After eight more days of work, I finished building the prototype windmill for the well, and had Karsh help shape a straight steel rod of the necessary size for the pump. The snow started melting on the mountain half-way through my work, which theed in nagging from Tiberius that I should go brave the remaining snow to get him crystals. I retorted that if he had simply hauled enough water to the b in the first pce, I wouldn't have felt the o build this well first, so he'll have to wait until I finish my projebsp; Never mind the fact that I wouldn't actually travel up through the snow, even if most of it is melted. That's just asking to get buried in an avanudslide.

  For now the pn is just to get the well w, but with the way I've set it up, I install different diameter pipes to get data on the most effit way to draw water out of the well, including potential data to reduce overall wear and tear on the check valves. Though to do that properly I'll need someoo record the actual data for total flow rate from the pump in various wind ditions, and I don't pn on being the oo do that. I have other tasks to plete that don't involve w at the b, so for now the idea of optimizing this well is just something for someoo do iure.

  Though it took some small ges, getting the well funing and building the water tank with an overflow valve only took three more days of work and one day of monit to make sure it didn't break. I didn't have much lightsto over from the work I was doing previously, and I used the remainder of it coating the pump rod to finish the windmill.

  Though the wind isn't stant, over the course of a day it seems like it averages about 50 gallons an hour, which is more than enough to satisfy a signifit amount of water needs for drinking for any future wells we might dig. Here though, that water will rgely be used if we for experiments.

  Given the sheer excess of water flow from the well, I've installed a shut off on the windmill itself which locks the fan in pbsp; This way we don't waste water, or wear out the check valves more than necessary. With that pleted, I've started getting ready to travel back up the mountain to grow a moderately sized crystal. Before I do that though, I want to ruest to see if I transport them over the surface, and see how long that might work for.

  For the experiment I pn on distilling some of the toxin I discovered years ago which burns mana. If I submerge the crystal in that solution, I suspect that it may, at least temporarily, prevent crystals which are submerged from overcharging and breaking. If that experiment fails, then there isn't a good reason for me to stay up on the mountain to grow a medium crystal.

  After another six days, the snow had melted pletely, and I felt fortable heading up to the cave. In the six days while I waited, I started helping with extending the fishiy again. At my suggestion, the stru crew had started to dig out a new quarry area that will eventually bee a new artificial tide pool iher valley as a source for stru stone, as well as a poblins to manually break rocks in an attempt to gain access to stone shaping. So I spent my half-asleep time cutting and hauling stone from that quarry, and then during my wakeful time worked oty, since I didn't particurly want to be diving ier while half-asleep.

  On the sixth day, I made the trip up the mountain, but took a detour for a few hours colleg the pnts that produced the mana-burning toxin. Once I was fident that I had enough to do a basic test, I pleted the trip up the mountain and got to work distilling the toxin from the pnts, and building a chamber that would hold some crystals suspended in the ter of the liquid.

  The day, I began my test. I selected a number of simirly sized rge crystals, and suspended one in the chamber within the cave after draining its mana, surrou with the liquid, then hauled the chamber to the surfabsp; For this particur test, I've left the top of the chamber open so I easily observe what happens inside.

  As I traveled closer to the surface the crystal still started to glow more than before, which had me initially ed. One of my hopes was that the toxin worked as a mana insutor as it would absorb the ambient mana before it could be used. The experiment wasn't a failure though. Despite the crystal starting to glow, it halted at a certain point well below the point where the crystal would shatter. Thanks to some impurities ier, I could also tell that some form of ve was also within the liquid itself. I couldn't tell the source of the ve, but I'm assuming it's the crystal.

  Over the course of six hours, the crystal steadily grew brighter and brighter until it finally cracked and started to deteriorate. As it deteriorated, the bck fkes sunk to the bottom of the surrounding fluid, and gas bubbled off the crystal and out into the atmosphere. My first test could be sidered a success, but not a perfee. Six hours is cutting it close for transp a crystal all the way to the b, and there are still too many variables to determihe effect that different crystal size or toxin tration might cause. I have a few more experiments I'll try to get a better idea of what will need done.

  I spent another five days doing various tests until I was fident in some basic predis. I only used very simirly sized crystals for my tests, to remove that as a variable, though I 't dist that they might have caused minor fluctuations. I tried running the experiment at night, ging the total volume of the liquid with the dissolved toxin, and both increasing and decreasing its tration. What I found was that the length of time it took for the crystals to break was fairly straightforward.

  I found a few useful pieces of data. The time it takes for the crystal to break seems to vary linearly with the volume of liquid present. If I double the volume while keeping the tration the same, it takes twice as long for the crystal to break. The same is true for tration, but only to a point. If I dilute the tration too much, the property begins to disappear, and by the time it's seven times as dilute as what I prepared initially, it no longer is capable of preventing the crystal from breaking. Oher end of the spectrum, if I trate it down to five times the tration, the liquid bees very viscous after a short while of being on the surface, and the crystal breaks quite early.

  Based on those observations, I hypothesize that the ve I observed before is strong enough to allow reasonable mixing of the fluid for even moderately rge volumes. When the tration is too low, ve slows too mud the capacity of the fluid is too low to prevent the crystals I've chosen from breaking. When the tration is too high, the fluid bees too viscous and slows ve, preventing the majority of the fluid from being useful.

  Finally, at night I observed that the crystals take about 30% loo break, which seems sistent with my findings on how quickly I regee maween day and night. The st test I want to do before making a slightly rger crystal to test with is to test a crystal during the sor eclipse which will occur two days from now. During eclipses, we normally get signifitly less mana, almost a 90% redu, so I feel like that is a good cheake.

  During the eclipse, I ran four tests simultaneously, sihe eclipses only happen once a month. The eclipse itself sts about eight hours, which is a signifit part of a day. During it, I ran the first test again, a test with a tenth the volume of liquid, a fifth the volume of liquid, and half the volume of liquid.

  All of the tests except the smallest volume ran past the eclipse, and then broke at different points afterwards. The oh volume test broke at the four hour mark, which was a little earlier than I expected, but I potentially attribute to their general affinity for drawing in mana. The one-fifth volume broke about thirty minutes after the eclipse ended, and the half and full volume ones ran for about two and five hours after the eclipse ended respectively.

  With this new information at hand, I estimate that I get about six times the duration on the surface for a submerged crystal by transp it during an eclipse. I imagihat if I was willing to wait a few months until the eclipses start when it is nighttime on the isnd, I'd be able to get even more duration from the liquid. As it stands, the rgest natural crystals easily make the trip to the new b during an eclipse, but the b itself isn't quite deep enough to prevent them from breaking at that depth, so I'll o grow slightly rger crystals. As long as those crystals don't behave too differently, we should be able to transport them during an eclipse following their pletion.