Unknown time on the 44th day of Winter

Light from a ball of plasma seared through the darkness. It lasted just over a second and when it cut off a small part of the cave wall was glowing an angry red.

“Well how about that?” I asked Schrodinger.

His hackles were up. I could tell he was getting more and more frustrated that we were still down here and it didn't help matters that I made him wear safety goggles. They were so darn cute but he hated them.

“Sorry friend.” I said.

I heard a whistle from the tunnel Arin always used. Sure enough she walked out of the darkness a mark later.

“That's impressive, did you blow up your thing with that one?” she asked.

“Thanks and no.” I said. “This time it stayed in one piece.”

I held out what I was holding. It was a black cylinder about as long as my forearm and as thick as a broom handle with a big red button on the side. It was my latest prototype magic-enhanced laser diode array and was pushing about five hundred watts of power if the glow from the stone wall was any indication.

She grabbed it and hefted it.

“Hey, if it ever breaks you can just beat the monsters to death with it.” she said with a test swing.

“Very funny.” I said.

“So, what are we working on today?” she asked.

I motioned for her to give me the laser back. After I put it back in its makeshift holster I explained.

“We are going to try and get a better sense of the physical mechanisms that produce light mana.” I said.

“The current bottleneck of everything I’m working on is power, well energy really. That light show back there took an entire monster core. If I can't recharge them more quickly then it will be difficult to make it into a reliable weapon.”

“Makes sense, how long do they take to recharge?” she asked.

“About six days. Three if I can keep a fire going.” I said.

“And thank you for recharging the ones you have. It has really helped.”

She shrugged, I guess it only took her a handful of measures but it made my research go much faster.

I went over to retrieve the materials I had prepared for today and jogged back. I had really enjoyed working with Arin these last couple tendays. I was learning a lot about how light magic interacted with the electromagnetic force. She was more pleasant company than Schrodinger as well.

“The first thing I actually need you to do is use as much of your magic as you can.” I said.

“I will be running different experiments and I need you to tell me how much they are affecting your regeneration rate.”

“Okey.” she said with a smile.

She turned to the same wall I had been using for target practice and laid into it with a barrage of lasers. As she was simultaneously using the darkness spell, it actually cut a dark line through the air. Each was at least twice as strong as what I could produce and she put out a half dozen before breaking a sweat. She even started doodling, quickly sweeping the laser to make loops and swirls and stars. Showoff.

After a minute she was ready. I asked her to sit by the lake with her back to me and try to focus on her core.

“We’ll use ten as the baseline. If it goes up, tell me how high it gets. If it goes down.” I said but she cut me off.

“I get it, let's get started already.” she said.

“Okay first experiment.” I said.

I start off by using a firestarter to light a piece of paper. It started at the edges and within fifteen marks or so had consumed the whole page.

“Maybe a twelve.” she said.

“Got it.” I said, recording the number in my notebook. “Second experiment.”

Then I got a light christal out and shined it at her back.

“Nothing, I mean ten.” she said.

“Got it.” I said.

“Third experiment.”

Then I took out a bright white diode I had made and shined that at her back.

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“Still nothing, what are you even doing back there?” she asked.

“Collecting data, and thank you for being patient ” I said. “Fourth experiment.”

This time I went with a different idea that had occurred to me the night before. I took out a small bowl and poured in a small amount of sulfuric acid and then some calcium carbonate. The two chemicals react violently, bubbling and spitting.

“Wow, that was at least fifteen.” she said.

“Interesting.” I said. “We are done for now. Thanks again.”

She turned around and eyed the messy bowl.

“What was that?” she asked.

“I mixed together an acid and a base.” I said.

“The chemical reaction is a lot like fire, except for two things. First, it doesn't emit light. At least not visible light. Second, it happens within a whole mixture all at once rather than the piece of paper that took ten or fifteen marks to burn.”

“And that puts out a big pulse of light mana?” she asked.

“That appears to be the case.” I said.

“We know that fire makes light mana as you can recharge light cores faster in a fire. My first thought was that the fire light would be the source of light magic. I ran two tests that produced light without the chemical reaction and both of those tests produced no change in your recovery rate. My second thought was that it was the oxidation reduction reaction and sure enough, isolating that variable still elevated your recovery rate.”

“So, what? Are you going to dip used cores in these acids and bases to recharge them more quickly?” she asked.

“No, there has got to be a more efficient way.” I said.

I thought about how much acid and base I would need to recharge the cores and it would be way too much. A barrel full of each at least. Well, if I used death magic, I could simply reconstruct the materials again and again so I wouldn't need much at any one … time. I froze at the thought. Then my eyes went wide in realization.

“Oh, that’s how cores generate their own light mana.” I said.

“What now?” she asked.

But my mind was spinning with the brilliance of it all. I found that there was highly pressurized hydrogen and oxygen running within channels inside a core. If the core also had a chamber to combine them into water, perhaps like a fuel cell, then it would generate a ton of light mana. But if that was all it was doing it would only be able to hold a single charge. The small fleck of heavy elements was constantly putting out death mana. The core could channel that into the simple task of breaking apart the water back into hydrogen atoms and then reassembling the oxygen from there. I had to sit down at that point.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“It’s a damn perpetual motion machine.” I said.

Now she was looking at me very strangely but whatever. How is that even possible? Where does the energy come from?

Then a memory surfaced from Earth of a proof by a mathematician named Emmy Noether that symmetries in the universe give rise to conservation laws. Basically, conservation of energy is a direct result of the laws of physics being the same everywhere. You would still have it even if the laws of physics were different. But if the laws were different in different places or at different times then conservation goes out the window and you can have perpetual motion machines.

“Snap out of it!” she yelled at me,

I looked back at her.

“Sorry Arin, I just figured out something important ” I said.

“I think my energy problems are about to go away.”

***

Unknown time on the 47th day of Winter

I was totally going to blow myself up. It turns out that trying to make an artificial monster core is fantastically dangerous. I was back to working underwater as it offered limited protection from shrapnel. Additionally I had created a crude breastplate and face shield of tungsten with diamond back plates. Heavy as hell but it might save my life. The water in the lake was actually running low on dissolved minerals at this point and another test with the radiation detector showed it was down to less than half its starting levels. Progress.

My work process with the artificial cores was to start small. I would make a shard of plutonium-238 and then immediately wrap it in diamond. The carbon in the diamond would contain alpha radiation and also absorb any loose neutrons. Then I would make a series of fuel cells with platinum coated electrodes. I had no idea what chemical to use for a proton exchange membrane so I was lucky I had found some complicated hydrocarbon chains in the wreckage of the core I exploded. I just remade that and with a bit of water it seemed to work pretty well. Platinum is an excellent catalyst for splitting water into parts. Then I would wrap the whole thing in layers of graphene until I could barely see the internal structures. Last I would try to fill the inside with hydrogen and oxygen. I thought that the whole process would just start after I finished but it turns out that I am missing something. It could be that the death mana produced by the shard is unaspected, just like when I first started out. There must be something within a core that allows it to apply an aspect to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

I was taking a break from that mess of a project and sketching out another idea in my notebook. It occurred to me that Arin was using a lot of magic for relatively little effect. Oh sure, she was throwing out kilowatt class lasers but all that was coming from her reserves. She could only do about ten seconds total before being drained. And she had to muster the concentration to focus it into as narrow of a beam as possible. I think that there might be a way to leverage her magic with a bit of science.

“What’s your impression of Arin?” I asked Schrodinger.

He was curled in a ball in my blankets and was purring loudly.

“Yes, she’s nice but what else?” I asked.

“What kind of gift would she appreciate?”

Schrodinger started licking his coat.

“Yes, she has nice hair but I can’t exactly get her shampoo or conditioner.” I said. “She strikes me as more adventurous than that anyway.”

I turned the page around to show him what I was working on.

“What about this?” I asked.

On the page was a crude drawing of a longsword. I had included annotations for various features I could add to it like making it out of tungsten carbide or putting in a core of gallium nitride to amplify her lasers. Schrodinger paused his licking for a second before returning to his task with renewed gusto.

“Well what do you know anyway.” I said.

The design needed work, if I got the material flexibility wrong then cristal or the blade would just break the first time she used it. Still, I wanted to give her something. There was a tradition of gift giving around the upcoming New Year’s Festival. Would it be too forward of me to give her something? As a friend of course. I would have to think about it. I put down the charcoal and stood.

“Well, I’ve procrastinated long enough.” I said. “You stay here friend,”

Then I picked up another light magic core. It was on the smaller end at the size of a marble. I really needed a better look at the internal structures of a core of I'm going to make one of my own. I am going to try and poke a hole in the pressure vessel so I can see what's inside. Again, I was totally going to blow myself up.