"Do you know the corresponding runic extraction for the topaz element? Because I'm certainly unaware of how the runes to extract topaz mana to power the veins look like. If you don't, we'll have to carry out extraction theory experiments." Ebony asked.
Although he learned most of the basic and even some of the more uncommon elemental runic equivalents, topaz magic or mana was one of the many that were not in Kong Jing's repository. It was unknown who first created runes but one of the first steps and basics was how to extract mana from their raw forms with runes. It was revolutionary to even work with mana ores already but the runes did not manage to extract other elemental mana.
The researchers and scholars of the past have deep study in the area and some simple trial and error experiments with an ever-increasing list of symbols that probe into the raw energy source and check for their reactions.
Seeing the freshened up runic scholar shake his head, they got to work. He watched the runic scholar bring out his tools and equipment, a little surprised he was bringing around so much stuff that wasn't exactly useful for a dungeon dive. The man didn't have a lot of bag storage after all.
"I don't have another spare set." He said.
In response, Ebony took one of the topaz shards and placed it on a rectangular block of ice that was slowly being 'engraved'.
"Damn. That works?"
"We're only testing for a response, even a piece of paper would work."
"Piece of paper?"
Hearing no reply, they both got to work.
Firstly, he wanted to see the runic scholar at work.
It was vastly different from his own experience with Kong Jing's occasional tips and teachings. Mark looked like a scientist at work in a lab. The box shaped object with a glass or see-through crystal cover had replaceable slabs of a stone-looking base with engraved extraction runes. He had five of them, one for pure mana ores, the other four were the basic, fire, water, earth and wind ones. Chances are, there would be some kind of reaction from the pure mana and earth mana ones. Then, they had to go into detail and change some of the hundreds of tiny symbols within it.
Then he had many other thinner slabs that appeared to Ebony that he would stack them and the runes would connect. That was handy. Everything was pre-engraved and Mark had had to place a topaz shard inside and activate the box by letting mana run through it. Through trial and error, he would be able to sift out the non-reactive ones and hence form the full topaz mana extraction rune.
At least that was what the theory he learnt told him as it was his first time conducting this experiment. What he was seeing was very different from what he knew.
The engraved runes on the replaceable slabs were too simple. Instead of the hundreds of minor lines and curves that were supposed to pull mana in all sorts of ways, there were barely dozens. One reason is obviously the multiple layers of slabs that would overlap and connect when aligned properly but even so, there was a large bulk missing. The bulk of the missing ones were the ones for safety.
He didn't bother the runic scholar and continued watching. Sure enough, dozens of slabs were put aside really quickly but the reaction got more and more violent. Three of his replaceable slabs broke, one was shattered against the glass cover while the other two got 'consumed'. The latest one exploded but was contained within the box.
'Sister Jing is surprisingly concerned about safety.' Ebony saw enough and got to work too. To be fair, at her level, the material or energy sources she worked with would be way stronger and an explosive reaction would not bode well.
Using what he read from her books, even if there was supposed to have an explosive or violent reaction, there would be layers upon layers of reverse or redundant runes that would 'cushion' or have the energy source/elemental mana be pushed back on themselves. The simplest ones would flood out the foreign mana/energy source with loads of mana either pure or one's own mana diluting it to have no violent reactions.
Mark was probably hundreds of times more efficient than him because he was slowly getting good results. Ebony had to mould the runic ice plate which took him quite some time for each version. Although that was the case, he was definitely closing in onto the right ones faster due to how effective the version he learnt was. The annoying part was probably how the topaz mana would eat up his ice mana, effectively destroying his runes that were acting as a pathway for the topaz mana.
He shared his findings to help Mark rule out many of his tries and they managed to get a working extraction that didn't harm the engraved material with any sort of leakages after 3 hours. Ebony saw no reason not to at least teach Mark the mana flooding runes for him to be safe. It would be costly for him if he was huge on experimenting but Ebony thought it would be a pity if Mark one day got killed by his own experiments and research. One layer of safety was better than nothing.
He was about to conjure another ice sculpture that was fully moulded but came upon another problem which was to integrate the extraction rune with an already complete 3-dimensional humanoid runic body.
A sculpture formed with its chest split open for Mark's expertise.
"There's free space but the configuration of the extraction rune would clash in dozens of places." Ebony pointed out. He was very good at mentally visualising where the runes would go if he were to mould them in. Since it was just clear transparent ice, Mark had a hard time 'seeing' the runic veins. The colour of ice would only be blue when he compressed his mana. Mark ran his mana through the veins, Ebony wondered if there was a skill at work.
The chest was where the core was and where the power source was supposed to be since it connected to the entire runic 'circle'. They had to use this topaz shard as a substitute rather than purely supply it with topaz mana. The Cardinal Golem's core was completely broken in the battle and nothing was left for them.
"No problem, it's just a simple rearrangement of the extraction rune. Mine was engraved, we have quite a bit of leeway and I think I can rearrange them to work in this model. I just need time."
Knocks came from the door.
"Breakfast." Their resident chef announced.
"I won't interrupt, just bring me a bite after you're done. I'll probably work faster on this anyway, seeing how you're unfamiliar with rearrangement or translation as I call it."
"Thanks."
Ning Xin sat there in a casual white long sleeved shirt and beige pants with her hair still tied up in a bun as she had been cooking. It was not the first time he saw her in those clothes but it was still fresh to see her in a different colour than bright red. The contrast of red and white together with her white mask with the red feather matched perfectly.
The first set of clothing he showed her were the shorts and tee-shirt made for workouts and she didn't want to look at anything else he made after that. Unwilling to even look at the many clothes he made and she was just wearing her own. He thought it was a good choice since they trained a lot but it had been the worst choice, the shorts were so short her temper didn't seem as short anymore. "How is that not revealing!?" She screamed as she stormed back to the kitchen when she first saw it.
"That's another extravagant breakfast." There was a widespread with the majority of the plates covered in meats and proteins.
"Hmm? Oh, uh…morning training together was more intense than usual and uh we still have another round of training later in the evening."
"Mmm. Thank you for making breakfast, let's eat." He went straight for a juicy sausage.
"Let's eat!" She didn't hesitate to dig in.
"So you'll be holing up in the kitchen today?"
"Yes, I save a portion of every sample for you to test."
"...I'll savour every bite."
'Hypertension and diabetes…Constitution can save me right?' He recalled all the sauces and jams that he'll have to taste test.
"You're thinking something weird aren't you?"
"I don't know what you mean."
"Hmm〜" Ning Xin didn't call out that she could somewhat tell what he was feeling. Although she didn't know what he was thinking exactly, she was too busy savouring every bite of her meal.
It was an uneventful day. He returned to observe Mark at work, they didn't have much headway. It would likely take a few days to get a working 3 dimensional model of the topaz mana extraction runes. He had little to zero contribution as Mark was going too fast, making almost incomprehensible changes to the original rune. Mark said he was only following the standardised steps to break down and translate them.
Ebony learned a lot of practical rune applications from him. It was fundamentally different from what he read and learned from Kong Jing's library. Chances are, the base techniques that the Xengs or Kong Jing herself used were quite different from others. Although the reason he was so clueless was that all he had been doing was applying what he learnt and not research and development.
One day later, he found out he was weaker than he thought when he faced a great opponent again. The spread of food in front of him. He contemplated for a bit before deciding to act sooner rather than later.
The devourer was perceptive, he was going to have to use that against her. As they were washing the dishes, he would pull his gaze to her belly over and over again, looking away whenever she turned to him.
"Wh-what are you looking at?" The predator was alarmed and went alert with the wet soapy three-prong claws.
He wiped his hands dry and prepared to make his move.
"It's nothing, I just can't help but think how soft your belly is now that it's getting rounder." He put his palms on her unguarded belly now that she was raising her claws up. Quickly pulling back before she slaps him away.
The feelings on his fingertips were a tinge of softness that was clearly hiding tight abdominal muscles. His attention couldn't help but go to his fingertips. He could still feel the warmth and softness.
"Round..er?" Instead of a counter, the attack seemed to have induced a stun.
'Was that too direct?'
"Looks like a nice pillow…" He tried to soften the blow but it seemed to have no effect as she was no longer reacting to his words.
"Let's go to the duelling grounds an hour early today."
"Mmm."
"Sister Jing is delayed by something and I can't contact her. If she doesn't call back in a week shall we go back to Ordina?"
"Mmm. How far along are you with your skills?"
"...After this dive, I'll evolve."
"We. We'll evolve."
❅❅❅
10 unmoving figures stood under the Quest Hall together with them.
"The most accurate way to dish out similar strength attacks would be spell scrolls unless one's control over their strength is highly trained. Let's just use a multitude of low-strength attacks to check them out." The panda-eyed runic scholar was trying his best to hold his excitement down while looking at five of the figures that were glowing yellow.
The other five were conjured as a control.
They managed to make an external on and off switch to save on the limited topaz fragments they had. Replicating success wasn't enough as they made these five draw a different output from the fragments. They had to test its limits and effects.
He wasn't sure how the runic scholar quantified it when neither of them could 'Identify' how much mana was left in a shard of topaz. Yet, he was able to set it such that the sculptures would consume 150, 200, 250, 300 and 350 mana per minute. It would have little to no effect when less than 150 topaz mana was supplied. Fortunately, they had some larger fragments that could at least sustain their experiments.
Ebony could tell that Mark had already begun on his study to find out how to change it such that it didn't require topaz mana but that was a way bigger project.
Mark took a thick book out labelled 'earth'. Standing 10 metres away and flipping to a specific page before pointing it towards one of the uncompressed ice sculptures. A shard of earth shot at its chest and made a deep indentation, halfway into where his heart would have been. The page withered off the book.
"Perfect, this was one of my old practice scrolls but I'm glad I didn't waste it." The spell scroll had decent power even considering that it was just normal ice, albeit ice that was naturally tougher due to his Fortification. If the same spell scroll was used against a level 30 monster, they would probably take some damage.
He helped to arrange them in order of their strengths. At Mark's call, he activated the weakest one and the same shard of earth was let loose.
"Success!" The excited runic scholar yelled.
For 150 topaz mana per minute, the effect wasn't all that strong but it was decent. The shard of earth bounced off instead and the ice sculpture had a dent 1 to 2 centimetres deep. It didn't change that they succeeded in activating the humanoid durability rune.
The same spell was cast on the one that consumed 200 mana.
"How much did that do?"
"...Not even a scratch."
"So I was right! The start-up energy required is quite large due to the multiple layers of capacitors that store them for larger bursts. By breaking past the start-up energy, the overall rune gets more and more efficient and less mana is required to give a bigger gain in toughness."
Mark flipped a few more pages and let loose a shard of earth twice as large and fast. It pierced through the normal sculpture, leaving a gaping hole in its chest. Then he let it loose on the second runified sculpture again.
"Thin cracks, a small area. Hardly a dent."
Their experiments didn't take long. The one that consumed 300 mana per minute was roughly 3 to 4 times harder than the 150 mana per minute one despite only using twice as much mana.
"Looks like you'll be busy with this for a long time." He said as they entered their house.
Mark laughed in response before he turned serious.
"Ebony, I get the feeling you're rich beyond my imagination. Do you think you could fund a workshop for me in Plainston?"
"Mmm. It would be easier for you to get topaz power sources for the first stages of your research won't it?"
"Pretty much, another reason is that I can't waste my time travelling back to my workshop but that too. There's so much to do. Converting it to an elementless mana compatible rune. Translating it back to a weaker, simpler two-dimensional one and making it work on armour or something close would take a long time."
"Don't you think that's pointless? You can just engrave the durability runes on your current armour."
"Of course not. There's no such thing as pointless research, just what we did over the past week gave me innumerable ideas and thoughts to improve. Besides, this is an unknown runic structure that has better capabilities at higher mana consumption than what I know. Think about the possibilities! Its potential!"
"I'll provide the funding. You have enough topaz to last right? I'll bring back more than enough for your entire research duration. I just want all your findings." He was just interested in the elementless compatibility so that he could power the rune with his own mana. It was probably too much to ask for a non-ice mage to try to make it compatible with ice mana too, not that that was necessary.
"...All huh, that's a lot to ask."
Ebony took out a wooden chest and pushed it to Mark.
He didn't ask any further after looking at Ebony's face that didn't look like he was going to explain further.
"Workshop, research equipment, your personal compensation. Whatever you want to do with it."
"Th-this..are they all elling Blues?" Mark was so shocked by the sheer wealth placed in front of him that he couldn't even raise his voice.
"Are they enough? I'm not sure how much the research equipment you require costs."
"Enough? I won't be able to get state of the art stuff but there's nothing on the market that would require half of this."
"Great. Oh, you can just turn this building into your workshop if you want."
"...with this amount, I may as well go ham and do as you say."
"We have a deal?"
"All of this for a couple of years of my time that I wouldn't even be wasting? You're goddamn right we have a deal!"
They high-fived as a sign that the deal was made. Ebony didn't feel the need for a contract even after Mark brought it up.
"You're not afraid I'll just run off with all your Blues after you go back into Ordina?"
"...Will you?"
"Why would I waste my time running off when I can be spending it on research?"
"There's your answer."
Ebony left Mark to get into contact with suppliers for his equipment and even construction companies that specialised in making custom buildings.
A week passed and Kong Jing contacted Ning Xin once that she was busy homing onto Zenin's location.
He made a call to the craftswoman right after she was done with her call with her cousin. He noticed the considerably large drain on the Blues he connected.
"Hey there, you could've talked to me through little Xin's call. What is it you don't want her to know?"
He cut to the chase and talked about Ordina's humanoid golem guardian with a runic body and how they were researching recreating that and their progress so far.
"Hey hey, stop right there. A dungeon guardian has that…" Sister Jing sounded a little surprised.
"Mmm."
"...It-It's an old technique…" She spoke more softly than usual.
"Don't do anything stupid for now, I'll look for you guys after I'm done. Take care of little Xin." She continued.
"Mmm."
"Is that all you say when the two of you talk?"
"Mhmm? No…"
"...Forget it. I'll hang up."
Ebony could hear a sigh as she hung up. A couple of Blues were dried up. She must have been lying to him when she said that the mana efficiency for callstone already hit a limit because Ning Xin was on the call with her for a much longer period of time. He didn't think she had that many mana ores inside her mask.
"Ready?" Ning Xin was fully geared up. She wasn't in the best of moods because the very night he indirectly said they were eating too much, their meals were a third of what they usually were in quantity. It was about the average amount that he would usually eat.
"Mmm…ready." He tried to find more words to say but it wasn't a very good attempt.
They left for Ordina with Mark sending them off.