Chapter 405: Going to the Future

Murphy came to the Magic Research Institute. Research on magic metal here had started earlier than the Void Particle Research Institute in the Soviet Union, and they had long realized that magic could affect the properties of various materials, including semiconductors.

But before he could find Denzel Evans, the expert in magic semiconductor research, he saw Haldane and others tinkering with a massive device. That thing was as large as a basketball court, occupying almost the entire largest laboratory of the Spell Path Research Group.

Near that huge device hung a construction drawing, and Murphy couldn't help but stop and watch for a while.

"Director!" Haldane saw Murphy and hurried over.

"Is this the Hive?" Murphy glanced at the three-dimensional structure composed of countless hexagonal grids on the construction drawing and asked.

"Exactly," Haldane looked very excited, "but what is being built now is just a partial test structure. It is mainly used to verify whether the Department of Mysteries is a 'Magic Net' node and to complete the magic energy extraction experiment."

After a trip to the Department of Mysteries, Murphy realized that the Department of Mysteries might be a component of the "Magic Net," and Haldane and others, after preliminary theoretical calculations, found that Murphy was likely right. The Department of Mysteries had a very high probability of being an important node of the Magic Net.

To verify this conjecture and at the same time investigate the possibility of extracting magic from the Magic Net as a stable energy source, they launched the "Artificial Magic Net" project under Murphy's authorization.

The Hive was the first step of the Artificial Magic Net project.

"We and the Jim Best team investigated the underground magic source room of the Danish Ministry of Magic, and invited the shamans of Arkaim to show us the Holy City Magic Hub. Like the Department of Mysteries of the British Ministry of Magic, they possess very many similar properties. We basically determined that they are all the same type of thing."

"The unique marker magic we added to the magic torrent flowing through the Department of Mysteries was similarly detected in the Holy City Magic Hub and the Danish magic source room, which shows that the magic nodes in the three places are connected."

"We speculate that these magic torrents, as well as the Departments of Mysteries of various countries' Ministries of Magic serving as turning nodes, together constitute a massive magic net covering the entire world."

Although this conjecture had not been fully verified, Haldane was already excited. He had proposed the conjecture of the Magic Net several years ago when he first came into contact with magic. He felt at the time that it would take at least decades to prove this conjecture, but he didn't expect this day to come so soon.

"The architectural structure of the Department of Mysteries is clearly a magic ritual. Each room retains a special and extreme magic energy, isolated from each other, yet having a certain connection, forming a powerful magic resonance."

"Jim Best and I both believe that this resonance is the key to connecting the various magic nodes."

"The Hive mimics the structure of the Department of Mysteries. If our conjecture is correct, it will also form a resonance with it, becoming a magic tributary."

Murphy nodded, looking at the construction drawing. In each hexagonal grid in the drawing, a marker was drawn—some were hearts, some were skulls, some were crystal balls, etc., representing energies such as love, death, and prophecy.

But among them were some things Murphy hadn't seen before. He pointed to a little head icon that looked like the style of "The Scream" and asked, "What is this?"

"Ah, this is the Source of Fear," Haldane explained. "We once had an experiment where we locked a Dementor into a ball filled with Patronus energy and kept compressing the ball, wanting to see if the Dementor would die. As a result, it was actually compressed into a mass of unconscious pure energy, and this energy possesses extremely strong mental polarity. It is a very pure fear magic."

"This fear magic is almost infinite. As long as a single extraction doesn't exceed the upper limit, it can be replenished like a Magic Stone. We believe this might be one of the reasons for the Dementor's immortal characteristic."

"Polarized magic energy and Prime Matter have many similarities. In fact, we once tried to compress a large number of Dementors to artificially manufacture Prime Matter. However, the magic amount produced by a single Dementor is too small, far inferior to a Magic Stone, so its value as an energy source is not great, but as one of the extreme energies of the Hive, it is enough."

"Oh, Dementor compression experiment." Murphy remembered. He had seen this in the achievement papers submitted by the Magic Research Institute every week.

One had to say that this group of scientists were all geniuses. A dignified Dementor was actually squeezed into a battery...

However, the similarity between the polarized magic energy mentioned by Haldane and Prime Matter made Murphy care more. There might be some connection between the two, but they were also different.

Each type of polarized magic energy, such as love and death, possessed an extremely single magic attribute, while Prime Matter was different. Its magic attribute was more like a hexagonal warrior, reaching an extremely high frequency in all dimensions.

But the magic torrents drawn by the resonance of multiple polarized magic energies also possessed multi-dimensional properties similar to Prime Matter. With lunar mining being less likely now, it was most appropriate to use it as an energy source to replace Magic Stones.

"How much longer until the Hive is fully built?" Murphy asked.

"Director, rest assured. The main structure is almost done. The rest is the layout and installation of magic wires. We can complete the verification experiment within a month."

Murphy nodded and encouraged, "Keep it up. Whether we can truly step into the magic energy era might depend on this experiment."

Leaving the Spell Path Research Group, Murphy found Denzel Evans.

The latter had actually locked himself in a laboratory. According to his assistant, he had lived inside for more than half a month, and usually, he just had house-elves send meals directly inside.

"The group leader is under great pressure. He has almost become obsessed with the research on the properties of magic silicon," an assistant said. "If this continues, I'm afraid he'll die in the laboratory."

Murphy frowned and Apparated into the laboratory.

A thin, short researcher with a bird's nest of hair was testing the performance of materials in front of a test bench.

"It doesn't work!" He looked at the data on the tester, his face showing a neurotic irritability. "Magic flux can affect the magic resistance of materials, but the resistance cannot recover on its own. This kind of material cannot be used to make semiconductors!"

Murphy stood behind Denzel and glanced at the data on the screen, suddenly feeling a bit familiar.

"What material is this? Magic silicon?" Murphy asked.

"No, magic silicon carbide. Relying on silicon alone is not enough. The silicon lattice is a complex lattice; there are two unequal atoms in the lattice, which will produce a blocking effect on the circulation of magic. The circulation of silicon carbide is better."

Denzel didn't seem to realize who was behind him, as if talking to himself. "But it still doesn't work. Its magic resistance change is not linear. It seems that it will be secondary-magically transformed by the circulation of magic and change its properties..."

Murphy looked at the graph, and a flash suddenly occurred in his mind. This thing was indeed not suitable for making semiconductors.

But who said magic chips must be made with semiconductors?

"Denzel, you are limited by the thinking of semiconductors," Murphy suddenly said. "Magic resistance changes with magic flux, and it can maintain resistance and will not recover on its own. This shows that this material itself can store historical information."

"Have you heard of artificial neural networks and memristors?"

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 406 =====