Chapter 203: The Beginning of the Disturbance |
Jared was the person in charge of Fallen Leaf Selections at the Northern Society. He had been in this line of work for eleven years.
In the beginning, he had been completely unknown, but after several years of hard work, he had successfully established his own curated publication.
Moreover, he had managed Fallen Leaf Selections fairly well. Aside from Snowflake Selections, the largest curated publication of them all, Fallen Leaf Selections was considered one of the biggest among the rest.
That day, he received a message from his good friend Alaric, who worked as a Reviewer at the Northern Society.
Messages like this usually meant that Alaric had discovered some important achievement and was sending word to the various curated publications.
Ordinarily, Alaric would not favor his friends. That was also one of the ways he made money. As long as he recommended a paper and a curated publication chose to adopt it, he could receive a sum of money.
Clearly, Jared’s friendship with Alaric was not close enough for Alaric to ignore such a considerable payment. But Alaric was not entirely someone who forgot old ties, either.
Whenever he came across some amusing papers, he would send the information to Jared alone, though most of the time it was simply to give his friend a laugh.
Many of those papers he sent separately were filled with utterly redundant ideas, such as adding three extra procedures to a process while leaving the raw materials unchanged, or making a single spell simultaneously perform both cooling and heating functions...
The papers that Alaric considered highly innovative were judged by a somewhat different standard when placed before professional evaluators like them.
Many papers that Alaric found excellent were hardly worth mentioning in Jared’s eyes, while the heads of other curated publications might still find them acceptable.
After all, everyone’s standards of judgment were different. It was perfectly normal for a paper to be published by one publication and rejected by another.
As usual, Jared opened the document Alaric had sent over.
The first title he saw was “Optimization of the White Star Sand Extraction Device.”
Just from reading the title, he could already imagine how significant this achievement must be.
He hurried out the door and made his way into the Mage Tower.
Jared went to a small room on the third floor and said to the person inside,
“Print me a copy of every paper up there. I want to take an early look.”
For people like them, who ran curated publications, there was one special privilege—they were allowed to view papers that had not yet passed review.
For a paper to be formally listed on the Mana Communication System of the Northern Society, it first had to pass multiple rounds of review. Content review was only secondary.
The most important part was checking whether the manuscript contained hidden patterns or magical markings with active effects.
Otherwise, once it was uploaded onto the Mana Communication System, if someone activated one of those hidden patterns, the consequences would be difficult to predict.
So even if a paper had already passed content review, it still had to go through the proper procedures. Only after its safety had been verified could it be uploaded onto the Mana Communication System.
This process usually took about half a month and was rather time-consuming. Nearly every paper had to go through it, without exception.
The heads of curated publications, however, could use that period to read the papers in advance and prepare their evaluations.
That way, when the paper was finally uploaded onto the Mana Communication System, the evaluation could be released almost at the same time.
Ordinarily, Jared had no need to be in such a hurry. After all, there were still fifteen days left. No matter what, that was enough time to write a review.
But merely seeing that title had already set his heart itching with impatience. So he came here at once and had all the papers currently under review printed out.
Since he was already here, he might as well print them all and save himself another trip later.
Carrying the stack of printed papers, Jared returned home and began reading them slowly on the sofa.
He first picked up the paper titled “Optimization of the White Star Sand Extraction Device.” After studying it on the sofa for a long while, he let out the same sigh of admiration Alaric had.
“The Society has produced another heavyweight achievement!”
“This will be a strong contender for the internal awards selection of the Alchemy School this time.”
Jared did not hesitate in the slightest to lavish praise upon the paper. He also felt that the achievement presented in it was simply too outstanding.
He set the paper on the table and let out a satisfied breath.
“The main feature of next month’s curated publication is settled.”
Generally speaking, choosing the main feature of each month’s curated publication was something that always gave him a headache.
Because calling the quality of the papers published each month “uneven” was already a compliment. More often than not, he could not even tell whether some of those things really counted as papers.
Sometimes, every single result published in a month was complete garbage, and curated publications like theirs could only announce a month of rest and publish nothing at all.
“But with this paper next month, even if everything else turns out to be garbage, we should still be able to put out an issue.”
Only after sighing in relief did he remember that he had brought back two papers. There was still one left unread.
After adjusting his emotions, he picked up the other one. Only then did he see its title: “A Mathematical Analysis of Fireball.”
The moment he saw it, his first guess was that this might be one of those papers Alaric had sent over for entertainment. What era was this already, and someone was still writing about Fireball?
But he could only continue reading first and see whether the paper had any potential to serve as a supporting feature in next month’s selection.
There was no helping it. Sometimes, those entertaining papers were still far better than the ones that just repeated common knowledge over and over again.
The moment he read the first line, his sitting posture unconsciously straightened, and his face tightened.
Soon, the only sound left in the spacious room was that of pages turning. He even held back his breathing.
Only when he reached the final line did he suddenly realize that cold sweat was dripping from his forehead, while his lungs heaved violently from lack of air.
He was not like Alaric, a mage who only knew a little about content review. Even as a researcher, Jared possessed a certain level of skill.
It was only because he had long since grown tired of the dull atmosphere of the laboratory that he had turned to working on curated publications instead.
And now, he had truly seen the value of this paper.
Its worth lay in the fact that it had derived a mathematical tool. Fireball was merely the author’s example. The truly powerful part was the mathematical theory it proposed.
Just from reading the paper in full, Jared could already think of countless ways to optimize various spells.
It could be said that once this paper was published, it would spur the emergence of many new achievements.
At that moment, he was incomparably excited. Papers of this caliber were usually so rare that one might not see even a single one in three years, yet now he had found two of them at once.
“Put the Fireball paper on the cover. Compared to this, White Star Sand extraction still falls a little short.”
After a brief moment of thought, he decided on the content layout for next month’s Fallen Leaf Selections.