I went back t on the mana crystal groaratuses for a few more months. By mid-summer, I had fihe 16-foot crystal apparatus along with the two smallest apparatuses that I o replicate from the mountain. It was at that time that I'd received hat the tunnel had reached the calcuted length, but the two halves hadn't actually met up yet. I expected that to some degree, however, because the odds of getting the angle absolutely perfect betweewo tunnels was very low, meaning I o go and make some final adjustments.

  So, I made my way over to the far side of the isnd, and after going to the end of the tunnel, I used teise to try to find where the other half of the tunnel was. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it despite how far my range was. So, I ended up w with them for another month, until we found the other tunnel, and ected the two. Ultimately, we were about 100 feet away in total, and most of that distance was horizontal. However, to make everything ect well at the same height, we dug forward ara 40 feet, and then ected the two tunnels.

  I think everyone was quite pleased with the fact we could now travel directly through the mountain in a pretty uhough the work that o be done was far from over. The tunnel on this side still o be widened, and now that I kly how much space we're w with in the ter area here, I have pns for how I want to expand it. I want this tral area to be a rest stop as the half-oiweewo sides of the isnd.

  As such, it o be carefully carved out to expand to meet both halves of the tunnel, plete with rge support pilrs, pces to rest, and some amount of lighting. I went and got a manascope to see exactly how much ambient mana there exists this far uhe mountain. The value came out to 0.006 CU, which means there is so little mahat we probably 't even use fluorite lighting. This does, however, give me an opportunity to test something that I've wao test for a little while now.

  We've had a 2-foot mana crystal in the b area for quite a while, aher Tiberius nor myself have used it for any new resear a year at least. So, I want to relocate that crystal to the tral area, a sit for a few months while people drain it for stru and mining. As they do so, I want to take readings of the ambient mana levels and see if the crystal actually amplifies the ambient mana, or if it even reasonably recharge this deep underground.

  Back when I was an imp, I found that the mana crystals did recharge deep underground, but they recharged much faster he surface, but I haven't had a good ce to test how that actually affects the surrounding area. It could either amplify the mana through some unknown meism, or it could drain the mana from the area, trating it in the crystal itself. I doubt it's the sed option, based ora ambient mana on the surface when we install rge crystals, but it just as well could be draining mana from further away, while amplifying the local area. Iher case, it's something worth cheg out.

  After bringing the 2-foot crystal to the tral area uhe mountain, I periodically checked the mana levels at a few different pre-selected points while the other demons worked to carve out the area I'd designated. I measured right o the crystal above the small water pool it was submerged in, about twenty feet away, where each tunnel meets the tral area, and a few hundred feet down each tunnel.

  I found some iis. Over time, the tral crystal dimmed more and more, and it recharged incredibly slowly. While it was bright, the tral area had very elevated levels of mana with the highest levels being trated right above the crystal, which was expected. As it dimmed though, an iing pattern emerged. The tral area tinued having somewhat amplified mana levels even after the crystal was essentially drained, reag ambient levels of 0.012 CU, though the real iis came from a differeween each of the two tunnels.

  The tuhat was ing from the far side of the mountain had much lower mana values thaher side. That had two obvious reasons that it could be happening. The first was that there was some form of cardinality to the way mana flows, which I thought would be unlikely. The sed was that we currently had another 2-foot crystal sittihe entrao that tunnel, along with a few trays of smaller crystals.

  So, I did an easy test, and moved the sed 2-foot crystal along with the trays into the opposite tunnel, and gave it a few days for the mana values to settle into a steady state. Sure enough, now the opposite tunnel had a lower ambient mana value. What it seems like, to me at least, is that the mana crystals seem to act like a mag for ambient mana. I also already know from experiehat mana seems to flow more freely through air than rock.

  I thus cluded from those two observations that it's likely that the mana crystal iunnel is essentially vacuuming up all the ambient mana that potentially would be ing through that tunnel. In the opposite tunnel where there are no other mana crystals ih, the ambient mana level forms a gradient along the tunnel, with the highest mana values he surface which slowly dees withiunnel until you reach the tral area. Iingly, he tral area, the mana values climb again until you reach the mana crystal itself, almost like the mana is pooling around that tral point.

  That brought up another question though. If I move the other mana crystals to the tral area as well, how would the mana in that area be affected? How would the two crystals i overall? So, I did just that. Obviously, all this moving of mana crystals did slow down the stru rate somewhat for the demons who were w to both expand the sed tunnel and build the tral area out, but the results of these experiments should help us be more effit iure with underground stru projects, so I think it's worth the dey.

  What I found after another month of letting the seana crystal slowly drain was that the ambient mana levels in the tral area had nearly tripled from when there was only one crystal, up to 0.032 bsp; While that was still less than 3% of the surface mana values at night time, it did give me some idea as to how mana crystals affect ambient mana. The gradient towards the tral area was simir to when there was only one crystal, although the final mana level wheering the tral area was higher, and it now had two tunnels feeding it, rather than one.

  What was more iing, however, was that the rge crystals themselves actually seemed to charge at about daytime mana values, meaning each crystal could essentially recharge a single demon at normal surface regen levels reliably. The smaller crystal trays, however, barely recharged at all, mirr the lower natural values. So, I tried out a mixed method. I kept the two 2-foot crystals in the tral area, and moved the mana trays back to the charging area in the far tunnel.

  The tral area did show a small drop in ambient mana, down to 0.026 CU, and the two crystals charged a little slower, but the trays themselves were recharging fast enough to keep up with the tunnel expansion, and the tral crystals let the demons w on the tral area work a little more effitly. I was a little intrigued by a new idea a that point, however. What would happen if I periodically pced the small mana crystals from the tray along the length of one of the tunnels. Would that increase or decrease the tral mana? Would it form a kind of duit for the mana, or would it absorb most of it?

  Despite the grumblings of the demons who's work I was disrupting, I tried that out as well. It took two days to space out the dozens of mana crystals along the tunnel length, and what I found was that when spaced out like this, it seemed to have about the same effect as when they were all tralized, and I was getting a reading of 0.032 the tral area again.

  Whether that is because small crystals individually have a negligible effect, and only start to do something when tightly grouped, like mags, or because of some unknown factor, I 't say, but I say that the small crystals do still seem to recharge mana faster than a demon would, so we could periodically pce them in tact with zinc fluorite to install basic lighting dowuhough it would probably ively effect the tral mana if we did so.

  Perhaps if we find another pocket of mana crystals, I attempt to grow a 4 or 6-foot mana crystal to put in the tral area to see how much that affects mana levels, by parison. For now though, I returned all the small crystals to their charging trays, ahe teams w ounnel and the tral area in peace to finish their work.