Since we'd reached te enough in the year, I took the time to move the 2-foot mana crystals down to the growth b using the new mana-insutive taihat utilized fluorite. After forty days, I'd grown one of the 2-foot crystals all the to 5-feet and got it moved bato the tunnel. It ended up increasing the avaible mana iunnel by quite a bit, which should end up making exploratory mining more effective. The tunnel where we'd found the mana crystals should be breag the surfay day now, so I'd expect the unnel's progress will be even more from this rger tral crystal, and it's influen the recharging rate of smaller crystal trays.
After that 5-foot crystal was moved, Tiberius was finally free to begin doing resear his idea of eng mana crystals in a fluorite crystal shell. Every so often, I e back to work on a project with Tiberius, and I remember just how hairbrained and reckless he be. The first thing, and I do mean the very first thing, that he did when I gave him the go ahead was reveal that he'd already encased a natural crystal that was a few inches in size in two halves of cut heat fluorite a few ihick which he was holding on the end of a rge stoibsp; Before I could react, he proceeded to run up the stairs and out of the b.
Well, he didn't make it to the surface before it was clear that the tral crystal broke. Holy, if it hadn't broken I would have been impressed. Perhaps more shogly, he proceeded to pull out some charcoal and make a big mark on the wall, and began walking back dowairs. He made a big show of catg his breath and not responding to me chastising him for wasting that crystal. I was about done giving him a lecture on wasting precious resources when he revealed an even bigger heat fluorite crystal, which he assured me had a mana crystal of simir size in the ter.
This time, however, I ositioned right in the middle of the stairs, and wouldn't let him run past me. I'd at least grasped what he was attempting to do. He was clearly just trying to run them up to the surface to see how far he could get before they broke. To which I then discussed that if he wants better data, he should walk them up slowly, rather than sprinting as far as he , since he'll never run at the exact same pace twice.
He protested that the only reason he nning on running past me to begin with was because he knew I wouldn't approve of him wasting the preana crystals, but it's at least let him collee data on the whole situation. Ultimately, it just boiled down to I didn't want them wasted on bad data, and if he did it accurately, collected good data, and got my approval, I'm also ied in the results, so I'm ok with some of the mana crystals beiroyed.
As for his choice of heat fluorite over something more measurable like lead fluorite, he figured it'd be the easiest to run with and still notice the effect it had while he ran. Which I admitted robably true. He would have at least been able to measure some amount of qualitative data. Moving forward though, he'll be going slowly, oep at a time, using lead fluorite instead of the iron doped heat fluorite. That way, we quantitatively measure the extra weight, and pare that against lead fluorite without a mana crystal in the middle at various depths.
If his results are iing enough, I might have to vince Zeb to give me a few more stoneshaping demons to process the mana crystal material. For the time being, however, it's not looking like Zeb is going to be getting his hands on a rge crystal. Instead, I'm going to spend a few weeks making some nearly identical mana crystal samples to be used in Tiberius's researbsp; It's actually not a plete loss when the mana crystals end up breaking apart, as we at least recover a fairly rge pertage of the solid material, meaning we only o resupply the necessary argon to grow the crystals again.
After another 20 days of growing mana crystals while Tiberius ran about breaking them, it was time to test out a rger barge's effectiveness in dealing with leviathans. This barge was rger tha oo allow it to hahe extra 20 tons of dynamite we loaded into it. Thankfully, the weather held and we were able to unch the barge without a hitbsp; Elora didn't e this time to observe. Iime sihe st unch, we actually installed a few new artillery pieces here. While I don't think it'll be useful for actually killing a crab, it might at least vin injured oo go find somewhere else to rest, which would potentially make it easier for a differehan to finish it off.
U time, there wasn't a fast clusion to the situation. The barge made it much further out over the course of a few hours before anything happeo it. Either the crab had moved on from being in front of the bay, or it'd realized that barges are dangerous. Iher case, we actually got to witness what we'd been hoping for. This time, an eel leviathan was the oo attabsp; Almost like a s ope's whole mouth to swallow the barge whole. For a moment, I was worried. The barge was swallowed whole without detonating.
That only sted a few seds, however, before we saw a massive explosion pletely tear the head of the eel leviathan from the rest of it's body. A few seds ter we heard an incredibly loud bst as the sound finally reached us. The sound of the bst was startling enough that two of the eagles took flight temporarily, circled around for a bit, theuro their ing sites.
It was good to see that we could actually kill a leviathan with our explosives. It'll take a bit of time before we ramp up produ enough to properly deal with the problem, but ever time we kill o makes the sea that much safer for us moving forward. Getting rid of the leviathans should also reduce the amount of predation that the very rge fishes experience, potentially allowing us to have a higher overall fishing yield as the ecosystem adjusts.
Though, it wasn't just a dead leviathan that was leftover from the bst. Thousands of fishes floated to the surface after the bst, so it's probably for the best that we're having to wait months at a time to send one of these barges out. I expect that when we send out another barge, there is a good ce that many individuals who are from the mainnd, including Elora, will want to e watbsp; We still don't know how successful each barge will be, but if we're at least able to kill leviathans with retive safety, that's a major milestone. Based oe that our nitrogly lines are being built, I expect the barge will probably un a bit over three months from now.
We had been stockpiling a lot of paper over time, but we actually are going to o build another paper mill to produce the amount we're going to need moving forward for stabilizing the dynamite. Uhe meical wood pulp we made before, we're actually incredibly close from being able to make high-quality chemically pulped paper. In fact, we're currently produg some of it and just leaving it mixed into our impure sodium hydroxide solution.
When we've beerolyzing salt water to make sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid, some amount of the process actually produces sodium chlorate in the liquid solution, rather than being released as chlorine gas. Because of the way we've id out our electrolysis, we've minimized the amount that gets produced, but it shouldn't take too long to re-adjust the yout of the electrolytic cells to instead produ excess of it. The only main ingredient we'd really be missing after that would be methanol. Thankfully, we do have both zind copper that we use to make the necessary catalyst to allow us to mass produce the stuff.
After that, the process of chemically pulping the wood is actually fairly straightforward, and we should be able to really mass produce it. In fact, I'm somewhat worried about the forests on the isnd as a part of this process. The process I have in mind for methanol produ is going to also require wood, and we'll probably use charcoal to redu sulfide to sodium sulfate in the process, adding a small amount more that we'll need. While the amouually use over time is retively low, it still takes decades for our trees trow. If it's only paper for our owhen we should be fine, but if we ever want to open up high quality paper trade in bulk, we'd almost o build a factory on the mainnd just to have access to excess trees to do so.