Modern World Warlock

After Paige had calmed down a little, she agreed to wait for one day before trying to use magic and spent the rest of the day preparing a training room for later.

The following morning, after the group in the laboratory had breakfast, Paige was fully determined to use magic.

The scientist entered an empty room and sat on a bench in the center, where dozens of cameras were pointing at her and scanning all of her movements.

Paige wanted to document everything she could, and she believed that recording herself could help her fix any mistakes she made later on.

When Paige sat on the bench, she took a deep breath and placed both of her hands before her. Then, she slowly opened her palms and closed her eyes for a few seconds.

Dante and the rest of the group were watching from the spectators' room, and when a bit of magical energy began to appear around Paige's palms, the warlock widened his eyes in surprise.

The scientist could feel a warm sensation in her hands, so she opened her eyes and beamed with a smile when she realized she could see the magical aura around her palms.

"Hey, Dante…" Asphodel muttered without taking her gaze off Paige.

"Don't ask me… I have no idea what that is," Dante replied.

Zac, Megan, and Alice seemed confused. They already knew that Paige would be able to use magic, so they weren't as shocked as when it happened to them. However, Wolfram elaborated, explaining that she had never seen an aura like Paige's.

The color of the aura had a white base that resembled mist, and there seemed to be dark-purple and red strands of energy that were fused into it.

"Is it a combination of energy…?" Wolfram pondered aloud.

There were plenty of mages who could manipulate more than one type of magical energy. Dante was one of them, but since his specialty was controlling umbra, there weren't many occasions where he would rely on mana or ether.

Moreover, it was a well-known fact among mages that combining two types of magical energy could be dangerous, as there had been mages who died while trying to cast spells that combined them.

Nevertheless, there she was—Paige, peacefully sitting on the bench and producing an aura that mixed several types of magical energy right on her palms.

"Could this be…? Am I tapping into the quantum realm?" Paige wondered, making everyone in the room, except for Zac, drop their heads laterally in confusion.

"The what?" Dante interjected, still confused but curious.

Paige theorized that magic was the manipulation of the quantum field—the base layer of existence.

"Don't you see? Magic exists in a state of infinite possibility, just like a quantum particle can exist in multiple states at once…" Paige explained, but the warlock barely understood the concept.

"You said it once, right, Dante? That people in this world couldn't sense magic since their bodies weren't used to perceiving it… It's a matter of consciousness," Paige continued.

As the scientist stood up from her seat and walked to a whiteboard on the side of the room, she lit up a cigarette and started writing down her notes.

Paige kept elaborating on her theory. In quantum physics, particles behaved differently when observed, which was similar to how magic behaved.

A mage couldn't accidentally cast a fireball; it required intent and observation. "When Dante casts a spell, he is choosing one outcome from the infinite possibilities, collapsing the wavefunction through sheer willpower…" Paige explained.

Out of all the spectators in the room, Zac was the only one who was familiar with quantum physics, but only because he had been curious to learn more about it before he started going to college.

Without saying a word, the redhead joined the scientist in her training room, and the woman noticed that his eyes were beaming with excitement.

"Miss Paige, could it be that the portal that brought Dante here was an instance of 'quantum tunneling'?" Zac pondered aloud.

"Oh, good point! Quantum particles can bypass normal space and time rules by exploiting the gaps in reality… By giving it a strong enough push, it could theoretically be powerful enough to move someone from one reality to another…" Paige added, writing it down on the whiteboard.

The rest of the spectators stayed silent. Even though Dante had the 'demon tongue' that allowed him to speak and understand every language, he couldn't understand most of the words used by the pair.

Wolfram also had a bit of trouble with the concept, but she showed a lot more interest in the matter and joined Zac and Paige in their studies, believing that she could improve her magic by learning about quantum physics.

As the trio began to exchange ideas with each other, the rest of the spectators left the laboratory feeling a mix of satisfaction and confusion.

They were glad to know that Paige had taken a step forward in understanding the nature of magic, but they couldn't shake off the fact that they didn't understand a single thing.

After Dante walked out, he thought about lying down on his hammock and basking in the sun. However, Camille called him up to her office for a 'non-urgent' matter.

When the warlock arrived, he noticed both Vesnia and Isidor in their cyborg bodies, standing before Camille's desk with serious expressions.

"What's up?" Dante asked, lazily scratching the back of his head.

"Hey, Dante. You don't have a problem with this guy, right?" Camille questioned him, pointing at Isidor.

"Not right now, no. Why do you ask?" Dante said with his nonchalant tone.

Camille explained that Isidor seemed to be nervous about being taken in by the Jade Dragons, as he couldn't leave behind the fact that he was their enemy.

Both Vesnia and Isidor felt a strong sense of guilt about their actions while being under Netherius' control, and that same guilt was making them believe that the people around them absolutely despised them.

Nevertheless, Dante clarified by stating that he didn't hate them in the slightest. "I already hold quite a few grudges. I don't have space for more…" he said.