In the absence of a rooster, Dime did the honors and woke me at the first light of dawn, without crowing. He was so annoyed at this critter he was hunting that he startled me awake when he finally got it at the first rays of dawn. But it made me think about the absence of the flightless avians and it was one thing that concerned me. Why didn't people raise chickens? They had low upkeep and a high nutritional value even if you don't kill them. Something to investigate.

And speaking of chickens, my morning feast included an egg. Inorganic egg. I couldn't wait to crack that beast. I rushed my morning routine and used Decompose to clean after me. It wouldn't be proper to leave soapy water behind. I still had one ore pile to process, the excitement of getting P-type semiconductors surpassed my dwarven greed. And no, I'm not secretly the queen of the dwarves, she's in another castle. I'm sure there's only humans in this world. I begrudgingly donned the arming doublet and the suit of mail, without the coif, and layered a beige linen dress over the armor. My schedule included too much time under the sun to wear dark clothes over metal armor.

I didn't require cooking and I hoped the egg was already done. With some effort, I removed the wooden bar and threw open the door. Outside, the wheezing of the bellows denounced the start of a brand new day of work at the smithy. The apprentices tasked with the menial tasks of feeding coal to the furnace and operating the bellows waved at me. I was hungry but I had to check on the egg. I went to the back where the blob of titanium we warmed up last night rested on the ground. The bare dirt under the metallic object showed clear signs of exposure to the great heat, and it was still hot to the touch. I didn't even need to make physical contact to feel the heat coming from the metal.

I assumed a few hours was more than enough time for the gallium to infuse the silicon. I went to order a couple guards to carry a barrel of water for me. While they fetched the water, I created walls around the metal to hold the water from the plastic bag full of silicon I had in storage. Once the water arrived, I used my frying pan to pour water on the titanium until I was satisfied it wouldn't boil or splash searing droplets. Then we dumped the whole barrel over the metal.

The water warmed up and I estimated the temperature was almost fifty Celsius. I opened up a hole next to the wall and drained the water out while the soldiers went for another barrel of fresh well water... We repeated the process three times until the water remained cool. I used Decompose to purify and move the water back into the barrels. I also checked for the presence of gallium and found none in the water. The titanium held the other metal inside. I had no idea if the graphite broke but it should have resisted the pressure. I would have to wait until it was safe to open to figure out.

I reluctantly left the titanium shell to cool in the water and went to the tent in search of nourishment. Breakfast was hard rye bread, ale, and salad. I ate the same as the smiths. Even though they stole glances at me I felt comfortable among them, and I was confident enough none of them would attempt anything. The furtive stares didn't bother me and madam Cloe's dresses didn't show more skin than they should, given the ethos of their society.

Speaking of which, I was slowly coming to understand that ethos. Not accept, just understand. While to me most of them seemed like assholes and opportunists, that was the way people behaved. It was as Nietzsche wrote regarding the master-slave morality in ancient ages. Rather than dividing actions into "good" or "evil", the master morality asserted its will on the world and conquered what they wanted through strength, courage, and "virtue". To them, "I am stronger than you so give me your lunch money" wasn't bullying but the natural way of the world.

Things would soon degenerate into savagery so the strongest among them, the Enshis and Lugals of the city-states set a body of laws that remained mostly immutable during these several millennia since they arrived here. it was still loosely based on the code of Hammurabi they brought with them from Earth. Therefore, rather than a zeitgeist born of a sense of community and cooperation, they had obedience to strength as their ethical compass. The Enshi wanted a city to rule so he forced laws upon the people. But he could take anything to himself as he was the strongest.

Including women.

The only reason Nephew left me alone and decided to accept my offer of cooperation was that he knew he couldn't take me without dying. I still had a bag of calcium chloride with his name on it, not to mention the bags of phosphorus and aluminum shavings. Not for a lack of trying from his part. If I were powerless or weakened during that audience, the sorcerer that died of burnout would've done whatever he wanted to me. And the fact that he was profiting from the cooperation as I was working to help his city. Abil-Kisu and the smith duo were also part of this society. They too measured their interactions with me on profit and gains versus losses. The merchant lord wasn't hosting me and my people out of charity. He was investing in a long-term profitable relationship.

All of them had vast evidence of my strength, including the blacksmith apprentices, the altercation with the Captain yesterday notwithstanding. I had a squad of soldiers ready to obey any order of mine right outside. Dime was somewhere getting his breakfast. There was no doubt some of them had naughty thoughts as they looked at me. But they wouldn't dare lay a finger on me. They would jeopardize their masters' future projects, and their own as they too were learning from the new ideas and techniques I brought them.

Therefore I could eat my breakfast in peace. I was too valuable and dangerous to be molested. I wasn't happy with the reason they restrained themselves to just looking. But while I would prefer true respect, what I had was close to the best I could hope for. As Machiavelli said, the best world for the Prince is to be both loved and feared but if the Prince has to choose only one, he should choose fear. I was still aiming for both.

After breakfast, I went outside and back to the warehouse. Even though the water was only lukewarm, it would be wise to wait so the pressure inside could have a chance to lower as the temperature slowly seeped out.

The last pile of ores had some very strange rocks. I took one that had a yellow crystallization, an outer shell of low-quality quartz. I gently tapped it with the pickaxe and the crystal broke. I split it and it revealed a pink rhomboid mineral inside. I sensed and it was composed of calcium carbonate and another metal. An unknown one. It was a transition metal and its atomic mass and resonance were very similar to nickel.

The only one I was missing from the fourth period was cobalt. To confirm, I broke off a small piece of the pink mineral and separated the calcium carbonate from the unknown. Then I lit up a candle and dropped the small pellet on the fire. It went silvery-white. Checking my chart, it was indeed cobalt. There were a lot of other metals that create similar flames but no unknown one near the atomic mass I sensed. I kept a sample of the pink ore and Decomposed the rest.

Next on the pile was zircon. I could recognize the quasi-gemstone by sight. They had impurities and flaws inside the crystals, making them foggy and brittle. Titanium and aluminum oxides. I sensed the resonance of new metal and it felt like titanium but one "octave" lower. I didn't sense the resonance as sound but the frequencies were harmonic to one another. Must be zirconium. I extracted it and tested a pinch over the candle. It became pink and it confused me. Yttrium was close enough to confuse my senses and also had a reddish flame. I checked my book and yttrium was usually found in phosphates, not silicates like the one I had in hand.

I Decomposed the pieces of zircon, keeping some of the better crystals intact. I got two thumbnail-sized clear crystals that could be cut like diamonds, one brown and one yellow-orange. While I separated the zirconium, I found traces of yet another metal. Pouring some dust on the candle, the fire became white momentarily. It once again had a resonance that was one "octave" lower than the zircon and two apart from the titanium. Hafnium. It was present in very low quantities. Around one-thousandth to one in five hundred hafnium to the zirconium.

Next in the pile was a bunch of dark rocks with red, orange, and brown mineralizations. Embedded in the granite I sensed phosphates and more unknown metals. Metals. As in several elements. I touched the rocks, savoring the unknown resonances of heavy elements when I found something bothersome.

There were traces of radioactive material mixed in these ores. Just specks of uranium and another one. I extracted a tiny bead of uranium from the rock I was handling and against my best judgment, Decomposed it inside my clenched fist. My hand locked and I could feel the rush of magical power depleting my stores to force the decay of the metal. Once my arm started to hurt, I pondered why the hell did I decide to do this stupid thing. I could smell my skin burning from the heat released by the rushed radioactive decay.

I had not. With all the mindfucking sorcerers and gods trying to control me, I was practicing mindfulness of my own conscience. I couldn't avoid or even recognize it as it happened but, in hindsight, I felt a compulsion to neutralize the uranium. I cursed the stupid god that thought I could be a tool. I used my anger as fuel and fought to regain control of my hand. The power expenditure increased sharply as I fought back. It was as if my power knew it had little time to work and hurried the process. I had no idea I could still call it "my power" at that moment.

The metal was burning my hand. I pulled my arm closer to my chest and suddenly the channeling of energy to Decompose stopped. I could still feel my magical power draining away but this time it was to alleviate the pain. As a well-engineered self-repairing machine, my body was restoring itself to working conditions. I hated it.

"Sandra, is everything alright?" Aran shouted from the warehouse door. "I heard you scream!"

Did I scream? I didn't even register it.

"I'm fine now. I just found some dangerous ore and had to neutralize it."

Aran approached carefully as he scanned the almost empty carts for any threat. "Like the one that poisoned the Enshi?"

"Yes, but in very small quantities," I replied.

I checked my hand. The feeling was coming back and it itched like a hundred crawling ants. Biting acid ants. My magic power was low but not critical. After a moment I was finally able to open my hand and drop the searing pellet of lead on the ground.

"This ore," I showed him the monazite, "Had traces of the poisonous metal. Nothing that can be harmful to people. But I tried to neutralize it all at once and it burned my hand. It will heal soon."

It was a tiny pellet, less than a pin's head. Yet it used more than half my magic to neutralize. What happened in that hole? How much into the negative did I fall to neutralize that much ore? I could sense my magic pool sitting still. All the energy generated used to regenerate my hand. It seems Nanna was right. My healing only actively used stored magic to recover from life-threatening wounds. Something to keep in mind.

"What should we do with it?" The smith asked, fearful.

"Nothing. Let me just catch my breath for a moment and I'll be right back at it. Meanwhile, do you want to come with me open that metal egg I left sitting on a pool of water?"

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He didn't answer verbally but his body language said he wanted really bad. We went outside and around the warehouse until we reached the titanium egg. It was not egg-shaped though. I tested the water, it was only tepid. The metal also wasn't cold to the touch and slightly warm. That information baffled me. Why would it be so warm after sitting outdoors for most of the night and being cooled in the water?

The materials inside were titanium, graphite, and gallium. All of them good thermal conductors. Very good conductors. I carefully sensed the titanium. Both the shell and my armor resonated back. I had to be careful to only manipulate the titanium in the egg. I projected Decompose out from my hand and peeled back the metallic shell. I expected steam to pour out but there was only a wave of heat. After I moved enough titanium out of the way, I could see that the graphite didn't break. It seems my setup resisted the pressure of the expanding liquid metal very well. I touched the graphite. It was warmer than the titanium, around fifty Celsius. It would burn my hand if I kept it for too long but not too hazardous.

I removed more titanium to expose the graphite to the water. I could feel the water warming up. Now, I could open the graphite but that was unwise. Given the temperature and how long it was still here, the galium would still be at high pressure inside. I had to find out why it was still that hot before I moved further.

"What is the matter?" Aran broke the silence.

"This thing should be cold by now. I have no idea why it is still hot even though it is soaking in water. I need to look into it before I open the 'graphite'... coal shell."

"Yes, it is strange to be this hot," He said as he brushed his hand over the water's surface. "It is even heating up the water."

I could change the water but it already proved to be inefficient. "I'm going back to the warehouse to check."

I sat at the table and chair I'd made out of silicon yesterday and poured through the books on my laptop. Either everything I knew of physics was wrong or something else happened to that egg. Why was the graphite, one of the best thermal conductors holding the heat? Had I inadvertently magicked something in there? Was it some strange law of physics that applied to this world? The many-worlds theory does predict that different universes may have different laws.

Maybe that's why Earth had no magic. Except it did. Or Tarhun wouldn't throw lightning at some random campers. Except we weren't random. Or maybe he was just bullshitting me.

I threw my hands up in despair.

That line of thought would solve nothing.

Until I had solid evidence that this world had a different set of natural laws, I had to abide by what I knew. I pulled the table of thermal conductivity. My agitation was undeserved. Pure titanium was a poor thermal conductor, it was thirty times lower than copper. Good to know that. And for the graphite... it gave two values. Graphite was anisotropic. Its conductivity along the sheet was good, great even, but across the sheets, terrible. I recalled how I shaped the graphite crucible to host the galium and the silicon slices. I intentionally bent and weld the sheets so they would all face the inside.

That meant the gallium inside would still be very hot. While it would be safe to quench the galium with water as it wouldn't react, the sudden change in temperature could harm the delicate silicon sheets inside. I stored my computer and went back to the egg. I found some soldiers on the way there and called them to do the heavy lifting. I raised the walls around the half-peeled metal egg and had the soldiers dump more water to fully cover it. The water was warm, like a hot bath.

I sent the men to get more cool water and set a barrel in the hole I dug during the night. After two cycles of exchanging water, I felt we drained enough heat to open the egg. I shifted the titanium as a lip protruding up from the graphite to contain the galium and reached over to touch and open the graphite. Liquid galium gushed from the tiny hole I opened and burned my hand. I pushed the metal away from me with Decompose and quenched my singed hand in the water.

I should have used my power to push the gallium away while I moved the carbon. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, indeed. My hand hadn't even fully healed from before. Remembering what Nanna told me, I went back to the warehouse and dumped all my bulk storage items except the food to reduce my basic upkeep and spare more magic for the healing.

The scribes should be working on their catalog today. There was too much paperwork for them to go through but that should benefit the town greatly. We will have a proper registry of the property then. And it should be done by the natives, not by an outsider like me.

I spent a few minutes staring at my hand. The speed it recovered without the burden of my storage was indeed impressive. I needed to stop hoarding so much stuff. But I still had one good hand so I went back to the monazite.

I took a chunk with my left hand and sensed it. I could feel several heavy atoms along with phosphorus and oxygen. The phosphorus was problematic as it would react if I removed it carelessly. My best bet would be to Decompose this ore underwater. I prepared a bowl of water next to the ore pile and dunked the ore in. Underwater, white phosphorus wouldn't react. The monazite broke and I added more ore, creating a large chunk of phosphorus in the muddy water. There was some silicon in the adjoining rock and I used it to wrap the phosphorus.

The metals should all be in suspension as oxides. Removing the phosphorus created to little bubbles so the oxygen that was bound to the phosphorus should've gone somewhere. The water is a little alkaline. Some of these oxides could've reacted with the water but most of them are insoluble. I went through the process of singling out one resonance and drawing it out. I got a chunk of soft metal. Since it was monazite it should be either lanthanum or cerium. Both were soft and felt like a hard putty.

Instead of testing what metal I had, I fished the others. I got another bunch of soft metal and while both had similar resonances, they were different. For a moment I thought that maybe isotopes of the same metallic element could have different resonances but I never found proof. Anyway, I went and fished for the third most abundant metal in the muddy water. It was even softer than the other two and started to oxidize right after I released my control over it. I was sure this one was neodymium.

I cleared the residual elements from the bowl. There were other minerals mixed with the monazite, nothing of note. Once I had pure water, I resumed the process. In the next batch, I found more radioactive matter. It wasn't uranium and its reactivity was lower. I was sure it was thorium.

As an experiment, I removed everything else but the thorium. I knew that if I tried to use Decompose on it my power would lock me down until it decayed entirely. I then wrapped the thorium in lead and set it aside. I kept repeating the same thing, using more water and wrapping the small pellets of uranium and thorium.

I had one-fifth of the pile to process when I found another type of ore buried in the other rocks. It was white-yellow with some quartz crystals embedded. It was still a phosphate mineral and had some thorium along with new and unknown heavy metals. Probably more lanthanides. I extracted the phosphorus underwater and checked the new metals. Both were harder than lanthanum and cerium. Both were electropositive and would react with the water to make weak hydroxides when I released my power. Probably samarium and gadolinium.

There was one cool way to figure out which one was gadolinium due to one amazing property of the lanthanide. Gadolinium is magnetocaloric, meaning it heats up when it approaches a magnetic field and cools as the field goes away. I took some of the magnetite crystals I saved for myself and tested the two small pieces of metal I extracted from the white-yellow ore, monazite(Sm). The samarium didn't react to the magnet while the gadolinium not only twitched when exposed to the low magnetic field of the magnetite but also slightly heated up. Unfortunately, there was little of the samarium monazite, maybe two dozen kilograms. I finished the pile, processing all the metals and cleaning up the area, doing one last scan for possible metals lost in the dust of the warehouse or in the cracks of the wagons.

Back to the gallium.

I checked the liquid metal that oozed out of the graphite shell. I could see now that some of the sheets of silicon broke and were floating on the hot metal. The gallium cooled but not enough. I reached down and Decomposed the graphite to open a hole at the bottom. The galium flowed out and emptied the inside, pooling at the bottom. After a few minutes, I pulled the graphite shell from the hot water and poured the rest of the galium into the water. Some broken pieces of the silicon rattle inside. I knew they would break loose, as the thermal expansion increased for each element I used but it seems that the galium infused a bit too much in some parts and weakened the silicon. I pick up the solid pieces and check using my resonance sense. Yes, there's galium infused in the silicon. I hope it is enough to give a good conductivity. With the silicon in hand, I wiped the excess galium using a rag.

Cleanup time!

I gathered the intact sheets of gallium-doped silicon and the useable shards and Decompose to purify and retrieve the leftovers including the water. Then I went to the battery array and did a rough test of my semiconductors. I plugged the flashlight with two wires and hooked it in series with a sheet of semiconductor. With two sets of chopsticks, I moved the wires around the semiconductors testing the strength of the lantern's light. I kept the good pieces and Decomposed the unusable ones. Most of the doped silicon was useable. Finally, I moved everything to the warehouse and set the elements in appropriate containers.

Before leaving the warehouse, I tested my burnt hand. The skin was still tender but that was it. I estimated it would heal completely in less than one hour. I was low on magic power but not critical. I had more than enough to Decompose another ore pile. Not that was any left.

Now I have to commission someone to make the contacts. I'll cut the silicon myself with the Dremel. I went to the smithy looking for either Samus or Aran. I found the latter instructing the blacksmith apprentices on how to forge the items I asked.

I waited patiently for him to notice me even though I wanted to get this thing done yesterday.

Aran turned around and came near me wiping his hands on his leather apron. "Sandra. How's your experiment? You have your 'good news' face on."

I noticed I was smiling. He was right. I was a few steps away from obtaining something invaluable for my comfort and commodity.

"All done and it was a success! I got these plates and now I can do something awesome with them. But I need help. Is there someone very good working with really tiny and delicate pieces?"

"We have a guy that does decorations and filigree for some custom jobs. Let me call him," Aran said and turned around to yell at the apprentices. "Fetch me Uki-Langor!"

I hoped he was not a beastman barbarian. The apprentice returned after a few minutes with a young man, not very muscular for a blacksmith, a lithe and gracious build.

"Milady, what is your wish," He politely bowed and asked.

He had a charming smile. But I was there to talk business, not to refresh my eyes.

"I need a specific device made, and it requires precision. Aran here told me you are good with small details."

He gave me a winning smile. "I shall try my best."

"Follow me to the warehouse, I'll show you what I need."

I used the laptop to show Uki-Langor the schematics for the device I wanted. I showed him the general idea and then the materials he'd be working with.

"I need tiny copper cubes, about this small. And then the connectors, we are using aluminum. For the upper and lower pads, a thin sheet of silicon to work as electrical insulation and two sheets of copper. I'll make these. You care about making the cubes and the connectors. You see, they need to be arranged in this snaking pattern, up, down, and back up. I'll cut the cubes of the material I have here with me while you work on the rest."

He looked around and I showed him a scaled-up version of what I wanted. After he understood, we went to his workspace and set ourselves to work. I summoned the Dremel and started to cut the doped silicon while he cut and hammered the copper and aluminum bronze ingots. We went on for three hours, mindlessly making the small cubes and the connectors. Once we had enough, I shaped the pure silicon sheets and thinned them the most I could. I made grooves in the silicon and handed a plate to Uki-Langor to set the aluminum connectors and alternating conductor cubes on that sheet while I worked on the next. Once the prototype was ready, I took it back to test its electrical conductivity with the flashlight while Uki-Langor assembled the next device.

I sighed in relief when the LED lit up. The device seemed to have been assembled right, I just needed to test if it would work as intended. I moved the boxes, connecting the aluminum contacts and started a voltage test just like what I did with the anodized titanium. I reached a bit over 40 Volts with fifteen cell volts and the wires heated from overdrawing current. The prototype also overheated.

Hovering my hand over it could feel the copper plate hot. With the chopsticks, I pushed the device aside and touched the table where it rested on. Cold.

I opened a big grin and looked around to what I'd accomplished in these two days at the smithy. I got my armor, I got my voltaic cells. I had electricity, renewable even as I could restore the electrodes with my power. I unlocked almost a dozen new elements. I had plenty of metals to do a lot of projects. The smiths' hammers were crafting rat traps around the clock.

And this rectangular metal-and-semiconductor sandwich that would change everything.

Everything.

I was even salivating as I remembered the taste but it would be unwise of me to not have my best collaborators present for the first test.

I went outside. The sun flew in its geodesic trajectory without me noticing. I had to fetch the two master smiths and see if Uki-Langor had a second unit ready. I had two aluminum cans with me, and getting a flagon of ale would be easy.

With these Peltier modules, it was time to introduce them to the wonderful world of cold beverages. That was only the tip of the iceberg.