I had quite a bit of time to burn until we were going to send out the barge. We have twice as much produ as the st time, but we're also increasing the total payload on the barge. I'd estimated it'd take about five months to produce all the dynamite we'd use for the barge. I had side projects to plete in the meantime, so I returo work on those for some time while I waited.

  The first tainers for transp mana crystals and mana poison were pleted, but si's springtime, there aren't any of the mana poison pnts to harvest, so that project is on hold until mid-summer. Though they're still w on making the rger mana crystal transport tainer. Instead, I focused my time on pleting the floatation separator process frowing more mana crystals.

  W on the floatation separator process ended up being far worse than I'd expected. I had thought I was nearly done, so I was very disappointed when I saw how impure my resultant material was. I spent four days initially setting up a single separation process, and things had looked retively good. I took some of the material to bih argon in a small crystal growth chamber to see if things were w as intended.

  What I received instead was a very impure mana crystal. Inside, I could see the imperfes in the crystal, and the material itself was very cloudy, as pared to the normal transparent-blue tinge. When I tried to drain a little mana from it, the crystal simply broke apart, and that was the end of that. So, the hing I tried was doing multiple floatation separation cycles. That resulted in a slightly less cloudy crystal, but it was still overly fragile, and broke apart.

  After 84 days of tinkering aing, I did find a way to make it pure enough that it seemed to be identical to the leftover material we were using before. The start of the process was the same, but after the first floatation separation, I had to add on quite a few steps. It'd gh two more floatation separations after the first, then a sed acid wash cycle, followed by awo floatation separations. Then, as a final step, when a det bulk of material is recovered, someone has to use stoneshaping oerial on top of a vibrating pte to try to pull out any minute particles of rock left inside.

  The bulk of the material doesn't react to stoneshaping, but the tiny particles do. By having the vibrating pte involved, it allows those ultra-fine particles enough energy to not get stuto the remaining material as the magic attempts to move them. I tried repeatedly to not have a magic step involved, but ultimately, it's the only way I could e up with to purify the material to the degree necessary on a short time span. I'm sure there is some chemical out there that could selectively dissolve only the remaining particute matter and leave our mystery material behind, but I don't really have the time to sit and try to discover that.

  It's one of the many things that I hope to stieone else on researg when I finally get around to having an academy of sces built. Since most of the steps are mundane already, however, I had a stockpile area built to store the almost finished product that just o be stoneshaped to be pleted. Right now, we still have an excess of fish fats that we use for the separation process, but as produ of explosives ramps up, we'll probably have to reduce the amount of this material that we process. It's a true guns or butter ei.

  We don't really have spare stoneshaping demons to mihe material ht now, so the whole project, while useful for the future, is basically just going to sit for a bit of time. I'll talk with Zeb about the idea of ging over the manual stone mining that we do to get oneshaping goblins. Instead, I'd like to have them excavating some of this rostead, but I'm not going to hold my breath on that. The mana crystal deposits are in fairly inve locations, meaning a lot of work time is wasted just getting to the worksite. Though if mana crystals end up in high demand again, then he'll probably acquiesce.

  We also have had four new eagles show up. Three seemed like they were juveniles, and were happy to settle along the lower rung of pre-made s at the upper edges of the mountain. One, however, required us to make a sed attempt at relocation. We made some modifications to the process based on what we had lear time, as an attempt at preventing brain damage. In essence, we allowed the eagle tain sciousness after clipping it's wings.

  Transp it up the mountain was much more difficult as a result, but we had the eagle sedated still with a lower dosage of nitrous oxide mixed with oxygen. The eagle was bound, and a bckout hood ced over it's head to try to keep it more calm. There were only a few situations where it started tle heavily which required us to up the dosage of nitrous for a short while to temporarily knock the eagle back out.

  After behaving oddly for the first two days after moving it up the mountain, this one seems to have settled into a more normal behavior pattern. If there was any brain damage, it seems minimal pared to the previous eagle we transported this way.

  Talking with Zeb about the matter went about as I expected. We still have a bit of raw material leftover from before, and we'd he argon to process it anyway. While we do produce a det amount on each year, it gets ed much faster than produ, so we simply stockpile it for some time and use it wheime es. We had some other discussioed to the leviathans, and what we're going to do moving forward.

  We only had one new leviathan body part wash up along the isnd i three months, meaning they've probably settled into a stable ecosystem figuration. That doesn't mean there isn't flict though, as we still see fights break out every so often. It just means that those fights likely aren't lethal. While the popution has gotteo the situation, it doesn't mean they're fortable with it. While we haven't seen ahans actually attack towards the nd, it's still gives the feeling of living in a cage surrounded by predators.

  My goal is to start testing the dynamite ste to determine how safe it is. It'll probably end up setting us back a few months of nitrogly produ to do so, but having a good sense of how much dynamite we safely store in a set area is better for us long term.

  I ended up literally blowing through the three months of dynamite produ we'd had doing explosive testing. I did three rge scale tests after doing a few dozen small oo get a good feel for exactly what we were dealing with. In short, I was correct that the initial pe was being uilized. I detonated one of the silos as a rge scale test, overfilled with dynamite, and it didn't set off any nearby samples of dynamite in other silos, or even in closer haphazard silos I'd built for testing.

  I also came up with added design to further help with safe ste. After ing up with the new designs, I had a stru team help me with upgrading the whole facility. It's now much closer to a properly designed facility. To prevent sparking, a few inches of wood lihe inside of each explosive silo. There is then a one-foot thick wall of stoneshaped stohen a foot of gravel and wood pulp, then a sed wall of thick stone. Above each silo, we've also built close walled wooden buildings to further prevent any actal iions with the enviro. They're still meant to direct their bst upwards, but the extra wood pulp and gravel barrier shock absorbs much better than gravel aloransferring far less energy into the nearby ground.

  Previously, the facility was 25 silos, in a five by five grid. Now, between each silo, another one has been built, bringing the total up to 81 silos in a nine by nine grid. Each silo, by my estimates aing, should safely store about 10 tons of explosives. Far more than the 1.5 tons I'd initially estimated. Meaning the whole facility store just over 800 tons of explosives, rather than the 37.5 tons it could before. To further help with dampening and prevent casg failures, we've also dug a grid of trenches between the silos, six feet wide, and slightly deeper than the silos. These are also filled with wood pulp and gravel to prevent ground shockwaves from travelliween silos.

  All in all, we ended up spending 95 days w on the e facility. Just before we finished w, the set of produ lines irogly facility also finished stru. Meaning we're only about 2 months from the barge going out. Right now, produg 50 tons of dynamite takes about three months. The stru teams and meical team are going to tinue expanding out the nitrogly produ lines until we either reach the point where we 't make anymore, or the leviathans are gone. During this st stru cycle, they built out the gly facility to be able hahe estimated maximum produ of fish fats we could gather. During the cycle, they'll be upgrading the sodium hydroxide produ to also provide more than we'll need going forward.

  After that, they'll be building out the sulfuriitric acid produ facility and nitrogly facility a handful of produ li a time. We're somewhat forced to do it this way, rather than build just e line, because we're limited by the maximum produ est mana engines handle individually. This also helps us ramp produ up over time, rather than waiting a long time until all of it is done.