Hyperdimensional Warlock

Chapter 4324 Creation
After the Spirit of the City explained in detail, Angor roughly understood what it meant by "energy self-circulation".

Simply put, the entire Fool's City is under the control of the City system.

It is similar to the "world consciousness" of the Fool's City, governing all aspects of the city.

Whether it's the changing weather, the replacement of grass seedlings, the construction of city buildings, the generation of streetlights and buses, or the auxiliary functions of the City of Learning... all of these are regulated by the City of Learning system.

Any form of regulation will consume the energy of the Academy City system.

Therefore, the City of Learning system must have an energy logic that enables it to achieve self-circulation.

In fact, the City of Learning system does indeed have such a self-circulating mechanism.

According to the Spirit of the City, when the number of people in the City increases and reaches a certain level, the City system will be able to achieve energy self-circulation.

This can be interpreted as the energy of the City of Knowledge system originating from the "residents" living there.

However, Angel still didn't quite understand where the specific energy came from, and the spirit of the city itself didn't know either... These were all things that appeared directly in its mind after it awoke.

All it knows is that the energy drawn by the City system will not affect the residents living here.

"It doesn't have any effect on the human body, but the more people there are, the more energy can achieve self-circulation?" Angel guessed that perhaps the energy supplied to the Academy system comes from the bioenergy of the living organisms themselves?
Or perhaps it's a kind of behavioral potential energy generated when residents are active, studying, and living within the school town?

Although he didn't know exactly what kind of energy it was, since it wouldn't affect the human body, Angel didn't intend to investigate further. Besides, there was no point in investigating now; if he really wanted to study it, he could wait until the City of Learning was at its peak.

Let's return to the current situation.

The energy self-circulation of the academy system can only reach equilibrium when there are more people in the future. Right now, there are only two or three people in the entire academy, which is obviously not enough for the academy system to achieve energy self-circulation.

The fact that the City system can operate normally today is actually consuming the system's energy reserves.

Once the energy is depleted, the City of Fools will be plunged into darkness, literally darkness.

"Mass production of the screen media mentioned by the Headmaster will inevitably consume the energy storage of the Academy System, which will cause the Academy to fall into a state of energy shortage ahead of schedule," said the Spirit of the Academy.

To some extent, this is due to insufficient production capacity.

Angell understood what he was hearing, but after listening, he still felt incredible about the energy self-circulation of the Academy System.

It's one thing to provide energy out of thin air, but to create things out of thin air?

Could it be that the powers of the Celestials have finally turned against him? Have they incorporated fantastical alchemy into the City of Fools?

If that's the case, then he understands why the Celestial Realm's powers insisted on making him the principal... He could solve the survival problem of the Pruxia civilization and also help him resolve the pain points of his utopian alchemy.
However, after inquiring in detail about "creation out of thin air" from the spirit of the Citadel, Angor discovered that it was quite different from the utopian alchemy he had imagined.

It's more like a directional mass-energy conversion.

It doesn't create matter out of thin air, but rather it uses the free energy within the city as a basis and reorganizes it according to a pre-set "matter template".

For example, when manufacturing a piece of glass, the Academy system first extracts the corresponding trace elements diffused in the air, then infuses it with the energy stored in the system, and through setting functional templates, reshapes these scattered particles into regular matter.

The whole process is more like "energy shaping and element aggregation" than a creative idea out of thin air.

Furthermore, the Spirit of the City explicitly stated that generating ordinary materials to meet daily needs is not a problem at present; however, it is very difficult to make the generated items reach the extraordinary level.

“It’s just difficult, not a complete denial, so does that mean it’s still possible?” Angell asked.

“It is possible, but it would require a massive amount of energy, which is absolutely impossible with current energy storage,” the Spirit of the Citadel explained. “Even if the energy storage were sufficient, there would still be limitations to creating extraordinary items.”

Angell: "What restrictions?"

The spirit of the city thought for a moment and replied, "Currently, we can only create six kinds of extraordinary items."

Angor was taken aback. He had previously thought the restriction was on the type of extraordinary items, but it turned out the Spirit of the City was referring to the quantity.

Which six?

The Spirit of the City: "I don't know. I only saw the shadows of six boxes in the core of the City system. Each box corresponds to a supernatural item. We'll only know what it is after it's created."

"Furthermore, there is a prerequisite for making them..."

"That means completing a special mission!"

Complete a special mission? Angor didn't understand what it meant at first, but after the Spirit of the City explained it in detail, he roughly understood.

These six extraordinary templates placed in the core of the Academy system are actually similar to Wonderland rewards.

Only those who complete certain special tasks in the fairy realm are qualified to create them, and then reward them to the person who completed the corresponding task.

In other words, am I transforming into an NPC and giving players quest rewards?

The so-called extraordinary items are actually magical artifacts from the fairy realm!
As for what those so-called special missions are, the spirit of the academy city doesn't know either. It seems that they will only appear after the academy city has developed to a certain level.

Angel: "You just said that we can only manufacture six extraordinary items at present; does that mean it's possible to manufacture more in the future?"

The Spirit of the City: "I don't know, but after I woke up, there was some residual information in my mind that told me that it is possible for the number of extraordinary templates in the future City system to increase."

But even the spirit of the city didn't know exactly how to increase it.

Angel nodded knowingly. How could it be increased? Most likely, it would be through the direct infusion of the power of the Immortal Realm.

“I understand what you mean. With the current energy storage of the Academy City system, it is not possible to produce screen media in large quantities.” Angell said, “Then let’s not rush to deploy it in large quantities. Let’s meet the needs of the faculty and staff first. After all, given the students’ current situation, even if they get the screen media, they won’t be able to use it right now.”

Future enrollment will definitely focus on Prussians, who were initially just empty shells and couldn't use the screen media.

Therefore, we should first meet the needs of faculty and staff, and then discuss the use of the students once they have regained their initiative.

The spirit of the university city thought for a moment: "If we only need to meet the needs of faculty and staff, the energy storage should be sufficient."

Creating a medium that can support the Academy City subsystem is not particularly difficult.

"Then let's make five first. One for me, Breda, Water Tower, Lawrence, and Mona."

The spirit of the city paused for two seconds, then asked in confusion, "Make it now?"

Angel nodded emphatically: "I still need to issue missions, so I definitely need to do it now."

The spirit of the city thought about it and agreed. In order to release those ten missions, they had to create them first.

The problem now is, how exactly should this so-called screen medium be designed? And how can the academic subsystem be displayed on the screen medium?

After some discussion, Angor and the Spirit of the Citadel decided to each solve half of the problem.

Ingres designed the shape of the screen media.

The spirit of the Academy City was tasked with resolving the "manifestation" problem of the Academy City subsystem.

In terms of difficulty, the Spirit of the City is definitely much more difficult; but there's no way around it. Although Angor has jurisdiction over the City system, he doesn't understand how to operate it at all, while the Spirit of the City is similar to an AI born from the City system, and it has an advantage over Angor in this regard.

In the following time, Angor and the Spirit of the City each solved their own problems.

……

How should the shape of the screen media be designed?
Angel's first thought was the Mother Tree Interconnector. As a mature controller in the Dream Wilderness, its interaction system—the Mother Tree Network—is similar to the City of Academia system in some ways.

However, after careful consideration, Angell ultimately rejected the proposed shape of the mother tree interconnector. After all, its shape wasn't perfect; it was only shaped to fit the limitations of the materials available.

The screen media manufactured by the Academy system is not limited by materials and can even be made incredibly thin and portable.

Given this, Angell's ideas must be even bolder.

Then he thought of holographic tablets.

The strategy for perfecting the City system that he just described to the City Spirit was based on the holographic tablet. As a mature design of Earth's civilization, it was certainly more suitable for his explanation.

However, the key to holographic tablets is "holographic projection and projection touch control," which requires deep integration with the Xuecheng system and may even require a long period of debugging to achieve.

Therefore, directly adopting the shape of a holographic tablet is definitely not appropriate.

Let's think about an even earlier design, such as an earlier version of a holographic tablet—a touch tablet and a smartphone.

After a moment's thought, Angell decided to go down the "mobile phone" route.

Because... it's easier to carry.

After having a general idea, Angell quickly designed the shape.

Its shape is a thin, rectangular crystal plate.

The edges are rounded, so it fits the curve of your knuckles perfectly in your palm without digging in. The front is a single piece of transparent crystal panel with no extra buttons, as clean as a piece of frozen moonlight. The back is engraved with a large "X".

In Ingres's vision, the position of this "X" is the emblem of the academic city.

The school emblem has not yet been designed, so we're using an "X" as a placeholder for now.

The design process didn't end there.

Angell was also responsible for designing the user interface for the Academy subsystem.

This is relatively simple. When Angel used illusions to demonstrate before, he had already shown the interfaces of the "Forum" and "Subforum".

Now all we need to do is copy it.

Angell spent half an hour completing the design of the exterior and user interface.

On the other hand, it took the Spirit of the City two whole hours to barely understand the “manifestation” logic of the City system.

This is all thanks to the fact that the Xuecheng system itself has the characteristic of autonomously adapting instructions.

Most of the adaptation work was completed automatically by the Academy City system through deduction and iteration, without the need for the Academy City Spirit to debug it step by step.

If the spirit of the Citadel were to dismantle the old underlying logic and reconstruct the manifested links on its own, it would probably take several days or even longer to get the hang of it.

Then, Angell and the Spirit of the City spent several more hours making various adaptations, and finally came up with the initial blueprint for the "City Crystal".

— “Xuecheng Jingyi” is the official name that Angell gave it.

After completing all the preliminary work, the next step is to hand it over to the Academy system to create things out of thin air.

“Let’s make two first,” Angell said.

The original plan was to make five, to include all the faculty and staff currently in the school city.

But after thinking about it, he decided to reduce it to two.

One for myself, and one for Mona.

Mona is essential because the task of designing the school emblem requires her to use the Crystal Instrument.

As for the others, Angell plans to wait until Mona designs the school badge, then paint the icon on the back of the crystal device before manufacturing it.

“Okay, shall we manufacture it here?” the Spirit of the Citadel asked.

Does creation require a specific location?

"No, but if you want to pursue a sense of ritual, Principal, you can go to the special creation room."

"The City of Academia has a Creation Room? Where is it?" Angell asked curiously.

The Spirit of the Citadel: "There is no creation chamber yet, but one can be generated by consuming energy..."

Angell: "..."

A creation room—that sounds like a huge building, doesn't it? You don't seem to care about the energy consumption when creating structures?

Angel thought to himself, "Fine, I'll just generate it here."

As for the sense of ritual, we'll talk about that when it becomes more widespread.

"Yes, as the principal wishes."

The spirit of the city responded, its voice spreading from the void.

Immediately afterwards, Angel felt a faint, shimmering white light emanating from the air around him. Countless tiny energies were drawn together by an invisible force, converging in mid-air into two palm-sized cocoons of light.

Although the cocoon of light covers the entire outer shell, the square and rounded outline inside the cocoon can still be faintly seen.

Clearly, it contained the crystal device he designed.

Inside the cocoon of light, silver-blue energy particles surged, collided, and recombined wildly, slowly filling the outline under Angor's gaze, just like birds building their nests.

Moreover, it is actually filled with energy particles.

When the energy particles completely fill the space, a certain transformation of mass-energy occurs.

The entire creation process was silent, with only the faint light of matter and energy flowing in alternating between light and shadow, exuding an ultimate sense of order. The silver-blue substance was continuously compressed and solidified within the cocoon of light, the hazy light layer gradually solidified, and the light slowly receded.

About five minutes later.

The light cocoon in mid-air finally solidified to a certain degree.

Even with the naked eye, one can see the distinctly shadowed, square outline inside the cocoon of light.

Clearly, creation is nearing its end.

As expected, a moment later the two cocoons of light suddenly disintegrated, turning into fine dust that fell down, while the two crystal instruments remained steadily suspended in mid-air.

(End of this chapter)