Shadow Slave

Chapter 879: Signs of Lightning

Sunny glanced at the old scientist with interest.

"Causality? Do you mean its reason?"

Professor Obel smiled.

"No, nothing so philosophical! What I mean is that we are exploring the cause and effect of various phenomena having to do with the Spell, as well as correlations between them. Of course, our study mainly has to do with the Nightmare Gates, but since nothing exists in isolation, we need to consider the system in its entirety."

Sunny considered his words for a while.

"Is this how you make the Obel Scale work?"

The old man shook his head with an amused look.

"That thing? No, not quite. The so-called "Obel Scale" is a primitive work that I and many talented colleagues of mine created in the early days of the Spell. It is relatively effective for what it is supposed to do, but the solution is purely practical. It can track and predict manifestation events, but does not shine a light on how and why they are happening. Back then, we had no time to ponder such things. We needed to come up with an immediate and effective measure, limited as it might be."

He sighed, and then said in a wistful tone:

"You see... a caveman can observe lightning and know that being hit by lightning is dangerous. Therefore, he can learn to recognize the signs of an approaching thunderstorm and take shelter from it. However, without understanding the principles of why and how lightning appears, a caveman cannot invent a lightning rod, build a Faraday cage, or harness the power of electricity. So, that is how our work here differs from the "Obel" Scale. That old solution is simply a tool to recognize the signs of a thunderstorm and assign a numerical value to the probability of a lightning striking in a particular spot, while we are trying to understand its principles."

Sunny listened to the elderly scientist attentively. When else would he get a chance to converse with someone so learned and knowledgeable? Luckily, Professor Obel seemed to either be fond of educating young people in general, or was simply in a talkative mood.

Deciding to use this chance to learn something new, Sunny asked:

the Obel Scale work,

The old man chuckled.

it's not too complicated. You are familiar with a pulse that the manifestation of a Nightmare Gate produces, right? Depending on the Category of a Gate, it differs in potency and characteristics, spreads over

tentatively nodded, prompting Professor Obel to give him a

know what to look for, we can detect faint aftershocks of a Gate impulse before it actually appears. Of course, that requires a vast and expensive network of sensors

Sunny blinked.

you mean when you say that the impulse spreads through

looked at him and remained

man. It always flows forward, from the past into the future, and we travel forward with its current. Now, imagine that someone threw a rock into that river. There would be ripples on its surface, wouldn't there? And those ripples, unlike the waters of the river itself, would travel both downstream and upstream. Hence, he can detect

but scratch his head. What Professor Obel said was not hard to understand... however, it was a

about it in a

harp. Someone plucked it in the middle, sending a vibration spreading both up and down. Downward was the furure,

Fate, and the neverending expanse of its countless strings, each stretching from nowhere to infinity. A certain event happened, making small

what the old

frown appeared

think of it... does affinity to

bit, and

I think I

Professor Obel smiled.

solution only observes the effect without understanding the cause. And the cause... why, it is much harder to comprehend. Truth be told, I don't think that humans like us can even conceive of it in its entirety. In fact, the predominant school of modern thought states that the Nightmare Spell is acausal by nature, meaning that

He grimaced.

anyway, trying to understand even a little bit of the causality of the Spell is a daunting task, so we limit

old man's face

that has proved to be an insurmountable task,