I was right about them notig things on the mainnd. When I had made it back to the city, I was informed that Kao had sent a message a ferior via the elf unication birds, and the bird was bei around waiting for a respoo be sent if we had one. So, I made my way to see what the message Kao had sent was exactly, and I was a little disappointed, but also slightly relieved.

  In short, Kao has noticed eagles leaving to sea, and assumes we've once again made a rge crystal. He intends to send a ship this wio pick up his remaining few dwarves still on the isnd, but that we won't be allowed to do any trade by order of the dwarven king. Gauging by the number of eagles that have left, he's already assumed we've either made a rger crystal, or done something very different from before. Iher case, he ences us to exercise caution, as mainiment towards demons has been plummeting i years, and people are already spreading rumors that we're stealing the eagles away so that the demon invasion will be more successful.

  I had to take a little time to process his note before ing up with a response. Despite everything, I still find it difficult to think about the mainnd impacts that we have, and what that might be perceived as. At heart, I'm no politi, it's why I leave that to Zaka, not that he's much more of a politi than me in practibsp; Regardless, our response was short, but veyed what we o.

  "Don't sent ship for at least a few years. Isnd surrounded by tens of leviathans. W on solving problem. Eagles being treated as well as we . One died in a territorial dispute, others all fine."

  I then had both our insignia, and Shasta's signature put on the paper, to verify the information inside. Even if the rest of the mainnd turns against us, having at least a few ral parties who we agree with could bee invaluable. In our current state, I'm actually fairly certain that if we are capable of clearing out the leviathans, the only real threat to our existence are the elves. Perhaps it's because of their long lifespan, or some other reason unknown to us, but they wield such immense amounts of mana in their bodies that I 't gauge their actual danger level.

  I'm certain that leviathans also have a det amount of magic power ihemselves, but they're also beasts, and from what I've seen, they ck high intelligenbsp; Perhaps if I could go to the mainnd to observe the elves for a time, I'd have a better idea of how much of a threat they actually are, as I've only really seen a matriarch overwhelm a fort and kill hundreds of humans. They might just be gss ons, but I really just have no way of knowing.

  In any case, it's clear that Elora also read our note before it was sent, which I suppose shouldn't be very surprising, I know that she's essentially funing as a spy for the elves. The reason it's clear that she read it is that she's now suddenly very intrigued in what we're doing, and how we pn to kill a leviathan. She's very diplomatic, but given her ck of curiosity before as pared to now, it's clear that something has ged.

  I felt no real obligation to answer her questions directly. Instead, I gave vague ao try to get her to reveal more information in the form of questions. I'd answer, but with only the bare minimum, such that she'd o ask more direct questions if she wanted answers. This all was happening while I went to use teise in the exploratory tuo see if we'd potentially found anythi. I used mental tration oonise as an excuse for why my answers were short. She also seemed to choose this time to ask because it would put me under more mental stress, making it harder for me to lie.

  I don't remember most of the bad forth discussion, but I did get a good glimpse into her mi. Her questions essentially started tered around e mana crystal, then moved towards the fluorite crystals o was clear that the rge mana crystal wasn't how we po try to kill leviathans. Ultimately, she got to the bottom of our pn to send an explosive barge out to sea.

  Based on her respohat essentially boiled down to 'Good luck with that', she doesn't seem to fident that will work. The more iing part to me is that the order she pursued questions basically went from most to least magical. In short, the reason she might not have been spying as much as I'd expect is that her world view might be so drastically different from mihat she perceives all the work I'm doing as practically useless.

  I could see how that might be the case, though it's just a guess as to how she's thinking. Elves have immense magical power, and I could ceivably believe that they're capable of killing a leviathan, or at least the most powerful among them could do it. paratively, the other races use muools to assist them in fighting, and are individually vastly weaker than the elves. Given that mi, if you looked at what we were doing, we're essentially taking magic power, and verting it to do muhings, essentially wasting it. From that perspective, the only major adva we've done is turn muerials inte mana crystal. I could see how from that point of view, we've done very little.

  I also wouldn't be surprised to learn that, at some points in history, people tried using bck powder barges to kill leviathans, and failed. That'd be unsurprising to me, as bck powder isn't a high explosive. It doesn't actually deto fgrates. Further, water will dampen the effect of the powder drastically. To use bck powder to kill something that size would be signifitly more challenging. Not only will nitrogly work whe, but it actually detonates, meaning the force shockwave from the bst will amplify as moes off, and will deal signifitly more damage. Whether it'll actually be enough, however, is something we'll have to wait to see.

  In fact, I don't know if anyone has seen a high explosive bst on this world. Perhaps some magics exist that do it, but if that is the case, they probably wouldn't reize it for what it is. If, and this is a big if, we mao kill, or even just maim, a leviathan with this we might o keep a closer eye on Elora. It's the sort of thing that could shift her world view enough that she might end up sounding arm bells on the mainnd.

  On a more upbeat note, we did find a new pocket of mana crystals in the exploratory mine shaft. Which means every time they excavate a bubble and recover the crystals, I'm going to o use teise again to see if there are other nearby bubbles, meaning I'll be here for a while. It's unfortuhat we found them now, rather than earlier, but mana crystals are mana crystals, and lenty of uses for them.

  There were actually quite a few pockets of mana crystals in the deposit, and it took 37 days before we reached a dead end where I couldn't detey new pockets from the existing ones. If we factor in supplementing growth with argohered about enough crystal material to make a 10-foot crystal. With extra crystal material avaible, I'd actually like to try to determily what the solid crystal sg is prised of. If we could determihat, we'd have made the first steps to being able to artificially reproduce mana crystals without needing to destroy existing crystals for material.

  I've also received a few requests from other ied parties for uses for these crystals. The excavation team would like to have the two 2-foot crystals in the tral area of the tuo be repced with a singur rger crystal, which I think is reasonable and doable. There are some drawbacks to doing this that we o mitigate, however. The first is if they mio a natural fluorite deposit. Depending on the kind of fluorite present, having excess mana iunnels could be deadly. Our existing fluorite deposit has bee pletely unusable since we installed our 16-foot crystal due to the extra heat its geing due to the extra mana all over the isnd.

  To mitigate that danger, we'll ehat the crystal easily be removed from where it's kept and moved out of the tunnel. It also shouldn't be too big, to mitigate the level of failure an exposed fluorite deposit would potentially cause. If push es to shove, the crystal might end up beiroyed by bringing it outside, but ideally, we use the mana draining poison to transport it to a safe ste facility underground elsewhere. I'm thinking we'll put a 5-foot crystal in the tral area.

  Tiberius has also made a request for one of the 2-foot crystals, which cides well with repg the ones iunnel currently. Once we have their rept crystal for the tunnel, I'll probably grant his request. I do, however, want to oversee what he has po make sure we aren't just wasting material.

  Zeb would also like one of the 8-foot crystals from before made, even at the risk of it breaking in the near future. He made a goument for the pace at which stru be done ie areas of the isnd with a semi-mobile rge surface crystal. Even if it eventually is destroyed, the sheer amount of work done in that time, he argued, makes up for the loss of material. I agreed with his assessment, but also said that it's going to be the lowest of my priorities for the material, since we'll be cutting it close between the uses I've already agreed to. If we figure out what they're made of, then wasting what we have will be fine.