Before I decided to destroy these jewels with some ideas of my personal theories, I gathered a few stones and cut them down to be more slim and pillar-like. From the two years I had been here, it made me realize that I cannot do it just on my own. Well, I mean, I can, but not in the sense of just myself. I needed tools and I needed the world itself. And if you're of the servitude of the High Deities, I guess their favour as well. Here were my ideas; Various points of Ishu to be drawn in and 'sent' to a center to accumulate. A singular point of high concentrated Ishu. An area of smaller points of various kinds of Ishu. It would be easier to show diagrams of what I'm talking about but you'll have to take my word on it. So, on these Ishu points were to draw in Ishu, it would either have to be the Ishu in the world; Such as anything on the ground and in air, along themselves. Using beasts, since living things tend to have bigger Ishu sources than something like a field of grass because of their general makeup. Or using Cores. Which would mean keeping the beasts alive to drain them of their Ishu. Which isn't a pleasant idea but then there is time of day; Twilight and Dusk seem to be the most appropriate times as both Light and Dark are present. But there is also Midday and Midnight where the presents of Light and Dark are at their peak. Worst case scenario was to go through each variation of this. I really didn't want to have to go through each variation to find out they all didn't work. Also I would have to figure out what to do with the jewels. A hypothesis would be to use the Aurourline as the very center gathering jewel for Ishu to 'burn' off of, with Tugillby & Suloxyhyte, being the represented Light and Dark, used as catalysts. And the Safs being a connected bridge and filtration of Ishu, since I wouldn't want to pump these full of Ishu with the will of ground or something, effectively changing their properties to something I'm not going after. Anyways, the stones would be used as mock versions to test a few of these ideas. Now the scale on these ideas are incredibly large and would take anywhere from a week to a month or two. So I would have to make a very small scale version using existing properties as a proof of concept. Though I guess not entirely true because I wouldn't be doing something new. Well I guess it'd make more sense to me than it would be if I was showing it to someone else to work on it. And being that I want to work with Pure Ishu as opposed to stones moving stones, the analogy only goes so far.

Before setting up the small scale field test, I tested the flow of Ishu through each of them and their retention, or if they had any. If they couldn't do what I was planning on having them do, there wouldn't be much of a point to a field test, now would there? I had to be careful with this research. If I used up all of my jewels then I'd have to go hunting for them once again, and leveling that cave system. Well, it'd be too much trouble to go to that level of effort, honestly. Anyways, I did end up ruining my supply, kind of. Aurourline was able to retain a very good size of Ishu and radiate it. Though it took a few attempts to actually figure out a rough limit on it. The ones that failed happen to shatter and dissipate into, what I could only guess is, Ishu. Oh, I should mention my trial runs with stones as well, as I learned how to make and use Glyphs, or what could be an imitation of them since this wasn't a thing I did back in Fenzoshu. They, uh, didn't go well. Imagine a rock about the size of your palm and thickness of your hand, if not bigger. Got it? Alright, now imagine said rock exploding in a volatile... well explosion. Lucky for me Niki wasn't around and I could feel what was going to happen so I was able to shield at least my collarbone and up thanks to the metal I have constantly wrapped around my metal-blessed arm. though my non-blessed arm and stomach got rained on, or rather penetrated, by rock shards. This is when I learned I shouldn't do Glyph & Ishu research inside my home. Tugillby & Suloxyhyte was more of a tougher thing to test. As I'd have to infuse these nonexistent Ishus into a living thing and then have it Shape them. So at the minimum I needed at least 3 good size jewels of each of them. I believe that having them 'fill' during peak day and night, along with dusk and twilight, would be the best. Having them laid out in a hexagon pattern going from, clockwise starting at the top; Midday Tugillby, Dusk Tugillby, Dusk Suloxyhyte, Midnight Suloxyhyte, Twilight Suloxyhyte, and finally Twilight Tugillby. Having them 'fill' with, essentially the essence of, Light and Dark based on time of day didn't make the most sense to me in some regards, but it was the first logical thing I could come up with. Now it actually 'filling' with said Ishu, or representative of it, would be another thing to come. Etching the Glyphs into jewels without breaking them was certainly a challenge. If I was able to Shape jewels, I could easily carve the symbols I desired. Having to begrudgingly head back to that cavern in search of more of these jewels was something I wasn't looking forward to. But I was delighted to have most of the components working after struggling for nearly a year. Probably closer to 4 or 5 months. Still hard to accurately count time and just basing it off of seasons.

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I don't want to bore you with the trial and error of setting up the field test. But I eventually found a configuration that would suit my needs. It didn't look anything too grand, just a bunch of jewels sticking out of the ground. Except for the Tugillby & Suloxyhyte, those I had propped up with a very thin metal structure. I wanted as little other existing Ishu as possible near them. This took about half a year to get all set up and kind of running. Certainly enough time had passed from the previous canine beast experiment that I could check to see if the Shaping knowledge trait that I was able to grant it could be passed down. In theory it should have been because Shaji & Half-Magi do. Though the problem with this after searching for a few days. I only did it to one beast. Not only that, but I quite possibly critically injured the beast as well. So it may have died years ago and was unable to pass it down. At the very least I know I can grant the knowledge with some possible side effects of making them more agitated but that might have come from my distaste for them. Maybe after all this time spent with Niki, it will have improved that. So I decided that it would be the best course of granting Shaping to more beasts and try to do it more of the same kind to increase the chances. It struck me. My first encounter with the boar a few years ago, or I believe was a few years ago during this time, was able to Shape. Or something similar. It was able to harden its tusks. This could have been from inexperience from handling tusks or live beasts. The best theory I came up with is that beasts are able to Shape, just not traditional Shaping that we would consider to be Shaping. What we could call an Incident, which is Shaping your surroundings through emotion with no direct control, they are able to use their instinctual reaction to Shape. Possibly with some or all direct control. Though if this extends to their surrounds is yet to be seen. In theory it does because the canine was able to Shape a breeze, though it may have only been itself and its rapid movement that caused the breeze. Which is a monumental finding if so, because if we Shapers could control Incidents to be less chaotic, we could harness such emotional states for higher Shaping. We could draw out so much more potential putting ourselves in such situations that we could become like the supposed Mystics. Now do I believe in their existence? Not entirely. But I've heard rumours from the other staff, Yè didn't seem to believe they existed. Shaji who could Shape the entire world if they wanted to. Absurd. No Shaji ever has had that strength. Not even the ones who made Fenzoshu. Could a Shaji reach such a height? Plausible but highly unlikely. I mean, being able to move an entire continent? Impossible. Moving an island? I guess that could happen, but a singular Shaji doing it just doesn't seem possible without a massive scale Incident. But even then, they would most certainly kill themselves doing so. I partially believe they exist, but not to the strength that they've been rumoured to have. They could be stronger than your average Judge.