In fact, magical fertilizer isn't the only project bottlenecked by magical energy.
Besides the magic metals essential to the entire magical industry, other magical material projects, magical plant cultivation projects, and large-scale potion projects are all limited by the allocation of magical energy.
There's too little magical energy — too few magic stones.
Magic detection satellites have excavated the most conspicuous primordial materials globally, but to date, only a dozen or so could match the volume of the magic stone like Lemay's. The rest are mostly small micro-magic stones, whose magical output efficiency is sufficient for powering small devices like satellites, but far from enough for use in magical power plants.
Next, Murphy visited the Celestial Magic Research Institute.
The research subjects here include celestial magic and magical phenomena or creatures that can cause changes in celestial phenomena — like Murphy's old friend, the Thunderbird.
"The principles behind celestial magic remain elusive, but applying it isn't as difficult," said the head of the Celestial Research Institute, Morchanov Rosbey.
"The spells are ready-made. After converting them into runes using the universal conversion formula and enchanting them onto weather radars or satellites, then amplifying the magic fluctuations to guide the spells to the clouds, we can essentially achieve artificial weather manipulation."
"Guiding rain or clear weather is the simplest. We have also tried to guide thunderstorms, hail, and other extreme weathers, though with a lower success rate."
"Moreover, we've found that celestial magic can also be used to guide ocean currents! Although its magical consumption is much larger than affecting the weather, we can indeed guide the direction of ocean currents to some extent... Of course, the range is very small, and the impact time is very short, almost producing no substantial effect."
"What about the research on the Arctic Ocean?" Murphy asked.
"We've found that the Arctic Ocean is melting at an accelerated rate, far exceeding the global average temperature increase, and this is likely a continuous cycle."
"Rising temperatures cause the Arctic ice to melt, revealing dark land or the ocean, which reflects less light than ice, thereby more efficiently absorbing heat from the sunlight. Meanwhile, the melting of glaciers also releases carbon dioxide trapped under the ice, forming a high-concentration area above the Arctic Ocean, thereby heating it up."
"The effect of the North Atlantic Current also plays a role. As the Arctic ice melts, without the ice's obstruction, the North Atlantic Current flows into the Arctic Ocean at a shallower depth, allowing more of its heat to melt the glaciers, creating a positive feedback loop."
"Naturally, we estimate that by around 2020, the Arctic Ocean should be navigable for most of the year."
"Can we accelerate this process?" Murphy asked.
"It's difficult," Morchanov said. "Theoretically, if we could guide more of the North Atlantic Current, we could accelerate this process, even guiding the current's path into the Arctic Ocean to open up shipping lanes for us."
"But we've calculated that to achieve such celestial control, we would need an immense amount of magical energy... Specifically, about two thousand times the current global output of magical energy."
Well, that plan is effectively useless for now.
Next, Murphy visited the Unlocking Spell Laboratory.
This interesting laboratory's research topic is: using the Unlocking Spell to solve any problem that can be described mathematically.
The idea, initially suggested by Murphy to Holden, was whether it's possible to expand the application of spells to unlock passwords.
Following this line of research, scientists realized that the Unlocking Spell doesn't change the lock's shape or properties; its process doesn't break the lock's rules.
Meaning whether the spell creates a void key or causes the lock's tumblers to move on their own, it gives the "wizard and lock" system a piece of information that wasn't originally there: this information decides the movement rule of the lock's tumblers to unlock it.
In fact, spells usually come with an information complementing effect, like Transforming Spells turning cups into rats, where the information about the rat's fur color, size, and specific appearance is complemented by the spell.
But the uniqueness of the Unlocking Spell lies in its "simplicity"; it only provides the specific information needed for unlocking.
This makes it very amenable to human manipulation.
The Unlocking Spell Laboratory gathers nearly all of Sukhbaatar and Britain's top mathematicians and cryptographers, who have developed an algorithm that can convert any mathematically described problem into an electronic lock, whose key is the solution to the problem.
They managed to create a scenario: when the Unlocking Spell is used on the electronic lock, unless it makes the connected computer display the solution to the problem, the lock cannot be opened.
Then, these mathematicians began a frenzy, finding that the Unlocking Spell could indeed produce precise solutions for many complex calculations that would otherwise take decades to compute using ordinary computers.
However, they soon discovered the bottleneck of the Unlocking Spell: given the level of magical energy, the Unlocking Spell has an upper limit on the complexity of mathematical problems it can solve. Beyond this limit, the spell fails.
It seems the Unlocking Spell consumes magical energy in place of computational power.
Yes, again, the issue of magical energy.
There are many fascinating laboratories in the research institute, and Murphy later visited the Portrait AI Research Institute, where they study how to transfer the simple logical intelligence of portraits to computers.
They also have a branch department studying how to transfer the "consciousness" of portraits to "robots," thereby giving humanoid machines a "soul."
Adjacent to the Portrait AI Research Institute is the "Animated Objects Research Institute," which isn't fixated on giving machines "souls" but hopes to endow them with animated properties.
Their research core is "Object Animation Magic," similar to what Arthur used on his family car in the original story.
Lastly, Murphy visited the Anti-Gravity Research Institute, the one previously enchanting the elevator with Levitation Spells.
Different from the Aerospace Research Institute, their research on anti-gravity magic focuses on civilian domains, such as their currently hottest project, "flying cars." According to them, it's hopeful that people will see flying cars within the next ten years.
After touring the various research institutes in the research center, Murphy witnessed many inventions and discoveries still forming.
But nearly everyone raised that issue.
A shortage of magical energy.
Magical energy limits the ultimate realization of almost all industries.
Addressing the magical energy issue has become urgent.
So, Murphy visited the Aerospace Research Institute, home to Sukhbaatar's largest magical energy satellite launch center, where satellite data is ultimately gathered.
"Has there been an increase in the discovery of primordial materials?" Murphy asked the head of the satellite launch center.
The latter shook his head, "There's almost no increase anymore. We've improved the detection precision to the microwave level, allowing us to discover almost all primordial materials on the Earth's surface. But this level of magical wave is easily blocked; if the primordial materials are buried slightly deeper, we can't detect them."
"And the primordial materials found at this precision level produce too little magical energy, some barely enough to power a satellite."
"Is it possible that some primordial materials are buried deep beneath the surface?" Murphy asked.
"Theoretically, it's possible, but if the Blood of Gods theory holds, these primordial materials come from gods not too ancient, making it hard to imagine them appearing deep
within the Earth's layers."
"However, we're researching spectral analysis," the head said. "Magic affects light, naturally causing spectral changes. We're recently studying methods to find magical sources through spectral analysis, which might help discover primordial materials."
"Besides, we're developing passive sensitive detection equipment, highly responsive to magical radiation, theoretically capable of detecting a wizard's use of magic hundreds of kilometers away."
"With some adjustments and neutralization to this detection equipment, we can remove meaningless interference signals and focus only on detecting primordial material signals."
Murphy nodded. These methods have broad application scenarios, but he's starting to lose confidence in discovering primordial materials; their scarcity seems even more severe than he imagined.
And for the time being, overcoming the technical challenges to improve the magical output of individual magic stones also faces many difficulties.
It seems necessary to look for alternative energy sources.
But as he was about to visit the Magical Energy Research Institute, a thin researcher with thick black-rimmed glasses stopped him, "I heard you're surveying the issue of magical energy allocation?"
Murphy glanced at him, this guy probably thought he was an official responsible for allocating magical energy, "Are you here for an allocation?"
"Yes," the person immediately nodded, then shook his head, "Not exactly, I'm here to offer a solution."
"I can't solve your energy problem, but I can help you optimize the magical energy allocation scheme to maximize the use of existing magical energy."
"Oh?" Murphy became interested, "Let's hear it, what do you do?"
"I research magical computers and also handle the algorithm optimization for the central supercomputer," the researcher said, "But my research direction is control theory. I have a set of algorithms... well, not mine, our algorithms, that can effectively solve your problem."
"However, if it proves effective, I hope you could allocate more resources to the development of magical computers."
"Central supercomputing?" Murphy almost forgot the initial purpose of his visit, "I was just heading there; let's talk as we walk."
Regarding the application of magic, I have a ton of ideas, but due to length constraints, I won't elaborate here; they might appear when possibly needed in the future. About the Unlocking Spell, it was written in haste without a detailed explanation before, but I've just added a segment to clarify, thanks to a reader's reminder.
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