In the remaining days of the month, Baiyi shuffled between his business and playtime with Mia. The Archmage was in charge of exploring the new world. Four more ‘scouting’ marionettes were deployed to the new world. To Baiyi, the issue of funding the manufacture of these marionettes was almost nothing to him; in fact, he even delegated the task to Tisdale.
“You’re not wrong in assuming that I can approve all these on Sir’s behalf, Royal Gramps, but, um…” Tisdale said, her approval stamp indecisive hovering above the application paper. She pointed at one of the items written on the paper. “I’m not an expert in engineering, but I seriously doubt that these twelve-tonne marionettes, which have three built-in Void Batteries, could pass off as ‘scouts.’ Do they not have as much firepower as a Bronze Shark-head?”
The evaluation system in Da Xue was lauded for being methodical and applicable across different domains, but the architect of this system had — as a joke, or as a “touch of personality” — forewent the use of numerical data or intuitive representation such as “Class A,” “Class B,” etc. Instead, the system used strange and arbitrary symbols to rate its subjects.
For example, the symbol for firepower or combat prowess would be a hammerhead shark’s head in different colors; Mia’s Sharkie was rated a Golden Shark-head. Tarantula, the Engineer Walker’s prototype battle marionette that made a name for itself during the war with the angels, had only earned two Silver Shark-heads.
The intelligence of a marionette was symbolized with fox heads. A group of the Engineer Walker’s brightest students built a housekeeping marionette, whose level of intelligence was at the Golden Fox-head level. In comparison, the Jawflower had a Bronze Fox-head level of intelligence, while Zakun the fox, one of Baiyi’s non-human students, only had a two Bronze Fox-head intelligence level. The fox was so furious with this result, it chased the Soul Armature Practitioner — the man responsible for the system — for a long time.
There were icons for other kinds of properties. A small picture of the Hitman Walker’s head was the icon for Stealth; a small picture of Mia’s head was made into an icon to symbolize; a small picture of the Archmage was used to symbolize Luck, and the symbol used to represent God’s Grace faith was now being used to represent the level of perversion.
Tisdale was reluctant to approve the Archmage’s application because the items on his form were high-rated and beyond her jurisdiction. Only Baiyi could authorize the application, but for some reason, the Archmage did not want to see his student.
“Come now, Dale, there’s no need to worry about the standards of these marionettes! The Engineering Faculty is the authority on those sorts of things; we have their latest and revised yardstick for scouts,” the Archmage said, passing another document to Tisdale.
Tisdale looked at the paper and saw a golden shark-head. Tisdale lowered the paper and said, “Pardon my curiosity, Royal Gramps, but what are you trying to do?”
At the bottom of the form, Tisdale saw the signatures of Vidomina, the Engineer Walker, the Blacksmith Walker, and those of other deans and vice-principals. An application that had this much support could not easily be denied by the Grand Principal, Baiyi, so it was likely that these high-powered scouts, which were made by the Engineering Faculty, would so become a norm.
“Behold, my long-awaited War of Conquest!” The Archmage gleefully announced.
Left with no other choice, Tisdale relented and signed the application form on Baiyi’s behalf. Afterward, a fully armed, twelve-tonne battle marionette ventured into the world to fulfill its role as a “scout”.
In the evening, a few days later, Baiyi finally learned of this. After having dinner with Mia, Noirciel propped down beside Baiyi on the couch like a lazy puppy ready for a nap. Mia also jumped on the couch beside Baiyi, resting her slender legs — which were covered with a pair of white stockings — on his lap. The legs he was forced to watch were like delicious popsicles.
Mia was surfing through her Friend Space — Isythre’s version of Facebook.
After studying the Orbment System for some time, the Engineer Walker and his team made a breakthrough; their achievement was not in dynamics and classical mechanics, but in miniaturization, which, in turn, was partly responsible for the invention of Mana Batteries. After combining this achievement with the Voidwalker’s findings in magic-based internet and computer coding — which they accomplished before the holy war — the first batch of smartphones, which were powered by magic, was finally unveiled. Da Xue’s students were the beta testers.
Although some may be shocked to realize that a miniature propulsion system was to invent these smartphones, everyone would still agree that the invention of smartphones was a good thing. After all, this was a huge step forward for communication technology.
Baiyi, however, did not wish to see Mia, his daughter, get obsessed with the virtual world. She already seemed a bit too focused on social media — so focused that for days, she had not engaged in cute antics for her Mr. Hope!
Although most of the communication software and applications in Isythre were still at their infancy, they were undeniably tantalizing for a tech newbie like Mia. Nowadays, every free time she had was spent taking selfies with Noirciel before uploading them to the net. A few minutes later, Baiyi would find her crackling in delight at the hearts and a long scroll of compliments.
‘This won’t do,’ Baiyi thought. If he did not nip this level of concentration in the bud, Mia would become an Otaku — probably even one as useless as the Archmage!
Baiyi was about to pinch Mia’s foot in admonishment when the Archmage barged into Mia’s living room. The old man was focused on the phone in his hand, but he did look away from it for a few seconds to ask Baiyi to be his witness.
“A witness to what? Are you upgrading your most useless character into a five-star general for the memes?” Baiyi asked in confusion.
“Nothing that shallow!” The Archmage replied without looking up. “I’m inviting you to witness… the Rohlserlian Empire’s latest conquest!”
The declaration would have been epic had the Archmage looked up from his phone. Baiyi was just about to point this out, but Mia suddenly jumped to her feet and shouted, “Royal Gramps! Wefie!”
The old man immediately knelt down and rubbed his cheek against Mia’s, after which the most grandpa-like smile appeared on his face. With fingers curled to form a “V”, Mia and the old man began to take selfies with their phones.
Baiyi’s phone vibrated, so he took it out of his pocket. He had received some notifications on his Friend Space. His two closest friends had just posted stories; Mia’s story was captioned “Royal Gramps is on fleek every time I see him!”, and the Archmage’s story was captioned “Im bout to start a war, but im literally havin anxiety right now.”
‘I knew it! All the time my sweet, sweet Mia spent loitering around in the Ancient Rohlserlian Empire has made her somewhat like the Old Geezer!’ Baiyi fumed silently. ‘Also, why are you announcing your intention to go to war on social media? Wait a sec… When the hell did we decide to go to war?!’
With that question in mind, Baiyi went that to his house with the Archmage in tow. As the Voidwalkers had turned Baiyi’s home to a sort of mission command center, the Fifth Walker had been forced to reside at Mia’s home, the residence of the Huffing Piggies, and even the home of the little female dragon.
When Baiyi saw unsolicited renovations made to his beautiful, luxurious, wholesome, family-oriented estate, he was shocked; it had been transformed into a military base. His precious flowers had been forcibly relocated to a park somewhere. What used to be his garden was now a storehouse for ammunition, equipment, and other military items.
“What — the — hell have you people been up to?!” Baiyi bellowed. He stormed into the open ammunition storehouse and picked up something that resembled a Brown Bess[1]. “What the hell is this?!”
“That is a respectful imitation of a classic. It doesn’t run on gunpowder or any form of chemistry, so it is very safe and reliable for use in that world. Besides, those items are all unwanted homework my students made during my lectures, so no money was spent. We’re basically reusing old products!” The Blacksmith Walker replied without looking away from what he was doing.
“What about that thing over there?!” Baiyi asked loudly, grabbing another weapon from a rack. This weapon was somewhat bizarre; it was a cross between forceps and a double-pronged fork. Two rail-shaped rods were beside its hollow middle channel.
“A Gauss Rifle prototype for infantries. This is the perfect opportunity to test its capabilities and reliability in different environments. One doesn’t get a rare opportunity like this to test such items!” The Blacksmith Walker replied.
“Okay, then what the hell is that?!” Baiyi demanded, pointing at a humanoid creature standing nearby. It was a beautiful brunette dressed in a pretty futuristic jacket. A long scar was underneath her left eye, and her chest was so flat, one could land a helicopter on it. There was no discernable expression on her face; she just resembled a very well-made mannequin.
“Dude, don’t you recognize a UMP45? You know, ‘Universale Maschinenpistole’? It’s German for ‘universal submachine gun’,” the Blacksmith Walker replied, finally looking up at Baiyi. “And that is just a statue my students gifted me for my birthday. They took a trip to Mars and spent a hefty price to get the most skilled dwarf artisans to make this babe. Then, they blessed the statue with a traditional dwarf’s ritual, and now, it’ll bring us good luck during wars. So, it stands to reason that I would bring her along!”
Baiyi suddenly felt the need to punch the Blacksmith Walker, but instead, he chose to poke the cheeks of the mannequin-like girl. She was quite cold to the touch. Baiyi did not know what rock was used to sculpt her, neither could he tell what paint was used on her. However, the mannequin-like girl looked so much like a real girl that even Baiyi had been fooled.
“How’s it, bruh? She looks like she’s bloody breathing, huh? I’ll tell you this: we, dwarves, are the best at sculpting!” The Blacksmith Walker grinned with pride.
‘Yes, yes. Godlike-level artisanship. But, more importantly, why did your students think it normal to gift you something like that is normal!?’
In the remaining days of the month, Baiyi shuffled between his business and playtime with Mia. The Archmage was in charge of exploring the new world. Four more ‘scouting’ marionettes were deployed to the new world. To Baiyi, the issue of funding the manufacture of these marionettes was almost nothing to him; in fact, he even delegated the task to Tisdale.
“You’re not wrong in assuming that I can approve all these on Sir’s behalf, Royal Gramps, but, um…” Tisdale said, her approval stamp indecisive hovering above the application paper. She pointed at one of the items written on the paper. “I’m not an expert in engineering, but I seriously doubt that these twelve-tonne marionettes, which have three built-in Void Batteries, could pass off as ‘scouts.’ Do they not have as much firepower as a Bronze Shark-head?”
The evaluation system in Da Xue was lauded for being methodical and applicable across different domains, but the architect of this system had — as a joke, or as a “touch of personality” — forewent the use of numerical data or intuitive representation such as “Class A,” “Class B,” etc. Instead, the system used strange and arbitrary symbols to rate its subjects.
For example, the symbol for firepower or combat prowess would be a hammerhead shark’s head in different colors; Mia’s Sharkie was rated a Golden Shark-head. Tarantula, the Engineer Walker’s prototype battle marionette that made a name for itself during the war with the angels, had only earned two Silver Shark-heads.
The intelligence of a marionette was symbolized with fox heads. A group of the Engineer Walker’s brightest students built a housekeeping marionette, whose level of intelligence was at the Golden Fox-head level. In comparison, the Jawflower had a Bronze Fox-head level of intelligence, while Zakun the fox, one of Baiyi’s non-human students, only had a two Bronze Fox-head intelligence level. The fox was so furious with this result, it chased the Soul Armature Practitioner — the man responsible for the system — for a long time.
There were icons for other kinds of properties. A small picture of the Hitman Walker’s head was the icon for Stealth; a small picture of Mia’s head was made into an icon to symbolize; a small picture of the Archmage was used to symbolize Luck, and the symbol used to represent God’s Grace faith was now being used to represent the level of perversion.
Tisdale was reluctant to approve the Archmage’s application because the items on his form were high-rated and beyond her jurisdiction. Only Baiyi could authorize the application, but for some reason, the Archmage did not want to see his student.
“Come now, Dale, there’s no need to worry about the standards of these marionettes! The Engineering Faculty is the authority on those sorts of things; we have their latest and revised yardstick for scouts,” the Archmage said, passing another document to Tisdale.
Tisdale looked at the paper and saw a golden shark-head. Tisdale lowered the paper and said, “Pardon my curiosity, Royal Gramps, but what are you trying to do?”
At the bottom of the form, Tisdale saw the signatures of Vidomina, the Engineer Walker, the Blacksmith Walker, and those of other deans and vice-principals. An application that had this much support could not easily be denied by the Grand Principal, Baiyi, so it was likely that these high-powered scouts, which were made by the Engineering Faculty, would so become a norm.
“Behold, my long-awaited War of Conquest!” The Archmage gleefully announced.
Left with no other choice, Tisdale relented and signed the application form on Baiyi’s behalf. Afterward, a fully armed, twelve-tonne battle marionette ventured into the world to fulfill its role as a “scout”.
In the evening, a few days later, Baiyi finally learned of this. After having dinner with Mia, Noirciel propped down beside Baiyi on the couch like a lazy puppy ready for a nap. Mia also jumped on the couch beside Baiyi, resting her slender legs — which were covered with a pair of white stockings — on his lap. The legs he was forced to watch were like delicious popsicles.
Mia was surfing through her Friend Space — Isythre’s version of Facebook.
After studying the Orbment System for some time, the Engineer Walker and his team made a breakthrough; their achievement was not in dynamics and classical mechanics, but in miniaturization, which, in turn, was partly responsible for the invention of Mana Batteries. After combining this achievement with the Voidwalker’s findings in magic-based internet and computer coding — which they accomplished before the holy war — the first batch of smartphones, which were powered by magic, was finally unveiled. Da Xue’s students were the beta testers.
Although some may be shocked to realize that a miniature propulsion system was to invent these smartphones, everyone would still agree that the invention of smartphones was a good thing. After all, this was a huge step forward for communication technology.
Baiyi, however, did not wish to see Mia, his daughter, get obsessed with the virtual world. She already seemed a bit too focused on social media — so focused that for days, she had not engaged in cute antics for her Mr. Hope!
Although most of the communication software and applications in Isythre were still at their infancy, they were undeniably tantalizing for a tech newbie like Mia. Nowadays, every free time she had was spent taking selfies with Noirciel before uploading them to the net. A few minutes later, Baiyi would find her crackling in delight at the hearts and a long scroll of compliments.
‘This won’t do,’ Baiyi thought. If he did not nip this level of concentration in the bud, Mia would become an Otaku — probably even one as useless as the Archmage!
Baiyi was about to pinch Mia’s foot in admonishment when the Archmage barged into Mia’s living room. The old man was focused on the phone in his hand, but he did look away from it for a few seconds to ask Baiyi to be his witness.
“A witness to what? Are you upgrading your most useless character into a five-star general for the memes?” Baiyi asked in confusion.
“Nothing that shallow!” The Archmage replied without looking up. “I’m inviting you to witness… the Rohlserlian Empire’s latest conquest!”
The declaration would have been epic had the Archmage looked up from his phone. Baiyi was just about to point this out, but Mia suddenly jumped to her feet and shouted, “Royal Gramps! Wefie!”
The old man immediately knelt down and rubbed his cheek against Mia’s, after which the most grandpa-like smile appeared on his face. With fingers curled to form a “V”, Mia and the old man began to take selfies with their phones.
Baiyi’s phone vibrated, so he took it out of his pocket. He had received some notifications on his Friend Space. His two closest friends had just posted stories; Mia’s story was captioned “Royal Gramps is on fleek every time I see him!”, and the Archmage’s story was captioned “Im bout to start a war, but im literally havin anxiety right now.”
‘I knew it! All the time my sweet, sweet Mia spent loitering around in the Ancient Rohlserlian Empire has made her somewhat like the Old Geezer!’ Baiyi fumed silently. ‘Also, why are you announcing your intention to go to war on social media? Wait a sec… When the hell did we decide to go to war?!’
With that question in mind, Baiyi went that to his house with the Archmage in tow. As the Voidwalkers had turned Baiyi’s home to a sort of mission command center, the Fifth Walker had been forced to reside at Mia’s home, the residence of the Huffing Piggies, and even the home of the little female dragon.
When Baiyi saw unsolicited renovations made to his beautiful, luxurious, wholesome, family-oriented estate, he was shocked; it had been transformed into a military base. His precious flowers had been forcibly relocated to a park somewhere. What used to be his garden was now a storehouse for ammunition, equipment, and other military items.
“What — the — hell have you people been up to?!” Baiyi bellowed. He stormed into the open ammunition storehouse and picked up something that resembled a Brown Bess[1]. “What the hell is this?!”
“That is a respectful imitation of a classic. It doesn’t run on gunpowder or any form of chemistry, so it is very safe and reliable for use in that world. Besides, those items are all unwanted homework my students made during my lectures, so no money was spent. We’re basically reusing old products!” The Blacksmith Walker replied without looking away from what he was doing.
“What about that thing over there?!” Baiyi asked loudly, grabbing another weapon from a rack. This weapon was somewhat bizarre; it was a cross between forceps and a double-pronged fork. Two rail-shaped rods were beside its hollow middle channel.
“A Gauss Rifle prototype for infantries. This is the perfect opportunity to test its capabilities and reliability in different environments. One doesn’t get a rare opportunity like this to test such items!” The Blacksmith Walker replied.
“Okay, then what the hell is that?!” Baiyi demanded, pointing at a humanoid creature standing nearby. It was a beautiful brunette dressed in a pretty futuristic jacket. A long scar was underneath her left eye, and her chest was so flat, one could land a helicopter on it. There was no discernable expression on her face; she just resembled a very well-made mannequin.
“Dude, don’t you recognize a UMP45? You know, ‘Universale Maschinenpistole’? It’s German for ‘universal submachine gun’,” the Blacksmith Walker replied, finally looking up at Baiyi. “And that is just a statue my students gifted me for my birthday. They took a trip to Mars and spent a hefty price to get the most skilled dwarf artisans to make this babe. Then, they blessed the statue with a traditional dwarf’s ritual, and now, it’ll bring us good luck during wars. So, it stands to reason that I would bring her along!”
Baiyi suddenly felt the need to punch the Blacksmith Walker, but instead, he chose to poke the cheeks of the mannequin-like girl. She was quite cold to the touch. Baiyi did not know what rock was used to sculpt her, neither could he tell what paint was used on her. However, the mannequin-like girl looked so much like a real girl that even Baiyi had been fooled.
“How’s it, bruh? She looks like she’s bloody breathing, huh? I’ll tell you this: we, dwarves, are the best at sculpting!” The Blacksmith Walker grinned with pride.
‘Yes, yes. Godlike-level artisanship. But, more importantly, why did your students think it normal to gift you something like that is normal!?’
