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

The old man chuckled.

produces, right? Depending on the Category of a Gate, it differs in potency and characteristics, spreads over a certain radius, and affects a certain volume of space.

prompting Professor Obel to give him

complicated than that, because it spreads not only through space, but also through time. So, if we 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 and

Sunny blinked.

exactly do you mean when you say that the impulse spreads through

looked at him and remained

imagine that someone threw a rock into that

was not hard to understand... however,

if I think about it in a different

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

and the neverending expanse of its countless strings, each stretching from nowhere to infinity.

what the old man was

subtle frown appeared on his

to think of it... does affinity to revelations, perhaps, work based on the

hesitated for a bit,

think

Professor Obel smiled.

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

He grimaced.

to understand even a little bit of the causality of the Spell is a daunting

old man's face

proved to be an