Today I began by tinkering with a crystal charging apparatus. From my prior experimentation, I recall that when crystals have faces toug each other that they tend to ba their internal levels, but for it to be useful here, the crystals o be roughly the same size.

  It's unfortuhat octahedrons do not fill space, so I 't just puzzle them inter crystal. What I do though is make a sheet of them, since fa they're basically twles on top of each other. So although the tact between two faces won't be plete, it will at least be partial, which should let them baheir levels between each other to a small degree.

  Basically, what I'm trying is a tray that has divots to y the crystals in such that they tou their faces. It's not going to be easy, since I'll o sort crystals that are very simir in size to make the grid work. Even then, it's going to be imperfect because if crystals are even slightly smaller, then they won't touch properly.

  A solution to that though is to just accept that I ake a perfect grid, instead I should make lines of the crystals, because that won't be reliant on perfect crystal size. I make it a long by making the ends of the from the rgest crystals, so it along in an S shape.

  Which means the first thing I o do is start s my empty crystals. I begin putting them into five different buckets. Smallest test.

  That ends up taking about half the day, because I end up re-s part way through as outlier crystals are found that make me redefine my size groupings.

  Now that I have my crystals though, I begin making my tray. I start by taking a small cutting from a wall to make the tray from. I've made sure it's thiough to properly embed the crystals in without them rattling about. Which means right now, it's really heavy. It'll get lighter as I shave out the pce for the crystals, and the crystals themselves are signifitly less dehan stone, so it should be fine.

  I grab one of the rgest crystals, and begin using stone shaping to carve out a matg hole for the crystal. It ends up taking quite a while, and when I finish, I've e up with a better method. Instead to shape the hole first, I should just make the hole bigger than what I need and add material in around it until it snugly fits the crystal.

  Doing the eique multiplies how quickly I add crystals to the , and it ehat each crystal is nid tight against its neighbors. By the evening, the first tray is done, holding 33 crystals. Satisfied, I y down to go to sleep. As sleep begins to take me, I realize one small problem I'll have to resolve tomorrow.

  As I wake up, I remember the issue I thought of st night. The tray in its current form only recharge exactly the crystals currently embedded in it, and oly in the order they're in, otherwise tact might be interrupted. Then when I finish using a crystal, I 't just put it ba its tray, or it'll drain the rest by a small amount.

  The solution to this, unfortunately, is that I o make a duplicate tray. Crystal by crystal. That way I pce the depleted crystals in the ray as I use them. Then it's ready to charge when it's full.

  It takes just under half a day to build the duplicate tray, and I mark the er of both trays with a number one so I don't mix them up iure if I make more trays. Which, if these work, that is exactly my pn.

  With the tray loaded up, I begin carefully making my towards the surface, all while watg the crystals.

  I slow down as I get close to where I had crystals break before. When I look at the tray, it's barely beginning to charge the crystals. I expected as much, given the crystals in the middle are likely getting signifitly less mana flux than the ones oside, but they're all sharing the charge levels.

  I begin to slowly creep more towards the surface, keeping careful watch over the crystals. As I get further up, I hat the big crystals oside seem to be brightening faster than the middle crystals. I'm a little ed about it, so I head back down some of the way until the crystals equalize in brightness.

  I sit and carefully watch the tray until the crystals are almost charged, and begin hauling the tray back. I don't want any of the crystals to overcharge, so if they're a little undercharged that is ok.

  All in all, the hauling and waiting took about an hour. Which is a det amount of time for 33 crystals. I easily gh double that in any given day. Just making the tray went through five, and this is precision work, which takes a lot less mana than bulk work.

  That said, I don't have a better system. Ohing that might be a little better though is if I get a lot of the crystals in trays, and store the trays a little bit away from each other then I might be able to passively charge some without needing to haul them. Uhe trays were stored closer to the surface, I doubt they'd passively charge enough to matter. After all, many of the expended ones have been so for many many months, and are still nearly dead.

  Either way, more trays does mean I make bulk trips to charge crystals. sidering the charge time is a little lohaime it takes to make a round trip, I could be hauling all day bringing charged crystals back, which sounds much more reasonable. I'll just o be careful that I don't leave any up there, or I'll lose a lot of crystals at once.

  Well, then the only thio do is start making more trays.

  Over the st five days, I've pleted seven more pairs of crystal trays. Each with their own specific crystals to go in each. All in all, I've got 255 crystals in trays designed for them now. I specifically use empty crystals, so that all eight trays would be packed with empty crystals for charging initially, and today I'm going to try charging all the crystals.

  I haul the first tray part of the to the entrance, set it down near where I charged the first tray before, and begin making my way back down, and I grab a sed tray, bringing it up. By the time I return, I end up waiting about 15 minutes before the first tray is charged enough to remove.

  I repeat the process, and by a little past noon, all eight trays are filled with charged crystals. Which is, to me, a nice aplishment. The crystals irays are all from the middle size and rger of crystals. I've kept all the small and smallest crystals separate, mainly because I don't want to have to deal with sing them out into trays, which would take a long time for much less payout. The dowo this is that the small and smallest crystals actually make up more than half of my total crystal mass, so I'm actually losing out on a lot of potential crystal battery power.

  All in all though, I'm quite happy with how things turned out. Unfortunately, right now I just have a bunch of trays of crystals sitting all over the floor. So for the rest of today, I'm going to go over to where I cut the sto of the wall to make the trays, and try to make a rack that the trays slide into in the wall, to hold all of them.

  By mid-m the day, I've fihe racks for the crystals in the wall, and now my floor is retively again. Unfortunately, now I o do a few tasks that I've beeing pile up. Namely, the corpse pile I burned before needs ed. It's ash and charcoal and needs removed from the cave, and while I'm aplishing that goal, I want t sticks back with me to start building up my stockpiles again.

  So, for the few days, I'll probably be repeating the process from before of ing up the burn pile, and distributing it out in the wild. This time, I'll probably deposit it much closer to the entrao the cave, just to limit how long I'm outside for.

  It took three full days since I started ing up, but I've gotten the cave enough to not be noticeable anymore, and in addition gathered enough sticks and twigs to keep my stove fire going for many, many weeks. I even had to build a rge bin ie room to fill with sticks, since I couldn't fit all of them in my room.

  Now I'm very tired though, since all of today was finishing up ing, so for today, I go to bed, and check my status as I do.

  Level: 10HP: 254/254MP: 95/95Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipution, Mighty ImpMagic: Stone Shaping, Teise

  Oh yeah, I should probably start experimenting with teise. I almost pletely fot.