A Chronometric Defect

Reading this report. Yes, am I reading a report? I flip the parchment over while holding it aloft.

*shrak*

No, it's not a counterfeit. Unless someone got ahold of the verification inscriptions. Again. I glance at the man standing next to my desk.

He shakes his head 'no.' Shit.

I look up at him. Another 'no.'

...

"Are you SURE?"

"Your excellency, I do not mean to impinge upon your grand intellect, but this is the fifth time you've asked. I requested verbal verification and have confirmed directly with the report's author. I am absolutely sure."

I smack the parchment with the back of my hand.

*thak*

"You know what this report says, correct?"

"Yes, your excellency."

"State it from memory."

"Yes, your excellency. That report concerns the activities of a dragon possessing an estimated stature of roughly four empire-standard floor heights; fifteen to seventeen meters. It appeared in the middle of an unnamed town, designated Tengerii satellite #331, with no detections or warnings regarding its approach. No spellcasts detected, either. However, said town vanished between scans. There are zero survivors, and this figure has been visually confirmed in situ. It then walked toward the west and uprooted a tree for seemingly no reason. After a short period idling, which is what allowed us to lock onto its location, it abruptly took flight and began flying toward the west. It has avoided all major population centers en route; it's still flying west and will soon exit our Empire's airspace."

He pauses for a moment, then continues speaking.

"Lastly, a probe of its Mana concentrations damaged the main measuring array via an unknown mechanism. It's therefore unclear whether it detected us or whether its Mana concentrations are beyond measure."

"Regarding the last point, did they try again? Using Ainthia's spell directly instead of the array."

"Your excellency, the team decided prodding this particular dragon multiple times might be imprudent. Since it's currently avoiding our population centers, we suspect it may possess intelligence. That's why we decided it was likely a counter-probe rather than assuming the dragon possesses immeasurable Mana."

I fold the parchment, place it down neatly, then look up to appraise him sternly.

"You do realize a dragon possessing enough intelligence to disable a probing spell, of all things, is FAR less desirable? This may be risky, but tell them to try again. Also, instruct them to specifically test whether it refused our probe or whether its Mana is immeasurable. While I do not want to inadvertently rain destruction upon my people, my decisions will be hampered by such severely insufficient information. I have no choice but to demand more."

"Yes, your excellency."

A glowing green array appears directly upon the skin of my secretary's hand. Another new breakthrough from the venerable Aitos. This morning, in fact. We rolled it out immediately; I decided it was crucial for our operations at the same moment he made the announcement.

Even if it was just for the first benefit: the fact it no longer requires one to hold an inscription slab somewhere upon their person. The array goes directly onto ones' own body. How? Nobody here knows. We just know it works.

I'd at one point believed Aitos was beginning to get old and crusty. The last time he announced a new breakthrough, it was in spell magnitude measurement. A fine algorithm, but that was over a year ago. His new developments were getting further apart, while his contemporaries began to catch up.

His only saving grace? He was already so far ahead that it didn't matter.

Others may say that Aitos is the best inscriptionist alive. They're entirely wrong. What they don't know is that my Purified Heavens conquered Shridenia specifically because he refused to leave Haitos. When he initially informed me he was named after the city itself, I nearly threw my hands up in frustration. Then, I contacted my great military and moved them to my Empire's western border.

My terms to the King of Shridenia were simple: allow my Purified Heavens full access to Aitos as our demilitarized protectorate, or he, Shridenia's King, would cease to possess a whole body.

As for why Shridenia needed our protection?

My Purified Heavens paid a heavy price for moving our troops west. A few razed towns and one damaged city on my eastern border. But, I'd let that half of my Empire burn if I were forced to fight King Shridenia— and he knew it.

King Shridenia is thankfully a man who can see reason. Even though I wasn't being reasonable. What I want, is what my Purified Heavens wants, and is what we both must receive.

Why so much effort for one man? Aitos isn't the best inscriptionist alive. He's the best who's ever lived. I don't need a silly inscription competition to see the proof.

Especially after today.

How, pray tell, did he announce his breakthrough? Why, with that very same breakthrough!

Cities often possess long-range communication arrays, but Aitos couldn't be convinced to place one in Haitos. He didn't want to be bothered. As someone similarly unparalleled in my position, I believed I understood his desire for quietude.

Yet, here he is, bashing down his own self-imposed prohibition. I now believe he didn't want a communication array in Haitos merely to motivate himself to make a better one. Which definitely explains the year-long gap in his breakthroughs.

His claim was easy to verify, too. Just like the old array, the new one contains two main inscriptions. Unlike the old array, the new one does not contain a pair of sending and receiving inscriptions. Instead, the pair is... Haah.

A sending and blocking inscription.

Indeed, this communication array can contact anyone. Anyone at all. Even if they don't possess the array themselves. Moreover, it can discern between different people of the same name through a person's intent alone.

What madness possessed him to make this?!

As if that all wasn't incredible enough, its distance to Mana usage ratio is negligible compared with the old array. It can send messages across the continent at almost no cost. Naturally, I asked Aitos why. He said 'it derives its activity state from the caster's Mana input.'

Not 'it can draw more external Mana' nor 'it uses external Mana far more efficiently.' He'd ignored the supposedly unbroachable divide between internal and external Mana. He'd utterly demolished a bottleneck that every inscriptionist has fruitlessly attacked since the day inscription was first invented.

The resulting array can absorb atmospheric Mana on its own. It does not require the caster to continuously fuel the array's Mana gathering mechanism. Meaning, it only needs a smidgen of the caster's Mana to kick-start itself. After that? The Mana it absorbs from the atmosphere acts in place of the caster's own Mana. It costs literally nothing to run. The only cost is the Mana needed to tell the initial circuit to activate.

This. This is absolute insanity.

Was his title as 'the best,' at risk?

The day before today; it was.

Today, he is solely at risk of being eternally unmatched. Of being the kind of genius whose ideas live beyond empires. Of being the gold standard of an inscriptionist. Forever.

From today, my peoples' everyday lives will become increasingly consumed by his mundane, yet incredible, inscriptions. My people shall always remember Aitos; even if... If my Purified Heavens were to someday perish.

I'm not being metaphorical. The end of my Empire is suddenly a very real possibility.

Dragons? Their power tends to increase as they grow, and as they age. I know this dragon's origin and its age. I also know its size far surpasses all recent records.

My mind drifts back to the Dragon God.

We have strong warriors. We have excellent mages. We have the greatest inscriptionist ever. We don't have the godslayer.

He was a real person. Was.

Worst case? The worst case isn't that Pure Evil's Mana is immeasurable. Assuming... I assume this dragon's the one reported up my chain of command yesterday. There had better not be two such disasters flying around.

Putting that horrid thought aside, in the worst case, this so-called 'Pure Evil' won't let us measure its Mana levels. That would mean it possesses immense 'power' backed by a downright ridiculous 'intellect.'

Ugh.

Before the dragon species lost itself to the gods' accursed 'sciolation,' or stripping of the mind, they tended to gain another thing in tandem with their size and age: intellect.

They didn't necessarily learn more than a human could possibly imagine via their enviable draconic lifespan. Though, wisdom is indeed what aged experience grants any old creature. Dragons in particular. Old dragons were tough as nails in any military engagement; this much is true, but they weren't necessarily learned. Most of them weren't. They still preferred sleeping on rocks in the sun rather than studying our world's knowledge.

Instead, it was the largest dragons whose intellects we feared. Their body itself would increasingly help them absorb endless knowledge as they grew larger.

Our mages theorize that this occurred because dragon brains grow along with their body's overall size.

I sit back in my chair and rest my head.

Most large monsters carry brains the size of a fist at best. There are exceptions, but those tend to keep to themselves. Only dragons express such prideful and greedy tendencies. It makes them a horrible bane for my people.

We humans have a brain roughly 14 by 17 by 9 centimeters. 1,200 cubic centimeters. 1.3 kilograms. This is about average.

The Dragon God's brain? Good Heavens.

13 by 20 by 10 meters. 1,700 cubic meters of brain matter. Its brain alone weighed over 20 kilotonnes. Yes, not tonnes, kilotonnes. They possess a brain larger than a human's at the same scale, a brain which grows with the dragon's body, and an absurd lifespan well in excess of a thousand years.

In too many ways, they're... They're like humans, but better. Never mind their peerless built-in armor, weapons, and senses. And, these DAMN monsters. Was all of that not good enough?

To top it all off, we discovered that the Dragon God was an exception among its own kind. The Dragon God's brain matter was over ten times denser than a normal dragon brain. True, the Dragon God's brain contained much more structural mass to deal with its own immense size and inertia, but what the hell did that even account for? Its brain's increased cellular density more than compensated for that additional structural mass. Several times over.

Was the Dragon God even capable of being stupid?

No. No it was not.

The Dragon God was, unfortunately, brilliant in its prime. It came up with wild ruses and schemes that still give me nightmares to this day. Like the time it tricked my father into declaring war on the elves. How? By using a minor slip-up that the elven leader made in one of his speeches to 'prove' they were in cahoots.

17 years after the speech.

Not a single human remembered what the elven leader had said, but we all surely remembered what he'd done. So, when the Dragon God used that exact same strategy; a strategy nobody had figured out how to replicate? Everyone thought that they must be working together.

Until the Dragon God gloated about how dumb we all were. If that was its one flaw— it's that the damn dragon enjoyed bragging more than winning. Realistically, though, that's probably because it was toying with us. It could've easily subjugated the whole planet if it wanted. My guess? It liked having enemies to fight.

Or... Trounce, I suppose. We couldn't fight it.

As for after it was sciolated, with its brain crippled?

It merely lost the ability to talk. Even a sciolated dragon of that size retained more than enough brain mass to outsmart any human. Dealing with that damn dragon was maddening. Even without its ridiculous intellectual ability it could still make each and every one of my family members and our advisors feel inferior. My childhood self? It goes without saying.

"Haaah."

Even so, there has never been a dragon who could use magic. Not a single one. Their bodies and minds are only compatible with flame breath. Not even the Dragon God could cast anything else— and I know it studied.

I watched it study right in front of me.

Magic is part and parcel with a brilliant mind. It doesn't matter what inborn talents one has, nor does it matter how much Mana they possess. If one lacks the mindset to calmly study magic schemas? They'll never cast magic. Ever.

Dragons are driven to conquer; that's why they gather knowledge. Though the power of magic is something they'd enjoy, their instincts make it very difficult for them to study magic calmly.

Except, even if they do manage? Their bodies are configured to only ever cast flame breath.

My whole family was forced to watch the Dragon God study magic. My father, emperor though he may have been, was forced to personally teach it water magic. The damn thing wanted us all to watch. So, I'd seen it happen firsthand: every water spell it casted somehow blazed with flames. Baffling.

Father wasn't inclined to understand why, lest the Dragon God manage to overcome its species' singular limitation. It would've been horrible if he'd mistakenly made the whole dragon species even stronger. The Dragon God, too, seemed disinterested in experimenting further.

It only threatened us with death if we spread word of its failure. Fine, whatever. It's not like I cared one smidgen.

I glance at my assistant. He still seems to be waiting for a reply.

I'll revisit my earlier thoughts.

Hm.

Probing spells can't be blocked by putting up a Mana Shield. These mentally-taxing spells must be disassembled and broken apart because they're ephemeral in nature. They're not something simply negated like an Earth Barrage. Even if this dragon had Mana Shield up at all times, we should've been able to learn at least that much. We got nothing.

Moreover, each probing spell is slightly different. To completely block a probing spell? One must understand how each component of how the spell is structured. They must understand that particular spell.

I think back to Aitos' grand achievement.

My people reported that this dragon has used unique magic. I didn't want to believe it. However, what if Pure Evil is so intelligent that it has overcome that singular limitation of its species? What if, like Aitos, it went even further and bested Ainthia's highest magecraft?

Her signature spells merge the two most difficult fields of human knowledge: inscription and spellcasting. Her probing spell, though, flits into the realm of the legendary. She's definitely the world's best mage, and not by a small margin. She may not be quite as peerless as Aitos, but she's also fairly young compared to him.

Her probing spell... It's a spell which most of my Purified Heavens mages are unable to learn.

Even my Elven Magic Team, for all their casting prowess, struggle with Ainthia's probing spell. It's so complex that even the magically-gifted elf species can't keep up. How in the world did she, a human, invent it? I haven't the slightest clue.

I usually send the whole Elven Magic Team along with Ainthia. Not because she needs their help, but because I want them to practice the probing spell by casting it alongside her.

I tilt my head in contemplation.

What if Pure Evil learned this spell...

I shake my head.

No, that's not— the dragon's three days old.

Hrm.

What if it learned to partly disassemble Ainthia's spell, so the spell can't gather a full 'report?' What if that's why the spell doesn't send back any useful data?

So it'd do all this, ahm.

The first time it ever saw the spell? And within less than a second.

My face hits my hands.

...

That's horrifying.

I raise my head.

I loudly sigh.

"Pbfuhhh."

I've read many reports by now concerning its activities in Achiton and Haitos. I didn't want to believe the parts about its spellcasting. I still don't, but— what choice do I have?

Wouldn't this mean that the Dragon God in its prime; a dragon thousands of years old and large enough to simply sit on and crush my castle... Could be considered an idiot compared with Pure Evil, who was born just three days ago?

I shiver like nothing I've ever felt before.

I just. I just learned something I shouldn't know. This knowledge is somehow forbidden. Judging by the strength of that feeling, perhaps knowledge of Pure Evil is protected by a being greater than a god—

I feel chills again, as if to confirm my fears.

My fear drops away since there's no use worrying about something at that level.

Hah! Are you bragging? Like the Dragon God? Gloating at my powerlessness?

I shake my head in disgust. Damn gods. And— whatever's causing that.

I hope Pure Evil's not a subordinate or minion of that thing.

...

No sensation this time, which makes me feel relief.

Whew.

Still, if Pure Evil blocked Ainthia's spell.

If it did, then...

The day may come, when, like Shridenia's king?

I, too, face an ultimatum.

My assistant waves his hand.

"Your excellency, the second test has been conducted, and the results are conclusive. Their probing spell—"

I grit my teeth and my chest tightens.

"— was blocked."