//
Hello everyone, just warned to pop in at the start of the chapter, what do people think of me including dialogue on other languages that Carman doesn't understand? For example if people of Liyue were taking into their regional language, would anyone mind if I just used Google Translate to convert English to Chinese? I know that it's not 100% reliable and that it likely won't fully convey what I am trying to say, I am open to advice, just wanted to know if people would be interested in being able to know what Carman doesn't or would rather not potentially have some plots forshaowed if not spoiled by the dialogue between other characters in other languages. Of course there will also be some benign small talk or references to other works for kicks, just wanted to get everyone's general opinion.
Thanks,
ParaDoxxed.
//
After eating the dinner Ryuzu had prepared, carman talked to her about helping him translate the contents of Nicolus Flamel's Research notes.
Upon reading through the book, Ryuzu noted that it was very similar to the French in her world. The key difference being it used many outdated words that hadn't been entered into her memory. Thankfully, the context in which the words were used helped convey the meaning.
With the mentioning of spells and wands, Carman was fairly sure that this was from the Flamel from Harry Potter. There were many alchemical creations and their recipes noted in the notes, it was surprisingly in the first quarter of the book that Carman found the alchemical creations he was most interested in.
There were many spells and alchemy circles that were mentioned but due to how interdependent the Philosopher's Stone's creation process was with other disciplines there was no way Carman would have been able to make one any time soon. However while the steps needed to make one were highly advanced, the basic principles of the process weren't. From what Mr. Flamel had described, the main component of the Philosopher's Stone was potential lifespan.
Nicolas in his research had found the existence of a person's potential lifespan as a tangible energy. Every living being with a soul has a potential lifespan. The length of this span varies with the species, with small animals and insects having the smallest and immortal creatures like Phoenixes having an almost infinite amount.
While he could not find where this energy came from, he was able to observe that the energy of this potential lifespan was consumed by the soul over time in order to produce vitality in the body. After a person died and their soul moved on, the potential lifespan typically dissipated. However after some expirementatuon he managed to create a circle that managed to collect and maintain the potential lifespan of deceased individuals. He managed to use it to great effect during the Bubonic Plague.
The stone itself was an alchemy creation originally used to house the collected lifespans, however as the energy was compressed, as millions of people and animal's lifespans were crammed into the same space the underent a reaction and became something else. It took him over a century to study this energy that was slowly generated and he dubbed it energy τ. Eventually he was able to redesign the original lifespan storage to make it intentionally and more efficiently generate energy τ.
Once he had his hands on enough of it Mr. Flamel found that this energy broke the almost universal law of equivalent exchange, one can not make more of something than they put in, be it from energy to matter, energy to energy, or matter to mater, energy τ broke the rules as when broken down into potential lifespan, it exhibited a ratio of 4:8 with it requiring only four units of potential lifespan to create but creating eight in return when broken down.
Using this principle, Nicolas created a design to create a perpetual cycle where the stone would continuously break energy τ into eight units of potential lifespan, and use four units to create a new energy τ particle.
However the stone, which had been a simple magic imbued ruby at the time failed to contain the exponentially growing amount of lifespan and energy τ.
Eventually, Mr. Flamel found that he would have to make a sacrifice of his own to make this alchemy creation. One component to house the functionally infinite energy was fate, but it had to be a powerful fate inorder to contain the condensed energy just waiting to explode. The second ingredient was emotions, they acted as the buffer and the heat resistant material that shields the main walls from the heat of the core of a reactor.
Due to the nature of the invention, Nicolas sacrificed part of his own fate, the ability to die of old age, meaning that no matter how old he got, he would not die of natural causes, he would either need to catch a illness capable of infecting and killing him or to die via other external means. The toll the stone took his emotions however were much steeper. Just as the internal shields and coolant on a reactor needed to be changed out regularly, the stone would also siphon off Nicolus's emotions over time. At first while he was still somewhat young, new experiences kept his emotions vivid and powerful enough that the stone only needed a small bit of his emotions to maintain itself, however, as he lived longer and started to repeat experiences, his emotions grew duller and the stone required more and more of his emotions to repair its self. Eventually Mr. Flamel noted that it was eating up almost all of his emotions, with only the strong feeling of love he had for his wife still able to be felt.
Carman's face paled slightly imagining what it would feel like to have almost all of his emotions being drained away only to perpetuate an existence that has long become dull.
Closing the book he thanked Ryuzu and bid her goodnight.
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The next morning, Carman officially had the day off and spent his time following Ryuzu for the day as she did her adventure's commissions.
As he was piggybacked by Ryuzu who was running around on the cliffs of Chenyu Vale, Carman spotted a puzzle. It brought up memories of ones he had solved when playing Genshin so he asked Ryuzu to Circle around and take a look.
It was nestled in a cave that seemed to have been recently exposed by a landslide. Inside he saw a few familiar mechanisms, a few large stone tablets with words etched onto them, and behind an archway with a glowing barrier within it was a familiar looking structure with a pair of double doors.