—
Playing in B minor and moving into G major 7 for the opening of the piece, Gustave heard the cries of a pregnant mother dying silently of hunger, waiting for her husband to return with food—unaware that he had been killed by the soldiers of Caldwell's son.
She crawled through the mud in search of the love of her life, only to encounter bandits funded by those who rejected modern concepts out of paranoid fear—fears that had never even touched them in the first place.
As E minor entered and shifted into F-sharp minor, Gustave saw an entire family from a village near Lyria burned at the stake simply because they chose to support and believe in their Queen, trusting that the disaster would pass.
What remained were only ashes from the everlasting pyre, lit by those who claimed to speak in the name of gods who branded them cursed and heretical. For a simple reason: to those watching from above, they were nothing more than numbers—sacrifices for a so-called greater good and a destiny they sought to shape.
As B minor moved into G major 7 once again, entering the first verse with lead notes, Gustave heard the sound of clinking glasses from those who held Power, watching his mother bow before them as they proudly declared that the Northern Realms belonged to them.
Not caring, not wanting, or simply oblivious in their naivety, they failed to see children on the streets searching through bushes for berries, their feet blistered. In the end, they could not endure the unbearable hunger beneath the burning sun or the falling rain, dying as they looked up at the sky, dreaming only of a single good meal.
As E minor returned with a slight shift into F-sharp minor seven and the lead tones softened, Gustave saw every monarch who had once claimed they wanted to help, offering promises of kinship and unity so the Twin Realms might share the same modern prosperity as their own. Instead, they turned a blind eye and allowed the parasite to enter his beloved Twin Realms.
Turning the wives of countless soldiers of his kingdoms into suffer of anguish, they pounded their chests and the ground with bloodied hands as they stared at the headless bodies of their husbands laid out on stretchers, while their children asked innocently, "Why doesn't Papa move?"
As the lead tone entered the chorus with a betrayed undertone, Gustave let out his frustration through a louder resonance of the lute, asking his people and families why they had become just like them in this crisis, and why they could not show even a little patience, enduring for just three short years.
He knew it was inevitable—they did not want to remain in the red forever—but the sting of being betrayed by his own people still cut deep. As for those who chose to leave in order to survive, he accepted and respected their decision, for it was their own lives they chose to gamble with.
Finally, in the closing cadence of anguish, he remembered there was nothing he could give back. He had slept while those who placed their trust in him died in countless ways, believing in his distressed mother, who was unable to reciprocate. Gustave looked up at the sky, unwilling to let them suffer the same fate in the afterlife.
In a once-in-a-generation moment of epiphany, born from his fractured mind, he created a geometric ceremonial formula within his steampunk metropolis.
As he beheld his people of all ages appearing one by one, he stepped forward. Some were burned and boiled by eternal fire, having suffered countless torments. Others were wholly unharmed, protected by his ancient grandmother. He welcomed them warmly, assuring them that they would finally be safe.
"Welcome home. You have done your best for those who came after. You've earned your rest."
He instructed his automaton creations to treat them with care. Then, before returning to the world of the living, Gustave raised his hands. He gathered the residue of authority that had once been used to boil his loyal people. He used it as a key. With it, he accessed Kreve's domain—and tore a piece of flesh from him.
RIPPED!
Breaking the connection of the formula that combined multiple disciplines—the Theory of Information Extraction, the Quantum Physics of Scattering, Fourier Analysis of Decoupling, and more—Gustave used the one-third he had managed to rip from Kreve while he was not looking to create a sun in the sky, just before returning to the opera house stage.
"Look! The sky! The rain has stopped!"
Although he knew that Lyria and Rivia would always remain rain-soaked lands, due to geological and climatic changes that had already been drastically altered, seeing his people's eyes filled with excitement and hope brought a smile to his face. For the first time in a year of despair, they were witnessing a sunny sky.
—
Held by the cheeks and kissed on the head by single mothers, while others murmured words of thanks or called him a prince who brought good luck, Gustave could only smile. For thirty to forty minutes, he was swept up in the crowd's jubilant emotions, dancing beneath the clear sky. At last, he managed to excuse himself and walk to the highest balcony of the opera house.
"Bravo, bravo, Your Highness! Magnificently—bravo!"
Dandelion approached, wiping tears from his eyes as he clapped until his hands turned red. Gustave took a seat at one of the tables, smiled, and replied, "Thank you, Master Julian. I hope you liked the piece."
"Liked it?! Are you jesting, Your Little Savant Highness?! This is a piece of the century! The chords, the progression of the melody—I've never heard anything like it before! It's like seeing the future of orchestral music!"
Footsteps sounded all around him. Gustave noticed another familiar figure from the books—Essi Daven—approaching, along with many bards, trobairitz, and others eager to glimpse the future of musical theory. He then turned back to Dandelion.
As his servant handed him a sheet of parchment, Gustave drew a charcoal pencil from his pocket and began to write the tablature. Then he said, "Well, in that case—here. I'll give you the Lumière à l'Aube sheet music."
"Wait, what?!!! This—this—this!!!"
Slipping through the crowd, which had grown increasingly rowdy as they tried to press closer to Dandelion, Essi Daven frowned as she saw the parchment. Shivering with excited trepidation, she turned toward Julian and replied solemnly, "Your theory is right, Julian. For the notes to sound good, they must be divided into twelve."
One of the Oxenfurt professors, named Leon Oppenhauser, stepped forward, sat beside Julian, and tapped several parts of the parchment. He spoke solemnly, "Not only that—look here, here, and here. These points create harmonic tension and resolution within the piece. It conveys a sense of sorrow and sadness, but also relief once it has passed."
Holding her lute, which had already been returned to her, Priscilla slipped forward as well and chimed in. Her voice was awkward and mosquito-soft as she stood among these giants, one of whom was much smaller than she was.
Strumming the strings one by one, she said, "A-also, every note is very methodical. And I can see that Prince Gustave already knew beforehand what pitches the lute strings needed to be tuned to."
Chuckling as he watched their reactions, Gustave realized once more that those who could truly appreciate the future were not monarchs, mages, nobles, merchants, or common folk merely struggling to survive. They were these people here—those who had never been given shortcuts, who worked with nothing but their own two hands to bring their imaginations to life.
Knowing that in the medieval and Renaissance eras, artists and scientists were, for the most part, two sides of the same coin, he could understand why their faces were filled with both excitement and trepidation as they looked toward the future.
Nodding to the people, who were chiming in one by one, attempting to reverse-engineer the musical theory of the modern piece, Gustave began explaining it to them in detail, holding nothing back.
"Yes, Trobairitz Essi. To my ears, if music is to sound good, the notes must be divided into twelve equal semitones, plus one to complete the octave."
"Each semitone must be approximately five to six percent higher than the previous one. I indexed them from 0 to 12, with the last one being just a higher-pitched version of 0. Here, I'll demonstrate: do, di, re, ri, mi, fa, fi, so, si, la, li, ti, do!"
Gustave turned toward Leon Oppenhauser, essentially the Da Vinci of this Witcher world. By the end of the books, Oppenhauser had managed to create a true perpetual motion device. Although he deduced it could only achieve infinite perpetuity through magic rather than science, it was still impressive nonetheless. Gustave gave the professor a nod of acknowledgment.
"And yes, Professor Oppenhauser, you are correct in your calculations of this functional harmony. But before we delve into harmony across the entire piece, which I've dubbed Tonic, Dominant, and Subdominant, let me explain it to everyone here from the start."
Explaining to the increasingly lively crowd, Gustave first taught them how chords are formed, then how those chords progress, and finally the concepts that Oppenhauser had already noticed far in advance. He then turned toward Priscilla and acknowledged her observation about the basic tuning of the guitar, which he had applied to her lute.
"And yes, Priscilla. I tuned your lute to my preferred frequencies. That's why I only use six out of the eleven strings. The tuning I used is E, B, G, D, A, and E."
Seeing that some of the listeners were confused by the letter names, Gustave connected the guitar tuning to the do–re–mi system and continued explaining every music theory concept he knew.
Finally, Professor Oppenhauser, realizing the pattern before anyone else, stood up from the table and pushed back the crowd. They toppled like dominoes—thud, thud, thud.
"Astonishingly precise! Every variable conforms exactly as predicted! Remarkable—truly remarkable! The symmetry, the proportions… this is mathematical beauty at its finest! Hahahahaha! I thought only painting could express arithmetic calculations like this! Hahaha! And now, now there is another!!! Hahahahaha!"
Chuckling at the giddy, giggling professor and noticing the crowd that had toppled like dominoes without him even realizing it, Gustave smiled in amusement. He continued teaching them about every genre, modern musical styles, and the theory behind them, effectively bringing the science of music in this world up to speed.
He knew this would push the boundaries of melody and composition, which on Earth often relied on repeated patterns.
The sheer curiosity and enthusiasm of these people, eager to create their own versions of music theory, made him even more excited to see what they would produce beyond the realm of his modern knowledge—especially given the presence of magic in this world.
—