Getting mana to flow in a wave was actually nowhere near as difficult as I had thought it would be. As it turned out, there was a way that I could reform a limiter and two collectors to work together to make a sort of stutter device, making the mana flow into one collector until it was full, then switch to the other collector while the first dumped its stored energy. With a bit of adjustment and a second reverse magnet rune, I was able to make a rune array in each hand that would operate in tandem with one another to create a pulsing magnet smelter. When the primary charge was fired the main magnet runes in both hands would pull at the same time, and when the second magnets fired an inverted pulse of pushing energy would fire. I also toyed with the idea of making the different arrays fire in a left pull while right push sort of way, but I got the feeling that doing that would make the molten iron spill over the crucible and magnetize to my scales.

As I had intended, this whole ordeal only took a few minutes of sketching and back and forth questions with Dobo, who had a degree of understanding due to his work on the thunder makers, which themselves were just a generator by another name. He liked my idea so much that he wanted permission to try experimenting with the concept in a machine that would be a more magically operated thunder maker. Knock yourself out pal, I’m not going to stop a spark of genius from growing into a beautiful star. Everyone took their positions once again with me by the sand and the others behind the blast shield. Okay, let’s try this again on AC power.

Maybe 25% input was overkill, but the Iron only lasted a few moments before it turned red hot and began to liquify into a levitating glob of molten metal. I toyed with the idea of just lifting the liquid death over the mold and just dropping it in, but I’d already gotten tongs and everything, so I would like to do this the right way. The magnet runes turned off, and the bottom half of the crucible was filled with the ready-to-pour iron. I grabbed the tongs from beside me and latched them onto the rim of the stone cup, using my hands as steadily as I could to pour the molds full of iron. I only got half of the measuring blocks down and a single wrench, but there was still more pole yet to be cut down and used.

Thus began the repetitive process of sawing off a chunk of iron, melting it down, then filling the molds three more times. There goes my limited supply of Iron, but now I have some scientifically accurate wrenches to put to use and hopefully have Vynrashu set on a production line somehow. I stepped aside over to the work table to get a drink and relax while the iron cooled off. As expected, all three of the eager kobolds wanted to ask me a hundred questions about what these tools were and how they’d be used, so I had to refer them to my pre-written notes on the benefits of a standardized measurement system. To me this was just a standard of operation that had yet to be made, but to them it was like the holy grail of inventions.

The molds had cooled off enough for me to poke around in the sand to find them with the tongs then grab them to drop them one by one into the water bucket for a few seconds before setting them off to the side to cool for a while longer. I had to warn my viewers a few times beforehand that this was red hot iron just a few minutes ago, and until I said it was safe there would be no touching. I think the bubbling and puffs of steam told them all they needed to know about the deceptiveness of relying on sight alone to see if something was cool. Yeah, I remember making that same mistake quite a few times when I first started out.

Just to be safe we gave the iron a good hour or so to cool properly, and once it was safe to handle I began to go through them and gave them all a run on the refinery rune to eject all of the sand from the tools. Once purified I then used my new plasma torch ability to shear off the imperfections and sand texture, leaving me with a relatively smooth set of tools. All in all these looked really good for being made in such a strangely primitive and magical way. The others seemed to think so too, as sliding the little metal blocks into their matching wrench was like fitting your hand into a perfectly tailored glove.

Then I was asked a question by Sheep that I had been waiting for one of them to ask the entire time.

“How do we use these?”

I showed them my artistic rendition of what nuts, bolts, and screws using my measurement system would look like. Explaining what they were used for also seemed to rile them up, as both Vimna and Sheep began thinking of all the parts you could bolt together or put screws in to fasten to other things. Dobo was more reserved with his reaction, but by the end of it he was trying to convince me to make a set of screws and bolts for the forge to make. Great, now I have to explain to him the other half of the problem, which would be making permanent casts for mass producing these with little to no variation in their size.

I managed to stop myself before going on with too many details, but by the end of it they all understood what the benefits of this new system would mean: replaceable parts. Everything here was riveted or custom fit, even the bolts they had were hand made to a specific size, which meant that one kobold’s work was wholly incompatible with another’s due to them using completely different methods of measuring. The ability to just unscrew a panel and switch it out would shave hours of work off of the arduously long time it took using the current method. Speaking of the hours, it had only been three hours of me explaining, and by my count the shift wouldn’t end for another fourteen.

Yeah, that was another of those other world details I’d yet to adjust to. Thirty hour day cycles, and the hours weren’t the same length as Earth time hours nor was there any way for me to confirm the exact difference. The only constants I had for comparison was that kobolds slept somewhere around seven to eight hours, work was supposed to be just twelve but was bumped up to seventeen due to the political climate, and my commute was a full hour here and back. Pretty much just like a regular work day back in my previous life. Even after dying I couldn’t escape the daily grind of work, eat, sleep, repeat.

Now that my mind was on this track about how our time was being used, I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. The people of this city seemed content to just work their days away as the elders deemed, unwilling to prioritize their own personal lives or expand their horizons. Was this due to the unseen influence of the ruling class of elders, or was it perhaps due to how things had been structured here because of the world around us? Flashbacks to my old history classes came back to me, particularly about how keeping the peasants in the dark and illiterate made them particularly easy to manage. I’d hate to see that kind of mentality here, but if greed and power were the driving factors behind decisions made among the elders then there was little chance that they were letting things go on for the good of the people.

No, it was almost certainly like this all over. This was just how people were when information was only passed down by physical means. Books were mass produced and sold afar, but even though they were cheap there was still the underlying issue that not many had the skills necessary to read them. Another thing that might be caused by the great war of the dragons, a lingering reservoir of knowledge and literature that is there and available but not accessible for most. Maybe there was some spell or machine already in use that was still printing all of this literature, but if so why would we still be using scribes? Just another mystery for the-

“Kayroo, you okay?”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Vimna was holding my arm, something I was unaware that she was doing. Sheep and Dobo were looking at me with skepticism, but they probably didn’t know how my thinking face looked. I smiled to put all of their concerns at ease and scratched at Vimna’s head, making her chuckle a little.

“You’re just thinking hard, yeah? Roo’s brain just too big for her head.”

It really is kiddo, it’s just too much for one little kobold to handle. Alright guys, we’ve still got some time to do some more work around here, so why don’t we try doing something I’d been wondering about since my first trial run with the filter rune on zinc? Dobo, if you would be so kind as to sit here and watch this, I would greatly appreciate your input. He watched as I took a raw chunk of zinc laced rock and put it through the stronger refinery rune, the ore practically spitting the impurities away and into the other hand, then began to tell me that he had already seen this before. I know Dobo, but there’s something more you need to see.

I began to funnel mana into the metal in my hands without any sort of runes to act on it, and the reaction of the zinc turning blue began to take place right before our collective of eight eyes. Vimna and Sheep looked completely dumbstruck, while Dobo was at a complete loss of words. The blue color crept all the way until it had encased the whole exterior, but unlike last time I kept pushing more magic into it. My sensor runes aimed at the ore eventually pinged once a minute had passed, and the information that was filtered through came to mind like a status prompt.

Mana enrichment: 100%

Alright, looks like it’s full. Tell me Dobo, what exactly is this? I held my open hand out with the blue metal sample in my palm, his hands carefully reaching for it cautiously.

“This…Kayrux just made metal turn to Melnythia. Rare metal only appear in places drenched in mana. You make it like easy thing doing. How?”

Would rolling my eyes relay just how unimpressive this snippet of information was? Dobo, I don’t know what this stuff is or how useful it was, so just throwing out a name as though it were supposed to make my jaw drop is kind of pointless. I picked up my slate and wrote down a few questions that would tell me what I needed to know.

“What is this stuff? What does it do? Is it valuable? What can it be used for?”

He took a moment to scratch his head before trying his best to answer my questions.

“Melnythia is…Melnythia. Rare metal from deep depths. It has much mana conductivity and capacity, but is dangerous to use if dropped or hit by magic. Explodes very large if that happens. Not very valuable unless knowing what it can do, and if used to make thunder magic or lightning devices it can create much power without getting very hot.”

So basically it's super zinc that’s been given a boost by the magic enrichment. Makes sense that Dobo would know just how this stuff worked with electricity since that was his specialty. Then again it also seemed that it was mine too, and my knowledge of batteries and machines might just be what makes this stuff a valuable thing to be collected. I should probably answer him on his question of how I did this, but exclude the real nature of my magic.

“I have a lot of mana, enough that filling this metal with energy wasn’t very hard. I could probably make a lot of this Melnythia stuff, but I don’t see any way to make use of it myself.”

Dobo readily snapped at the obvious bait, knowing damn well what he would do with this stuff if given the chance.

“Can make things! Many things! Thunder magic has many uses, many that Dobo has found in practice! Let Dobo have this piece, show you what can be made!”

Vimna and Sheep acted as his personal yes men, their little red heads nodding eagerly with every word as their tails wagged from side to side. Alright, alright, it’s yours pal, go ahead and show me what you can do. He carefully plucked the shiny blue lump of metal from my hands with his little claws, possibly afraid that any mishandling might cause it to detonate. With it safely in his grasp he turned to the door and jogged his way out of the gate and over to his own workplace with his kids in tow.

I’d let him have some time to assemble whatever it was he was going to make, but for me it was time for some note taking and experiment logs to set up. What other metals could be enriched into magical metals, and what sort of alloys might have similar reactions? It was as though there was a second periodic table just behind the one I knew of, the boundary between them hidden by a film of dense mana. For most it would be a struggle to think of ever conducting these experiments, but I had no reservations. My curiosity would be sated, and this new realm of material science would be studied and analyzed no matter the charge it required.

Since they were still off doing whatever it was they were doing, I could grab a chunk of aluminum and nickel from their boxes, a copper scrap from the waste bin in the corner, and a handful of iron shavings off of the table. All four were scanned to check on their enrichment, and all four were found to be at zero. As expected, my scanner also confirmed that each metal had a different resistance to mana and had iron as the most resistant, aluminum a step below that, and both nickel and copper sitting at a relatively average level.

Starting off the pack would be the most abundant material in the workshop: copper. It offered the modest 30% resistance score and a durability of 2.5, perhaps a latent understanding from my brain of where it would fall on the mohs scale. Charging copper with mana was as easy as the zinc was, but a noticable problem was that it wouldn’t stay at 100% enrichment and would begin to bleed off the excess energy at a rate that was proportional to how much mana was forced within. The more the charge, the faster it bled out, the faster it bled out the faster it turned back to its brownish orange as opposed to the enriched green it took on.

Next was the other 30% resistor of mana, the humble nickel. As expected, a durability of 4 meant that my brain was indeed being asked for the vague memories from my metallurgy studies for the placement of the metals on the hardness scale. I could worry about how irritating the scanners were playing in my memories later, right now it's testing time. Nickel seemed to have a sweet spot it aimed for when being enriched, and would always level out at 70% enrichment when charged. The new color it turned was a deep yellow that looked almost like gold, but the way it reflected light was just too much for it to pass as the more valuable metal. Another odd thing was that this metal got heavier unlike the other two, which meant that the mana was actually solidifying in it.

Okay, how about aluminum? Yes, I know 2.75 mohs, you can stop telling me that now, the 40% resistance is what I wanted to see. Enriching the aluminum was not as easy, but once it was charged it wanted to be put at 90% with its new purple-red sheen. My goodness that was a gorgeous sheen it had, but why did it feel like it got so much lighter? I made extra notes on what kind of implications that had for when the creation of alloys began.

Last was the beefy boy iron, boasting a whopping 70% mana resistance. Weird, where was the durability…there it is, right at 4. Okay, so wanting to not get certain bits of information was an option for my sensors, good to know. Charging the iron with mana was quite a bit more challenging at first, but it felt like there was some sort of increased resistance the less enriched it was. Once it broke through 30%, it became much easier to funnel mana into and the actual resistance dropped down to 50%. This was definitely a different material, as its gray had gone completely white and was so incredibly tough that even the thinnest piece was unbendable.

I stopped my note taking when Dobo came back with some contraption in his hands, but the sight of the materials set before me almost made him drop his gizmo. Sheep was quick to react, and before it touched the floor it was swept up by his tail and rolled into Vimna’s waiting hands. The siblings shared a tail slap like a high five while their father stared at my table with a complete lack of expression. Pal, are you alright? You’re really freaking me out dude, please say something.

I reached out and poked him, only for him to turn around and close the gate before sliding the blast shield over to block it. Oh no, I feel like I’ve just made a big mistake.