Rather than start from scratch for the 5-foot mana crystal for the tunnel, I wao use one of the 2-foot crystals we had already as a starting point. That meant I o collect mana poison to use to transport it. Unfortunately, I ran into 3 different problems in regards to that. First, while the mana poison pnts were growing well, much like everything else on the isnd since we installed the big mana crystal, they actually had less mana poison ihan previously.

  Sed, and this is probably reted to the first issue, the mana poison didn't st nearly as long as it would have previously in open air. Perhaps the ambient mana being high is overwhelming the pnt's produ of poison, which is also being sated much faster? That's hard to say without further study, which I have no iion of doing in the near future. Third, because the ambient mana is higher, I actually do need much more of the poison to transport a crystal than I would have in the past.

  These three factors actually resulted in me needing to e up with a few innovations. For the time being, the mana poison is going to be extracted and stored in the old cave up on the mountain, at least there the ambient mana level is a little lower, and the poison sts longer for colle. Loerm, however, I've e up with a schematic for us to use for mana crystal transport and mana poison ste.

  The design is essentially just a barrel which we'll o make multiple sizes of to be able to handle different sizes of crystals. The barrel is actually triple yered, with the inner and outer yers being prised of 2-inch thick lightstone, and the middle yer being prised of fairly rge, specially-cut zinc fluorite crystal at least a few ihibsp; The hope is that these barrels will waste a rge portion of the ambient mana before it ever leaks into the tral portion, allowing the mana poison to st much longer.

  After drafting the design, I passed it on to the fluorite processing teams to start w on the pos. They've actually been idle for a few months now, sihey'd processed what raw fluorite we'd collected. As a result, they'll be reprocessing already pleted fluorite to make these designs. To start, I've givehe design for the 2-foot crystal carrier, and also a 4-foot drum meant to store mana-poison before the crystal carrier is used. Ohose two designs are pleted, they then move on to make the 5-foot crystal carrier necessary for the ter crystal.

  I also ended up talking to Tiberius in that time, as he also had requests for fluorite crystals to be made. In short, he wants a 36-inch version of each lead, iron, and zinc fluorite crystals. From that, he pns on cutting them in half, then carving out a tral hollowed area for the 2-foot mana crystal to sit. He's ied in what effects that will have on the overall effectiveness of both pos, and the possibility for that to be brought up to the surfad used as a standalone on.

  It was actually quite a good idea, albeit way oversized for initial testing. We've done something simir with mana fshlights using zinc fluorite in the caves, but we only had the mana crystal ta one side of the fluorite, rather than fully e. Rather than have him pletely destroy a 2-foot crystal off the bat, I told him to start small with some of the natural mana crystals we found, and to use smaller fluorite crystals for initial testing.

  I'm actually very intrigued by the idea of that potentially allowing smaller mana crystals onto the surface while amplifying the properties of the fluorite. Not as much for the cept of a on per se, but rather as the core po for an engine in jun with heat fluorite. If the assumption we're w under is that mana crystals have some sort of attra field for maive to their size, this would potentially allow for amplified mana dire towards the fluorite, while also ag as something like a fuel tank for it between day and night. Much testing will o be done, but it could yield fantastic results.

  Overall, I ended up burning 8 days on pnning and discussion. With these new ideas reted to mana crystals, it's all the more reason for me to foy own study to figure out what material or materials are pos of them besides argon.

  In the past, I was so precious of the mana crystals I had that I really didn't do much destructive testing of them, which means I didn't know much about them in actuality. The only things I knew were that a mysterious gas was given off when they deposed, and bck fky material was left behind. If physically shattered, they'll generally reform into octahedrons again after yers peel away, though I don't know the exact details of why that works out.

  I actually find it somewhat surprising that I never bothered attempting intermediate testing back then, such as just trying to heat the leftover crystal material in open air. I had, and still have, the crystal sg stored in vacuum tainers, sihat is how it's useful to us. So, one of the first things I decided to do was go get a few of those sg tainers, and open them up.

  Ihe fky bck powder resent, though si had beeed once, a rge amount had bee a more solid lump of somewhat shiny bck material. Handling the material, it easily would break apart, f long, mostly smooth surfaces. Even a small amount of force would cause it to break along another pne. It's almost like graphite, but it looks a bit different. I thought it'd really be something if it was just carbon, though I found it highly uhat that was the case.

  So, the est was to just heat it up, and see what happened. Doing that gave me a lot of insight. I knew for a fact it wasn't graphite afterwards. First, heating it hot enough resulted in the all-too-familiar smell of sulfur dioxide. What was left was an off-yellow, nearly white powder, which didn't appear to obviously be any material I had seen before.

  sidering this new material was likely some form of metal oxide, I had a few things I wao try out. First I tried melting it, to which I was surprised it actually melted at a retively low temperature, below that of copper. It then began to boil slightly above the melting point of copper, so I quickly removed the heat to prevent losing the material.

  Giveility, I sidered two options to potentially reduce the oxide down to a pure metal. I could try carbon, which might leave some residue behind, or I could try heating it even hotter in a hydrogen/nitrogen atmosphere. Giveive ease carboion first, I gave that a go.

  What I was left with after that test was a shiny powder. The metallic powder seemed to be i, and leaving it for a few days exposed to atmosphere did very little to it. Heating it to higher temperatures didn't cause it to melt, but it did oxidize again, and the oxide would boil away nearly as soon as it formed. As a result, I wao try to heat it again, but in an oxygen poor enviro. The results were that the tainer would fail before the metal would, though the hot metal did bee ductile enough that I was able to attempt to fuse some of the pether with force.

  While not a perfedicator, these did give me a few ideas as to metals we might be dealing with, though if I'm right, it's not great. Given the apparently exceedingly high melting point, it removes a number of metals from the list as options. What I'm left with are a few differeals of varying likelihoods. , Molybdenum, and Tungsten form the shortlist of materials that it could be in my mind, though without solid evidend access to a bunch of chemistry books, I 't say for certain. I thought about cheg the material with acids, but I e back to do it ter, as how they react wouldn't actually provide me any insight with my current knowledge.

  sidering the meical properties of the initial sulfide, I recall there was some lubrit like graphite that was used prised of molybdenum that behaved in that sort of simir manner, so it could be that. Though in theory, any of the other elements in group six, or in this case, both or tungsten could also exhibit those properties as a sulfide. There is even a ce that any of them could be used intergeably in growing a mana crystal, though I doubt that is the case.

  In short, I have a good indicator of the material, but I also know that based on the properties I determined in my experiments over the past 15 days, finding and refining other sources of this mineral are highly unlikely. It's not impossible, but if they're posed of a group 6 metal, it'd take decades of dedicated research from individuals trained in both minerology aallurgy to properly rediscover potential ores, and rediscover how to isote the metals from them. It's unfortuhat the rest of the world is at a roughly medieval teological level, as that really limits how maals they know of, and by extension, what minerals are valuable or not. It's just not a skill I had much of before I came here, so I'm not useful for it either.

  In other words, unless we just find the raw crystal material in the ground, separate from the crystals, we're out of luck for using anything other than mana crystals to grow more of them. That said, I am going to go and look through the pockets where we found mana crystals before, alongside usionise and doing some digging, just to see if maybe there are some minerals that could be further utilized. Perhaps I should go bad check the acid reactivity of the different stages of the material, just to determine if perhaps it could be leached from the surrounding roe degree.