Free Web NovelChapter 217: Chapter 192: Inscription
And just like that, in a corner no one was paying attention to, the Drama Guild quietly disappeared.
Most people didn’t even realize that the New Drama Guild had become a *new* drama guild.
The troupes remained the same, but the guild’s management had been completely replaced.
However, people recently discovered that ticket prices at every theater had dropped considerably.
With the high licensing fees gone, the operating costs for the troupes had fallen dramatically.
Grandpa Galina set price standards for troupes that joined the guild, with different ticket prices corresponding to productions of different scales.
Those who create art are different from those who are purely in it for business; there’s always a touch of idealism.
If it had been run by businessmen, prices would have risen when costs went up for various reasons. But once costs fell, you could forget about those prices ever coming back down.
To a merchant, it makes no sense to turn down that much profit for no reason.
However, Grandpa Galina’s methods were not without their benefits. The theater industry was now showing signs of recovery. The guild’s income wasn’t as high as before, but it attracted a large number of new audience members into the theaters.
It shed the label of "high-society entertainment" for theater and successfully expanded its audience base, so basically no troupes objected.
On the contrary, a few audience members did object, saying that if everyone could afford to see plays, then what was the point of them watching?
Another matter that drew some attention was that many properties belonging to the old Drama Guild were being auctioned off after being confiscated upon the guild’s dissolution.
A foreclosure sale, you could say.
The sheer number of properties being auctioned was astonishing. Many of them were nominally guild branches, but it was obviously not normal for a single city to have eight branches.
In reality, they were for the private use of the guild’s upper management, as the taxes were lower than listing the properties under their own names.
The Zog Group also came to pick up some bargains, mainly buying back the copyrights to traditional plays.
They hadn’t really wanted to buy them at first, since the current Drama Guild didn’t rely on the traditional repertoire anyway.
But because nobody else wanted them, the prices for those copyrights were just too cheap.
Sometimes, you have no intention of spending money, but then you run into something incredibly cheap and feel like you’re losing out by not buying it, triggering a sudden impulse to spend.
Zog had been like that when he was human. His Steam library was full of games he’d bought but never even opened, all because he’d impulsively bought them when he saw they were at a historic low price.
The copyrights for over a thousand plays ended up costing less than two hundred Gold Coins in total.
Just as everyone was happily looting the corpse of the old Drama Guild, Elsa brought news that was even more exciting for a dragon.
Xiaomo’s team’s intelligent Inscription Prediction System had passed preliminary testing and was ready for acceptance.
「Two days later, on the day of the acceptance test.」
In an academic hall on the outskirts of Twin Tower City, all four hundred seats were filled, and many more people were standing in the aisles to watch.
Anyone who didn’t know better might have mistaken it for a celebrity performance.
However, the audience wasn’t made up of star-chasing fans, but the core members of the Zog Group’s research and development division.
The R&D teams within the Zog Group were highly fluid, a bit like the Adventurer Guild. Teams were often formed only after a new project was assigned, and there was a great deal of freedom in how they were assembled.
That was why, whenever there was a project demonstration, members of other teams were allowed to attend.
First, they could offer opinions from different perspectives.
Second, it allowed them to understand each other’s skill levels and areas of expertise, which facilitated team reorganization for new projects.
As a project second in importance only to the Magic Energy Machine at this stage, the Inscription System had captured the attention of nearly every researcher.
Everyone wanted to know if this system, which claimed to be able to completely unravel the mysteries of magical Inscriptions, was really as miraculous as it was said to be.
Even Yuno, Moore, and others who specialized in technology came to the event. They believed that if Inscriptions could be predicted, then so could principles in mechanics, materials, chemistry, and so on.
Xiaomo stood on the stage, looking a little nervous. He had never spoken in front of so many people before, but he insisted on presenting the demonstration himself.
"Begin whenever you’re ready," Zog said.
Xiaomo nodded and said, "From this moment on, we will no longer need Inscription Masters."
The moment he said it, an uproar swept through the audience.
An Inscription Master wasn’t a Mage from a particular School, but rather a specialized profession among Mages.
Their job was to decipher Inscriptions, the smallest units that make up magic models.
Different Inscriptions have different functions, such as the most basic ones that represent the major Elements, or the exclusive Inscriptions that form the magical effects of different Schools.
The birth of every new Inscription would inspire a host of new spells.
But now, as the number of known Inscriptions grew, it became increasingly difficult for Inscription Masters to make new breakthroughs.
An Inscription Master might spend their entire life deciphering just one new Inscription, and even that would be considered lucky. Most would likely toil their whole lives in obscurity.
To date, across all Schools combined, a total of 1,124 Inscriptions had been deciphered. The most recent one was discovered thirteen years ago.
Some had even declared that the path of Inscription discovery had reached its end, but there were still some Mages who persisted on this path.
"The intelligent Inscription Prediction System has studied the deciphering process for all known Inscriptions and makes its own predictions. The predicted Inscriptions are then tested by Mages, and the results—whether they are usable or not—are fed back into the system."
Xiaomo explained the basic operating principle of the system.
"So far, the usability rate for predicted Inscriptions has reached 91%. For the Illusion School specifically, we have already obtained 67 new, usable Inscriptions. Other Schools have not yet been tested."
The projection in front of the hall displayed the 67 new Inscriptions, with their effects noted beside them.
That number, 67, was more than the total number of new Inscriptions deciphered in the last two hundred years.
The Mages in the audience wore expressions of utter disbelief.
It wasn’t that they questioned whether these Inscriptions were truly usable, because the projection stated that the usability tests were completed by Furin and El.
You couldn’t find anyone on the Continent more skilled in Illusion Techniques than those two.
Rather, it felt like their understanding of reality was being shattered.
They had never imagined that magical breakthroughs could be achieved this way; it was difficult to accept all at once.
It was as if they were still struggling to cross the sea on a small wooden raft when a steamship several hundred meters long suddenly sailed past them.
Xiaomo continued, "In the process of developing this system, we also discovered an interesting function: it can parse encapsulated Runes into a sequence of Inscriptions."
He then demonstrated by inputting a simple illumination Rune into the system. A string of Inscriptions quickly appeared on the output end.
However, the crowd didn’t immediately grasp the usefulness of this function.
Any Mage Apprentice worth their salt knew which Inscriptions made up an illumination Rune.
Only Zog’s eyes widened in an instant.
’A compiler? This thing can be used as a compiler!’
’Doesn’t that mean that in the future, when building magic models, we won’t have to painstakingly assemble them one Inscription at a time?’
’An incredible, unexpected bonus.’
Until now, the Zog Group had been "programming" using a method similar to assembly language—inefficient and highly difficult.
And you could only barely call it assembly language after the birth of the Visible Inscription Workshop.
The way traditional Mages constructed spells was not much different from punching holes in paper tape.
But now, he was seeing the first signs of a High Level Magic Language.
Xiaomo’s next words confirmed Zog’s thoughts. "As long as this system is confirmed to be viable, it should theoretically be possible to construct spells directly using Runes. This would be easier to understand, learn, and port."
"But," El said with some concern, "if people don’t understand the Inscriptions, it might hinder their ability to grasp the essence of Magic."
"That doesn’t matter!" Zog shot to his feet. "We absolutely have to develop this system! Not everyone needs to grasp the essence of Magic, but this system... it might just allow everyone to use Magic."
And so, on an ordinary afternoon, what would later be called the First Magic Revolution took its very first step.
