MOSS: Magic Prints and Where to Find Them 101 – Additional Page

In the previous issue, we have explored how an infinity bag works. Although I still don’t exactly understand most of it, Mr. Zeno has shown me the big picture of what makes an infinity bag.

It’s so complicated that I can’t wrap my head around it, but let me recap it a bit. Infinity bag works by adding extradimensional space-time volume to the bag, which subsequently results with an all-around safe imaginary dimension to store everything. How could it be safe? I don’t know. He said it’s something concerning kwantum whatever and possibilities of whatever it is.

Which, oddly enough, I have never heard of. I can deduce that it’s either a lost knowledge or a knowledge the current civilization hasn’t reached yet.

Since it’s about him, both cases are more than plausible.

When I reviewed the last issue about infinity bag, I noticed that Mr. Zeno hasn’t explained why only the registered people can use their own infinity bag.

I asked him about this matter.

He gave me a lengthy answer.

Which, I will try to make it as short and understandable as possible. Only to the degree of what I could get into my head, however.

Opposite to the general beliefs, Mr. Zeno stated that Magic-created phenomenon doesn’t completely and perfectly vanish. The remnants of it would still linger by around the vicinity where the magic was executed, intentionally or unintentionally.

In macroscale, said remnants can be observed easily. The burn mark that birthed from fireball magic is one of the remnants. It’s quite obvious and intentional.

In the microscale, however, things get weirder. He was trying to explain something like the structure of atoms, or basic particle model of matter, or other shits that will get my head to explode trying to cram it up. He said my body is made of the same thing that created goblin’s excrement,  only the… vibration? is different. I don’t get him at all.

Simply put, everything affects each other. I think that’s what he wanted to say.

He named it 【Mana Print】. The remnants of a magic-created phenomenon that lingered in microscopic size. When someone does a magic activity, the Mana that is consumed for it will be released to the surroundings and stuck there while containing the structure of the magic activity.

Let me make an example.

When a magician makes a fireball, Mana amounted equivalent to that of the fireball will be consumed. In that sense, you can say that Mana is the fuel for magic. In another sense, you can also say that that fireball is just a form of Mana that is flaming and burning.

Quoting him: 「You don’t create fire from absolute nothing, you molded the Mana into the form of fire and give fire properties to it.」

When the magician puts out his magic, the fireball vanishes. But that’s not the end of it. For the macroscopic remnants, the temperature of the room elevated due to the fire. If it hit a tree, the burnt mark on the tree is also a macroscopic remnant. For the microscopic scaled remnants, the Mana that 「molded」 into the fireball is stuck to the water molecules in the air, to the soil on the ground, to the three that the fireball hit, and many other things that the fireball is affecting.

When the fireball magic is put out, Mana amounted equivalent to what was consumed before is now free again. A thing, whatever it is, that is made from Mana will always return to Mana without fail. That’s because Mana is eternal. However, not every Mana will return to the 「ground state」, in Mr. Zeno’s language, when they’re released. Some of it will retain the structure of the magic that it was molded into before.

Quoting him: 「There’s nothing perfect; nothing at all. There is always a nonzero amount of imperfectness/chaos inside a system. This time, the imperfectness is what we’re looking for.」

This very tiny amount of Mana that escaped from the fireball can tell you surprisingly a lot of things. In general, it can tell you that somebody some time ago had executed fireball magic in this place, since it’s containing the structure of said magic.

If examined correctly, this speck of Mana can also tell you the time when said magic was executed, the weather when it was happening, the race of the magician, the gender of him, even the habit and the secrets that he is hiding. Theoretically saying, it can also tell you the history of his lineage.

Because every person has a different character, a different history, and many differences from each other, they will naturally produce different traits of Mana print.

As the designer of the infinity bags, Mr. Zeno is utilizing this micro remnant phenomenon by adding it to his design. Only when the bag detected a specific trait of Mana print, it will function. Otherwise, it’ll be nothing but a sack of empty air.

I honestly surprised. Not only because he discovered such an extraordinary fact that was hidden behind our daily life, but he also actually explained it to me very thoroughly.

Last time I asked something to him, he used it to harass me. I can’t believe he could properly explain something without harassing me in the process. Well, if I omit the goblin’s excrement part, that is.

I’m not even sure what he meant by that.

Incidentally, the usage of this magic print thing is of course not limited to magical bags alone. One usage among many is to expose someone who uses invisibility magic. If there’s an incident that involved magic, it can also tell who is the culprit behind it.

Mr. Zeno says that it’s like 「fingerprint of our magic」. I don’t understand what is this 【fingerprint】, and I don’t want to ask him about it.

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Author Note.

The oversimplified version of this chapter:

Fireball costs 100 MP -> 100 MP is consumed -> Fireball is launched -> Fireball hits a tree then vanishes -> 99 MP returns to the aether + 1 MP is stuck on the tree

Special thanks to my Editor
Schwarz13