Magic is Programming

B2 Chapter 21: Detection Risk

Carlos groaned as the brightness of sunlight seeping through his tent's fabric finally woke him. Ugh. It's definitely way past dawn, but I still feel tired. Even with parallel minds, finishing all 8 new soul structures took until… past midnight, I'm pretty sure? He rubbed at his eyes, then yawned and stretched. Absorption's been going full bore all night, aaand… wow, still not quite done. The big superstructure is still at Level 15, working its way up. Needing 10 times as much essence is a huge slowdown for that thing's advancement. That's probably our new big bottleneck, really, now that we can make new normal structures 3 or 4 at a time.

He thought back to the previous night's concurrent activities and laughed quietly to himself. What an odd mix of strangeness and normality. I remember meditating exclusively on the concept of a storage space for mental contexts for hours, and I also remember spending the exact same period of time meditating exclusively on the concept of quickly and smoothly switching mental contexts as needed, whether swapping the current context with a stored one, or saving the current context and starting a new one. And at the same time, also meditating, once again with exclusive focus, on the concept of managing and controlling my mental focus.

And if I think about it, hmm… Carlos started a second mind running and paid attention to his memories of the immediate past. I wonder how it feels when I focus on that multi-memory thing while it's happening. Aha! I remember thinking "How will this thought come across?" just now, when it definitely was not part of my - or rather, this mind's - active mental context. It's a memory, my memory, that I'm aware of and know about, but it doesn't inherently involve this mind's current focus of attention. He dropped back down to one mind, because he had no particular need for an extra mind at the moment. His two minds didn't exactly merge, because there was no need for any kind of merging; the memories were all already merged, and both minds were Carlos. Carlos simply chose, as himself, to stop thinking of two things at once.

Carlos sat up and called out quietly toward the privacy divider that split the tent in two. "Amber? Are you awake?"

"Hmm? Oh, you're finally up!" Some rustling sounded from her side of the tent, then the dividing curtain retracted into the tent's ceiling, pulled up by a minor enchantment.

Carlos yelped and instinctively pulled his sheet up to cover himself. "Hey! I'm not dressed yet!"

Amber blushed and hastily triggered the divider to unfurl back into place. "Sorry. I thought you were ready to talk."

"Since when does talking require getting dressed first? Never mind, just remember for next time."

Amber mumbled something that might have included "next time," but was too quiet to make out clearly, then raised her voice again. "Okay. What do you want to talk about?"

Carlos triggered a cleaning enchantment and luxuriated in the feeling of cleanliness washing over his body for a moment before responding. Man, Mayor Stelras really paid for high quality comfort in his personal tent. I'll have to thank him again for loaning it to us. He turned his main attention back to Amber and spoke while putting on a shirt. "The first merged structure, the tier 10 one. It's still not at Level 16 yet. That's going to be our new big bottleneck, isn't it? The lower-tier structures, and especially the basic ones, take less essence to compress, and then the big one has to catch up."

"Yes, it seems so. We could skim off from the rest to speed it up. Should we?"

"Hmm." Carlos cocked his head to consider. "No, I don't think that's a good idea." He switched to speaking telepathically through their bond with Purple. [We can't sustain that in the long run. We'll have fewer and fewer basic structures to skim from and more and more high-tier structures to speed up with it. Lorvan will notice our rate of advancement slowing down, and we need to avoid giving him any clues about us working around the normal limits and potentially rivaling the Crown.]

[Good point.] Amber paused to think. [We'll need to skim off essence like that to make the sheer quantity of structures involved in doing that, though. Plus, if we're going to do that at all, now is the time to start. We have our soul disguisers, and if we don't beat the normal limits somehow, we're stuck waiting for… Level 19, I think Lorvan said for when 8 structures merge?]

[Yes, 19 sounds right. And yeah, I don't want to wait for that.] Carlos finished dressing himself. [We'd better test that the soul disguiser can actually fool Lorvan's gear first, though. Come on, let's go ask him for a demonstration of what his fancy enchanted armor can do.]

Carlos and Amber stepped out together into the brightness of the late morning sun with no clouds overhead. They looked around and quickly spotted Lorvan, standing guard nearby as usual, looking out from the edge of the camp into the surrounding trees. A little nearer, next to where Sconter's portable kitchen was set up, Carlos spotted Felton idly sitting and waiting in his black and orange robe uniform. Carlos narrowed his eyes at the sight. [Wait a moment. I have a better idea than asking Lorvan.]

Carlos walked up to the royal mage, Amber keeping pace beside him. "Felton, looks like you're available to talk?"

Felton looked up at him, stood, and gave a shallow bow. "Lord Carlos. Lady Amber. Indeed, I have no pressing business at the moment." He gazed searchingly at them for a moment. "Are you ready to begin the project I came here for?"

Carlos raised his right hand and wobbled it a bit. "Eh, kind of. Partially. We're not ready to start analyzing those enchantments for sabotage. We can get a bit of a head start by familiarizing ourselves with them, how they work, what they do, and how they're used. The sabotage analysis will go faster if we already know all that by the time we've fully completed our preparations."

"Ah, of course." Felton nodded and waved a hand, and two suits of full plate armor arranged on armor stands appeared a few feet in front of him. "By all means, examine them as much as you want. Is there anything in particular you want to start with?"

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Carlos cocked his head and looked at the suit on the right. He started two extra minds to examine it with mana sense, one from the top and the other from the bottom, while he thought. What I really need to know about right now is whatever detection and analysis it has for the details of people's souls, but that would be a suspiciously odd thing to specifically start with. Ideally, I should ask about something related that has an obvious reason to focus on. Hmm… Aha! He nodded sharply and looked at Felton again. "From what Ressara said, there's a particularly sophisticated part of the sabotage in the enchantments for detecting and analyzing magic. Can you show me which ones those are and how to use them?"

"Certainly." Felton gestured forward, and each suit of armor's helmet and right-hand gauntlet detached from the armor stands and floated forward, carried by Felton's wordless telekinesis spell. "To use that, you will need to wear these parts. The gauntlet to activate and focus the enchantment, and the helmet to show you the information it finds. The rest of the suit has enchantments focused on defense and physical capabilities."

Carlos exchanged a look with Amber, then shrugged and put his hand in the gauntlet presented to him. Putting the helmet on with one of his hands in a gauntlet that he wasn't accustomed to was a bit awkward, but he managed it soon enough. "Okay, what's next?"

"For royal guards, next would be days of training to develop sufficient skill with the weak mana sense and mana control that are inherent to any high-level soul. For you with soul structures dedicated to those capabilities, simply reach out with your mana sense to get a feel for each enchantment's activation control point. It should be exceedingly easy, almost instinctive, for you. They will detect that you are the gauntlet's wearer and actively announce themselves to your mana sense."

Before Carlos could even begin following Felton's instructions, Amber exclaimed in triumph beside him. "Yes! Got it! Wow, this thing is incredibly easy to use. And versatile. I think I could almost pretend to be a mage just by using this gauntlet! Let's see, what does it tell me if I scan you?" She extended her gauntlet out toward Felton, who just chuckled and made no move to stop her. "Huh?" Amber tilted her head in confusion.

Carlos belatedly swept his mana sense over the enchantments in his gauntlet. He'd examined the gauntlets at least cursorily with mana sense before, just finding them to be incredibly dense, powerful, and inscrutably complex. Now with one actually on his hand, its enchantments were still dense, powerful, and complex, but not even slightly inscrutable. Each enchantment announced its purpose to him at even the slightest hint that he was inspecting it. Now I just need to find… Oh. Just having intent to search for something specific prompts the matching enchantment to present itself and announce the details of its controls while the others draw back. Jeez, usability designers back on Earth would kill for that kind of capability.

Anyway, let's find out what has Amber confused. He held out his gauntlet toward Felton and activated the general-purpose magic analysis enchantment. Red script appeared in front of his eyes inside the helmet.

Scan blocked.

Carlos raised an eyebrow, then pointed the gauntlet toward the sky and activated it again. The red script changed.

No target.

"I see it can tell the difference between being blocked and being aimed at nothing. Now, what does an actual positive result look like?" Carlos looked around. There were several people he could try scanning, but he didn't want to jump straight to that right away. He glanced down and a glint of metal on his other hand drew his eye. Oh right, the platinum ring that's secondary evidence of my noble status. Sure, why not? He put the ring squarely in front of the gauntlet's palm. This time, the text was black.

Signet ring.

Enchanted item.

Ring.

Mana-activated.

Creates predetermined small visual illusion.

Laughter interrupted Carlos's experiments, and he looked up to find Amber looking at their tent and chuckling. She looked over at him and cocked her head. "Why would a tent have an optional sound-blocking enchantment, and why would Stelras have paid for it? Was he worried about being spied on while camping in the Wilds? Does that seem silly to you too, or am I just too new to being a noble, or something?"

Carlos almost doubled over laughing in response, only to be drawn back out of it by the surprise clang of his gauntlet hitting his helmet as he instinctively did a facepalm, momentarily forgetting the pieces of steel armor he was wearing. He recovered after a moment and settled into a more subdued chuckle. "You could ask him, Amber, but I'm nearly certain that concerns about spying have absolutely nothing to do with it."

Amber paused, then shook her head and shrugged. "What other reason is there for blocking sound on a tent? I suppose if there's a lot of noise outside making it hard to sleep?"

Carlos stared for a moment, then took a deep breath. "Um. How should I put this… Imagine that Stelras goes somewhere with that tent, and his wife comes with him. Then at night, he and his wife, ah, 'sleep together' inside that tent. And outside the tent, they have guards on duty and whoever else is coming along for the trip. Got the picture yet, or do I need to get more explicit?"

"Uh…" Amber froze like a deer in headlights, then spun away. Her voice was a bit higher pitched than normal, and she spoke hastily. "No, no, that's enough. I understand now." She took several deep breaths, then shook herself, glanced toward Felton, and switched to telepathy. [I think that's enough playing around. Let's get down to business with these things.] Feelings of muted embarrassment and a flicker of something else came with the message.

[Agreed. Let's do it.] Carlos nodded, pointed the gauntlet at Amber, and sought the enchantment for specifically analyzing a soul. I expect it will show considerably less details than the ritual inspection we went through to become nobles revealed, but I don't know how much less. Learning that will tell us a lot about how careful we need to be about hiding our upcoming shenanigans from Lorvan and Ordens. Here goes. He activated the soul analyzer enchantment.

Adult high noble soul, in development.

Level: 16.

Second stage, advanced.

Unified structures: Tier 10, tier 9.

Basic structures: 8

Archetype probabilities: Mage 92%, Mystic 8%.

Carlos frowned. Hmm. It pegged the tiers of each structure. That's more detail than I'd hoped for. I can't directly sense that the two hard spots in Amber's soul have different hardness, but apparently this thing can. Not sure if that's because of it being more specialized, having more power, or both. And this equipment actually isn't the only thing we need to worry about noticing what we're doing anymore. He was acutely aware of the presence of a royal mage, who had strong personal mana sense without relying on equipment, just a short distance away.

He turned toward Felton, squared his shoulders, and tried to hide his nervousness. Time for the first potentially tricky and sensitive part of this: trying to keep Crown Mage Felton from catching on when we experiment with methods of hiding things from him.