On the other side of the universe, Silas, walking through the bustling streets of New York, arrived at the location of the New York Magic School.

The address led him to a housing colony quite far from the main part of New York City. The location was an ordinary house indistinguishable from the others in the area.

Standing in front of the door, he knocked three times and stood patiently.

Two minutes later, someone finally opened the door. The individual dressed in a blue suit looked him up and down and asked, “What do you want?”.

‘How rude!’, he thought internally while replying in a respectful tone, “I want to enter Keystone”.

This elicited a curious expression from the gatekeeper, who promptly asked, “Who told you of this location?”.

To this, Silas replied, “I learned it online”. He figured there was a good chance a magician could tell the difference between a truth and a lie. So, it was better not to lie when he didn't have anything to hide.

Hearing his response, the gatekeeper looked at Silas with a suspicious look. It was true there were individuals in the secular world who knew about the existence of the school, but he didn't believe anyone of them would be foolish enough to publish it.

But he sensed that the man in front of him was telling the truth, so he didn't ask further.

After a while, the gatekeeper said, “Follow me!”.

And Silas did, however, halfway through the passage, he noticed that something was strange. The surroundings seemed ‘false’.

And so, he stopped. This made the guard look at him, and he seemed bewildered. He secretly thought, “Did that guy figure out he was inside an illusion immediately?”. He was impressed.

As for the reason, Silas could immediately sense he was in an illusion, but he himself didn’t know. Perhaps it was because his body had a naturally high perception.

This was an interesting topic. So Silas decided to find out why later.

After what Silas calculated to be 10 seconds, the surroundings changed again. Now, the surroundings seemed more real, though he still wasn’t sure.

However, the guard’s voice broke Silas out of his reverie. “This door leads to Keystone. Good luck!”.

Silas immediately stepped towards the door. He also replied in an enthusiastic tone, “Thank you!”.

Stepping in from the door, he was indeed in another place. He was standing in the middle of a hall with stone chambers on both sides that seemed to extend to infinity.

From the stone chambers, he saw students chanting in their rooms and floating mandalas hovering over open archways.

‘Well, they sure like to impress, ’ he thought.

Suddenly, he saw a young man, in his early twenties, standing to his left just 3 meters from him. Seeing him, Silas sighed, ‘Maybe I am not as perceptive as I thought. ’

The man stared at him for a few seconds and gestured for him to follow.

Following the man, Silas arrived at a stone chamber. The room inside was very simple and only contained a pair of robes, some food, and a mat to sleep on.

Looking back at the man, he saw that he had disappeared again.

This greatly annoyed Silas. He really didn't like people grandstanding in front of him.

Silas had great hope for magic. He wanted magic to serve as the ‘code’ to help him operate the world. That means, given energy as input, a magic rune/sigil/spell will perform a certain function according to his intention.

He hoped that after he masters this coding, he will be able to project all his intentions and not have to rely on ready-made spells.

For example, Silas knew that there was a fire spell, but what Silas wanted out of magic wasn't this spell.

He wanted the ability to create a spell that could use the pan and the steak present, and cook the steak to perfection.

Comparing it to the technology pathway, the spell will be the material used to harness and direct magical energy to perform a task.

The reason this attribute of magic was so important to Silas was that he hoped that after he completely understood its essence, he could use it to bypass the need for outside materials.

In simple terms, it means that with magic, as long as he has enough energy, he should be able to perform any task he desires.

Of course, the chances of that were small, but they were there. This was the same as him getting his hands on a metal component that can change its composition according to his will.

He could use this metal component to build any machine in the world as long as he knows how it's supposed to function. This way, he wouldn’t have to rely on external machines and could weaponize his own understanding of the world to create wonders.

Imagine if a scientist were not bound to materials. If he could create things as long as he understood how they would work.

Let's take a Room-Temperature Superconducting Processor as an example, if Silas had to attribute his success in taking over the world in his past life to one tool. It would be this processor that was the key reason he could take control of the world so rapidly.

Humanity had already understood how superconductors behave, and it knows that a superconductor made entirely of room-temperature superconducting circuits would allow for nearly lossless, infinitely efficient computation, processing speeds far beyond what current silicon-based systems can ever achieve.

It could handle something as complex as an entire planetary network without lag or perform trillions of brain simulations, but alas, it isn't possible because no known material is superconductive at room temperature under scalable conditions.

So, now to create this superconductor, scientists had to spend years trying to create a suitable material first.

Silas was one such scientist.

He was the first one to invent this material. So, Silas took full advantage of this fact. He combined the processing power of this chip with his hacking skills, though average at the time, to take control of the entire economic system of the world.