{Author's note: Bring some brain cells}
'Now for the drones… I should improve them since I'll need to make some more anyways. …Wait, what happened to Little Birdy, Mk1?'
—Dms: Cain and Dresil— (3ms)
Dresil: I stored it in one of Bob's storage dimensions just in case.
Cain: Oh, thanks. Can you move it to the Mana Storage dimension?
Dresil: Yep.
--------------------------
Cain directs his full attention towards the portal on his chest, the one Bob opened up that connected to the Mana Storage. His speed slowly dropped from 9.5m/s to 9m/s where it hovered between 8.9m/s and 9.1m/s due to the lack of focus. Within the storage dimension, a magic circle appeared next to Little Birdy, Mk1.
The magic circle created another drone using the mana within the storage dimension, exactly the same as Little Birdy, Mk1. Magic circles from the first Birdy were copied and pasted to the camera and the flight controller of the second Birdy. A third magic circle was created on its frame; along with a dense sphere of mana that enveloped the second Birdy.
A terminal linked to the third magic circle appeared in front of Cain, the name of the file was "Concealment of Mk2." Cain's speed evened out at 9m/s as he began to program the concealment of the second Birdy, a.k.a. Little Birdy, Mk2. The dense sphere of mana that smothered the drone shifted around according to the program's will, slowly enacting the contents of the program.
A few minutes passed until the concealment program was complete. The terminal closed and a notepad opened listing the functions of the concealment program. Cain read this while analyzing the new form of creating magic circles he just used.
'Looks like I can displace the mana used for the spell by performing some calculations with calculus equations and coding. The mana drain seems to be more than usual… I'll have to edit the autopilot so it finds an aether vein to stay in. Nevermind… I don't know how to detect the density of mana using magic circles yet, I'll just let them know to try and keep it inside a vein. The concealment doesn't appear to be physical anymore. It also blocks sight, smell, and sound coming from the drone. Next upgrade will be tougher…'
2 terminals appeared in front of him again, stacked on top of each other. They're connected to the flight controller and the camera. Cain fixed the kinks and bugs of the programs until they were self-sufficient then exported all of the updated changes to Little Birdy, Mk1, upgrading it to Mk2. Cain added an additional function to the group chat magic circle that showed what spirit was watching his surroundings using the drones.
{Author's note: the format for this boi has been updated in the format chap in vol. 0}
—Group Chat: Cain, Dresil, Bob, and Rex— (17ms)
Cain: Livestream is setup and the drones are done.
Bob: Sweet.
Rex: Heck yeah.
Dresil: How much longer are you going to be running?
Cain: Idk… I wanted to go for another hour or two, but it's getting pretty dark already.
Cain: I'll just head back to the campsite for now and do some experiments until we get called over for dinner.
Cain: Bob, can you open a portal?
Bob: Understood.
--------------------------
«Rex and Bob have joined the livestream»
[10% - s]
Cain slows down to a walking speed and walks into a portal that appears abruptly in front of him; the portals that make up his mask appear shortly before. Dresil emerges from his clothes, preparing a mat and laying down several leaves to set down the food. She walks over to the side after laying down the last leaf and creates a chair and screen to continue binging her anime on.
Cain sits down on the mat the same time as a portal appeared on his left, where the leaves were laid out, and deposited all of the sweets and snacks Dresil bought before his run. Cain leisurely munches on the various cookies and cakes while thinking about what experiments to perform.
—Dms: Cain and Bob— (3ms)
Cain: Can you help me do some experiments?
Cain: Afterwards I'll need some help to program a simple AI with your power. Trying to get it so I just need to request something and it performs the task so I don't have to bother you for the simple stuff.
Bob: Sure.
--------------------------
Four magic circles were created in front of Cain; a mini Bob materialized on his right to pitch in where needed. 100 grams of titanium were deposited on each magic circle. A fifth magic circle was created underneath a sixth that appeared roughly one meter above the fifth.
—Dms: Cain and Bob— (7ms)
Cain: How accurate can you time things?
Bob: Down to the millisecond.
Cain: What about velocity? Make sure to measure it the moment before it hits the bottom circle.
Bob: ±0.001m/s.
Cain: Sweet. Can you make sure the 6th magic circle is exactly one meter above the 5th, then get ready to time and measure the velocity of the titanium I'm about to place there.
Bob: Understood.
--------------------------
A titanium cube with a mass of 100g was created and placed on top of the sixth magic circle. Bob edited the height of the sixth magic circle to be exactly one meter above the 5th. Once Bob gave the ok to Cain, he dispersed the 6th magic circle and the titanium fell on to the fifth magic circle.
—Dms: Cain and Bob— (2ms)
Bob: 0.452 seconds and 4.430 m/s.
Cain: Sweet.
--------------------------
A notepad terminal appeared in front of Cain in which he performed a series of calculations on. 'Looks like gravity is the exact same here as back on Earth. It was assumed so before, but it's nice to get confirmation.'
—Dms: Cain and Dresil— (4ms)
Dresil: Told ya so.
Cain: Yeah, yeah.
Cain: You done exporting my memories?
Dresil: Almost.
--------------------------
—Dms: Cain and Bob— (3ms)
Cain: Try editing the coordinates of the titanium on the 1st through 3rd circles, starting with each separate axis relative to the magic circle it's on.
Cain: For the 4th one, change it's coordinates using all 3 axi at once.
Bob: Understood
--------------------------
Bob edited the coordinates of each piece of titanium individually while Cain watched. Titanium A, the one on the first magic circle, disappeared and reappeared half a meter away from Cain; he swiftly created another magic circle to catch Titanium A. Titanium B, C, and D went through similar phases, with B teleporting half a meter to Cain's left, and C half a meter above its original position. Titanium D teleported upwards, to the left and away from Cain by 0.866 meters; all of the measurements with respect to the starting magic circles, each landing on a separate magic circle.
—Dms: Cain and Bob— (132ms)
Cain: Was that teleportation or something different?
Bob: It was close… How to say this…
Bob: The object traveled in the space between the dimensions to get to its final position.
Bob: Teleportation usually bends, distorts, or connects space to shorten it or travels through other dimensions, not between them.
Cain: …so a tier below teleportation basically?
Cain: It seems like it could be faster depending on the situation though since no gate is needed…
Cain: Although the mana cost might be higher…
Cain: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it should be mana cost = 1000? * mass in kilograms * distance in meters…
Bob: Indubitably. The constant is exactly 1000 though.
Bob: The formula is the same for my portals except there is no need to consider the mass of the object.
Cain: What about the surface area of the portal opened and the time it's open for?
Bob: It's too small to be considered. If it were the other spirits, it'd need to be measured though.
Cain: Sweet. What about the speed comparison?
Bob: The coordinate method is faster unless we force the object through the "gate."
Bob: It also doesn't need to be a gate or portal to work correctly, that's just the most common way to visualize it.
Cain: So it's possible to teleport with a gate/portal? Interesting…
Bob: Yep.
Cain: …I won't be able to do that for a while though. Heck. The idea of needing something as a medium is too ingrained into me.
Cain: Anyways, what if we forced the portal onto the object instead of vice versa?
Bob: Are you implying that the portal is created inside the object and rotated around it?
Cain: Yep. Let's try that with Titanium A. I'll disperse everything besides that and Titanium B.
Bob: Understood.
--------------------------
Magic circles 3 through 6 were dispersed into mana, merging with the mana zone; along with their corresponding titanium samples and post-translation circles. Titanium samples A and B were moved back to magic circles one and two, their post-translation circles also dissipating. A magic circle was created above Titanium A. This was where Titanium A would be forced to move to.
Cain made deep grooves on Titanium A, creating numbers one through six on each face, by converting parts of it into mana. This was done to track the orientation of the sample during the experiment. Once the marking was performed, Cain gave Bob the signal.
Bob created a microscopic portal perpendicular to the front and back faces, Face 1 and 3; it'd be more appropriate to call this portal a line due to miniscule width compared to its length. He extended the portal to Titanium A's left face, Face 4. With the portal now in the dead center of the titanium cube, occupying its left side, Bob rotated the portal upwards towards the top face, Face 5, then towards Face 2, 6, and back to 4; performing a full revolution. On Magic Circle 1A, each of Bob's actions were mirrored; while keeping the original orientation. Titanium A slowly materialized on Magic Circle 1A; the portals disappeared shortly after the experiment was completed.
—Dms: Cain and Bob— (3025ms)
Cain: How was it? Also how fast do you think you can do this?
Bob: There was little to no difference in normal teleportation through a gate; even object displacement through portals would be the same.
Bob: I can perform the teleportation within a few milliseconds as long as the object isn't too big… say… roughly 45 or 50 cubic meters.
Cain: What's the biggest volume you can do under a second?
Bob: 10,000 cubic meters.
Cain: Dang… so roughly a cube with side length of one and a half buses…
<3 seconds later>
Cain: I can fit roughly 22.8 million 1lbs cheeseburgers in there… nice.
Bob: Are you actually thinking of doing that?
Cain: …maybe. Do you think we can find someone to cook all of that?
Bob: :sigh:
Cain: For this next experiment, I'm going to try and exert force using the magic circle. So correct me where needed?
Bob: Understood.
--------------------------
Cain dispersed Titanium A and its corresponding magic circles into mana, then opened a terminal connected to Magic Circle 2. From yesterday, Day 4, until now, any time a magic circle was treated as solid ground, the coordinates of the object were frozen slightly above it. It had the same function as a platform, but it was never truly a platform. Cain programmed the terminal with Bob's aid so that the magic circle would exert a normal force on the sample, thus becoming a true platform. The ascension of the magic circle platform, if you will.
Bob also programmed the magic circle to measure the amount of force it exerted. It took a few minutes for the programming to be done; at this point Cain's pile of treats was already gone. Cain looked at the resulting normal force, the mana drain of the circle, and other related properties, ensuring that it was accurate and there were no bugs.
'Roughly 1 newton… it checks out. It looks like the magic circle consists of roughly 1k mana with no drain. What would happen if I added more force?' Cain moved forward some to place his hand on Titanium B. He pressed down on it slowly, gradually increasing the pressure, then sharply put a lot of force into his hand. He sat back down on his mat to analyze the results.
'The mana drain gradually increased according to the force and if the force was held near constant for a short period of time, the mana would solidify into the circle… When I put a lot of force into my hand at once, the mana drain spiked but none of it remained in the circle… Interesting.'
Cain opened up the terminal that contained the program to turn mana into force and memorized its contents. He then exported it as a file to the digital storage for safekeeping. Recognizing Cain's actions as him being done with this experiment, Bob dispersed the magic circle while Cain turned Titanium B into mana.
Cain created a new magic circle for Bob and him to create the AI that'll manage his requests for spatial manipulation. Cain opened a notepad and wrote down the required tasks the AI has to manage then showed it to Bob. The list contained the following:
¦Interpret if the request is possible.
¦Make necessary changes to make it possible.
¦Interpret the commands and actions to be done from said commands
¦Manipulating coordinates (changing, freezing, etc.)
¦Opening portals
¦Spatial sensory system
¦Manipulate other magic circles, tags, and Cain's mana
¦Search tagged being's memories for a specific place
¦Able to use imported memories for teleporting
¦Able to teleport using memories in general
The duo then divvied up the tasks and got to work. Cain worked on the AI and its interface with the spatial powers while Bob configured its spatial powers. The two worked furiously, aware that they could be called for dinner at any moment. It goes without question that whether or not this pet project was completed, Cain would drop everything to go to dinner. Thus, the two programmed, tested, revised, and occasionally scrapped entire segments of code for the next 69 minutes.
With the AI complete, Bob and Cain began their live tests. Before they just tested the program itself and some basic interactions. Nothing was being manipulated spatially by the AI due to the risk of it going wrong and triggering something unwanted due to the rough programming. Now that the bugs were fixed, it was safe to perform live tests. Cain created two titanium samples that sat on newly formed magic circles for these tests.
—Spatial Requesting Interface (SRI)— (2610ms)
Cain: Teleport Titanium A 2 meters directly above it.
SRI: Processing request…
SRI: Request processed (32ms)
SRI: Performing request…
SRI: Request performed (511ms)
SRI: Total time: 543 ms
Cain: Change the coordinates of Titanium B from (0,0,0) meters to (0,10,0) centimeters
SRI: SRI: Processing request…
SRI: Recognizing origin…
SRI: Calibrating units…
SRI: Request processed (43ms)
SRI: Performing request…
SRI: Request performed (201ms)
SRI: Total time: 244 ms
Cain: Teleport Titanium A on my bed in the inn.
SRI: Processing request…
SRI: Requesting location from memories…
SRI: Processing location from memories…
SRI: Request processed (103ms)
SRI: Performing request…
SRI: Request performed (1025ms)
SRI: Total time: 1128 ms
Cain: Teleport Titanium B 4 meters above Titanium A.
SRI: Processing request…
SRI: Error:
SRI: Suggested edit: 4 meters → 3 meters or less
SRI: Awaiting response…
Cain: Change to 2.5 meters.
SRI: Response received…
SRI: Processing response…
SRI: Response processed (23ms)
SRI: Recalculating request…
SRI: Request processed (52ms)
SRI: Performing request…
SRI: Request performed (304ms)
SRI: Total time: 379 ms
Cain: Teleport Titanium B to the most recent snack shop Dresil visited; using her memories
SRI: Processing request…
SRI: Requesting access to memories…
SRI: Access granted (13ms)
SRI: Retrieving memories…
SRI: Memories retrieved (32ms)
SRI: Request processed (69ms)
SRI: Performing request…
SRI: Request performed (210ms)
SRI: Total time: 311 ms
--------------------------
—Dms: Cain and Bob— (12ms)
Cain: Any errors with its functions?
Bob: The precision is roughly ±50 centimeters…
Cain: Yikes. Can you get that down to a millimeter or less?
Cain: There were some errors with the user interface I need to fix.
Bob: Understood.
--------------------------
Bob teleported the two samples back to their respective magic circles. Cain opened up the terminal for the AI and smoothed out the user interface while Bob narrowed the precision down to 0.1mm. After three minutes, Cain performed the exact same tests as before; this time the results were satisfactory except for SRI's interaction with foreign memories; memories that weren't stored in the digital space or from Cain. Therefore Cain began the grind once again, this time it took five minutes to complete. After another round of testing, SRI's creation was deemed perfected.