Mysteries: Arcana Wars

"Yes, beggar!

"A beggar who has a huge problem even surviving!

"This is the great Mr. Kondra Tesla!"

Felix laughed crazily and slapped the cold iron rod vigorously until his hoarse laughter turned into a meaningless dry trumpet and then fell silent again.

"So, ma'am, what do you expect a beggar with no money to live on? Change the world? Come up with electromagnetism? Huh? You must be kidding!

"Madam, please ask yourself, if at the end of the Fifth Epoch, when people still relied on the Russell steam engine, an old, weird, dirty beggar who couldn't even read or write Loen suddenly came to your door and told you that magnetic fields can generate electricity, and electricity can also generate magnetic fields, and that he has a complete set of theories called electromagnetism, which will lead mankind to a brighter future, would you believe it?

“Even if you can believe that what this old beggar said is true, will this society and the entire academic community regard all of this as true academic guidance, rather than the nonsense of a vagrant madman?

"What's more, it is said that at the end of the Fifth Age, the church tightened its policies and even arrested those who spoke too abnormally. If Mr. Kondra really published his "Kondra Tesla Says", do you think the first person to find him would be the university professor or the church's religious police?

"But the fact is that in that era, a beggar couldn't make his voice heard at all."

Felix sighed.

"Mr. Kondra is a tenacious man. It is hard to imagine how he survived the Doomsday Disaster and came to the Sixth Epoch under such harsh conditions, and how he learned to read and write Loenese, and even found enough manuscript paper to record everything he knew, and successfully passed on the Tesla Code and the book to the next generation.

“Not long after completing Thus Spoke Kondra Tesla, Mr. Kondra passed away. The bright moon of the Sixth Epoch was beautiful, but he was unable to see it for several years.

“A beggar’s son is still a beggar, but if we want to speak out, we can’t remain beggars forever.”

Felix was silent for a moment, playing with the gold coin with the portrait of his ancestor in his hand, and looking at the magnificent auditorium in the distance.

"From being a beggar who couldn't make a living on the streets to having enough money to support a college student to complete his studies in Backlund, this journey took our family more than two hundred years."

He raised his hand and held up a copper coin towards the bright white moon.

"Now, we can finally speak out and let the world hear our voices.

"But they told me that the tower we were going to build was actually precarious from the very beginning. The so-called tower leading to the future was actually just a pile of illegal buildings piled with construction waste on top of bubbles and ruins. In front of those extraordinary forces, our efforts and struggles seemed so ridiculous.

"Scholars believe that there will be a stable and unchanging ultimate truth in this world, but because of those extraordinary things and magic, those so-called ultimate truths have lost their persuasiveness: How can we know whether the theories we are currently exploring are the truth of this world or the product of distortion by extraordinary forces?

"Or have we lost all the truth forever, because all truth can be tampered with?"

At this point, Felix's voice began to tremble.

"Now, I have just begun to explore Mr. Condra's treasure, but the book he left us has an end. When our descendants reach the end of the guidance, seeing the abyss and cliffs that are bottomless and cannot be crossed, where should they go when they lose their direction?

“If this path is destined to be fruitless, should we continue to pursue it?”

Felix fell into depression again. Like other people of his age, he was seized by a sense of absurd fear and powerlessness from the future, which gave him a vague sense of urgency about distant things that might not happen to him. This panic would then reverse time and affect what people were doing in the present.

The old woman sighed, as if she understood the thoughts of these young people very well. Then she relaxed herself like Felix and leaned back in her chair lazily.

"I'm curious, how did such a great inheritance take place?" the old woman asked. "In that turbulent era, there was no difference between a book and a pile of paper. This carrier seemed too fragile for such great knowledge."

"Tesla is our mother tongue, and we were taught to speak it at home when we were young. Like other minority children, if we don't learn our mother tongue well, our parents will beat and scold us.

“As for the book ‘Thus Spoke Kondra Tesla’, if there is paper, copy it again as a backup, and if one copy is damaged, there will be other copies.

“This knowledge is advanced and dangerous, so our ancestors’ last words tell us that we must not rely on external transmissions to ensure continuity, otherwise we will be targeted by the church as heretics before we grow up.

“On top of that, we have another layer of insurance.”

Felix pointed a finger at his temple.

"back."

There was even a hint of pride and arrogance in his drunken eyes.

It was only then that Felix showed the appearance of a young talent. The pride born from his talent and vigor, the confidence hatched from his knowledge and experience, all turned into little sparks of brilliance, flowing in his eyes.

“The whole book, the size of a palm and two fingers thick, is filled with Tesla’s secret language, and I memorized it all.

“Just like other children would be forced by their parents to memorize The Apocalypse of Night or something else, but what our family had to memorize was Thus Spoke Kondra Tesla.

“This can’t even be called an enlightening book, because even today we still can’t fully understand what kind of electromagnetic world our ancestors are showing us.

"So in the end all memory will become the purest and most painful rote learning, until no one can forget those weird knowledge and abnormal formulas."

The old woman listened attentively and couldn't help sighing again and again.

"Until one day, you completely crack this knowledge and build your own skyscrapers outside of books..." she murmured.

"Until one day, we completely crack this knowledge...until that day, we solve all the puzzles of Mr. Condra..."

Felix chewed over these words over and over again, the brilliant golden light dissipated little by little, and finally his eyes were completely extinguished, allowing the smell of alcohol to spread over his sight.

"But when we reach the end of the road, where should we go..."