Letter 1
Expedition to The Snow Wall
Zaraan's Log
Journal Entry Day 6 after reaching the Snow Wall
I started keeping a journal log in order to record the activities on our expedition. For all of Cato's brilliance, he forgot to tell us to document our trip to make sure we didn't fake it.
Today we found a mine abandoned in the mountainside. I'm sure it's a mine because the area isn't prone to caves, with few natural springs and the wrong sort of rock. The rock here is hard and primeval, they're the true bones of the earth that can't be worn away so easily. The cave itself is also dry and the cave floor is only mildly uneven. We could almost sleep in it.
It's already late so the knights voted not to explore it today. We set up camp just outside the mine entrance in the loose gravel. I suspect the gravel here is the waste material excavated from the mine.
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Journal Entry Day 7
Our first step into the mine lead to a tunnel that bored straight into the mountainside. If there was any doubt that the mine was not artificial, there's none now. The mine floor is dusty with sand and dirt, blown in from the outside, and as we proceed deeper, the leavings decreased to nothing. Given the potential danger, we decided that half the team would remain at the camp for half a day and the mine team would switch roles for the other half a day. The camp team will start searching for the mine team if they do not return on time.
On our way down, we encountered a metal grating. It was a widely spaced sieve structure ringed with metal fitted to the tunnel's shape. That appeared to be meant to keep out animals and trespassers. The knights removed it and deposited the pieces in our camp for further examination.
I am writing this during a short rest stop. We have reached a fork, the tunnel opens up into a small room with three paths leading away. Three tunnels that are nearly at right angles to the entranceway. We have seen no signs of any occupancy by wild animals or by humans in the past, possibly due to the grate. We have marked the entrance path with chalk and will mark our choice next before proceeding.
The front and right paths were dead ends after a short distance. Although the front path appears to be the widest of the three, the path is blocked by a collapse. The left path is the only route. We have marked the route.
The left path contained many side branches but most of these were shallow and lead nowhere. Our time was almost up when the path finally lead to another open room, this time with a pit in the middle that contained a sheer drop into another room far below. The pit's sides is almost too small for a person, you could arrest a fall just by bracing against the sides. The pit room also has two offshoots, which we could not explore as we needed to report back to camp.
Exploration sure goes slowly if you're being cautious and observant. Many interesting rock layers were seen but no natural magic. No useful resources either.
The second team reported that they explored the side paths. Both paths curve around in a large arc ending in collapsed tunnels.
In a fit of possible insanity, Mari decided to try clearing the rubble. It was far too lucky of her to get away unscathed and I made sure to reprimand her severely. She could have collapsed the entire tunnels with the team inside!
Nevertheless, one of the tunnels is open again, with a crawl space under two large rocks. We shall have to get it reinforced. It would be horrible if someone was crushed or trapped on the other side if the roof fell through again. We agreed on a tapping analog to Cato's light signals in order to communicate with trapped members.
The other side of the tunnel leads to a vast open space with dense columns. Or a series of interlocking rooms above and below each other, it's hard to tell which. That space will be the target for our explorations tomorrow once we can fabricate a proper iron bracing from the rods in the supplies.
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Journal Entry Day 8
I'm on camp duty today, so I shall examine the grating we brought back. The knights aren't even interested in investigating anything, a bunch of muscleheads they are. I think Cato might have made a mistake hiring them.
The grating is made of steel. A steel that our best smiths cannot make. The material is uniform throughout its interior, there are no marks of the foldings and hammerings that we need to make good steel, and its strength is correspondingly higher. Whoever made this had much better steel making technology than we did, along with the implications of spending steel for a simple grate to keep out animals. Its no crysteel but I'm sure the Ironworkers would be happy to have it. I shall save a sample for Cato too.
I am now certain that this mine was dug by the First.
The other group had braced the tunnel with iron and woodwork holding up the weak tunnel roof. Let's hope it doesn't collapse behind us.
The other group has attempted to map out the cavernous area and found a return path on the other side that links with the other collapsed tunnel. They were not able to complete the mapping activity as the haphazard connections between the open spaces and the varying height of the spaces makes representing them on paper difficult and confusing. It does not help that the walls and pillars left behind appear to be unnatural rock, fused perhaps with the same idea I had with using elemental Water, clearly made to brace up the ceiling and not to divide the area into logical zones.
What is clear however, is that the area is vast, extending away from the entrance and downwards for more than hundreds of meters in each direction.
Beyond the obstruction, the tunnel continues to curve around and finally enters a vast cavern. Or something like it. It is evident some sort of mining activity occurred here but no Inath mines go this deep under the ground.
I noticed that the bracing walls and pillars were the thickest nearest the edge of the mined volume, with the exception of the pillars near the 'ceiling'. This allowed us to attempt to map the length and approximate shape of the mined volume by striking out directly towards the center instead of attempting to map the area.
However, the walls thin until they disappear completely, leaving a massive open zone at the center. It was clear to us that the pillars were arranged to support the ceiling by transferring the forces to the sides. Just the construction process of the pillars, especially since it must have been done during the mining process itself, is completely unknown, as well as the design of the expanding bubble-like shapes.
Needless to say, mining out such a huge area is obviously impossible for us. We stood at the edge of the void on the floor of a large hollow, looking across at the similar bubble-shaped hollows all around the walls on the other side. The void is large enough to fit a small castle.
In it is the most important discovery of the entirety of Inath. The natural magic. They were even magical crystals like you said.
In the center of the void lay the most massive agglomeration of magic I have ever seen. A crystalline formation was growing at the center of the void, a pile of fused transparent crystals of multiple hues and colours. Many of them appear to be growing out of the rock or each other, with smooth transitions between them. From where we were, the pile of crystals would stand nearly twice as tall as a human and could easily fill an entire caravan's capacity.
Its signature in the magic sense is extremely weak, for its size. But unlike techniques that bend the signature into itself to conceal it at range, the crystals' signature did not increase when approached, more than expected from a normal unconcealed magical effect that is.
What bothers me is why the First left these crystals here. This mine was clearly a crystal mine, meant to extract deposits of natural magic. Why would the First leave such a large pile behind when it is their very objective?
We have called the other group in and we will move our camp next to the crystal formation in order to investigate it further.
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Journal Entry Day 9
Even the knights are excited. Some immediate experiments indicates that the crystals themselves are made out of magic. It may be a sort of magical material similar to elemental Water and Crystal, but this magical deposit does not display the same magic absorbing properties of elemental Crystal.
After some discussion, we have settled on using the word Mana when referring to the deposit of magical crystals to avoid confusion with elemental Crystal.
Raw magical blasts exert disruption effects on the mana, that causes it to disappear much like how a magical material would behave under magical attack. With some difficulty, Mari, Sari and I have managed to utilize a finger sized piece of mana to fill an iron staff, albeit with horrendous inefficiency. Judging by the contained power, mana is a hundred or more times as dense in magical power as standard alchemical enchantments without special materials, at least without compression techniques to increase the binding rate of alchemical enchantments.
This means the deposit here contains more magic than the entire order of knights in the Minmay region could produce! It would not be surprising if all the powers of the knights for a month could not match the deposit here! Even with our current inefficiency in using it, this deposit of mana could refill the entire of Wendy's Fort wall enchantments! It is difficult to understate the magnitude of this find.
Mari has begun to work on improving the conversion technique, the knights are looking forward to getting enchantments that fully utilize the capacity of their iron or steel armour. Sari is investigating the physical and magical properties of the crystals, trying to figure out how they behave and what the different colours mean.
That leaves me to investigate surrounding area with half the knights to see if there are any other deposits the First might have left behind.
We have sent word back with one of the knights along with one sackful of crystals for further examination.
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Letter 2
Journal Entry Day 11
We may have part of the answer to why the First have abandoned this mine. A swarm of tremors attacked us not long after nightfall and six knights have been killed in the battle. This is the first time we have seen small tremors along with the normal sized specimens, the smaller tremors were weaker, attacked more hesitantly and were easily dispatched.
The reason for this attack became clear when we retreated onto the mana deposit to gain cover from underground attacks. The tremors' attacks only increased in frequency and after a long battle to the death, we exterminated more than thirty tremors until none of them were left alive.
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Small opaque angular crystals were found in the mana deposit and when these new specimens were examined by Sari, the opaque crystalline shell was broken open to reveal a malformed and clearly embryonic tremor.
Apparently we have stumbled upon tremors making a nest in the mana deposit. Tremor eggs were killed by magical disruption and the dead samples have been kept with knight Homa, who is tending to the knights injured during the fighting. The rest, more than a hundred, have been killed then smashed and disposed outside the mine entrance. We know very little about the lifecycle of tremors and I am sure studying them can yield much more information than we currently have.
We have left three living eggs with Homa under strict instruction to kill them immediately if they look like they are hatching.
However, something does not add up. Since we could clearly deal with tremors, it is inconceivable that the First are unable to. Why would the First abandon this mine upon attack by tremors, however many they were? And why leave this mana deposit behind instead of using it to defend the lives of the miners? Mari is certain that the First would have the ability to utilize the mana directly instead of merely channelling it for charging iron staffs.
And why were the tremors nesting inside the deposit? Do they somehow require mana crystals to hatch their eggs? If so, we may be able to find more deposits by tracking the location of frequent tremor attacks, the fort at the Passage of the Great Yang comes to mind, suffering constant tremor attacks as they are.
The mine may be a lucky windfall but the facts we have are incomplete.
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Journal Entry Day 16
It appears that there are no other deposits in this mine. All the passages have been extensively explored and there is no sight nor sound of more mana.
I also think that there is some significance to the location of the deposit. The shape of the mined area is a rough ovoid, clearly centered around the deposit itself. How or why this might be, I have no idea, I only know that this cannot be a coincidence.
Another point occurs to me as well. We found this mine pretty quickly upon entry into the Snow Wall, that would imply that we were either unreasonably lucky or these mines are fairly common. Could not others have been noticed by now? What happened to the other mines or do they not have any mana crystals inside them?
Towards the back of the mine, we have found the purpose of the sinkhole in the first room. A side tunnel from the bottom layer of the mined area leads to a room directly below the first room, connected to it via the hole. This was most likely used to haul the mined rock and mana up the shaft to the outside, allowing the flow of rocks not to share the same mining tunnels as people. We should spread this design among the iron mines, provided that such is not already implemented.
Since there is nothing further to learn here, we will be returning with as much of the crystal as we can carry as well as the tremor egg specimens. Perhaps once the casualties have been replaced, the knights will stage a second expedition to capture some zombies.
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Landar pushed open the door, still steaming from a long awaited hot bath.
She had been rather curious of the contraption Cato had been setting up when she got back but he had insisted she take a bath or at least a shower with lots of scented soap. Another invention by Kalny and an ex-rival he had bought over. Hmph, knights who had just saved a family from a pointless death should not mind the smell from a mere two week's travel.
The bag full of magic was intriguing but things had their own proper priorities. The device Cato had been trying to start before her bath was far more interesting. And for another thing, she simply had to enjoy the cool air of her last invention.
Wait, that thermometer was different and even the casing of the cold air fan was changed. Had Cato got someone else to work on the air conditioner while she was gone?!
"What is the meaning of this, Cato?" she stalked up to him, pointing at the air conditioner when he raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"The air-con? What's wrong with that? I got Omal to revise the trigger enchantment, with some design work I managed to make it more stable. A one minute trigger delay seems to work best. "
Landar pushed aside an uncomfortable feeling and pouted, "that was our work! I was looking forward to improving it! You can't just give it to Omal!"
"But I just wanted to see if my ideas would work?" Cato looked bewildered, "should I have waited for you to come back?"
She paused, wanting to say yes but realizing how ridiculous that sounded. Landar instead smiled and nodded, "all right, fine. I'll let you do that. "
For some reason Cato winced and asked, "why are you angry?"
Angry? "No, I'm not," Landar said sweetly, "your reasons are good after all. "
"You totally are!" Cato pointed at her, "cut it out, don't smile like that! It's creepy. "
Eh, but she was smiling to show she wasn't angry? Wait. "What does my smile normally look like?" Landar asked out of morbid curiousity.
"Definitely not that one, a sweet demure smile like that completely doesn't fit you," Cato rubbed his shoulders in shivers.
Oh ho. Be like that would he? Mischief warred with irritation in her heart. "I beg your pardon, sir, this little girl understands that nothing about her is sweet," she put on her best smile taught her by her parents when she was younger.
"Stop it! That smile! It's seriously scary!" Cato shook his head in panic, "fine, I'm sorry all right? I'll ask you next time before I let anyone else touch your projects. "
"Good," Landar nodded. She would have to remember this tactic next time she wanted a new experiment. Why, she had never expected that she could get her way simply by smiling at him!
"I have a nice present for you," Cato said, still looking at her nervously. He hauled over the bag full of magic and poured out a selection of small crystals onto the table. They radiated magical power.
"Is that the magic crystals you were talking about?!" Landar exclaimed, "they actually found natural magic already?!"
"Yes, that was faster than anyone thought they would. Natural magic must have been very common, I wonder why Inath forgot how to use it?"
Neither of them had any answers. "So according to the twin alchemists from the expedition team," Cato picked up a crystal, "using these is quite difficult. Something about the magic being bonded too tightly to remove without spending so much magic it's almost not worth it. So I thought I'll give you some to see if you can solve the issue. "
The crystals disappeared from the tabletop faster than the eye could blink. Landar grinned and held one up to the light, "leave it to me! I'll have the magic out of them and in my wands in no time! And it has so much power! Magic bowguns will never be the same again! Ahahaha!"
"Now that's more like it. " She studiously ignored Cato's mutterings.
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Cato fed the fire under the machine with a fresh shovelful of charcoal, watching the water in the pressure gauge climb. At the appropriate moment, he opened the valve through the switch and the boiling hot steam shot down the pipe into the chamber on the other end. The piston inside was driven back, turning a shaft along with a rod that shut off the steam inlet and opened the exhaust. The rotating wheel pushed the piston back and exhausted the steam onto the grassy field. Then the inlet opened again for another cycle.
For now though, the wheel merely pumped the bellows that blew the fire, practically free spinning.
"So that's a steam engine?" Landar asked, "doesn't look like much. Although for it to be moving like this without magic is amazing. "
"Yeah, I was thinking of reinventing this," Cato sighed, "the steam engine first allowed deeper mines by serving as water pumps. Then as they got better, they began to be used to drive machinery that waterwheels used to operate, allowing factories to be sited away from rivers. That was how the Industrial Revolution started on my world. In fact, the steam engine was the driver of the known world for nearly a hundred years before electricity was invented. "
"It would be amazing if it could move faster," Landar clapped her hands as she examined the makeshift pressure gauge and safety valve, "how does it work?"
Cato pointed at each part of the machine, explaining the flow of steam and pressure that drove the piston. The curious audience of the staff members behind him were quiet, leaving Landar to fire off endless questions.
"There are still a number of problems with this prototype however," Cato pointed out the lack of a way to replenish the water without shutting down the engine and the fact that the safety valve still had to be operated manually by looking at the pressure gauge. When he pointed out the boiler explosions were a common problem in early steam engines, the audience abruptly found better things to do.
Not that it stopped Landar from attempting to heat the boiler with magic.
"No wait, didn't I just say that it could be danger-" Cato got out only a few words before the entire safety valve popped out of its pipe in a cloud of steam, smoke and boiling water. Everyone except Landar dived to the ground.
Landar watched the valve contraption arc through the air to land in a neighbouring field.
"I know what you're thinking and the answer is no," Cato said, "no steam cannons. The steam engine is mostly useless now though. "
"What?!" Landar looked at him, with a dismayed face, before clearing her throat awkwardly.
"Instead of using high pressure steam or even gunpowder," Cato said, "you can just use magic to accelerate an arrow or stone to lethal speeds. Or to any speed really, just add more magic. It's almost too simple. "
Landar pouted, "but what about your industrial revolution? Won't that be useful for us?"
"You don't need steam engines for an industrial revolution," Cato said simply, pointing at a certain warehouse, "I mainly investigated the possibility of steam engines in case natural magic didn't work out. But since it did, we are much better off just using magic instead. Rather than learning to build steam engines all over again, you already know how to work with magic and don't have to start from scratch. "
They were both thinking about Landar's attempts to make a device for standardizing alchemical enchantments.
Cato sighed again and watched the small amount of water remaining in the boiler as the fire died, "magic really makes things far too easy. "