic Essence collisions.
Finally, the different resonance frequencies of these magic on energy derive the rich and diverse attributes of magic, resulting in different participation rates in different magic reactions.
With more in-depth research on Magic Essence, some theoretical experts have discovered through calculations that this universe should not only have actively active Magic Essence that releases energy outward.
There should also be another kind of Magic Essence that absorbs energy to maintain the balance of the entire universe.
This is the hypothesis of positive and negative magic essence.
Since its appearance, this hypothesis has gained wide support, and of course, some people scoff at it.
Tens of thousands of years of magical civilization have not discovered negative magic essence, and a new type suddenly appeared in the past few years. Just thinking about it is unreliable, right?
But anyway, positive and negative magic essence is the most cutting-edge work in magical theoretical research, a new peak in new arcane theory, a field waiting for someone to explore, there is no doubt about that.
After the fourth year of the Eternal Night Calendar, mages' control limit and precision of power have been continuously improved, and they can mobilize more and more resources, and began more extensive research.
Tianhai Tower even devoted its main energy to exploring negative magic essence due to Galilei's arbitrary decision.
After nearly five years, thanks to the empire's countless entries into the Origin Sea to retrieve much knowledge that this world cannot understand, the empire finally successfully found negative magic essence.
Although there is no application yet, but just the progress of the theory can promote the construction of many top magics and further analyze their internal principles.
"This year's Theoretical Star is well-deserved."
The Eternal Night Empress issued the Empress Award medal to Galilei and other project participants with admiring eyes.
Then came the moment that truly ignited the people of the empire tonight, the awarding of the Military Star.
In these five years, the empire's militaristic side has been locked in a cage, but it does not mean that they will change their nature. The dream of unifying the world has always existed in the hearts of every imperial citizen.
It's just that they have become more rational and know the truth of accumulating grain widely and slowly claiming the title of king.
Taking advantage of the great powers' crazy civil wars, the empire began to accumulate strength and improve its national strength.
Without real bloody battles, everyone can only look at the new equipment and new tactics brought by the annual Military Star, and then look forward to it.
Anyway, everyone is very clear that Her Majesty the Empress is also waiting for a big one.
Obviously there is no war, but the real military expenditure every year is increasing dramatically with the increase in tax revenue, but it is hidden in the accounts of other departments, performing a blindfold to avoid other countries being alert to the empire.
This year's Military Star was awarded to a team from the Chapter of Imbalance, and the project they completed was:
Strategic Floating Fortress!
Many mage towers are actually combat fortresses floating in the void, which is a technology that has long existed in the Eternal Night world.
It's just that it consumes a lot of energy, and the environment for its deployment is also limited.
Especially in the material plane, the intensity of the battlefield often does not meet the conditions for the deployment of combat fortresses, so the research and development of such combat fortresses in the atmosphere has always been blank.
Moreover, mage towers are, after all, personal items of mages, and at most they only consider small-scale conflicts, and the value for large-scale group operations is not high.
Larger, stronger, and more stable floating fortress manufacturing plans have since been put on the agenda.
In fact, the empire once hesitated whether to engage in strategic floating fortresses. The opposition believes that this technology is extremely expensive, and the surrounding hostile forces are not strong enough. The empire may not need this strategic weapon at all.
It is enough to use economic means to cause internal strife, and then send troops to occupy it. It is obvious that engaging in this super fortress is suspected of using a cannon to kill mosquitoes.
Unfortunately, the number of opposition parties is ultimately limited, and the strategic floating fortress project was successfully launched.
There is only one reason for supporters:
But, it's big enough!
The empire's superficial militarism is hidden, and the warmongering in its bones will never disappear.
In the eyes of war maniacs led by the Eternal Night Empress, big is beautiful, and firepower is the truth.
If the surrounding enemies aren't strong enough, don't we still have the Seven Gods to test our firepower?
Maybe one day, I will really break into the divine kingdom and go on a rampage, who knows?
Sufficient cannons are necessary, and sufficient troop transport capacity is also necessary. We must stand above the heavens!
The Disbalance Chapter and the Life Ritual have launched bidding for the design and construction of strategic-level floating fortresses. In the end, the Empire chose relatively stable magic crystal machinery as the first direction.
Lydia's proposed bio-engineered warship was downgraded to an experimental marine combat platform, to be developed for the sky after it matures.