Rather than start from scratch for the 5-foot mana crystal for the tunnel, I wanted to use one of the 2-foot crystals we had already as a starting point. That meant I needed to collect mana poison to use to transport it. Unfortunately, I ran into 3 different problems in regards to that. First, while the mana poison plants were growing well, much like everything else on the island since we installed the big mana crystal, they actually had less mana poison in them than previously.

Second, and this is probably related to the first issue, the mana poison didn't last nearly as long as it would have previously in open air. Perhaps the ambient mana being high is overwhelming the plant's production of poison, which is also being sated much faster? That's hard to say without further study, which I have no intention of doing in the near future. Third, because the ambient mana is higher, I actually do need much more of the poison to transport a crystal than I would have in the past.

These three factors actually resulted in me needing to come up with a few innovations. For the time being, the mana poison is going to be extracted and stored in the old cave up on the mountain, at least there the ambient mana level is a little lower, and the poison lasts longer for collection. Longer term, however, I've come up with a schematic for us to use for mana crystal transport and mana poison storage.

The design is essentially just a barrel which we'll need to make multiple sizes of to be able to handle different sizes of crystals. The barrel is actually triple layered, with the inner and outer layers being comprised of 2-inch thick lightstone, and the middle layer being comprised of fairly large, specially-cut zinc fluorite crystal at least a few inches thick. The hope is that these barrels will waste a large portion of the ambient mana before it ever leaks into the central portion, allowing the mana poison to last much longer.

After drafting the design, I passed it on to the fluorite processing teams to start working on the components. They've actually been idle for a few months now, since they'd processed what raw fluorite we'd collected. As a result, they'll be reprocessing already completed fluorite to make these designs. To start, I've given them the design for the 2-foot crystal carrier, and also a 4-foot drum meant to store mana-poison before the crystal carrier is used. Once those two designs are completed, they can then move on to make the 5-foot crystal carrier necessary for the later crystal.

I also ended up talking to Tiberius in that time, as he also had requests for fluorite crystals to be made. In short, he wants a 36-inch version of each lead, iron, and zinc fluorite crystals. From that, he plans on cutting them in half, then carving out a central hollowed area for the 2-foot mana crystal to sit. He's interested in what effects that will have on the overall effectiveness of both components, and the possibility for that to be brought up to the surface and used as a standalone weapon.

It was actually quite a good idea, albeit way oversized for initial testing. We've done something similar with mana flashlights using zinc fluorite in the caves, but we only had the mana crystal contact on one side of the fluorite, rather than fully encase it. Rather than have him completely destroy a 2-foot crystal off the bat, I told him to start small with some of the natural mana crystals we found, and to use smaller fluorite crystals for initial testing.

I'm actually very intrigued by the idea of that potentially allowing smaller mana crystals onto the surface while amplifying the properties of the fluorite. Not as much for the concept of a weapon per se, but rather as the core component for an engine in conjunction with heat fluorite. If the assumption we're working under is that mana crystals have some sort of attraction field for mana relative to their size, this would potentially allow for amplified mana direction towards the fluorite, while also acting as something like a fuel tank for it between day and night. Much testing will need to be done, but it could yield fantastic results.

Overall, I ended up burning 8 days on planning and discussion. With these new ideas related to mana crystals, it's all the more reason for me to focus on my own study to figure out what material or materials are components of them besides argon.

In the past, I was so precious of the mana crystals I had that I really didn't do much destructive testing of them, which means I didn't know much about them in actuality. The only things I knew were that a mysterious gas was given off when they decomposed, and black flaky material was left behind. If physically shattered, they'll generally reform into octahedrons again after layers peel away, though I don't know the exact details of why that works out.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

I actually find it somewhat surprising that I never bothered attempting intermediate testing back then, such as just trying to heat the leftover crystal material in open air. I had, and still have, the crystal slag stored in vacuum containers, since that is how it's useful to us. So, one of the first things I decided to do was go get a few of those slag containers, and open them up.

Inside, the flaky black powder was present, though since it had been heated once, a large amount had become a more solid lump of somewhat shiny black material. Handling the material, it easily would break apart, forming long, mostly smooth surfaces. Even a small amount of force would cause it to break along another plane. It's almost like graphite, but it looks a bit different. I thought it'd really be something if it was just carbon, though I found it highly unlikely that that was the case.

So, the next test was to just heat it up, and see what happened. Doing that gave me a lot of insight. I knew for a fact it wasn't graphite afterwards. First, heating it hot enough resulted in the all-too-familiar smell of sulfur dioxide. What was left was an off-yellow, nearly white powder, which didn't appear to obviously be any material I had seen before.

Considering this new material was likely some form of metal oxide, I had a few things I wanted to try out. First I tried melting it, to which I was surprised it actually melted at a relatively low temperature, below that of copper. It then began to boil slightly above the melting point of copper, so I quickly removed the heat to prevent losing the material.

Given the volatility, I considered two options to potentially reduce the oxide down to a pure metal. I could try carbon, which might leave some residue behind, or I could try heating it even hotter in a hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere. Given the relative ease of trying carbon reduction first, I gave that a go.

What I was left with after that test was a shiny powder. The metallic powder seemed to be inert, and leaving it for a few days exposed to atmosphere did very little to it. Heating it to higher temperatures didn't cause it to melt, but it did oxidize again, and the oxide would boil away nearly as soon as it formed. As a result, I wanted to try to heat it again, but in an oxygen poor environment. The results were that the container would fail before the metal would, though the hot metal did become ductile enough that I was able to attempt to fuse some of the powder together with force.

While not a perfect indicator, these did give me a few ideas as to metals we might be dealing with, though if I'm right, it's not great. Given the apparently exceedingly high melting point, it removes a number of metals from the list as options. What I'm left with are a few different metals of varying likelihoods. Chromium, Molybdenum, and Tungsten form the shortlist of materials that it could be in my mind, though without solid evidence and access to a bunch of chemistry books, I can't say for certain. I thought about checking the material with acids, but I can come back to do it later, as how they react wouldn't actually provide me any insight with my current knowledge.

Considering the mechanical properties of the initial sulfide, I recall there was some lubricant like graphite that was used comprised of molybdenum that behaved in that sort of similar manner, so it could be that. Though in theory, any of the other elements in group six, or in this case, both chromium or tungsten could also exhibit those properties as a sulfide. There is even a chance that any of them could be used interchangeably in growing a mana crystal, though I doubt that is the case.

In short, I have a good indicator of the material, but I also know that based on the properties I determined in my experiments over the past 15 days, finding and refining other sources of this mineral are highly unlikely. It's not impossible, but if they're composed of a group 6 metal, it'd take decades of dedicated research from individuals trained in both minerology and metallurgy to properly rediscover potential ores, and rediscover how to isolate the metals from them. It's unfortunate that the rest of the world is at a roughly medieval technological level, as that really limits how many metals they know of, and by extension, what minerals are valuable or not. It's just not a skill I had much of before I came here, so I'm not useful for it either.

In other words, unless we just find the raw crystal material in the ground, separate from the crystals, we're out of luck for using anything other than mana crystals to grow more of them. That said, I am going to go and look through the pockets where we found mana crystals before, alongside using tectonic sense and doing some digging, just to see if maybe there are some minerals that could be further utilized. Perhaps I should go back and check the acid reactivity of the different stages of the material, just to determine if perhaps it could be leached from the surrounding rock to some degree.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.