As she looked at the nonchalant expression on the face of her true self, little Beatrice, whose eyes were red, and who hair was disheveled from complete overwork, couldn't help but clench her fists, causing Beatrice to turn her attention to her.
...
As she looked at the small version of herself, who was looking at her with puppy eyes, beginning for some help, Beatrice couldn't help but let out a faint sigh and touch her forehead.
A moment later, though, Beatrice suddenly took a small rock out of her pocked and placed it right next to the tiny Beatrice.
A few moments after that, another tiny Beatrice suddenly appeared, with confusion filling her eyes, causing the eyes of the first Beatrice to suddenly light up.
Without even waiting for the original Beatrice to say anything, tiny Beatrice suddenly grabbed the hand of her new comrade, who was now stuck in this hellhole with her, and walked away.
As she looked at the two Beatrices, who quickly got to work at dividing the work they had to do, Beatrice couldn't help but feel her lips twitch.
Even though she noticed the fact that the older Beatrice was delegating harder work onto her younger self, Beatrice had no intention to intervene, and as such, made her way downwards from this floor after taking a few more looks at it.
Though, as Beatrice made her way down to the floor below, a faint frown couldn't help but appear on her face.
The closer to the next floor, the more Beatrice could sense tiny bits of mana, not elemental energy, floating through the air, causing her to feel somewhat confused.
A moment later, though, a small amount of enlightenment flashed through her face as numerous new memories from her clone flashed through her mind.
"That could be quite a problem..." mumbled Beatrice as she stared at the scene below her.
At this moment, next to the mana farm, which had increased massively in size over the past few weeks, stood three Beatrices, alongside several ants, discussing something.
The moment Beatrice entered the floor, all three Beatrice's suddenly raised their heads and stared at her with hopeful looks in their eyes.
As one might expect, the reason for their actions was quite simple, they had a problem.
Currently, the process through which the entirety of this compound obtained elemental energy was very simple.
Firstly, numerous mages, which Beatrice had brainwashed, refined mana out of elemental energy.
After that, though numerous tubes, as well as thanks to the brainwashing, Beatrice was able to make the mages send out the mana out of their bodies and into the tubes, before arriving in a large containment area which Beatrice had created.
After that, thanks to the fact that the mages had then lost control of their mana, the mana then begins degrading into elemental energy in the containment vat.
Thanks to the fact that the mages imbued the spirit and will into the mana, after it degrades back into elemental energy, which is an efficient process, the amount of elemental energy becomes slightly larger, roughly 2 percent larger compared to the original amount of elemental energy sent into them.
After that, some filtration takes place, making sure that nothing from the mages remains in the elemental energy, decreasing the profit to roughly 1-1.5 percent, depending on the batch.
Lastly, the profit is then siphoned off, whist the original amount of elemental energy is sent back so that the process could begin once again.
Right now, though, the tiny Beatrices, as well as the smart ants who helped them manage this place, discovered something else.
They discovered the fact that the efficiency of this process could be higher, since after increasing the size of the operations, they discovered the fact that their pipes, which they thought were quite good at keeping mana in, were actually quite leaky.
This was the origin of the mana Beatrice felt through the air.
Although the mana will also degrade into elemental energy after some time, it would take a lot of effort that capture that elemental energy, and at the same time, while the mana was still in the air, the efficiency of the mana refining of those captive mages will be greatly reduced, as they have to be much more careful to not take in any of it.
Back when the scale of the production was small, this was not much of a problem, sadly though, in the future, the production will continue to grow.
"So, what solution have you thought up?" asked Beatrice as she appeared next to the group, even though she had read the memories of all of her tiny selves.
"We're currently in the process of designing a mana capturing device."
"After some experimenting, we've managed to attract mana, by attracting the faint spirit residue in it."
"On a small scale, this works perfectly, but right now we're having some trouble figuring out how to do it efficiently and without the need for much maintenance on our part."
"We've come up with a new design and need your help to improve it..."
...
Extremely quickly, all three of the tiny Beatrice's began speaking to their true self, without paying any attention to each other.
As she listened to her tiny selves, who continued blabbering on, Beatrice couldn't help but stretch out her hand, causing the design that these guys had created to fly towards her.
'I'm really brilliant...' thought Beatrice as she looked at the design in front of her with a smile on her face.
The machine that would have to be built would use clones of the mages currently refining mana as magnets to attract tiny bits of mana refined by them.
Because the pipes are only leaking at the beginning, intersections and near the vats themselves, not all places need to have all clones next to them.
For example, if mage 206 is located next to the left wall of the room, his clones need to be present in only two places, next to the left wall of the room and the vats.