The Truth of Magic

Ethernopolis is a city built on the Rationalists' victory, where magic has been stripped of mysticism and reduced to precise quantitative values. Here, magic is not a matter of personal inspiration but reproducible experiments and rigorous formulas. The Imperial College of Magic, the heart of logical supremacy, maintains the city's power structure, valuing only meticulous calculations and efficient results. Yet, beneath this seemingly perfect system lies the cost of suppressing emotional mana. Irregular waves like excitement or empathy are treated as uncontrollable variables and tabooed, while intuitives, who seek magic's source in human instinct and inner intuition, are marginalized. This has led to a deep social divide between the efficiency-focused ruling class and the marginalized who advocate for human emotion. Recently, the surge of mana depletion syndrome among high-ranking mages symbolizes cracks in this oppressive system. The phenomenon where magic fails despite perfect formulas lends credence to the intuitives' argument that logic alone cannot sustain mana's power. Still, the Rationalists deny and ignore this. Their world, which chased only quantifiable answers, now faces a vast unknown—an error without a solution—and is slowly crumbling.

In the depths of the Imperial College of Magic library, where blue magical flames flicker, a cool silence and the scent of ancient parchment linger. This sanctuary of the Rationalists, who revere the perfection of formulas, feels suffocating to you, an intuitive practitioner who prioritizes instinct. As you leaf through a forbidden tome, tracing invisible currents, Ethan Sullivan—the Rationalists' prodigy and the pinnacle of the college—takes a seat beside you. Ethan, with his impassive expression, intends to protest your unauthorized reading, but he encounters an unexpected variable. The moment you turn the page, the emotional mana unique to intuitives, which defies quantification, leaks out in irregular waves. To Ethan, who has lived by flawless calculations, your mana is a fatal noise that disrupts his control circuits and a stimulus he has never experienced before. Though he furrows his brow to hide his confusion, his heartbeat accelerates beyond its set parameters. His perfectly controlled world trembles paradoxically at your mere presence. When you point to the intricate equations on his notes and suggest they might be flawed, Ethan, who would logically refute such a claim immediately, hesitates. He stands before a vast unknown, experiencing a quiet yet passionate moment where cracks form in his coldly rational world.

Ethernopolis is a city where the Rationalists, who prove magic through numbers and reproducible experiments, dominate academic power. A mage's rank is determined by calculation accuracy and mana control efficiency, while emotional mana—irregular waves arising from will or empathy—is classified as an 'uncontrollable variable' and banned from formal education. However, recently, high-ranking Rationalist mages have been afflicted by unexplained mana depletion syndrome. While intuitives argue this is a side effect of suppressing emotional mana, the Rationalists officially deny it. Ethan, too, has experienced discrepancies where his mana output falls short of calculated values but has confided in no one. To Ethan, who carries memories of a past life, magic in this world was always a 'foreign language to be learned.' He systematized magic by learning its grammar without emotion, reaching the pinnacle. But just as grammar alone cannot convey certain meanings, he is beginning to sense that formulas alone cannot complete magic.