When the old, curled-at-the-edges parchment was slowly spread out on the desk, time seemed to freeze in the room cluttered with ancient books and alchemical instruments.
At that moment, Nicolas Flamel's breath hit a nearly imperceptible pause.
This alchemy master, who had lived for over six centuries and personally witnessed the rise and fall of dynasties and the shifting of seas and lands, had spent his entire life pursuing the ultimate truth of the world. He thought his heart had long been polished into a calm, untroubled philosopher's stone, impervious to any disturbance.
Yet he was wrong.
On the parchment, there were no letters recognizable by humans, and no known magical runes.
There was only a single line.
A line composed of hundreds of millions of micro-glimmering data points, constructed with complex functions and formulas incomprehensible to ordinary mortals — a mathematical curve.
Cold. Precise. Devoid of any human warmth, yet at the same time, its absolute order radiated a terrifying, cruel beauty of geometry that made the heart skip.
This curve was Apparition.
Not a description of Apparition, not an analysis of it, not even a feeling of it.
It was Apparition itself.
It was Alan, staking his life, ripping and reshaping space, using his mind palace of "Absolute Reason" to forcibly extract and imprint a mathematical model directly from the fundamental rules of the world.
Nicolas Flamel's gaze was locked on that green curve.
His eyes, weathered by six centuries, reflected the cold, streaming data. His skeletal fingers curled unconsciously, knuckles whitening from tension. Shock, confusion, bewilderment, contemplation… countless emotions collided in his deep eyes, eventually subsiding into a long, complex sigh, as if echoing from the depths of history.
"Six hundred…"
His voice was hoarse, carrying the weight of time.
"I spent six hundred years feeling it, approaching it, understanding it… and only then could I barely grasp it."
Slowly lifting his head, Nicolas Flamel's eyes, for the first time, shed the calm of centuries of wisdom. Only a raw, almost primal seriousness remained — the solemnity of one witnessing a miracle.
He looked at the boy before him.
"And you… Alan."
"You did it in one minute, in a way I had never imagined… a way I wouldn't even dare to imagine… and saw it clearly."
Every word carried absolute weight.
"You saw the essence of magic."
This wasn't praise. It was a statement of fact. A truth capable of shaking the very foundations of the magical world.
"Child, you make me believe that a whole new era of magic may come… because of you."
Leaning forward, his voice low but commanding, he continued:
"Since that is so, I have decided to teach you some of the most fundamental things in advance."
He raised three fingers — dry, gnarled, like old tree roots, casting shadows across the floor.
"To become a true 'magical creator', or, in your words, a great 'magical programmer', you need to master the three most crucial keys that lead to this realm."
"The first key is 'Language.'"
His first finger curled slightly.
"That is the ancient magical script and runes you are studying. They are not mysterious symbols — they are tools. Tools that allow you to communicate with the magical world, issue instructions, and 'program.' You must master every stroke, every syllable, and the fundamental rules they represent, just as you master your native language."
"The second key is 'Logic.'"
His second finger closed as well.
"This is the core of alchemy and advanced magical theory. They are not tricks for turning stone into gold or creating a few magical items. They are the syntax and rules of programming. They allow you to understand why flames are hot, why space can fold, why matter can reorganize. They let you comprehend the inner workings of the world and find the correct way to modify its 'source code.'"
Alan's breathing quickened. Flamel's words built a grand framework, giving immediate structure to all of his previously scattered knowledge and explorations.
"And the third… the final key," Flamel's tone turned deadly serious. The air in the room seemed to be drawn out, leaving only his metallic, stone-like voice.
"Is Authority."
"Authority?"
"Authority," Alan blurted out. The word, drawn from his previous life in computer science, carried a surreal, almost time-warping shock when spoken aloud by a six-hundred-year-old alchemy master.
"Yes… authority."
Flamel's gaze sharpened, as if it could pierce through Alan's flesh and directly reach the mind palace of "Absolute Reason" deep within his mind.
"Just like a programmer must have administrator-level access to modify an operating system's core code, a wizard must possess sufficiently high authority to bypass wands and spells — these so-called 'applications' — and directly communicate with the fundamental rules of the world. Only then can you truly 'write' your code into reality and make it take effect."
"And this kind of authority," Flamel continued, his voice resonant and commanding, "has only one source."
"Your own mental power."
"A core of consciousness strong enough, stable enough, and cohesive enough."
With that, Nicolas Flamel turned and walked to the oldest desk behind him. Without using magic, he slid open the deepest drawer, one that had never before been opened.
With a faint creak, he pulled out an object.
It was a notebook.
A very thin notebook, entirely handwritten by Flamel himself. Its cover was ordinary parchment, devoid of decoration, and even the title was scrawled casually:
"On Meditation and the Preliminary Construction of the Mental Realm."
Flamel held the notebook reverently and returned to Alan, moving as if performing a sacred handover.
He placed the notebook into Alan's hands with solemnity.
"This contains the methods I explored in my youth, before I became an alchemy master," Flamel said, his voice tinged with reminiscence.
"Methods on how to conduct deep meditation and construct a stable computational core within your own mental realm. It's crude, filled with errors and naive conjectures, and may even be incomplete or partially incorrect."
"But I believe that with your talent, you will be able to refine it and forge a path… one that even I have never seen — a completely new road."
Alan reached out with both hands to take the thin notebook.
It was light, almost weightless.
Yet the moment he held it, Alan felt as if he had lifted an invisible mountain, taking upon himself the future of the entire magical world.
He knew that from this moment onward — from the instant he grasped the concept of Authority — he had truly embarked on the most difficult and yet most glorious path toward the realm of the God of Magic.
~~----------------------
Patreon Advance Chapters:
[email protected] / Dreamer20