As time passed and the preparations were going on full speed, the equipment they requested from the craftsmen were ready so Amy and Clair started to work on the explosives. Amy started with creating a wood like substance from mushrooms. While she was working on the mushrooms in front of the fire, Clair was also working on the wax. As the wax passed through the various pipes of the monster contraption Clair built, the wax was being seperated into two parts.
A clear and viscous liquid, and a white coloured leftover that had the texture of mashed potatoes. Of course normally, when someone heats wax and mushrooms, the wax would just melt and the mushrooms would either be cooked or be more unedible.
The reason why this wasn't happening was Amy and Clair's magic changing what normally would happen.
And Amy was stirring the mixture inside of her cauldron while the ladle in her hands glowed dark pink.
"My magic changed colours again... Is that a good thing or a bad thing?"
The personality of someone's magic was caused by the faults the human body made when casting magic after reaching a certain amount of training which let's the body use more mana. It being less significant like a simple shine either meant the magic being cast was too basic or the caster was really efficient at magic. Of course, since tools to measure things like that either didn't exist or were really expensive to operate, so research about personalized magic was almost nonexistent.
Just as Amy was starting to whistle a tune in boredom, her eyes caught a light blue spark from where Clair was working.
While Clair was working on the wax and casting her magic to change what happened inside the contraption, suddenly small light blue sparks started to appear around the wax. Clair froze at first, and the whole process stopped because she forgot to concentrate on her magic, and the sparks went away.
Then with curiosity, she applied her magic again. The sparks started to appear again. After repeating this for a while and reaching a conclusion, a wide and proud grin appeared on her small face.
"Hey Amy! Did you see that!? Did you see it! My magic is changing! It is gaining personality!"
"Sigh~, I did Clair."
"Look at that! It looks cool, doesn't it? It's like the power is flowing out of it because it couldn't be contained!"
"Where did that come from? And, I didn't know you cared about your magic that much..."
"Of course I do. It is the only real thing that I gained myself...", muttered Clair with a slightly less happy face.
"Hm? What did you say?"
"I said my magic looks better than yours!"
"Hey, since when is it a competition? And, aren't you worried those sparks might cause an explosion?"
"NO!"
Clair hurriedly stopped casting her magic and started to check the wax and the equipment.
"Pffft! Don't worry Clair. Those aren't real sparks, it is just light. Personalized magic might look like that but it doesn't change what you are doing with your magic and it doesn't do anything else. It just looks like that and nothing else."
"Oh~ I see... Don't make a joke like that again.", said Clair in a cold tone.
'Why does she have the eyes of a warrior when she is the one with the least amount of experience with fighting?', wondered Amy, but didn't dare to ask that audibly.
After finishing the first step of processig the main ingredients and other preparations, Amy and Clair were ready to finalize the explosives. Noah and Acherie were also about to return from their cartography trip. Corvin was training with the spearmen and Kharon.
"That musclehead... Even though he is aware, he still chose to train and exhaust himself..."
"Well, nothing we can do about that, I guess. We can do it early tomorrow."
To finalize the last step of the magical explosives, they needed Corvin to make wind with his magic to cool an ingredient, but he was training despite knowing they needed him and exhausted himself. With slight resentment, they decided to sleep for today.
The next day, most of the preparations were complete, and everyone decided to take a rest. Except Corvin, Amy and Clair.
To finish making the explosives, Amy used the wood like substance she made from the mushrooms to make charcoal. Clair mixed the white paste that she made from the wax with the charcoal while effecting it's properties with her magic.
The light blue sparks appeared as the white paste and the black powder mixed together. At first, it was coloured gray like one would normally expect, but as the blue sparks continued giving a visual show, the colour of the mixture slowly turned brown.
Then they added the brown mixture into the clear viscous liquid made from the wax, and both Amy and Clair used their magic on the materials while the two ingredients were mixed together. Corvin was also using his magic to create winds and cool down the mixture. Without this cooling, the reaction inside the cauldron would heat itself up until the nature of the ingredients were broken. But with Corvin's cooling and the girls' magic, no accidents happened and the final product showed itself.
The product was like a dark brown dough, but instead of being cooked, this thing was a really powerful explosive.
"We finally made it!"
"Yeah!"
While the girls were celebrating, Corvin had a concerning idea.
"Wait... Is making powerful explosives with magic this easy? We just used some mushroom and wax..."
"Well, I don't know about the mushrooms but the wax was definitely not normal. If it was normal beeswax, we would be here for another year.", said Clair.
"What do you mean?"
"You don't get it? Obviously, the wax made by the monsters weren't normal. Maybe I can sense it because of my magic, but the wax had a much more violent nature than normal beeswax."
"Huh? How does that work now?"
"Who knows? Maybe what I am saying is just nonsense, but I felt like something was different, and I was right."
"... When did you test it?"
"Test what?"
"The wax?"
"Uhh... Like two days ago?"
"...When we started making the explosive?!"
"Y-Yeah... It did work out in the end, didn't? Don't brood over the small things."
"...I have a lot of things to say, but I am too tired. I am going to rest, tomorrow is going to be long."