Lyun kept dedicated to her pursuits in earnest for her own progress, pushing herself towards a feeling of accomplishment that felt so close to her. With the events that had just occurred, she was still in high spirits, and was determined to turn confidence into success.
She’s already done quite well in such regards too. When it came to matters of true chaos, she had found her arm really was a flowing reserve of elements. Not only that, but directing elements through it could actually manipulate such elements as well. She could simply will the chaos to strengthen elements or shield the effects of them, like her arm was the most complicated type of kyuemu.. thing.. that had ever existed. Her arm couldn’t even be called a shard, it was bigger than any shard she had ever seen before in that light, more like a gigantic cluster. Handling calibration of elements was even a sizable feature, allowing for a lot of easy manipulation of instrumentation in their everyday life if they so desired. This still left a lot unknown overall about their true chaos, but it was at least a strong base understanding from the perspective of this world.
On matters more relevant to this world, things were already much more complicated. She had taken some opportunity to practice designing what she had taken to calling frost holos, but it really wasn’t the same. A real holo could carry an insane weight, especially one designed well enough. Her gift’s creations weren’t even enough to support more than a small box. She had at least managed to get her power gear to boost her gift enough for her to stand upon it, but that’s about the farthest she could go with it. What was much more intricate though was making frost designs with her gift, actually artistic patterns, especially if the goal was to have them immaterial. Her frost patterns could have a very high quality detail to them, representing even really tiny details with clarity and a great stability. Walking through her work didn’t even affect it, though the patterns could feel quite cold. The only thing that would really impact her designs would be too much fire elemental, but that was only to be expected. Water elemental might make her work a bit more annoying though, as the water would freeze the entire construct as ice.
In truth, all of this elemental stuff was even starting to bore her, she was far more inclined to consider things a lot more scientifically. However, she was aware that Axln would be affected by her actions there as well, she would have to minimize the time she invoked science and simply tried to put stuff together in preparation for science. Supposedly both time travellers had come here doing that already, making things that were expected to be functional even without having access to the environment that would be required for their function. However, both of them simply had known what they would be making, she was still in a learning process. She would thus have to consider and remember concepts of science, set up something that should work, then use small windows to check her creations. It would be annoying, but somehow she just felt that she could trust her depth of scientific expertise to make up for the difference.
Of course, there were plenty of things that might have also helped in this situation. Having actual supplies and equipment, having practical experience with everything that amounted to a lot more time than the short period she’s had as Rosa, maybe even having an informational resource that actually compiled a half decent repository of relevant notes. Of course though, notes would have to be readable to her, the notes here were readable but not relevant, the notes of the other world were relevant but not readable. Instead, she had to depend on people for information, like Kori, Holi, Drew, or Tristine. Overall, she was at a loss right now, which would explain her first few failures. As it stood, her greatest scientific passion was in holography, so it was the foremost thing she was eager to reproduce. After all, most holography required complex computing for processing, like nanites, but herself.. as Rosa.. she had been producing quality holos from the complex computer called her mind. Certainly, such an advantage would exist here as Lyun, as long as science applied. However, holos also required the machinery that produced it, the OSIDFs. Optical Spectrum Ionic Diffusion, or Diffuser if you were considering the object instead of the technology. The thing then manipulated ionized particles with matter to create the holo effect. This implied that one challenge was making the thing, the second was creating an ionic reaction. The resource they had found underground simulates a thermal or even plasma reaction, but that just wasn’t good enough.
However, she still knew this wasn’t impossible. Mheridz had pulled out a holo chair on the citadel, meaning the whole concept could work. However, she doubted Mheridz would be compelled to share such secrets, considering the knowledge had come from the future. Mheridz was also a few choice words of an insult, there was no way the girl would want to be nice if it didn’t lead to their surrender. There was no way she could just invite Mheridz to the citadel again and… Wait, maybe there was someone she could call for help. The citadel was filled with strange composites, especially more metal than she had seen in her whole life.. as Lyun at least. Going over the entire concern with Luna, Lyun found herself quickly brought to the citadel’s... Actually, she had no idea what this was. Storage bay? This place honestly had more secrets every time she visited. She went searching through the stock, her curiosity at play for if this place even had anything useful. Everything seemed so primitive. The first box contained an assortment of plain weapons; a rapier, a bow, a hammer, an axe, and five huge swords, all of them tarnished black.. possibly overtime. The second box contained stuff even more strange; a misshapen scythe, a deformed crossbow, two warped shields.. even a book made of blades. The third box contained a broken headset.. six other very different headsets, half of them charred black. Under yet another black shield, she found a pair of weird boots, a pair of weird gloves, and a.. music box? The stuff looked so old, it was clearly all junk.
Lyun was however clueing on to one notable trend though, everything in these boxes were metallic for the most part. As such, when the next section contained nothing but exclusive raw metal plates across more than a few boxes, she felt she might actually be in the right area. Elementally, such metal was clearly a stone element composite, possibly produced artificially from simple elementals using instrumentation. From a scientific perspective, it could be considered a simple steel alloy, which would still be a bit old fashioned from the perspectives of the other world. Even so, this was something she could start with, she could even reshape the metal if she treated it with fire elements. Her memory of cybernetic component design from a scientific perspective proved refined enough that she could create a vast assortment of the parts she needed from what she found. She didn’t have silicon, but she was familiar with it.. and knew that she could reverse engineer a kyumu crystal for a silicon-like extract. However, she still had made no progress with ionization, an aspect that had continued to elude her.
Ionization would be an atomic process where materials acquire a positive or negative ionic charge by gaining or losing electrons. If she could filter electrons like that, she could get the reaction she needed. Electrons.. so like, electricity.. or lightning. Was that how it became so easy for Mheridz? The girl was so obviously of lightning affinity. Lyun however had no idea where to start in making electrical circuits, something that would be required to hold the electrical charge during a scientific shift. So far, all she had was a basic frame for something that would do a thing if it was completed. Fortunately, the metal didn’t stay as hot as it would have under scientific principles, the fire elements fading along with her focus. Actually, in all consideration, the shape it endured would be more ideal if it did finish cooling with physics.
Considering such, she took her work through a rift, considering that the void would leave her with the most neutral environment to work with. Once there, with Luna safely out of the way, she set physics to finish off her work for her. Within an instant, she found herself buried in an ashen mound, heavily winded by the significant impact. What in the hells had just happened? She first dug herself free before looking for her project. Instead of finding it, she found an ashen ball appended together where the thing had previously been. The resulting ball didn’t even open by force alone, it was too powerful. She dismissed her distortion, watching the ashen flakes fall freely from what was left of her project, the entire thing crushed by the significant pressure. Lyun then realized that she had been lucky she herself hadn’t been so close to the thing, else it would have turned out much worse for her. Strange how that had all just worked out, as if the ashen surroundings had been magnetically attracted to her steel.. wait, physics like that would have been totally possible. Steel is a ferrous compound, it’s really good at magnetics. But there would have still needed to be a charge somehow, from something else.
She looked around the ashen void around her as it dawned upon her. All of this stuff around her was basically kyuemu void, what happened when elements were taken from it. When playing with the same reaction too much on Aestus, she had come up with an atomic reaction due to the molecular instability. This implied that the physics consideration of the ashen void was of a material that had its energy pulled from it, that it had lost electrons.. or possibly even protons, though that would be rather awkward. That would have provided enough of a reaction to garnish a magnetic force, at least. Wait, that’s also the sort of reaction she needed to isolate ions, too. Does.. that.. mean.. the entire ashen wasteland.. is an endless expanse.. of potential ionic energy? By the divine, this entire concept was outright intimidating. Wait, that could even go two ways, as the other side had an endless expanse of ‘low energy’ frost elementals everywhere. The non-energy state of one world was the plentitude of the other.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Quite honestly, Lyun had always thought it a bit unfair that Axln had the plentiful power of something like manipulating time. Quite obviously, that was a very significant idea, and even people like Mheridz and Velvet were treasuring Axln due to her vast abilities with time. In that comparison, it had left Lyun feeling rather insignificant, being only able to do something as simple as shifting between two world principles. Sure, that was a big thing, but it still just couldn’t compare to time manipulation. However.. learning that her advantage comes with the potential for infinite energy.. that was maybe different. Her ability could allow them to reuse energy, render such energy sustainable indefinitely. When against foes that treasured states of low energy, that was more than a slight advantage. Actually, wasn’t her chaos also offering to provide true chaos energy too? That.. they might not have an infinite supply of, but it did mean they had that initial spark at any time which could be then further reused. It broke laws of conservation of energy, but such laws weren’t designed for chaotic factors like changing principle laws anyway.
She gathered a collection of ashen void and returned to the citadel to make another attempt at her work. The process however could not simply be completed in just a half day, though Axln let her process her work the whole while. Lyun had no idea what Axln was doing, but this worked for her. Axln even provided long range time stop periods for rest, letting her work in what looked to anyone else as a period without breaks. Luna however wasn’t one to complain, and no one else was present. Eventually, she was able to deploy an unchanging holo on demand. Of course, the next problem was in interfacing with her product. She remembered Drew’s lesson, that quite nothing could compare with a direct interface from the mind. This whole world was about that idea too, but it did so in measures of focus.. which had no scientific proxy. Making an appropriate microchip would be beyond her abilities.
As she took down the distortion, she was quick to discover that maybe.. she had used too much ionic energy and hadn’t properly contained the effect. The entire thing burst out in a wave of mixed elementals that threw her to her back. Wait, too much energy? Well, the ashen void really would be rich in ionic energy, but.. was it actually so bad to have too much in use at once. Of course, she would need to ensure that it remained stable, but.. having raw energy in a mass quantity could be weaponized in ways that holos never could before. How though.. how did..? Right, most of her experiences with ions had been in ionizing gasses for a holo, one of the easiest things to ionize. However, supposedly, it was also very easy to ionize.. minerals. That would include almost any crystalline component she could think of, especially while considering this world. Using crystalline ashen would then.. give a very high potential holo when it came to ionic capacity. More so, she could brace the holo to the crystal, which might in turn make it a touch more mobile. Finally, she could even distribute the direction of emission, making it safe at certain points and yet less so in others. She expected this would even continue for a while beyond her range in the other world, though she would lose the ability to manipulate it at that point. As things stood, here, she wouldn’t have any of such manipulation, but could at least design its creation.
To handle the entire process, Lyun made a glove for her left hand with OSIDF-inspired technology built into it. With it, she could charge any of the crystalline shards she carried into a full on holo. However, while this was great for her, she worried about what this would leave Axln with. Axln already felt a bit out of place with science at this point, at least when put beside Lyun. Adding a holo advantage would just make things even more annoying. She managed to at least improve their power gear to a state that could weather impact even without elemental principles in effect, much like the gear Sophie had provided for them, but they would still lose the elemental barrier without elementals in effect. Wait, but couldn’t they generate a pretty good barrier with a holo? No, actually, that would require a pretty big crystalline component, the power gear really wasn’t designed for such.. but Axln’s arm was. Axln's entire right arm was a cybernetic crystalline composite, which would do much more than even the silly glove Lyun made for herself. It would have less direct control, but a lot more power. Instead of offering Axln the ability to create holos, this would allow her to outright discharge ionic energy.
As she was setting up the silicate traces needed for that sort of manipulation, Lyun realized that they actually already had this setup on the other world with their tights.. just there it had been used more for cosmetic purposes. It might be nice in fact if she found a way to provide this same service in the other world, but that would require some suitably high supplies of ionic energies. Very clearly, this would be something to look into for her next visit to the other world. In the process, maybe she would have an opportunity to revisit such sciences and figure out if there was anything she could do to improve upon this initial design. Thinking about it that way, she didn’t even want to bother wasting Axln’s time installing such junk if there would just be quick adjustments needed right away anyway. In all consideration, visiting the other world would be great, maybe she could finally invest time into reading lessons. Research really was getting annoying when she was so deprived of all the good sources of information, no wonder Axln put so much priority into learning to read here.
So decided, Lyun packed up her work and returned to the academy. She had no idea where Axln even was, but a quick cell call at least brought them together quickly enough. Just as quickly, she even managed to convince Axln upon the idea of spending time in the other world, leading with the logic that they had technically been away for a while. However, once switched to the other world, you couldn’t even tell that much time had passed, everyone working much the same as everyone had when they had left. In fact, it seemed like everything had really gone quiet.. everywhere. That might be true with both worlds too, things were really quiet. However, that did at least provide them with plenty of opportunity to get stuff done. Both of them were well worn out by constant practical discoveries, so instead they turned to more relaxing pursuits. Reading and exploration, mostly, casual things both girls felt held a lot of value in right now. Such even continued for several more days until both decided to return to more practical goals.
Rosa found herself occasionally interrupted by Kori for a variety of requests at this point, stuff like making strange instruments or shifting to elemental stuff. Kori even asked for a lot of regular glass crafting too in some of her projects, something Rosa had to learn from Drew in how that worked in this world. Rosa did at least take a lot of opportunity to practice with saturated frost in this world when Kori needed elementals active, her practice modelled upon her newest venture into holography. Solid frost was rather cold to carry though, inspiring her to make yet another special glove for this world too, one designed to deal with frost in elemental conditions. The instrument Kori had made to allow her to harness frost was woven into it, and obviously Kori has been needed to finish the whole idea too. However, when left to normal conditions, Rosa was happy to invest her efforts into ionic constructs. This time, working heavily with Tristine, she made substantial progress realizing her sudden vision. She discovered quickly that mineral deposits didn’t even need to include crystalline ones, though such were mostly then just pretty light effects, not even capable of a kinetic factor. Ionically intense minerals, such as rendering the onyx here into ashen, had a really promising energy capacity, but proved very difficult to store in a ready state. The base onyx though at least functioned very well, capable of at least being ionized artificially very quickly for use.
The problem then was that they would need to actually carry around a powerful enough ionic core to get the job done. It also seemed, when the goal was to have substantial ionic outputs, such a thing could get heavy. Even her weapon, which had dangerous ionic outputs, wouldn’t have enough of a core for this sort of idea. Getting a core substantial enough proved excessively heavy and left her unbalanced, a feeling she didn’t like considering her reliance on mobility with holos. Further research into the problem invested into a solution of having multiple smaller cores of sufficient intensity, which could then be built into the tights Sophie had offered with a distributed weight factor. Such had been Tristine’s idea, as she had a lot of projects she had worked on in the past which had similar problems needing a similar solution. Quite honestly, Rosa treasured Tristine’s input on the subject, as she sought ways to improve upon her design in the other world too. With a bunch of extra effort though, Rosa finally came to the conclusion that this project was finally ready for implementation.
Both of them had in fact spent an entire moon on their individual projects, a complete lunar cycle if you count the days of unsuspended reading and exploring too. After everything they had done, it was finally time to introduce each other to the surprises of their discoveries and the advantages such would provide to the other.