Chapter 108: The List (28)
The storm outside had quieted to a distant murmur when the music finally stopped.
Professor Taiga turned, as if only just realizing Lucien’s existence, a lone, trembling observer framed against the door.
For a heartbeat, the only sound was the faint crackle of overcharged mana coils and the soft ticking of some unseen mechanism.
Then, with a kind of sheepish dignity, the professor reached across a cluttered workbench and carefully lifted the needle off an ancient phonograph.
The sudden silence was deafening.
“Ah, well,” Taiga said, his voice somewhere between theatrical baritone and anxious muttering, “that was... louder than I intended. The acoustics in here are terrible. My apologies, young man.”
Lucien blinked.
His mind was still processing the fact that there was a metal giant nailed to a cross in front of him, its arms suspended by wires and brass joints glimmering faintly under residual magic.
The professor, meanwhile, was already bustling toward him with a kind of nervous energy that suggested he was circulating more caffeine than blood in his veins.
He half-tripped over a coil of wire, muttered something about “cleaning up later, probably,” and gestured for Lucien to sit.
“Please, please, don’t just stand there like a ghost at a funeral. Take a seat.”
Lucien hesitated but eventually took one of the nearby chairs, its cushion coated in fine metallic dust, faintly smelling of oil and ozone.
Professor Taiga, humming tunelessly, flipped a few switches on the wall.
The room came alive in light.
What Lucien had first assumed was a laboratory was, in truth, a battlefield of half-realized metal work.
Tables sagged under the weight of incomplete automatons, arms, torsos, and heads with glowing eyes left open and unblinking.
There were chalkboards filled with frantic equations, sketches of humanoid frames annotated with messy handwriting, and what appeared to be a miniature forge glowing in one corner.
Taiga removed his singed coat and draped it over a chair before rummaging through a pile of teacups.
“Are you all right?”
He asked at last.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, or worse…”
Lucien opened his mouth to respond, but the professor had already turned his back, muttering about how “students never hydrate properly before fainting.”
He found a teapot, sniffed it suspiciously, poured something dark into a cup, and handed it to Lucien.
“Drink. It’s tea. Probably…”
Lucien sniffed the contents.
It smelled strongly of black tea, bitter and dry, but familiar.
He took a tentative sip, suppressing a grimace at the lack of sugar.
Still, it was warm, and that counted for something.
“Good lad,” Taiga said, seating himself across from him and folding his hands with sudden, intense focus.
“Now, what brings you to my little corner of mechanical damnation? You don’t look like one of my regulars. Too clean. Not enough burn marks.”
Lucien hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck.
“I, uh... was told that this class might be a good fit for me. By the academy counselor.”
That seemed to strike a nerve.
Taiga’s eyes twitched slightly, and he leaned back with a long, suffering sigh.
“Oh, them again,” he groaned.
“Of course. The noble counselors, saviors of our administrative statistics. They’ve been sending first-years to me like pigeons into a storm just to fill the quota.”
Lucien tilted his head.
“Quota?”
Taiga’s tone became more animated, one hand waving dramatically as he spoke.
“Yes, yes, the blasted quota system! Every class must maintain a minimum number of students, you see. If it doesn’t, the class gets pushed further down the schedule ladder, worse hours, less funding, smaller room, more rats. Let it happen often enough, and voila! You get me, an award-winning researcher condemned to lecture at one in the morning!”
Lucien blinked.
“That’s... absurd.”
“It is!”
Taiga declared, standing briefly, pointing to the ceiling as though demanding divine validation
He caught himself, realized he was ranting, and awkwardly sat down again.
His hand trembled slightly as he reached for his cup, though whether from excitement or caffeine, Lucien couldn’t tell.
“Still,” Taiga continued, his voice softening,
“I can’t in good conscience recommend this course to a first-year. Not because I doubt your intelligence, mind you, but because it’s... inconvenient. The schedule will ruin your sleep cycle, the workload’s heavy, and, well... automaton theory is not exactly glamorous. It’s a lonely craft. Long hours. Little recognition. You’d be better off studying applied enchantments or, I don’t know, social dynamics. Something with sunlight and people who remember to eat.”
Lucien looked into his cup.
“You really don’t make it sound appealing.”
The professor gave a tired, self-deprecating laugh.
“That’s because I’m an honest man, my boy. And honestly, there’s better courses out there, with more respect and prospects down the line. This on the other hand…”
For a while, the two sat in the strange half-comfort of the ticking machines around them.
The crucified automaton still hung silent, almost reverent now under the humming lights.
Lucien finally asked, quietly but with genuine curiosity, “Then... what is this class about?”
Taiga tilted his head, studying Lucien with a faint, almost nostalgic smile.
“That,” he said, standing up and brushing off his sleeves, “is the one question worth staying awake for.”
He turned toward the massive, lifeless automaton on the cross.
The hum of the conduits deepened, a low thrumming that rattled the glassware.
“Automaton Theory and Design,” Taiga said softly, “is about learning how to give thought to that which cannot think... and wondering, all the while, if we were ever truly different from the things we build.”
Lucien blinked, not sure if he was supposed to be inspired or concerned.
After a long pause, he finally muttered, “So... that’s one of the pros then?”
Taiga grinned, wide, manic, and utterly sincere.
“It has its charm.”
***
Professor Taiga seemed to come alive once Lucien showed genuine interest.
His manic energy softened, but his words carried a quiet conviction, the kind that came from years of patient work rather than any hunger for glory.
“Come along, my boy,” he said, motioning Lucien through the maze of tables and half-finished constructs.
“Let me show you what we really do here.”
He stopped beside a mechanical limb, a crude prosthetic arm made of copper and brass, its joints clicking faintly when Taiga adjusted them.
“Most people think Automatons are made to impress,” he said, voice steady and thoughtful.
“And they aren’t entirely wrong, the likes of walking statues, mechanical beasts, soldiers made of steel are definitely impressive, if for nothing else than the pure spectacle they provided. But the truth is... most of what we make never has such an audience. They’re not grand. They simply are...”
He tapped the artificial hand gently with a finger, the metal chiming softly.
“This one was made for a gardener in the outer district,” he explained.
“Lost his hand in an accident. All he wanted was to hold his tools again.”
Lucien bent down to look closer.
The design was simple, almost inelegant, but there was something deeply human in it.
“Does it work?”
He asked quietly.
Taiga smiled faintly.
“Not yet. It’s waiting for its final fitting. The enchantment still needs tuning so it can respond to his heartbeat. When it does, it’ll move almost naturally.”
They walked to another table.
Small, animal-shaped constructs lay there, birds, cats, a lizard with a gleaming tail.
“These are study models,” Taiga said.
“They help us understand motion, how nature designs what we can’t. As they say, evolution is the best designer of them all, we can most of the time just mimic what organisms have developed after years of trial and error under the sun.”
He picked up the tiny lizard and adjusted the small rune etched into its back.
The creature stirred, its joints clicking softly before it scampered across the table in an oddly lifelike rhythm.
Lucien couldn’t help but watch, transfixed.
Taiga’s smile deepened, his tone taking on that gentle warmth of a teacher who loved his craft.
“You see, they’re not truly alive. They don’t think or decide. Each is given a set of instructions, simple ones. ‘Move forward,’ ‘blink,’ ‘chirp.’ The runes are written to hold those commands. All they need after that is mana to power them.”
“Like... fuel?”
Lucien asked.
“Exactly,” Taiga nodded.
“That’s why even non-mages can use them. The instructions are already there. You just need to give them life, temporarily.”
He gestured toward a stack of small, rune-etched batteries on a nearby shelf.
“They take in the world’s ambient mana, not unlike how a lamp draws oil. It’s simple work. Quiet work. But there’s beauty in it, isn’t there? Making things that help people live a little easier.”
Lucien nodded slowly.
“You sound like you really care about this.”
Taiga chuckled under his breath, though it wasn’t mocking, more wistful.
“I suppose I do. It’s not glamorous, but there’s something comforting about giving shape to usefulness. A prosthetic that holds a pen, a toy that makes a child smile... these are the sorts of achievements we can build with our hands.”
They continued walking until Lucien’s gaze fell upon the massive automaton fixed to the cross, the same towering metal figure he had seen when he first entered. Its head hung low, its silver body faintly glinting under the lab’s light.
“And that one?”
Lucien asked.
Taiga followed his gaze, his expression shifting into something quieter.
“Ah. That one’s... different.”
He crossed his arms loosely, the edge of a smile tugging at his mouth, though his eyes stayed distant.
“It’s a personal project. No purpose. No client. Just something I built because I thought it was... interesting.”
He looked up at the crucified metal form.
“Most of what we make is meant to fulfil a purpose or request. That one just... exists. Sometimes we build things not because they’re needed, but because we want to understand why we feel the need to build at all.”
Lucien didn’t know what to say.
The professor’s voice carried a faint melancholy, an undertone of someone who had poured too much of himself into machines that would outlast his own flesh.
Taiga eventually turned back to him, brushing the dust from his hands.
“So tell me, my boy, what about you? What’s your magic like?”
Lucien blinked.
“My... magic?”
“Yes,” Taiga said, walking back toward the center of the room.
“You mentioned you were recommended to this class. Usually, that means someone noticed something unique about how you use mana.”
Lucien hesitated, then sighed.
“Unique might be a generous word.”
Taiga tilted his head in mild curiosity.
“My mana doesn’t act the way it’s supposed to,” Lucien explained.
“When I try to cast something, it either takes too long to activate or it keeps going even after I stop focusing on it. Like it... remembers what I told it to do.”
Taiga paused, visibly intrigued.
“So it retains the command?”
Lucien nodded.
“Yeah. Once, I accidentally enchanted a spoon. It stayed stuck to my arm for an entire day.”
To his surprise, Taiga didn’t laugh. He looked genuinely thoughtful.
“That’s fascinating. You know, that’s not too different from how these automatons work.”
Lucien blinked.
“How so?”
Taiga leaned against the table beside him, his tone patient, almost fatherly.
“When I give an automaton an instruction, I carve it into the metal through a rune array, essentially embedding a permanent command. The automaton doesn’t think or question, it simply remembers what it’s told to do, and continues until the mana source runs out. Your magic seems to behave the same way. You’re giving your mana an instruction that it keeps carrying out... perhaps indefinitely.”
Lucien frowned thoughtfully.
“So you’re saying... I’m basically a walking automaton?”
That earned a soft, genuine laugh from Taiga.
“Not quite. But perhaps you and they speak the same language.”
Lucien smiled faintly.
“That’s one way to put it.”
Taiga studied him for a long moment, his gaze steady but kind.
“You might find this field suits you, then. Automatons are patient creations. They need time, care, and understanding, not just plain command. Maybe your mana isn’t faulty, my boy.”
Taiga ran his fingers down his semi-matted hair.
“Maybe it just prefers to listen rather than obey.”
Lucien glanced down at his hand, the idea quietly settling in his chest.
He had always thought of his mana as a backdraw or a complication, something that made traditional magic out of his reach.
But the way Taiga spoke about it made it sound... different.
