BXBX NOVEL Chapter 79 - Rebecca’s Success and Doubts About Magical Power
Chapter 79: Rebecca’s Success and Doubts About Magical Power
It was a basket of dark-grayish, grotesquely strange substance. Some were loose like sand, while some were packed together, but regardless of their form, they were all almost evenly filled with countless tiny particles. And compared to the ‘waste residue’ that Rebecca had unintentionally produced, the products in this basket evidently contained more crystals. The average diameter of these crystals also seemed to have increased significantly.
This meant that Rebecca had not only found the formula, but she’d even figured out the way to improve the method of production.
Upon hearing Gawain’s words, even the iron-headed, straightforward Rebecca with low EQ instantly became embarrassed. The viscountess scratched her face, now black from the smoke and heat. When she smiled, she looked like a doofus who’d just turned seventeen and had set off explosives in a kiln. “Hehe… Lord Ancestor, do you really think this thing can be named as such? Isn’t it only really great people who get things named after them…”
“You invented these crystals. Isn’t that impressive enough?” Gawain looked at this nth+1 great-granddaughter who lacked confidence. “Mm, although there’s still a lot of room for improvement, this is indeed a ‘product’ that can be repeatedly produced. The name ‘Rebecca Crystals’ is well deserved.”
Rebecca entered a state of silly happiness. “Hehe, heheheh…”
“Stop your silly giggles for now. Tell me how exactly this was produced.” Gawain was at a loss of whether to laugh or to cry as he glanced at this iron-headed girl. “Although luck has a part to play in the emergence of any new material, I still want to know how such amazing luck befell us.”
“Oh, oh, as a matter of fact, it’s totally a coincidence.” Rebecca scratched her face. “They had actually been baked according to the primitive formula that you gave me. But I failed several times when I attempted to recreate the baking process. None of the mixture ratios worked. Subsequently, I suspected a problem with the furnaces, so I ordered people to check on their condition. In the end, it was found that a big piece had fallen off from the inner walls of one of the furnaces…”
“A big piece fell off?” Gawain frowned. He realized that the key to producing these ‘Rebecca Crystals’ was probably in those fallen pieces of the furnace wall. “So the materials used to build the furnace were also involved in the reaction?”
“That is one of the reasons. Because those furnaces were also heated using runes, there was quartz sand mixed in when they were being built. And other than quartz sand, another important factor is the rocks from the Dark Range.”
“Rocks from the Dark Range?” Gawain repeated.
“Yes, I compared quite a few records and found that there were two obvious differences between the products from that furnace and the other furnaces. One, quartz sand from the building of the furnace was mixed into the raw materials; two, the limestone in the raw materials was dug up from the Dark Range. The limestone from the other furnaces was from the banks of the White River; also, it was transported from the logging shed at the western side. When those are used as raw materials, even adding quartz sand is useless…”
Two conditions, quartz sand and limestone from the Dark Range is it…
Gawain pondered for a while. These two conditions were the accurate conclusion that Rebecca came to after multiple comparisons; there was no need to suspect their validity. Then exactly what role did these two materials play in this process?
The effect of quartz sand was plausible as it was a weak magic-conducting material. Though extremely cheap, it was still a genuine magic material. Besides, it was one of the raw materials to produce man-made crystals in itself. But what was with the limestone from the Dark Range?
Why couldn’t limestone extracted from other places work?
He threw these questions to the floor, leaving Rebecca stupefied.
The young viscountess had never considered these details. She scratched the back of her head as she mumbled, “I was too wrapped up in feeling happy. I’ve yet to think…”
“The Dark Range had once been enveloped by the Dark Wave,” Gawain said as he rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Till today, the mark of being corroded by the elemental tide still remains in many areas in the mountains. Perhaps it is this process that altered the properties of some minerals… that provided them with the attribute of being responsive to magic?”
In the situation where there was a lack of more experimental data and theoretical guidance, Gawain could only make such a bold guess. But regardless of the reason, Gawain was now sure of one thing — ‘Rebecca Crystals’ were absolutely unique in this world; at least in the Anzu Kingdom, it was.
In usual times, who would be so idle as to go dig up the Dark Range and bake rocks…
“After confirming that the key was with quartz sand and limestone from the Dark Range, I tried out several methods to increase the proportion of crystals and their quality.” Rebecca went on, “I found that increasing the proportion of quartz sand can increase the yield of crystals, but many crystals would shatter out of the furnace. Upping the proportion of limestone would enhance the product’s capacity to store magical power, but past a certain amount, there would instead be no crystals formed. And I also realized that the effects of temperature and baking duration are especially notable… There were too many variations that could be tested. I couldn’t finish them at the same time, so I baked one batch using the best method we have now. Na, they are the ones before you.”
Gawain asked bluntly, “Could laymen complete this process?”
“Yes, but the majority would not understand what the ‘cross-referencing’ and ‘observation group’ that you taught me means, so they can only produce according to the method taught to them,” Rebecca answered. “Moreover, they’re really careless. Even if they’ve been told how to do it, they would often get the compounding ratio wrong or remember the incorrect baking duration. The time control that is needed for producing crystals is much stricter than that for baking bricks!”
Improving the average quality of the labor force was imperative.
Yet he couldn’t even find a few cultural teachers that were up to standard… Everyone literate in words and numbers was already overworking; where would he find people to create an education system?
Hire them from Tanzan Town? There weren’t many who were literate in Tanzan Town either! People who could read and write were either merchants or had already joined aristocrat residences to take on ‘respectable roles’ like butlers and clerks. How could those people be willing to come to the middle of nowhere and join them in developing the wilderness? They weren’t impoverished serfs or peasants…
Gawain touched his head again. Each time a new problem emerged, he would subconsciously do this action, as if he was checking on his own hairline…
“Lord Ancestor?” Rebecca spoke up cautiously.
“No, its fine, all these are issues that need to be settled in the long term.” Gawain waved his hand. “Continue with production according to this ‘optimal case’ for now. Then try to come up with even better ratios of materials when you have the time. In short, the more crystal bits there are, the better. It’s even as important as the output of steel. Oh yes, we also need to come up with a way to extract these crystals mixed in them. This black waste residue is quite useless. You can try crushing them and then use water to sift through it. Crystals are much harder than the waste residue and also heavier. It should be easy to separate them after crushing and rinsing with water.”
Rebecca nodded as she listened. When Gawain finished, she then leaned over with a gleeful smile and asked like a cat that ate the canary, “Um… Lord Ancestor, I heard from Aunt Heidi, you’re planning to make such crystals into magic articles that can explode?”
“Something like that.” Gawain looked at this girl who always had funny ideas. “What opinions do you have?”
“You’re planning to use the explosive magic circles in the Gondor manufactured crystals on these crystals, aren’t you?” Rebecca’s eyes were bright. “But have you thought of how to do the detonation?”
Gawain frowned; this was precisely the question he was deliberating over.
The explosive magic circles in those ancient Gondor crystals were the same as commonly seen small-scale arrays; they belonged under ‘magic circles that could not recharge themselves’. In other words, they need an external magical power source to be the ‘starting source of energy’ to continue proceeding with the subsequent detonation. In those Gondor crystals, this portion of energy was provided by the crystal itself; in the ‘Art 1’ that he conceptualized, there did not exist this portion of energy.
Other than being an explosive substance and being directly blown up, the magical power stored in Rebecca Crystals could not be extracted to be used in other magical reactions at all. As such, the explosive magical circles attached to the Rebecca Crystals would require another magical power to be the ‘starting catalyst power’, then where would this portion of magical power come from?
Use another piece of storage crystal to be the ‘explosive battery’? Then it would have lost the significance of being ‘inexpensive’.
Use mages’ magical power to stimulate the magic circles? Then it would lose the design objective of ‘having the average person be able to use it’.
“Speak your mind. Just looking at that gaze of yours, I know you have an idea.” Gawain scanned Rebecca. This young lady before him really wasn’t someone who could hide things; even if he didn’t ask, she would probably still spill her thoughts.
“It’s like this…” Rebecca, as expected, didn’t keep him guessing. “I studied that explosive magic circle for a bit and found that the magical power required to activate it… is actually pretty little.”
Gawain nodded. “That’s of course. It’s a magic circle used for spontaneous explosion when the crystal ceases to be effective, after all. Its activation-energy demand would definitely have been optimized countless times.”
“Then I realized one thing,” Rebecca went on. “The ‘rune trigger’ that I invented, it produces an extra ‘spark’ of magical power. Very weak, but it really exists…”
“Wait a minute!” Gawain interrupted Rebecca instantly. He realized that he had caught a key problem which had been neglected for a long time. “You said that the rune-trigger construct produces magical power at the moment it closes? Are you sure that it isn’t magical power dissipated from the magic web buried underground?”
“I checked several times because I’ve been able to sense magical power very well from a young age. I can see it very clearly.” Rebecca nodded hard in emphasis. “There is an extra portion of magical power when the rune trigger shuts, and I even found that it’s not restricted to the rune trigger. As long as a pair of originally intact runes is taken apart and put back together, an ‘instantaneous spark of magical power’ would be produced. This bit of magical power comes and goes in a flash, just in the blink of an eye. But if one wants to ignite something, just this blink of an eye would be enough.”
Gawain immediately sank into deep thought, only coming back to his senses when he saw he’d left Rebecca utterly nervous. “Ah… Very good, very good. Then, you can test out your rune trigger together with the explosive magic circle according to your ideas. You can get Heidi to help. Just tell her the order comes from me.”
Rebecca presently beamed with a smile. However, before she left, she suddenly remembered something. “Ah yes, Lord Ancestor, have you thought of what to name such explosive articles in the future?”
Gawain thought for a moment and replied solemnly, “Art.”
“Eh? Does this have any relation to art?”
Gawain’s expression was serious. “We’re naming it Art!”
Rebecca’s eyes rolled up as she gave it some thought, thinking that Ancestor might have some significance in that, so she nodded along happily. “Mm! Art!”
Rebecca left joyfully, but Gawain couldn’t find peace for a long time as he sat in his tent.
He fiddled with a pen, spinning it around subconsciously. When he recovered from his daze, he realized he had scribbled a line of words on the rough paper: “Magical power. What exactly is magical power?”