—
Teleporting back to Rivia, Gustave couldn't help but look back at Alvin—not at his balding head, thinned by far too much thinking, but at how closely Alvin resembled him.
Now, with stronger Elder Blood and an expanded [Knowledge] ability—one capable of drawing information from the recent history of an object or person, even if it dated back only three days—Gustave was able to reach a clear conclusion regarding Alvin's leaking magic.
That conclusion was that Alvin was, quite literally, only a Second Degree Mage.
A Second Degree Mage who was exceptionally skilled in wielding the Power—so much so that it often felt as though he were an Arch-Master in the realm of mysticism. An expert capable of conserving and storing Power over time, allowing him to stand toe-to-toe with opponents who possessed far greater raw firepower.
And considering that someone from another saga was, in essence, cut from the same cloth as both him and Alvin, Gustave understood why Alvin had been able to fight Avallac'h back then, despite facing someone with overwhelming firepower—much like the Ancient One from the Marvel Universe, who fought countless deities despite being merely mortal.
Although many of her later achievements were thanks to the Amulet of Agamotto, that had not been the case in her early years. In the same way, even with only a modest amount of Power—or seemingly none at all—she had still been able to defeat demons and gods.
That was when Gustave knew that Alvin belonged to a category of mages who focused not on the amount of Power they possessed, but on mastery of its use.
And when he considered that nuclear fission followed the same philosophy—the application of a small amount of Power to create an impact far greater than what even an Arch-Mage could achieve—Gustave understood how oversimplified the Chapter's leveling system truly was.
Categorizing such mages by fixed Degrees to judge a sorcerer's worth was no different from measuring a gardener on a battlefield, never realizing that the true warrior might be living peacefully in a garden, with no desire to parade their strength before the public.
With newfound respect for people of this kind—like the Ancient One and Alvin—and a desire to one day stand among them, Gustave finally arrived back at the Rivian palace workshop, where he saw Zoltan already asleep beside the anvils.
Judging by the completed printing press designed to reproduce images from Parestisomach memory crystals, it seemed the dwarf had already finished his inventions.
Wanting it to be his turn to create something, and unwilling to disturb Zoltan's rest, Gustave instructed the servants following him to carry the dwarf to his room along with his inventions. He then picked up a copper ingot and approached the Vaucanson 1.0 that Zoltan had built.
Seeing that some parts of the Vaucanson 1.0 were still off by 2.2 millimeters, Gustave decided to use it regardless. For the near future, extremely precise machine cutters requiring micrometer or even nanometer accuracy were simply unnecessary.
So, building the design in his mind—one meant to revolutionize transportation in Lyria and Rivia, or perhaps even the wider world—Gustave avoided heavy modifications.
These kinds of designs could be copied by the intelligent craftsmen of this world through observation alone, and it was not yet the time to push further, since the Twin Realms' production lines were still in their infancy.
In other words, if he deduced that the world would soon reach its first generation of steam paddlers and rail wagonways, then he would deliberately halt his work at that level.
Only when his kingdom was ready would he move on to second-generation designs—or even designs five generations ahead, developed in secret—and only after that would he unleash the full scope of his creativity.
Even though he trusted Calanthe's prophetic eyes, he knew it was wiser to remain cautious. In a world shaped by magic, any invention could be replicated and refined far more rapidly than on Earth.
He had already deduced that, if he was careless with his inspirations, the people of this world might eventually grasp the principles behind nuclear fission and nuclear fusion themselves.
Although he knew that Fire, Air, Earth, and Water magic was still far from being able to produce such reactions, he also understood that accomplishing them would require a vast body of scientific knowledge no lone sorcerer could realistically achieve.
They demanded precise chemical understanding, the correct materials, extremely fine particle control, specialized pressurized and confinement chambers, and many other extreme conditions that could only be simulated through sophisticated heavy machinery.
Such feats could not be achieved with a mere swipe of mortal hands using magic, unless one could perceive atoms with the naked eye.
Even then, anyone with that ability would first need to understand the principles behind many branches of physics before even approaching the starting line of nuclear reactions, making it an extremely difficult endeavor for anyone without comprehensive modern scientific knowledge.
For everything that happened in real life was never so simple. No physical reaction was ever truly straightforward; each relied heavily on the complex symphonies of the universe and did not come cheaply. It was entirely different when dealing with Quintessence, a realm composed of ideas and spirits where any thinking individual could imagine anything out of thin air.
Even so, it was best that he did not reveal too much of his designs until he was capable of staying many generations ahead of human creativity. Otherwise, he would be gambling on luck alone, hoping the world would not regress into a new stone age because of knowledge it was not yet ready to wield.
—
After just two hours spent cutting copper with the Vaucanson 1.0 lathe, producing many parts for the two miniature basic designs, Gustave proceeded to assemble them and tested the models by asking his servants to bring a basin of water for the steam paddlers and simply placing the tracks he had cut on the display table.
Looking at the two miniature toys, which would work with any source of steam—for example, candles and their smoke—Gustave decided to scrap the entire prototype. He wanted to transform this scientific version into a magical one, keeping his modern knowledge to himself, even if it was only basic thermodynamics.
He realized he wanted to be selfish; it was too precious to him to simply give up the "golden finger" of knowledge he had brought from modern Earth.
Even with his Sequence 8 intelligence, which probably already ranked among the highest in the world, he still felt insecure about his savant abilities. He feared that if a cold war ever turned into a battle of wits—or a contest of pure intelligence—he might lose.
Knowing that magic in this world conveniently made people lazy, preventing them from thinking about the fundamental principles behind how things worked, Gustave decided to convert every scientific design he had into a magical one. That way, he could simply pass it off as "magic" whenever anyone asked how it worked.
Because whenever magic entered the conversation, people stopped questioning. Just as before, Alvin had not grown suspicious. Gustave deduced that Alvin had simply accepted his own version of the deductions in his head about how the spell was broken—that it was because the Eye of Knowledge could see its weaknesses—even though that had not truly been the case.
So he knew that most people in this world would do the same, nod to themselves, close their mouths, and think no further about it, considering that even the Arch-Masters of this world, who were closer to scientists than magicians, simply nodded along when it came to magic.
With that philosophy settled and out of the way, and with the decision that from now on he would translate his modern knowledge into magical forms, he began altering every system of the two toys, the steam paddlers and the rail wagonways.
For example, the steam engine was replaced with the Dazhbog Rune for fire and the Zoria Rune for water, producing steam mist without conventional machinery, while power-transmission gears and belts gave way to the Stribog Rune, eliminating the need for precise Newtonian mechanical calculations.
Not only that, many elements were further simplified and reshaped into magical baubles that could be passed on and plausibly reproduced by souvenir makers, because he wanted the people of this world to see them as just another set of magical contraptions, not something drawn directly from scientific knowledge.
Simply because, in this world, magical contraptions were quite common, especially in more prosperous areas. There were many examples from the books and games of such devices, like Keira's magical lamp, which could easily be passed off as a flashlight, or the magical door that used a sound-recognizing password system in Season of Storms.
Even for non-magical users, many magical contraptions were in everyday use, which made them even more commonplace, such as the magical amulet Vivienne de Tabris used.
There were also descriptions in the short story Eternal Flame, in which one out of every two houses used magical locks, and three quarters of the people wore magical amulets and baubles to protect against thieves, fleas, food poisoning, and many other dangers in Novigrad—details that The Witcher 3 did not fully convey and that reflected the reality of the world he now lived in.
So Gustave knew that the things he created here would be seen as just another wonder born of magic, not something that made people pause and scratch their heads in confusion, wondering how it worked.
In the minds of the people, they could be passed on as just another set of magical contraptions that many craftsmen, both mage and non-mage, could make, albeit in a more complex form. One non-mage example was the statue maker in Toussaint, who was able to create Reginald d'Aubry, a statue that granted forty percent more stamina whenever someone touched its balls.
So, continuing this process across countless other components and carefully erasing every trace of modern science, Gustave finally finished nine hours later. It was harder than he had initially expected, especially since he was still new to runic knowledge, which did not come to him as easily as science did.
Now that the basic functional miniatures of the steam paddlers and rail wagonways were complete, Gustave moved on to designing ways to protect this transportation from bandits and monsters when it traveled to distant places.
Because this work edged into the realm of weaponry, Gustave knew he needed to speak with his mother. One of the weapon inventions he wanted to build involved mounting both models with supersonic mini trebuchets or ballista he had once seen on YouTube, modified for easy reloading through purely mathematical designs that maximized classical physics.
These creations would require secrecy during testing and production, as they demanded extremely loyal people who would not blabber about such protective weapons, like the supersonic mini trebuchets or ballista, to outside kingdoms before they were ever used.
Although he planned to add failsafes later—such as completely hiding the mechanisms within certain parts of the transportation, usable only by loyal soldiers and equipped with simple methods to disable or destroy the weapons—it was still best for secrecy to begin at the design stage rather than later, when production began.
So, taking the two toys with him, Gustave set out to visit his mother at the already late hour, yawning from time to time.
—