There are a few reasons crystals may not have formed. Some of the reasons won't be too bad to rectify, and some will be nearly impossible as things are right now to fix. Some of the bad reasons include having to boil the solid crystal material, or missing some fundamental component unknown to me that acts as a catalyst. Both of those would be nearly impossible to rectify as current things stand.
Thankfully, there are also things that I can try which aren't too bad. First, it might need to be agitated as it cools, making sure that the gas released by the broken crystal is re-dissolved into the liquid to allow crystal formation. Second, it might need imperfections, or a seed crystal inserted to grow off of. Thankfully, both of those are not too bad to test, so I'll give both of them a shot moving forward.
For testing agitation, I think for a single test, manual agitation should be fine. If it turns out to work, it'll be a hassle to make an apparatus for it, but not impossible. As for inserting a seed crystal, that is actually slightly easier thanks to stone shaping. All I need to do is embed a seed crystal into some solid lightstone such that I simply use stone shaping to merge and drop the crystal into the heated chamber back down in the cave. This might end up needing multiple tests though, because if the material is too hot, it might actually dismantle the existing crystal.
With a plan laid out, Zeb and I have a some work to do over the next few days to make plenty of testing apparatuses. I think we're getting close to having a third batch of wood ready too, which means Zeb might also prestige soon. Plenty of things to keep us busy.
----------------------------------------
Well, we spent five whole days getting various things ready for testing. In that time, Zeb did prestige after felling a few more trees, which we finished converting to charcoal yesterday. I quickly jotted down his new status when he awoke the next morning. He definitely grew a few inches during his prestige, and his arms gained some brown striping along them.
Level: 0
HP: 383/383
MP: 52/52
Traits: Mimicry
Magic: Stone Shaping
When I asked him about his options for prestige, he said he had Stone Shaping, Mana Affinity, and Improved Endurance. I'm not particularly surprised about the first two, considering I've been having him work along side me doing a lot of similar work to when I was an imp and gained those traits. After he explains Improved Endurance, which does exactly what it sounds like, I have to give him a slight talking to.
Basically, he's been pushing himself further than he should be while working for me. While he's getting larger, he's still only 2/3 my height, so I told him that if he's feeling exhausted, he should take breaks, unless he's really certain he wants to keep working. If I don't say that we absolutely need to push ourselves, like when we're operating the impeller, it's fine if he wants to take a break to just relax while he's working. I'm not sure that he's actually going to listen though, because he just waved my concerns off with a smile.
Well, a nice thing is he has stone shaping now. A downside of that of course is the fact that he only has 52 mana right now. Which means to do a large amount of work, he basically needs to be attached to a crystal charging tray. I'm still four times as fast with improved stone shaping, but it means that I no longer need to do all the stone work myself, as long as it is something small or in the cave.
If we weren't quite as close to the next tests with the crystals, I'd probably invite him to manage one of the tests, but considering he's so new to stone shaping, and there actually is some danger in working with very hot materials, I think he'll have to wait until he's a little more trained to run tests like these himself.
Well, either way, it's time to start the two tests today. We're going to heat two crystal containers up at a time, then bring them down into the cave, and one I'll drop a solid crystal into, and then we'll take turns agitating the other container until it cools.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
----------------------------------------
Neither experiment yielded the result I wanted, but the seed crystal experiment did give a result that might be promising. The crystal didn't grow, but it shrank slightly, and part of the crystal looked like it had regrown from an even smaller size. I think there is a possibility that the temperature was a little too high when I dropped the crystal in and it partially dissolved before re-growing.
Tomorrow we'll try waiting a little while with two new containers and drop the crystal in at different temperatures. I'm hoping this starts yielding positive results soon because we're actively destroying the smallest crystals doing this. The smallest ones aren't very useful on their own, but it seems like a shame to be completely destroying them.
----------------------------------------
One of the two new tests yielded a small positive result, thankfully. Honestly, I was ecstatic that I found a way to artificially grow the crystals. The medium temperature drop had a small growth of new crystal along four of its eight facets, resulting in some new growth on it. Not a large amount by any means, maybe a few percent of mass growth, but it's growth!
However, this yields a new problem. The size of everything we've been doing won't let me work with as large of a crystal as I'd ultimately like. How large would I like? As large as I can obviously! If I can make it large enough, there is a chance I can take it outside without it breaking down. Then I can have one installed down in the goblin village. No more waiting around to work due to mana down there! I can put another one up by the cave entrance as well, then I don't have to travel half way down the cave to recharge when working outside up here. To me, it sounds like it's worth coming up with an entire process for making these if I can.
I'm going to think on the process for a little while and see if I can come up with a better way than what we are currently doing given we actually have a path forward now.
----------------------------------------
I've been tinkering for four days and I think I might have something to try, such that if it works, it should scale up to whatever size I want. There is only one downside, and that is space in the cave. Zaka will be back in a few days, so I think even initial testing is going to have to wait until he leaves, but I think I'll have to talk over the idea of closing off the deepest part of the cave to make into a place where I can work without this all being interrupted when he wants to summon imps.
----------------------------------------
Zaka brought more smoked meat when he visited, and he left with three new goblins, and again bricks of lightstone. He gave me the go ahead to close off part of the cave for working on my project, as long as it won't get in the way in the future for imp summoning. I felt a little bit upset at the way he phrased it, but I guess I sort of approached it from the position of asking for permission, so I'm a little at fault too. Although I suppose the other option is that I take charge, and really, I'd rather just let Zaka be in charge of most of the stuff. I get to work on whatever I want, and I haven't had him say I can't work on anything in particular, so I guess it's the trade off of responsibility for freedom.
With that figured out, it's the first large project that I'll have Zeb actually helping with stone shaping on. What we're going to do is create a false back to the cavern. The whole thing. We'll take material from the back most part to deepen the cavern, and with that material make a wall that will serve as a new artificial back to the cavern so that the imps don't interfere with anything behind it.
If we work hard, it should be done in a day or two. Once it's done, we'll have to work inside to level the floors, and then I'll have to build the apparatuses I have in mind for growing crystals. The basic idea will be to make multiple vacuum chambers, each increasing in size. Each one has a stand holding a crystal in the center, held so that it points directly up towards the top and center of the chamber. Then, instead of dropping the crystal into the liquid, we'll drop the liquid slowly onto the crystal. Then, have a small collection section at the bottom of the chamber where I can seal it off and re-melt the liquid once it hardens in the bottom to repeat the process. This way we'll also keep the chamber charged with all of the gas from the crystals, so hopefully when the gas gets to higher concentrations the crystal will grow better. Once the crystal gets to a certain size, the gas will be collected as best it can, and moved into a larger vacuum chamber along with the crystal. Rinse and repeat the process to hopefully grow the crystal as large as we want.