Chapter 1296: The Unified Wave Conjecture

Gawain knew full well that the only truly permanent solution was to eliminate the cultists lurking in the wastelands—and the “Sentinel” behind them.

But the cultists’ calculations were equally clear: they understood that the vast, perilous wastelands of Gondor served as a natural shield. Any mortal army venturing into that desolation would be at a severe disadvantage. Protected by this buffer, they seemed determined to develop their “Grant Plan” in secret, refusing to emerge until it was complete—come hell or high water.

At present, Cecil’s “Project 115” was still unfinished, the Typhon mage corps were still gathering, and the Silver Empire’s wasteland expeditionary forces were not yet ready. Before the mortal world’s strongest military powers were fully prepared, would the cultists complete their plan first? No one could say for sure.

“…Perhaps we have no choice but to launch a preemptive counterattack,” Gawain said, stroking his chin with a dark expression. “We can’t force the cultists to come out early, so we have to take the initiative ourselves… Even if it’s just to put some pressure on the ‘Sentinel,’ it might disrupt its judgment and preparations.”

“Attacking the wasteland before we’re ready?” Myrmina looked at Gawain skeptically. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“…It’s one option,” Gawain sighed. “I’ll coordinate with Typhon and the Silver Empire, but if there’s no alternative, we’ll have to act prematurely.”

“Alright, I’m no expert in warfare,” Myrmina shook her head with a hint of melancholy, “and the one who was, well… he ended up dead by his own hand.” She straightened up. “I’ll try to crack the technology behind those cubes. Though it’s all relics left by the Starfarers, if a bunch of limited cultists can manufacture them with their craft, it means the ‘Sentinel’ must have adapted the technology. There has to be something in there we can understand and use—it’s just a matter of time to find it. If I make any progress, I’ll share it with the tech department immediately.”

Gawain nodded gently, then glanced at the spot where Myrmina had been leaning against a tree. The air there shimmered with countless symbols and numbers, constantly calculating themselves. Abstract geometric shapes flickered in and out of existence, dizzying to the eye. Clearly, Myrmina hadn’t been resting; those rapid computations were her true work.

He didn’t know exactly what the former goddess of magic was calculating, but he sensed it was crucial—important enough to require her to “seclude” herself.

Curious, he asked, “I heard you’ve been studying the secrets behind the fluctuations of magical energy? Is that what you were calculating just now?”

Myrmina glanced back at the floating symbols, then met Gawain’s curious gaze. Noticing his thirst for knowledge, a faint smile appeared on her lips. “You really are a curious one… Yes, I’ve been researching the secrets behind the fluctuations of magical energy. I’ve been at it for days, and my paper is halfway done.”

Gawain’s expression twisted slightly. The idea of a “goddess of magic writing a paper” seemed ripe for jokes, but he couldn’t quite find the angle to mock it. Instead, he forced a dry smile and focused on the serious academic matter at hand. “I know about the experiments you conducted in the War God’s realm—part of the procedure was actually designed by me and Kamail. We’ve finally confirmed that magic is a kind of wave, or at least exhibits wave-like properties. The academic world is thrilled—we’ve finally gained a real understanding of one of the most familiar natural phenomena around us.”

“Indeed, we’ve advanced our understanding of magic,” Myrmina said, “but the world has begun to reveal a side utterly alien to us.” She sighed. “You know, what we confirmed that day wasn’t just the wave nature of magic. I also saw… something far more incredible.”

“I’ve heard about your unusual experience, but scholars remain baffled by what you described,” Gawain frowned. “What exactly did you see?”

“Have you ever considered this possibility?” Myrmina fixed her gaze on Gawain, as if weighing whether to unveil the veil of truth. Then, with solemn gravity, she said, “Perhaps… the material world doesn’t truly exist. Maybe we—and everything we know—originate from a single ancient ‘point of origin’ that once trembled.”

Gawain fell into thought at her words, recalling the mysterious phenomena Myrmina had observed in her reports. Amber, standing nearby, couldn’t help but exclaim, “The material world doesn’t exist?! What does that even mean?!”

Clearly, Amber didn’t understand Myrmina’s explanation but was deeply shaken by it.

“Strictly speaking, the boundary between ‘material’ and ‘immaterial’ might have been a false dichotomy from the start,” Myrmina explained patiently, undeterred by Amber’s noisy reaction or her usual intellect. “It’s a partial truth seen by us ‘observers’ trapped by the rules and limited vision of this world. We’ve always thought the world was divided into distinct ‘layers’ with isolated boundaries, but maybe… at its core, our world is fundamentally ‘unified.’”

“…I don’t get it,” Amber blinked, trying hard to follow but ending up frustrated.

“That’s normal. The deer next to you doesn’t understand either,” Myrmina said seriously, without a hint of mockery. This drew a grumble from Amon nearby: “Hey, don’t drag me into this! If you want, we can have a contest growing eggplants!”

Myrmina seemed not to hear Amon’s protest. After a moment’s thought, she continued: “At the end of that experiment, the instant I fully grasped the wave nature of magic, I attempted to reconstruct my ‘existence’ by understanding the magic that composes me as a wave. Unexpected phenomena occurred… My avatar disintegrated in the War God’s realm’s unique environment, becoming something neither material nor energy, more akin to the surrounding ‘echoes of thought.’ A new, unprecedented ‘perspective’ emerged in my perception…

“From that perspective, everything around me appeared differently. Whether it was the bricks of the War God’s realm or the bodies of explorers like Kamail, nothing in my view was a solid ‘object’ with definite form. Instead, everything was countless overlapping, interacting, and intricately structured ‘vibrations.’ I myself was part of this vibration, but due to a brief ‘derailment,’ I temporarily gained the ability to observe all this from outside my usual viewpoint…

“In that state, I also observed the magical energy detection device at the center of the test site. I saw a pure, high-intensity arcane beam striking a denser, higher-frequency vibration wave, generating ripples that spread through space. Those… were the bright and dark stripes we observe in the material world.”

Myrmina paused, then added, “That’s all I observed—but it’s not the most accurate description. Unfortunately, language and writing have limits, and much of what I saw and sensed exceeded common human understanding.”

She described a scene utterly alien to mortals of this age, choosing words carefully to avoid ambiguity. Still, she worried that Gawain, Amber, and the royal mages listening with wide eyes might struggle to grasp her meaning. In truth, she was prepared for no one to understand, knowing that the truth she’d uncovered was far ahead of its time.

Yet Gawain grew thoughtful as she spoke. Those strange, bizarre phrases sparked connections in his mind. After a few minutes of silence, he finally broke it: “So, you believe that everything in our world might be formed from fundamental ‘vibrations.’ At some most ‘primordial’ level, our material foundation is actually non-solid and formless?”

Myrmina’s surprise was evident. She looked at Gawain with unexpected admiration. “In a way, yes, you could describe it like that…”

“So, it’s not just magic that exhibits wave properties. Theoretically, everything is a form of vibration. But due to certain limiting conditions—we can call it a critical point at the microscopic level—only magic’s wave nature is observable to us. The wave nature of everything else is hidden beyond our ‘observable domain’…”

Gawain spoke thoughtfully. Though not a magic expert like Kamail, he possessed a different kind of wisdom that let him interpret Myrmina’s observations from a unique angle, even pushing the theory further.

“The key point in this theory is that ‘we’ ourselves are constrained by this constantly vibrating wave system,” he said, locking eyes with Myrmina. The “Master of All Laws” leaned forward again, her imposing yet curious presence filling the space. Under her glowing, mysterious gaze, Gawain’s thoughts sharpened. “If all things are waves, then we ‘observers’ are fixed to a certain ‘link’ in the cosmic chain by our own ‘frequency’ or ‘waveform.’ Our vision is similarly limited, and even the instruments we use to observe and manipulate are bound by this constraint, unable to cross the microscopic critical point…

“From one perspective, this issue may remain unprovable and unfalsifiable for a long time. So, according to strict academic standards, it can only be considered a conjecture…”

“Yes, it’s only a conjecture for now, unless we find evidence to support or refute it,” Myrmina said calmly. “Though I observed phenomena that seemed to confirm this theory from a special perspective that day, my observations can’t be reproduced or documented, and there’s no proof that what I ‘saw’ was real and unaltered. So it can’t serve as evidence.”

Amber glanced between Gawain and Mylmina, feeling her head heat up. Still, she struggled to keep up with the tail end of their conversation and managed to grasp bits and pieces. A look of shock and disbelief crossed her face. After pondering for a moment, she casually drew the ever-present dagger at her side, weighing it in her hand as she stared wide-eyed and confused at Gawain.

“Wait a minute,” she said, “if I understand you right, even this dagger of mine is fundamentally made up of ‘waves’? Like that buzzing sensation you mentioned? But if that were true, how could this dagger just sit quietly in my hand? Wouldn’t it merge with me, or slip right through my fingers, or just dissipate altogether…?”

The more she spoke, the more tangled her thoughts became. Then she looked up at the caring gaze Gawain had turned on her and immediately shrank back. “Okay, maybe my brain’s not cut out for this. Just forget I said anything…”

“Thinking is a good thing,” Gawain said with a smile. “You’re already thinking more deeply than most people, and you’ve hit on an important point: ‘Everything in the world vibrates just right, and that’s what shapes the reality we see.’” He chuckled softly, feeling he should reassure Amber. After all, this was a huge improvement over how she used to be when it came to thinking things through. “What Mylmina and I are talking about is that the fundamental layer of matter is wave-like—not that any single object is just a wave. That’s a different concept. In the material world as we know it, these wave properties only show up at the microscopic level. Your dagger… that’s a macroscopic object.”

At that moment, Mylmina’s voice chimed in: “If our theory is correct, then the boundary between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ is already blurred. As observers, our understanding of macro and micro, matter and non-matter, is limited by our own ‘foundation.’ But if some external force alters that foundation, the entire world might appear completely different to us…”

Gawain thought for a moment, then spoke softly: “If that’s true, then all the strange phenomena caused by magic, the paradoxes behind transmutation spells, the fuzzy line between mental power and physical form… even the magical tides—they might all be explained. If everything in existence is ultimately unified at the fundamental level, if it’s all just waves interfering and overlapping, then it all makes sense…”

Mylmina looked puzzled. “Did you ever think these things didn’t make sense before?”

Gawain smiled, unable to explain his thoughts fully to her, so he brushed the question aside. Then, with a serious expression, he said, “Don’t you think it’s time we gave this hypothesis a name?”

(End of chapter)