Deep in the heart of 16th century Florence, in a workshop cluttered with alembics, half-dissected clockwork contraptions, and stacks of manuscripts, Maestro Leonardo was about to make history. He adjusted his spectacles, his brow furrowed in concentration as he held a lute up to his obsidian mirror.

"Sing, Isabella, sing!" he bellowed towards the curtain that divided his workshop from his living quarters.

A moment later, a sweet soprano voice, accompanied by the lute’s melody, filled the room. Leonardo held his breath, staring intently at the obsidian surface. A faint shimmer, a ripple of… something… passed across the black mirror. He scribbled furiously in his notebook. "Again, Isabella! And louder this time!"

This was it. The culmination of years of research, fueled by countless sleepless nights and an unhealthy amount of Acquarosa. Leonardo, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of "Obsidiology", was on the verge of adding sound to the static images the Obsidian Nexus was known for. Imagine the possibilities! No longer would scholars have to squint at handwritten manuscripts shared across the channel. Bards could broadcast their latest ballads, philosophers could hold live debates, and busybodies could share their latest gossip for instant gratification.

His door burst open and his apprentice, a gangly youth named Giacomo, rushed in, breathless. "Maestro! Maestro! Have you seen what’s on the Nexus today?"

Leonardo, still fiddling with his sound-capture contraption, waved a dismissive hand. "Another silent cat video from Constantinople, I presume?" Cat videos, ever since their accidental discovery by a Turkish merchant who’d held up a kitten to his mirror, had become a global phenomenon.

"No, Maestro! It's… it's…" Giacomo stammered, his eyes wide. "It's Friar Bartolomeo! He's… he's showing everyone how to make gold!"

Leonardo's head snapped up. Friar Bartolomeo was a notorious alchemist, known for his outlandish claims and even more outlandish hairstyles (he currently sported a look involving a live hoopoe perched atop his tonsure). "Gold? That charlatan? He probably just dyed a chicken yellow again."

But curiosity got the better of him. He rushed to his own personal obsidian mirror, a beautifully polished disc framed in silver. Sure enough, there was Friar Bartolomeo, grinning maniacally as he held up a gleaming gold ingot. "That's a cheese curd, you fraud!" he yelled at the mirror, forgetting for a moment that Bartolomeo couldn't hear him.

The next few days were pandemonium. Everyone with an obsidian mirror was glued to the Nexus, watching Bartolomeo's every move. He held up page after page of his alchemical recipe, his handwriting a spidery mess that was almost impossible to decipher. Arguments erupted; scholars debated the validity of his claims, alchemists tried to replicate his experiment (leading to several unfortunate explosions), and theologians argued about the ethical implications of instant wealth.

Meanwhile, Leonardo, feeling somewhat overshadowed by the gold-making friar, doubled down on his sound experiments. He managed to capture Isabella singing a popular love ballad, and then, in a stroke of genius, had her recite the day's news while holding up illustrations. He called it the "Obsidian Observer," the world's first multimedia broadcast.

But the real breakthrough came when, during one of his experiments, he accidentally captured the sound of his dog, Sirius, barking. The sound, distorted and amplified by the obsidian mirror, came out as a terrifying roar. An idea sparked in Leonardo's mind. He spent the next few weeks working feverishly, combining his sound capture technique with a series of lenses and mirrors. Finally, he was ready.

He held up his new invention, a bulky contraption of wood and polished obsidian, towards the Friar's broadcast. With a mischievous grin, he activated it.

Across the entire Obsidian Nexus, instead of Friar Bartolomeo's triumphant presentation, users were suddenly assaulted by an earsplitting cacophony of amplified dog barks. Sirius, it seemed, was not impressed by the Philosopher's Stone.

The chaos was glorious. Bartolomeo's broadcast dissolved into a flurry of confused images as he tried to figure out where the infernal noise was coming from. Complaints flooded the channel. Some praised Leonardo for silencing the charlatan, while others lamented the loss of their gold-making secrets.

Leonardo, watching the chaos unfold, leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. He may not have discovered the secret of turning lead into gold, but he had discovered something far more potent: the power of trolling. And in the burgeoning world of the Obsidian Nexus, that was worth more than all the gold in Christendom.