While everyone was in the living room, Sophia had gotten the tablets she and Maya bought in the old world out of her storage, and the sisters showed how they worked to everyone. Chloe was very impressed by how far technology had advanced since she left about 20 years ago. The wolves were a little more confused, though, as it really looked like, to an outsider at least, that magic very well existed in the world they came from. They somehow could convince them that magic, in the way they know it, definitely isn’t a thing, but it was also hard for them to explain how the technology worked because it's rather complex.
“Alright, should we get to the next thing we got?” Everyone was still playing with the two tablets, but Sophia slowly wanted to continue because they had bought many more things, after all. “It’s camera time!” Saying so, she pulled a couple of boxes out of her storage again. It was the main camera she bought, the instant print one, and many accessories, including the paper for the instant one.
"Eh…?" Fen got confused again while he looked at the boxes and the pictures on them. “It looks so different than the, uhh… tablet? You said that also had a camera thing?”
"Ahh…" The tiger scratched her cheek. "The tablet from earlier has another main function. Its selling point is the big display you can use to look at pictures, for example. They just crammed a camera in there because… because they could. This is a standalone camera you use purely to take pictures. They’re of much better quality.”
“I see?”
“Think of the tablet as activation word magic. Pretty versatile, easy to use, and you can do most moderately well with it. The camera is highly focused chantless magic designed to do one thing perfectly.”
“Ohh!” Somehow, this seemed to have made sense to him.
“We’re going to take so many pictures!” Sophia sounded really excited about it. "Maybe not today, though…" She noticed that it had already long gotten dark. “I guess we can save the cameras for tomorrow. In the end, it’s just a much fancier version of what the tablets can do, after all.”
“The tablets also are about to run out of battery, so, the instant one aside, we also have nothing to look at the pictures on. Not to mention that setting up the cameras would also probably empty their batteries." Steph agreed that playing with them right now wouldn’t lead to the desired outcome. “You also bought solar generators with battery storage, right? How about we check them out now? They’re kinda essential for everything, after all.”
“True, but…” The tiger then looked out of the window again. “I doubt we’ll be getting much of a charge out of that.” She then pointed at the pitch-black darkness outside.
“Yeah, but the batteries of the generator should be at least 50% or more charged, as well. That stuff really doesn’t like to be fully empty, after all. If you really got as much capacity as you claimed you did, that should last us for a loooong time!”
“Ohh!” Sophia’s face lit up again. “That’s true! Let’s try them next!” She jumped off the sofa in high spirits and then looked at Maya. "Can you help me get all the boxes out of the storage? It was quite a lot of boxes."
"The many and somewhat heavy ones we bought in the camping store, right?” She tilted her head in response before also getting up. “Sure!” Afterward, the couple stepped into the portal, and a few minutes later, half of the living room was littered with boxes.
“That’s even more than I thought! Just how much did you spend?!” Once the dog-girl got a good look at everything, her eyes grew wide. “That must’ve been a fortune!”
“That is a pretty good description of how much money I left in that store…” Sophia reacted with a small sigh.
“No kidding!” Steph raised her voice a little.
“Well, we went shopping with the intention of getting rid of all the money we had because we were sure that we couldn’t come back to get more or replacements, so…”
“Yeah, that’s fair enough. I probably would’ve done the same. I haven't seen any solar generators myself, so I'm also looking forward to this!
“Oh, that’s no good…” The blonde’s expression suddenly changed. “I was counting on your expertise here! I have no idea how any of this works or is even put together!"
“I’m sure it comes with a manual.”
“R-Right!”
“Then again, manuals are nowadays often just an online link to a video or something like that…" The little sister also got a little awkward. "W-Well, I've always been the learning-by-doing type, so it'll be fine!"
“Uh-oh…” For some reason, Sophia didn’t seem to be relieved in the slightest.
“Let’s go!” Steph ignored her and energetically started opening the first box.
----------------
After a little over an hour, a ton of boxes, and packaging material, together with a mess of cables later, the sisters seemed to be finally done setting everything up.
"Thank everything holy that it came with a manual that even included pictures…” The tiger sounded slightly tired.
“Ahaha… Well, I think it was pretty plug-and-play for the most part.” The dog-girl looked a little more confident. “Okay, connecting the solar panels was a good bit of pain with how you have to connect them in a certain way with a mess of adapters…" She was somewhat confident about it.
“Why did you two want to plug in all those solar panels in the first place? It’s not like those will do anything right now.” Chloe tilted her head while staring out of the dark window. “It’s amazing that those are somewhat portable now, though! It’s a great idea to make them foldable!”
“Because I wanted to see how everything goes together!” Steph had an easy explanation for her.
“Okay, I can accept that.”
“It’s not like you joined us halfway in and were just as excited about it as Plushie, after all.” The blonde was a big fan of the nickname.
“A-Ah.”
“What is all that…?” Fen was confused a lot today already, and the array of new and weird-looking things wasn't making it any better.
"Any electronic device needs something called electricity.” Steph tried to explain it to him. “All those square boxes are something we call batteries. They're used to storing it. Electricity can be generated in many ways, but we’re going to use solar power here. In easy, very easy, terms, it uses the sun's light to generate it. It then gets stored in the batteries, and we can later use it in the electronic devices even when there is no sun anymore.”
“I see…” Aura was the one who nodded in return. “Long story short, magic is called electricity in your old world, and all of you are just in denial?” She had her very own explanation for all the weird-sounding things she had heard just now.
“…” The sisters and Chloe paused for a moment. “I mean… Sure, why not…” They gave up.
“There are many logical explanations, scientific proof, natural occurrences as examples, but…”
“Same goes for our magic here.” Aura had no intention of letting Steph have this.
“Did our world have magic…?” The brainwashing was working, and she looked at her older sister with a questioning expression. “I mean, if we really want to, we can also create electricity with our own body by converting movement… It’s just incredibly low and negligible in general terms.”
“Same goes for the magic power of humans in this world.” Fen had to use this chance.
“…”
“W-We still aren’t able to create something out of nothing like we can do with magic here, so…” Sophia was grasping for the last straw she had. “Also, let’s just ignore our old world! It’s a bad place, so let’s just enjoy some of the few good things here, and we’re good!”
“Sure~.” The wolves took it as their win.
"Hmm…" While all this was happening, Chloe started staring at the solar panels again with a curious expression.
“What’s up?” Noticing that, Sophia then addressed her.
“Does it have to be sunlight?”
“What do you mean?” She needed a little more context.
“Light magic to use on the panels.” The fox-girl tilted her head. “If you put some power into it, it has some, well… real power. It can be blindingly bright, and it even radiates some warmth. If used right, it can feel exactly the same as being hit with the warm rays of the comfy afternoon sun. There's a high chance it has the same properties and can be used to generate electricity through the solar panels…."
“Ohh!” The tiger liked the sound of that. “Let’s try that!” Looking really motivated about the idea, she moved in front of the six huge solar panels they had unfolded on the other side of the room and concentrated for a moment. Soon after, a big ball of pure light formed above the panels and brightly illuminated the whole room. It even made the surroundings feel warmer, as well.
"Woah!” A few moments later, once Steph was done being amazed by the show, her eyes grew even wider when she looked at the two base stations of the solar generators. “They’re each charging with about 1000 watts! The panels can apparently do 350 each, so it’s basically maxed out!”
“Seriously?! That’s amazing!”
“First: Ouch, my eyes!” Maya wasn’t a fan of the sudden brightness and was covering her eyes. “Second: What does that mean?”
“Ahaha….” Hearing that, she turned off the light again and smiled at her girlfriend. “It means we have unlimited electricity! We’ll be able to easily run and use everything we bought in the other world without having to worry!”
“Yay!” That was all she needed to know.
“Alrighty! That went even better than expected!" Sophia's mood was excellent. "How about we clean up a bit? The boxes and packaging material ended up everywhere, after all. After that, we can continue with the other stuff we got!”
“Okay!” Everyone agreed with her, and the group made the living room livable again before they could finally focus on the main attraction, the TV. Maya disagreed with that being the most important thing they got, but that was a different story.
Really, what is magic? It's all a matter of definition, I guess. Also, whether or not you can explain it, so... uhh...
Can’t they chuck the solar panels and stuff in a cordoned off room in the basement and have them charging all the time?, that way it’s not visible to anyone they don’t want to know about it, and they can just have a plug socket available to charge?
@Jessy That was/is the plan. Not sure if I mentioned that in an upcoming chapters or still just an idea, tho xDD
Get advanced enough science and it is magic
"it's only magic until you figure out how it works. Then it's science."
So by that definition, both worlds have magic and are heavily reliant on science, but the science on earth is far inferior xD
@Seiden how the hell is earth inferior? While they don’t have as high individual strength, the strength as a whole could probably wipe out the beastmen with ease. Nukes etc are far stronger. And the people of idk the name of the world, Teanam name it properly already, might have higher individual strength, but their technological advancements so far are heated floors and a magical oven. Demons are probably further ahead, but I don’t think they will have things like tablets or tvs and movies etc.
@Jessy But at least the people of Teanams world (except humans) don't destroy the environment at a large scale to get what they need to advance.
@Jessy partly what @Asatur said, but I was also including advancements that will be made in the very near future. We took less than a century to go from our best communication being centrally controlled hardwired telephones to the entire f*cking world being connected with each other, and what did we do it with? Glorified light switches.
Now think. I doubt it'll even take a month for Sophia to spark the information age in the Capital, and maybe half a year for it to be spread to the demon continent. It took less than a century for us to get from on average, their technological level right now, to having dozens of times more computers than people on earth. Just how fast do you think they'll advance with scientists actually being supported by the government without the threat of war behind them. Not to mention, we use glorified light switches. They have the equivalent of a very obliging, sentient fundamental particle instead.
To throw even more fuel on the fire, (@Teanam please correct me if I'm wrong in my interpretation of this function) magic learns and REMEMBERS. Computers will be able to be simplified to a simple spell at some point. Sure, the speed and capacity will be dependent on the caster's authority, but anyone who can use magic will have a computer anytime, anywhere. And I'm sure that to go with that, there will be ways for people to attach to a "dock" that expands their capabilities.
Just imagine the Information Age except without the limit on bits, the difficulty programming, the difficulty in starting mass production, the difficulty in developing hardware (to a great extent) and without the classic assholery and idiocy of humans involved.
Although they haven't actually assembled computers yet, their starting point is astronomically further forward than we are right now. As soon as they get their Babbage equivalent, I'd be stunned if it took them more than five years to catch up with, or surpass us.
Also for the record, Sophia literally accidently almost destroyed the entire continent, and that's a conservative estimate. Sure we could obliterate the entire world with nukes, but it would take far more than one. Not to mention, that's predicated on them actually detonating. Even without Sophia and her crowd, as long as they had any idea of what was coming, the beastpeople definitely have the means to intercept or prevent them from detonating. with any one of Sophia's party added into the equation, let alone Sophia herself, the idea of a nuke actually successfully detonating and causing damage anywhere near the Capital is ridiculous.
@Seiden Not only wouldn't you get the thing anywhere near the capital, you would actually endanger Ellie and Maya, which in turn would endanger your whole nation. I doubt there is anything, what could stop an ANGRY Sophia...
@Jessy
Nukes etc are far stronger.
Uh, no. They are mostly limited by using it poorly, Maya should naturally have had enough juice to match any useful warhead and the wolves should be able to match the kind of destruction caused by larger test detonations. They just don't need the kind of destruction a magical recreation of an overpressure event would cause
@Kaithar They have no RADAR or similar at all to detect intercontinental missiles to get early warning. so they have to deal with a dozen reentry warheads dropping at many mach right on top of them.
Sure people like Sophia are strong as hell, and would probably survive personally. but she is only detecting mana etc with her own scanning. so she wouldn't notice the warheads dropping on top of them. she then also wouldn't have time to throw up a shield to protect the squishy people around them.
Outside of Sophia's group of stupidly strong beings, the average citizen wouldn't have enough personal strength to hold up a shield capable of blocking all deadly effects a nuke would put out.
The only chance they would have is that the overseers would probably step in at that point. Which they wouldn't even let get to that stage, as they would take the nukes out of play long before they would ever get launched.
@Jessy Oh, you mean being attacked by nukes, that's a different kettle of fish.
Firstly, ICBMs aren't trivial to build, and certainly not something that can be created without people noticing. It's highly unlikely a world with no electronics tech could build such a thing and they certainly don't have the tech to build anything close to a nuke. Heck, that lack of radar you mentioned means that you can't even track a test launch to build the necessary rocket tech. They'd have to some how fake the guidance tech when they likely don't even have accurate enough mapping tech to specify the target to hit. And forget MIRVs, those are even more technically problematic to build.
But let's assume they some how manage to acquire ICBMs with nuclear warheads from our world (something impossible on half a dozen different levels) and the means to operate them (another half dozen impossibilities)... they still wouldn't be worth a damn against Sophia. As long as she can sense the high speed object during a re-entry, which seems likely given something moving that fast would probably cause a rather noticeable mana signature purely due to kinetic physics, she can stop time and deal with them at leisure.
Anything entering the atmosphere after travelling any distance should be a large, hot, super-sonic object causing all kinds of "interesting" chemistry, anything less either won't survive re-entry or lacks the horizontal velocity to remain sub orbital for any length of time. I'm going to assume something like that would, even if it's purely from the atmospheric bow wave, generate a similar shockwave in the atmospheric mana that would travel much faster.
@Kaithar AS far as i can tell from reading past comments, this entire conversation is pitting OUR earth against the beast men, without fully fledged overseers reacting.
We have seen nothing that would indicate physical non-magic materials interacting with atmospheric mana. (but that's my conjecture, and ANY ASSUMPTION for it is probably wrong unless Teanam says so)
But lets work on the assumption that it DOES interact with atmospheric mana in the same way it would interact with the atmosphere, even WE can not intercept warheads as they fall, and we have radar and COMPUTERS to react to them. if the mana reacts in the same way as air, then any chance to see the effect would be similar to seeing the air shock wave / radar signatures.
Sophia has decidedly not seen what multi-warhead nuclear ICBM's look like on reentry to be able to recognize what they would look like if they DID show up on her "radar". which i DON'T believe atmospheric mana DOES show up on her "radar" as she targets both living things and their potential for magic.
An modern ICBM heads into a sub orbital arc, and just before re-entering, drops somewhere between 5 and a dozen nuclear warheads. These warheads are built to survive re-entry. which given their small size, is trivial with current technology. upon which they will air burst somewhere between a few KM and a dozen KM.
Even if Sophia DID notice something falling into the atmosphere, HOW would she tell what it is, that it was a threat of such a scale to begin with, and realize that she needed a large scale barrier to protect the whole city instead of just where they were falling towards.
Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles are INTERCONTINENTAL. AKA can be fired from the other side of the planet. even with Sophia being BS right not, she does not have the range to detect the launch.
Hell, even us, with all the modern technology we have, cant easily intercept ICBM's simply because to do so, you have to knock them out before leave the atmosphere, as once they have split, its stupidly hard to target them. and even if you do realize that the rocket that just launched was a nuclear one, actually hitting the rocket is stupidly hard, because it accelerates to near orbital speeds stupidly quickly.
Modern ICBM's can hit anywhere on the planet and glass it in less than 10 minutes. Most of those 10 minutes is speeding up to get out of the atmosphere, and by the time the individual warheads reached Sophia's "radar" range, she would only have a minute or two to 1. notice the re-entry warheads, 2. recognize that they ARE re-entry warheads, 3. snap out of the shock she would likely enter if she figured it out in time, 4. Stop time before they explode, as to do so after they explode would already be too late for those at ground zero, and 5. notice that not all of the launched ICBM's and re-entry warheads would be falling close enough for her to notice, since why would they target only one city at a time, and 6. move the bombs somewhere safe, probably off planet, or put up shields around everything if she was too late.
In conclusion, Sophia wouldn't notice the launch, and wouldn't recognize what the multiple reentry warheads were, wouldn't notice the mana reacting like air from the reentry, wouldn't HEAR the re-entry, wouldn't know how big the threat from the re-entry was to react properly, would be highly unlikely to recognize, assign a threat level internally, then act, before kaboom. Until Sophia herself has some form of omniscience, such as an ability to scry, She would have no way of identifying what something is from a distance, her current "radar" is only able to see magical potential and not atmospheric mana. and unless she was looking up at the same time as they were falling, she wouldn't see anything wrong in the atmospheric mana, and even if she was, she would have to look through KM of mana to see fluctuations in it.
@Jessy Yeah, but you can't just import one piece of tech in isolation or import the whole military system and not expect anyone to notice... things don't work like that. Anyway...
We have seen nothing that would indicate physical non-magic materials interacting with atmospheric mana. (but that's my conjecture, and ANY ASSUMPTION for it is probably wrong unless Teanam says so)
I went back and reread some of the earlier chapters and based on those her detection magic is reacting to any source of magic while in active mode, but Fen and Aura both directly mention "Danger Detection" as the passive mode... only very little is actually dangerous to our chaos group. Based on the description of how she got Maya to learn water magic, she absolutely can sense atmospheric activity if she wants, though she's probably filtering it out most of the time. Consider that in chapter 34 Fen was able to spot arrow traps in the wall, which are considerably less threatening, smaller and not even moving yet.. I see no reason they wouldn't sense an ICBM coming. Particularly since, if you bother to go watch a video of one doing re-entry, you can see the damn things coming if you're looking in the right direction.
even WE can not intercept warheads as they fall, and we have radar and COMPUTERS to react to them.
I'm beginning to think you're not actually familiar with these weapons... when they're falling is normally the only time we CAN intercept them. They're somewhat slow while launching, but generally you're not close enough to hit them then. They're way too fast and hard to spot while they're sub-orbital outside the atmosphere, even if you wanted to intercept them the relative velocity makes it a waste of time. When they're re-entering they're mostly ballistic and decelerating (terminal velocity is proportional to altitude) so that's the easiest time to hit them with a... what do they call them, "kinetic disruptor"? Basically you fire a bunch of boring rockets at them and let the impact wreck them. I think pessimistic ratings give 10% odds for intercept, so they fire way more interceptors than re-entry vehicles. It's still possible though, just never tried for real.
Sophia's detection range... not been put into numbers recently, she was at 50km and increasing back in chapter 78, but she can't pick up the village, so I'm guessing she's at something like 70-80km right now? Certainly enough to detect a high energy signature with plenty of time to react. The crater from back when she blew up the maze with a simple fireball was a dozen km across, as was the darkness field she used against the human army, and the frozen lake seemed to be more than a dozen km across from the description. She's quite capable of taking out a strike via brute force, half the group probably could, even if she didn't stop time and deal with it surgically.
Your timing is also way off. If I remember my timings, modern stuff takes something like 2 minutes to make orbit, 6 to 8 minutes to travel around a quarter of the way round the planet, and another minute or so between re-entry and detonation. Normal LEO orbital period is on the order of 90 minutes or something, you can do it quicker if you're sub orbital but you definitely can't hit "anywhere" in less than 10 minutes. Hypersonic glide might cut down the travel somewhat, if it ever gets to a mass deployment state, but 10 minutes is still around the time for a launch from Russia to make it through the Arctic circle or across Europe.
And it's not like she needs to recognise what the stupid things even are... anything coming in from space with enough mass to survive re-entry would be a considerable threat. Magic would make her aware of it, because that's what magic does in this world.
@Kaithar I was just guessing time based on half remembered videos from a while ago. And i should probably look up a video of what an incoming ICBM would look like. But as far as i remember from the story, her magical radar is for things putting out magic themselves, and she can only see atmospheric mana with her eyes. But i might be misremembering things again.
I don't think it would be possible to steal just a nuke to import it, if only because beast-men don't have the most effective shields available, and guns are still deadly. i was imagining something like there suddenly being a nuclear silo that launches at the beast men. though i do think that even if a whole country suddenly appeared on the planet, the beast men wouldn't learn about it without overseer's telling them, since their mobility and speed of communication is horrible. they don't have any way to quickly get word from one side of the planet to another, or to tell if something major happens on the other side of the planet, they don't even know where the demons are, nor what has happened with them recently. Hell, they had to send beast men on horses to get a message to the human capital.
my posts are mostly for fun coming up with interesting things with little to no dedicated research, though i do like arguing my point based on half remembered things if people cant come up with good counter arguments. EDIT: i do argue longer than i should on points that hindsight say are false when i get riled up someone told me i was wrong xD
I do however know for a fact that this scenario wouldn't work, even without Overseer intervention because Teanam said so in a discord.
@Jessy I actually did look it up to be be sure, Canir's pretty clear that there's mana/magic in everything, and the process for actually using magic involves sensing and controlling that mana. Besides, given how Canir said that magic is intelligent, loose on exact detail, and able to learn, I would expect her detection magic to warn her of things that can threaten her even if they weren't in the list of things that it's supposed to warn her about. Magic wouldn't want some of its favourite users getting hurt, after all.
One of the rather more difficult parts of ICBMs, even the early basic ones, is targeting things with them. Modern ones use satellite positioning and some pretty sophisticated digital maps, but without those things you'd need incredibly accurate maps. If you want to send something 100+km up and 1000+km away to hit a target 10km across, you need insanely precise calculations based on the precise distance and direction to the target, the shape of the planet, its rotation speed, gravitational anomalies, and so on. Doing that without a bunch of test flights is just impossible.
On the plus side, looking for the mechanics of how their detection magic worked provided a great excuse to reread a bunch of early chapters, so no regrets there.
@Kaithar Funnily enough, you remembered/found some stuff around Sophia's abilities even I forgot about xD
Some of them will be pretty handy once we get to the real reason all this isn't possible~. Parts of the established things are a build-up for that, after all.
@Kaithar All that was said? How much have I forgotten.
@Jessy In Sophias wise words: Yes.
I really did go back to like the single digit chapters and Maya's training to find references lol. That Forsaken Maze she blew up was a useful one.
Also, I may have spent more time than I needed rereading Ellie chapters
@Kaithar Make that too little time for rereading Ellie chapters!!
@CosmicWolf There is never enough Ellie time, that is mathematically impossible
@CosmicWolf well most of those bits had nothing to do with what I was searching for, read them anyway :p
@Kaithar Understandable, especially if it has to do with our little striped ball of cuteness