Our public statement got mixed results. The governmental entities on the dwarven continent, along with a handful of southern human countries seemed to believe our statement. As I feared, however, the general population is weary, going so far as to sabotage machines that other people own. No such sabotage has happened here in Kembora, thankfully. Some of the individuals who have committed sabotage have been imprisoned, but not all of them have been caught. I can't really be too upset about that happening, though it is unfortunate.

The individuals committing sabotage seem to all honestly believe they're saving everyone's lives by doing so. It doesn't mean it's any less of a crime, or that they shouldn't be punished, just that they aren't doing it maliciously. The situation makes me even more certain that the elves and humans of Veldenar are just trying to make the most political gains they can from a bad outcome. The reason for my belief of this is that the result actually doesn't hurt Kembora all that much, though it does hurt the potential prosperity of the dwarves who are our ally.

Since we're continuing to further industrialize without sabotage, this incident is resulting in a slowdown of other nations compared to us. I'd expect, however, that Veldenar, the elves, and potentially some other nations, are still actually continuing development despite their statements. It's just suppressing the potential strength of the dwarves moving forward. It's a shrewd calculation, and honestly quite ruthless.

It's a hard sell to the rest of the world that this is the case, unfortunately. It'd be very easy for anyone to feign ignorance, and merely admit that they were trying other metals when the incident occurred, and that they honestly just believed that the crystals were inherently dangerous. Right now, there are very few individuals in the world who have formal training in logic and the scientific process, and most of them are here at the academy. There are some individuals who have a good instinct for it, but those people have probably already seen through the situation for what it is. For most people, the situation is merely one nations word against another, so no real consequences would come of it.

That's another benefit of slowly training up future administrators and nobles at the academy. When the average level of deductive reasoning and ability is higher, it's much harder for schemes and manipulations to be executed, which seems to be the main method by which the elves keep a grip on power.

I'm still getting periodic updates on the situation, since it is fairly important. The end of this semester is fast approaching, and there are a lot of matters I have to take care of. I had an enjoyable break over winter, but it seems like I'm going to be quite busy for a while again. Since machinery is now at risk if we bring it to the mainland, I've put a hold on the idea of introducing automobiles with the help of the self-propelled wagon club until the risk of sabotage is lowered. The good news on that front is that it means the first introduced product will probably be of higher quality than it would have been otherwise.

On the flip side of that, however, the demand for quality hand tools has gone up. Since portions of our casting and manufacturing processes use machines, it does actually give me a decent bargaining chip to try to convince the Karnosk brothers to work in the trade city for a bit. At least within that particular area, we haven't had any sabotage thus far. It'll still be another year until the older of the brothers graduates.

I might try to offer them something along the lines of their own factory in the trade city that they'll be half-owners of, and they can open a second factory in their hometown of Karnosk after a few years when things settle down around fluorite. That'd let them build up the knowledge they'd need to further improve their craft on the business side of things before they move back to their hometown. They'd also have a decent amount of capital built up at that point to fund operations.

We've halted any shipments of materials that include fluorite to the mainland, if only to not waste our ever shrinking supply. Over this next break, we've got a handful of minister meetings scheduled to discuss the evolving situation on the mainland. I also have my meetings with the department heads to determine if we'll be attempting to hire on any of the graduates. In addition to that, I'm still planning out the faculty positions for crystal and materials research. I've got a bit of a window, since I don't think any of the upcoming graduates fit those positions. Never mind the fact that I still have to come up with my own set of internships and approvals for the engineering department.

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The break was hectic. To make things easier on myself, I just had the same internships as last time, but with corrections for the various things that went wrong during the last sets of data collection. We're apparently looking at only one student as being potentially worth hiring. It's up to the dwarven studies department to handle it. The dwarf they're interested in is apparently quite the skilled translator and scribe, so that's what they're hoping to hire him on as. Perhaps he'll be able to also teach an introductory demon language course, but I'm leaving all of that to their department to handle, though I've set rails for pay and other such amenities as to what they can offer.

My ministers meetings were also very busy. The mine scouting tunnels have made it to the top of the inside of Kembora. There are quite a few ore deposits that they're continuing to extract as needed to keep up with metal refining. They've resumed going down, which was a direction that they had been working in until it had flooded after a vertical dyke was breeched. They've periodically hit new water dykes as they've continued mining, so downward digging was stopped to reduce the risk to miners.

After one meeting, I asked Zeb how this has affected total freshwater flow in places, since turning the entire mountain into a hollowed out tunnel network has likely had a lot of influence on the situation. The ecological impact is actually quite severe. During all seasons except spring, around half of the natural springs around the island have dried up. Some springs remain year round, and their locations general align such that they aren't near any of the internal tunnels.

However, that water isn't just disappearing. There are now a handful of additional water outlet tunnels that had to be dug around the island to channel the internal water safely. In essence, we've redirected most of the island's water through controlled channels. I'm sure this is probably having an impact on plant life, so we've also informed the minister of terrestrial resources that they'll need keep an eye on things. The good news is that the side of the island that has the bay has always been significantly drier than the side with Kembora City, so there are plants already on the island that can likely grow in the now ambiently drier conditions around a lot of the island.

Additionally, some work is being done to design a small power station outside the mine to direct electricity into the lower levels to run pumps. The deeper they go underground, the hope of having any mana available to directly power pumps becomes unrealistic, even if we used mana crystals as a form of conduit. The reason being that after they go below sea level, they can't just dig an outlet tube, and salt water will seep into the mine.

Unlike with the above ground portions of the mine, the lower portions will be resealed if scouting tunnels don't find anything. That should reduce the overall demand on the pumps, but even then there will be an ever growing need for water pumping the deeper they go. This becomes a two fold problem as the deeper they go the more effort it takes to remove the same amount of water, while the amount of water seeping in will also increase with depth. There may become a point where it isn't feasible to work any further. However, it's also possible, through some complex engineering and the help of stone shaping, to reduce the seepage drastically at the expense of a significant amount of labor.

Ultimately, I'm leaving the details to Zeb, as it's outside of my domain. The only reason it is somewhat important is to guestimate whether we'll have access to more minerals or not, which affects what direction we should take as a country. Since fluorite crystal production speed is fairly limited, we're simply stockpiling completed crystals until we decide to resume trade. We're open to trading with specific entities if they request them, like Kao, but for the time being, regular sales are paused.

A request was also made to find domestic uses for the extra crystals if sales don't resume soon on the mainland. Ultimately, it's been assigned to me to design something that can use them, military or otherwise, by next summer. If sales resume, then I can stop working on the project, but if not, that is the deadline. So I'll be thinking on that while I handle everything at the academy. It's unfortunate, but automobiles aren't actually very useful on our island, otherwise that would be my go to. Aircraft would also be too much research such that I wouldn't actually meet the deadline.

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