Tatsuya Shiba was fiddling with his newly purchased holster when Azusa Nakajo happened to come by and spotted the Silver Horn inside it.
"You brought the Silver Horn with you today?" Azusa looked excitedly at the Silver Horn in Tatsuya's hand.
"Yeah. I bought a new holster and wanted to get used to it beforehand, so I wouldn't be unfamiliar with it when I needed to use it," Tatsuya replied.
"What? Can I take a look?" Azusa asked eagerly.
"Sure. Go ahead."
Seeing how excited Azusa was, Tatsuya helplessly handed her the holster and the Silver Horn.
"Wow, it's a genuine factory-original Silver Horn! It looks so good, and these exquisite curves make it easy to fire. The design doesn't get carried away with advanced technology and takes the user into account."
"Ah, ah, Lord Silver, whom I so admire."
Azusa hugged the Silver Horn, her face full of bliss.
Miyuki Shiba couldn't stand seeing Azusa like that, and it caused her to make a mistake in her work.
"It's rare to see you make a mistake, Miyuki," Azusa remarked.
"Maybe she just touched it by accident," Tatsuya explained.
"What sort of person is Taurus Silver?" Azusa asked curiously.
"Are you that interested in him?" Tatsuya asked.
"What? Of course I am! That's Taurus Silver we're talking about. He was the first to put the Loop Cast System to practical use, and he's a genius engineer who supposedly advanced specialized CAD software technology by ten years in just one year."
Azusa spoke excitedly.
"I didn't know enough about him," Tatsuya replied.
"I didn't expect him to be held in such high regard."
"Right? Right? Shiba, what sort of person do you think he is?" Azusa asked.
"Hmm... maybe he's just a teenager," Tatsuya said with a smile.
"But I'm even more interested in K. He can develop magic on his own, and he's one of the world's top geniuses in magic research. If I had to compare the two, I'd rather find out what sort of person K is."
Azusa spoke.
"K? Maybe he's a teenager from Sakura Country too," Tatsuya said.
Hearing that, Miyuki made another mistake. Mayumi Saegusa, who was beside her, looked at her in puzzlement.
"They're both exclusive to FLT, a Sakura Country company," Tatsuya said.
"By the way, A-chan," Mayumi said.
"What is it, President?" Azusa asked.
"Didn't you say you were going to finish your assignment during lunch break?" Mayumi asked.
"Ah, President."
Only then did Azusa remember that she had forgotten what she was supposed to be doing. She looked dejected as she spoke.
"I could help you a little," Mayumi said with a smile.
"Really?" Azusa asked gratefully.
"So what exactly is your assignment?" Mayumi asked.
"Actually, I'm writing a report on 'the three major technical challenges of weight-increasing magic.'"
"I know about gravity-controlled thermonuclear fusion reactors and the creation of a pseudo-perpetual-motion mechanism that infinitely amplifies inertia, but why can't general-purpose flight magic be realized?" Azusa asked in confusion.
"I can't explain it very well yet. If you want to fly using magic, every time you decelerate, accelerate, ascend, or descend, you have to overwrite the original magic with new magic. The autonomous interference strength required increases each time, so you can only overwrite it about ten times at most."
"Therefore, flight magic is practically impossible. If overwriting is necessary, I think you could just cancel the active magic before activating new magic."
"But if it were that simple, someone would surely have tried it already. Like deploying interference over one's own domain..." Mayumi said.
"The year before last, another country conducted an experiment based on the concept you mentioned, President..."
"But it failed," Rin-chan said.
"What caused it to fail?" Azusa asked helplessly.
"It didn't say," Rin-chan replied.
"What do you think, Tatsuya?" Mayumi asked.
"There was an error in the basic concept of that experiment. But someone else achieved flight magic using a much simpler method, though it places very high demands on the magician."
Tatsuya spoke.
"Who are you talking about, Tatsuya?" Mayumi asked curiously.
"K. He was already able to use flight magic years ago, but the theory behind his flight magic is very different from the one currently being researched," Tatsuya said.
"What's the difference?" Azusa asked.
"K used wind and gravity magic. First, he used gravity magic to change his own mass, then he used wind magic as kinetic energy to fly. As for the specific details, I'm not very clear on them myself," Tatsuya said.
(The author is making this up here, so please don't take it seriously or scrutinize it too closely...),
"You can do that?" Azusa asked in surprise.
"Yes, but as I said, it places extremely stringent demands on the magician. Still, I heard that flight magic is among the innate magic K is researching. If he succeeds in developing it, it could become general-purpose."
Tatsuya explained.
"Wow, K really is worthy of my interest. He's amazing!" Azusa said, her eyes sparkling.
"But K's flight magic is easily disrupted by external factors, preventing it from working properly."
Tatsuya explained.
"But compared to the flight magic being researched now, K's flight magic seems quite simple," Mayumi said.
"Yes, you're right, President. In theory, anyone who can use gravity and wind magic proficiently can do it. But since it's still in the experimental stage, K has never made it public."
Tatsuya explained.
"How is it going now, then? Has anyone successfully verified it?" Mayumi asked curiously.
"I don't know yet. Some of the core information is in K's hands, but he seems to have mysteriously disappeared three years ago," Tatsuya said helplessly.
"As a result, no one knows some of the core data, so no one can verify the experiment, unless someone researches it from scratch like K did and experiments step by step."
"Ah, K disappeared three years ago? How could that be?" Azusa asked in surprise.
"That's only a rumor. No one knows yet whether it's accurate."
That was only what Tatsuya said on the surface. In truth, he knew very well.
There had been no news of K for three years. At least, that was what he knew.
As for why Tatsuya knew so much about K, it was naturally because K was actually Baifeng Uesugi.
They had researched magic together before, but their areas of research differed. Tatsuya leaned more toward magic engineering, while Baifeng Uesugi preferred researching magic itself.
"How could this happen? Didn't anyone go looking for him?" Azusa asked dejectedly.
"They did, but they didn't find him," Tatsuya replied, shaking his head.
How could no one have looked for him? When Baifeng first disappeared, Tatsuya had searched for him for a long time, and only now had he found the slightest clue.
He had also asked Mizuki Shibata what she had seen back then, but her answer had left him somewhat puzzled.
Mizuki said she had seen psion fluctuations on Baifeng Uesugi's surface, as if a magic effect had been active on him all along.
Tatsuya didn't know about the disguise magic. Baifeng Uesugi had developed it during the three years after he left the Yotsuba Family.
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