The Future Applications of Mana

While Fran was out working on her Paper submissions, Philly was given a rare opportunity to rest.

However, this period of time did not last long, and a new task came along.

"Philly, come with me."

Fran beckoned Philly straight out of the house, her unchanging smile sending chills down Philly's spine.

Philly dared not say anything and could only follow Fran out.

Because she needed to take care of Philly, who couldn't fly, Fran carried Philly on foot this time.

The journey wasn't far, but it wasn't exactly short either. It took them half an hour to reach a somewhat dilapidated house.

Part of the wooden exterior wall of the house had peeled off, and black and gray stains covered all the seams.

As a Third Order Mage, Forrest certainly wouldn't live in this house, but the massive device and materials of the Mana Communication System needed a place to be stored.

And it is estimated that his disciple Asher also lived among these things.

"Hello, Mage Lai."

Forrest had noticed Fran's arrival early on, so he greeted her warmly.

It wasn't just the enthusiasm for the mage's donation of 30,000 Gold Coin, but also a sense of hope for ' Lai '.

He had read the other person's works and knew the difference in their Talent for the position of researcher.

While spells and Order can be Order through abundant resources and one's own Mental Power, it is not the case with those amazing Paper and achievements that benefit the entire the Alliance.

The latter determines the upper limit of almost everyone when they become a mage, and those who are good at the latter are usually not bad at the former either.

Forrest has won many awards, but the prestige of these awards is about the same as that of the Sandglass Cup Youth Competition, an award specifically for young mages.

Most of the awards he received were from smaller competitions, such as the [Purple City Wall Cup] and the [Little Sky Tower Award]...

It sounds good, but it's far inferior to the real grand prizes of the Construct School: the [Floating City Cup], the [Magic Barrier Award], and the [Great City Cup].

The awards he received are far less than the Silver Alchemy Award; even if he received three more, he would still be the same.

Yet, even with this Forrest, Forrest's academic achievements still ranked in the upper-middle range among the mages who took over the Mana Communication System project.

This explains why researchers are considered a very important Profession in the Alliance, but not the most important Profession.

Even without the Talent of a researcher, it's not impossible to reach Order, but the possibility is much smaller.

Who is this?

Forrest looked at Philly behind Fran with some surprise. He didn't remember seeing this mage before, especially not one from the Elemental School. Was there some significance to this?

"My friend asked me to look after her and teach her some research-related things; just treat her as an assistant."

Forrest didn't ask any more questions, but instead welcomed Fran in.

The house was very well maintained; there was no dirt or trash, and the materials were neatly arranged on the shelves.

When Fran looked at the various materials on the cabinet, she subconsciously frowned because there were just too many of them.

She had a basic understanding of the Mana Communication System. She knew what materials could be used to make the receiving board, image display, and so on, but she didn't know anything about the magic element itself.

The variety of materials was far greater than she had anticipated.

Are all these materials basic materials related to magic essence?

Forrest turned around and nodded, indicating that Fran was right.

However, he then added:

"Actually, the materials related to magic essence are only those on the very edge, but to power the magic essence generator, we also need to set up a Mental Power generator."

Fran pressed for details and immediately learned the biggest challenge the project was currently facing—energy.

This is also one of the biggest problems facing the Alliance's development.

Fran extracted two Energy Core from Lucy's device for Territory Destroyer and binding Earth Spirit. These two Energy Core were enough for the device to run twice.

However, if placed in the Northern Lands Society's Mana Communication System, it would probably only be enough to keep the system running for three days, which shows how serious the Alliance's energy problem is.

"This Mental Power generator can produce Mental Power similar to that of a mage, activating magical elements and enabling the system to function."

"Although a normal mage's Mental Power can also do this, as you know, Mage Lai, no mage can output continuously for such a long time. Furthermore, the Alliance's ban stipulates that unless specially approved, a mage's Mental Power cannot be used as a power source for the device."

"This Mental Power generator does not consume Energy Core; it only requires some basic materials. It is an optimization result of a previous mage."

Fran walked to the table and began to carefully examine the main equipment, the specific structure of the magic element generator.

She discovered that this part, as the focus of the project, had already been optimized to the point where there was no room for improvement.

For the Mana Communication System to achieve a breakthrough, the magic element generator must undergo revolutionary progress.

We must either acquire a new way to generate magic essence, or obtain a way to generate Mental Power in large quantities at low cost.

Both of these are extremely difficult, Fran's two Arcane Mage traits are completely untouchable.

"Then we can only start with the application side."

Fran sighed, focusing her thoughts on an area where the mages here had absolutely no idea what to do: how to apply it?

They had absolutely no idea how to make such a system user-friendly, nor did they know what was necessary and what was unnecessary within the system.

In this respect, Fran doesn't even need the two traits of Arcane Mage; she knows exactly how to modify them.

"The input system desperately needs changing; handwriting recognition is absolutely terrible, and it even accounts for 10% of magic power."

"Replacing them with mechanical buttons, either by recognizing where they are pressed or by engraving a standard character on the back of the button, would reduce the space occupied by at least half."

Fran explained her ideas to Forrest, Forrest felt that while some of them were valid, they were generally unfeasible.

"We can print standard characters, eliminating the need for handwritten identification plates and reducing costs significantly, but we can't have the kind of mechanical keyboard you're talking about."

"I estimate that it would take a skilled Magic Artisan at least three days to carve such a complex keyboard."

Fran licked her lips and spoke slowly.

That's not necessarily true.

Her construction projects in the Antir Region enabled her to develop a certain level of industrialization capabilities.

Fortunately, since we no longer need more weapons and equipment, we can shift that production capacity to mechanical keyboards.

Furthermore, she recalled that if such a change were made, Iris, who would likely be able to enjoy it for a short period of time, would be able to build a railway to transport it there.

"I have a place where these mechanical keyboards can be produced quickly, and these mechanical keyboards can be sold again for a profit..."

Forrest reluctantly accepted Fran's proposal. After all, what Fran said made no logical difference; it was just that the idea of having a place to mass-produce complex products quickly was beyond his imagination.

Next, Fran proposed a coding scheme for further optimization of the Mana Communication System, completely redesigning the text display of the entire system and further optimizing the magic element usage of the system.

This impressed Forrest greatly, because it solved the information security problem in a relatively simple way.

Originally, each magic element stored a set of characters in the common language. Now, it has been changed to a long string of codes, making full use of the magic element space. Furthermore, the more complex information can render many low-level methods ineffective.

Of course, other mages, if they are determined and spend some time, can still break the information encryption.

However, with the support of the new method, this breakthrough method is not only much more complex, but also takes much longer to emerge.

For at least a year or two, they will hardly need to worry about information security issues.

After one or two years, the encoding and encryption method can be changed again, or a new method can be adopted.

This was somewhat different from what Forrest had expected. He had previously thought the problem was too thorny, but he foolishly believed that there might eventually be a way to eliminate unauthorized viewing.

However, once he understood Fran's thinking and deeply grasped the principle of encryption, he instantly realized that there might not be an unbreakable Mana Communication System in this world, and that even the strongest defense would be breached in the first place.

"It seems we'll never be able to sell this system to those University Association..."

Forrest was somewhat downcast, but Fran still wore a smile.

"We don't need those who have learned to use our system, but we can let the mages who have learned it use another system that we have built."

Forrest didn't understand the meaning of that sentence, and Fran didn't elaborate further, after all, they were still too far removed from that time.

Fran thought of the internet from her previous life. Since the magic element mage's device requires the mage's Mental Power, why not make a terminal device that allows the mage to activate the magic element simply by inputting Mental Power, and provide the cost of 'internet access'? Or, allow two or even more terminals to connect locally.

That's something for much later; right now, Fran needs to prepare for the new Mana Communication System for the Northern Lands Society.

They need to do a lot of debugging, figuring out the specific styles of the characters and codes on the mechanical keyboard, and which characters they correspond to. These are all very complicated and tedious tasks.

There's also a second check to ensure the character table is complete, which is another kind of arduous task.

This task ultimately fell to two people: Philly and Asher.

There was nothing they could do; Fran and Forrest were, after all, higher-ranking mages than them, and Philly and Asher could not refuse their orders.