There are many problems that need to be solved before functional tanks could be built, and with every technological jump we make, I get more concerned with Elora's existence as a spy on our island. I'm not quite as concerned with her leaking our processes, as they require some degree of understanding simply to design, let alone operate. What I am concerned about is the potential for my throat to get slit in the middle of the night. If ever there was a time to do such a thing, it would be in the near future when I prestige.

<LAVA DEMON> Level: 96 HP: 6289/6289 MP: 2707/2707 Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance, Partial Sleep Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands, Pulverize, Thermal Regulation

I'm not even sure if it'd be safer to be in the city or off in a remote location. I wonder if this is how crabs feel when they molt? She hasn't shown any direct hostility, but if I can tell that we're becoming a real threat to the Elves' hegemony, then surely she can too. On the other hand, she'd probably have to kill more than just me to stop things now. I'm pretty hands off on the shipbuilding process now, and most of our industries are running themselves. She'd need to kill a few dozen individuals in key positions, otherwise, she'd risk retaliation.

I'm actually somewhat thankful for this other demon invasion in that regard. For the time being, it's letting us bypass Thucydides trap, which is when a rising power begins to rival the existing hegemon, war breaks out between the two. With a common enemy existing, the elves have, in some regard, let us rise above our station to be a real threat.

Elora is useful as a communication resource, but the risk now far outweighs the rewards. What I believe we'll try to do, if possible, is have her return to the mainland with the next completed ship. Our official stance on the matter will be that we insist that we'd prefer her talents be used on the mainland rather than idling about on our island. In practice though, I just don't want to risk sudden sabotage or murder, especially once the tide of the war shifts.

I'll instruct the ship's captain to request that Shasta once again return as a full time representative of the mainland, giving assurances that we aren't up to anything nefarious. Should that not work out, then I'll leave it to Kao to choose a human or dwarven representative of his choice. With our justification again being that the elves are individually far to valuable to simply be sitting around on our island. As compensation for the disruption, we'll offer some amount of tribute in the form of the dwarven coin we've earned on trade missions so far.

That's still over half a year out though, so I have plenty to do in the meantime for developing tanks. When we get closer to the ship's launch, I'll talk with Zaka for us to get a proper military escort to ensure Elora makes it onto the ship.

The portion of the tank that was most important to nail down first was the engine system. Designing that system also meant a lot of waiting for the extra large fluorite crystals to grow to create the engine's core. In practice, that meant I spent a lot of time working on some of the other components that won't be affected much by the final engine design. The first component that was fairly easy to develop were treads and a drive sprocket. That took eleven days before I had a fairly functional and stable design.

The next thing I spent time on was figuring out how to adjust that same design to properly use suspension to support the potential weight of the tank. Since I don't know the total weight balance yet, I tried to get a better understanding of how I'd potentially need to adjust the design based on where the weight sits, rather than making a strictly functional design. That took a bit longer since I needed quite a few different sizes of springs for testing, but after another 37 days, I think I've gotten a good feel for it.

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That led me to the point where I had my first failed test for an engine core. Some of the details on exactly how mana flows through things isn't entirely clear. In the first test, I had copper rods inserted about half the thickness of the fluorite to the mana crystal to act as heat sinks that would connect to copper plates for heat transfer to water. The rods were each about 1-inch thick, and unfortunately, on the surface, the mana crystal cracked well before the fluorite failed.

That means I either need to make the rods thinner, or more shallow, or both, or go with an entirely different design. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait until the next crystal is grown to do so. I've got a plan for the next one, however, such that I should be able to run multiple tests in a row with it, working my way up to the failure point, rather than failing immediately on the first test.

While I was working on the next portions of the tank design, which this time involved doing research on miniaturizing and optimizing some of the turret components that are on the ship, one of the construction teams started work on the new air liquefaction facility. In all, there are seven large sections that need the vacuum insulation, so they'll be busy for quite a long time before they're done and I can begin the next stage of construction there. The biggest thing is that there is a whole apparatus for liquefying air, then there are three separations columns that will be operated continuously rather than batch, then finally three large storage tanks for final components.

Optimizing the ship's turret components to instead be operable within a tank isn't easy. To save on a significant amount of space, we'll be doing away with the auto-loader functionality. That also reduces the mechanical burden on the engine quite a bit. The fire rate will be much lower, but I don't know that the fire rate matters as much on a tank as it does on a ship.

After a total of 46 days, it was finally time to do more testing for the engine core. This time, I started with a smaller number of smaller, shallower holes with copper heat sinks, and carefully brought it to the surface submerged in water. While it worked, it took a long time to reach temperature, meaning the inside of the fluorite was probably much hotter than the surface. I continued testing by making the holes a little deeper each time, and tracking the rate at which the water would reach a boil.

After quite a few tests of deepening the thin holes, I found that we could drill the holes almost to the mana crystal without failure. If we left just over 1-inch of fluorite at the bottom, it was stable. The next test after that failed. However, that is probably only true for the 24 holes that we drilled. If we add more holes, I imagine failure will occur sooner. Once we do the next test with an increase in the number of holes as the variable, rather than the depth of the holes, we'll have two sets of data and may be able to write an empirical formula to describe the behavior.

Fluorite isn't nearly as heat conductive as copper, meaning it can support a much higher thermal gradient across a length of it. In practice, that means while the water on the surface boils, the temperature in the core can be significantly higher. A higher temperature gradient induces stresses, causing it to be more brittle. If, for instance, the engine got jostled because the tank took a high powered attack, that thermal gradient could cause the whole thing to fail. By putting copper rods down into the crystal, we're introducing failure points in the crystal, which weakens it's integrity, but we're also allowing the copper to act as a thermal conductor, reducing the overall gradient.

These experiments are first meant to determine the limits of how much copper I can put into the hybrid crystal. Then, when I've determined operational limits, I can begin testing for overall stability in hazardous environments to determine the most stable configuration to use as an engine core. Once I do that, I can begin designing an engine to harness that power, and finally start the overall design of the tank to accommodate all the different components.

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