Quote:
The Clock Tower of 2015
[...]
A magus was a creature with nothing but magecraft on his mind. There was no room for burdens such as "life".
To a magus, deciphering a grimoire was not just a matter of comprehension. It was for recreating a Mystery from eras past, and then redefining its meaning in the current era.
It was like translating Shakespeare into modern English.
If deciphering a page of the grimoire took an hour, then a five-hundred-page tome would take 20 some days. In the research building, there were 500 grimoire awaiting to be read. On average Leiv could read about 12 per year. It would take 4 to 5 years to finish reading all the tomes.
No, if that were the case, it would be a simple matter. Reading grimoire one by one was even easier.
However, Leiv Uvall's duty was not "deciphering a certain grimoire", but "deciphering a System". He must digest all concepts and comprehend all the interrelated phenomena.
If grimoire A and grimoire B had conflicting views on a certain item, then the content of A must be reviewed.
The more grimoire he read, the more time he needed to redefine concepts. The number was astronomical.
Of course, the cause of Leiv's grief was not "exhaustion from reading for so long".
Rather, he was disgusted by the briefness of his life, which fell short of the time required to comprehensively analyze all the tomes.
"Short. O so short. My one life time will not suffice!"
.Quote:
"If I'm not mistaken, your research aimed to measure the past?"
"That is correct. Unlike you, it is decidedly standard archaeology. Locating relics, examining them, and interpreting them in modern terms. Gathering evidence and putting together hypotheses on how things must have been until there is no room for debate. Archaeology is a discipline that accurately reconstructs and brings messages from the past back to life. It's the same with astronomy. When you observe the vastness of space, do you not measure distance using the light from the past?"
"It's actually the opposite. The only way to perceive the present is by observing the light from hundreds of millions of light years away. Because for current technology it's safer to rely on 'something that has existed in the past'."
"Ahh, then that is fine. Humans cannot even grasp the present, let alone the future. The only thing certain is the past. By receiving the records of the past we can ascertain 'why the present is here' and change it. The future is something like the answer column of a test; a blank space waiting for someone to fill it out. Worthless in itself, what matters is only the person who fills it."
Leiv Uvall's life was dedicated to filling that blank space.
Accurately receiving guidance from the past and disseminating it into this era.
Reproducing the world of the past and its rules in the present day.
That was Leiv's research. The unshakeable conviction that he had held since he was born.
"My research continues as always. Recording a past that has definitely existed, what I leave behind is my life. Beyond that―――the future after the 22nd century is unworthy of consideration. After all, that would have nothing to do with me."