Zaka arrived with two other goblins this time. One was carrying a rolled up lizard hide, with Zaka and the other carrying dried lizard meat. I asked him how lizard hunting has been going, and he said that they've actually started to have to travel for hours before they find any. This left me slightly concerned about the population of lizards as a whole. Although it also probably means that the goblins are much safer than they used to be.
After making sure that the everyone has full mana, I get everyone to help haul the crystal up to the charging room, where I've made a special indent in the wall for the crystal to sit. I ask Zaka if it is alright if he stays overnight tonight, since it will likely take that long for the crystal to charge up. Thankfully he agrees without any issue, as according to him, the frequency of lizard hunting has slowed down. They now actually have to plan out a long trip with multiple goblins to haul back all the meat, so they only go once or twice a month.
Zeb and I do our best to entertain our guests through the evening. Although Zaka has seen most of the stuff up here, the other goblins seem to enjoy a tour.
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In the morning we go to check on the crystal. It is glowing quite brightly. In fact, compared to other crystals, I can actually tell there is a gradient to its glow. The center actually shines much more brightly than its edges. Everyone seems intrigued by the crystal, but before we move it, I double check that everyone has full mana. I'd hate for someone to get injured just moving it into the tunnel outside.
As we move it, we all notice ourselves getting a warm feeling throughout our whole bodies, like we're overheating. I check my status, and I notice that I'm actually overcharged slightly on mana. After we set the crystal down, the mana overcharge dissipates quickly, and I no longer feel overheated. After checking with everyone, apparently it wasn't just me, and everyone got overheated from that. Which isn't a good sign.
I decide that I should probably be the first one to do any kind of test. I have Zeb tell everyone that I'm going to use a very small amount of mana on stone shaping, and then touch the crystal. I use a mere five mana and then brace myself to touch the crystal. I hesitate a few times, getting my hand close, but not quite touching it, partially out of fear.
When I finally do touch it, it's excruciatingly painful. If I was on earth, I'd assume it's probably like touching an electrical outlet. I winced in pain when I felt it, and lost 25 hitpoints. Zeb, thankfully, was watching closely, and said when I touched it, the bright center of the crystal seemed to arc out towards my hand in a flash. It didn't just fill my mana either, but it overfilled it again. Well, we said we were going to try using hide as an intermediary, although I'm not exactly keen on electrocuting myself again. The hope is that the animal hide will still be able to transfer the mana, like how our own flesh can. I'm hoping it will dull the sensation at least somewhat.
I use five mana again, and this time put some of the hide between the crystal and myself when I touch it. It still hurts... a lot. Maybe a little less though than the first time. I check, and I'm missing an additional 20 hp. Well, it didn't help that much. Also, the hide itself was actually damaged somewhat. While not destroyed, the bit I was touching has changed color. When I go to touch that section, it easily tears. Not exactly a permanent solution to the problem, and especially not if I need to grow an even bigger crystal.
Knowing that at least the hide does something means I can try to look into other things that might act to transfer mana more safely. Until that point, I think I'll need to halt the rest of the crystal research. It just seems a little too dangerous to keep making the crystal larger when I have no way to use it properly. Without much else to do, Zaka and the other goblins get ready to head back to the village for the day, and I give them some lightstone to carry back again as well.
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The past three days, I've been testing all sorts of things to act as an in between for mana transfer. So far none have been successful. I've tried copper, the unknown metal, various stone materials, and different plants and wood. The organic materials work to varying degrees, but they always deteriorate after some use. The inorganic materials that I've tried have all completely prevented mana transfer. I still want to try some more materials, but those will actually need even more prep work to make, so I haven't gotten to them yet.
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Seven days, and I've hit a success, although not a very big one. I went through even more stone materials, all new ones that I made from other rocks from the nearby materials. All of them were failures. So then I moved on to even more difficult to craft tests. The first one yielded the first very minor success, which I then improved on. The first success required I build a large tank to fill with water and submerge the crystal in. When I tried touching the water, I very slowly regenerated mana. By submerging my entire arm into the tank, I regenerated mana slightly faster, although still at a very slow rate.
So I decided to try and improve on the water idea. I'm almost out of water to test with though, so I'm going to need to collect more water. For now, I'll drain the tank back into buckets, and start work on a larger rain collection system outside. I'll probably build another terrace, and hollow it out to the next layer underneath it to form a large water tank. It probably won't fill up until after it snows again up here though.
Considering how much of the area around the cave entrance has been developed, I should also make channels to direct the rain into the tank when I make it, and then overflow channels to safely direct it further down the mountain. While I work on this project, I'll put every bucket I can out to collect extra water in case it rains.
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As luck would have it, five days into digging out this collection tank we got a decent rainstorm with heavy rains for a few hours. Not nearly as bad as the massive storm last year, but it filled up my buckets, and there is a decent amount of water in the partially completed collection tank. Enough that I'm going to halt construction and go back to crystal testing.
I have had some time to think on it, and I have a few different tests I want to run, which are going to require I do some setup. What I want to do, is try both soaking, and boiling organic materials in water, and try using those liquids alongside the crystal. These will require me to have tanks to hold the liquid, boil it, and then drain it to move to where I'm testing the crystal. Which means I'll need plenty of the materials as well.
Of the organic materials I want to try, most are plants. I want to try soaking wood, and boiling it. I also want to try the plants that burned my mana before. Both as a boiled, and non-boiled soak. For good measure, I also want to try some random plants from nearby as well. The last thing I also want to try, which might concern some people, is my own blood. I have a heightened capacity for mana thanks to Mana Affinity, so I'd like to see how that affects things. I'd like a control for that, but I won't ask Zeb to do it. If he volunteers I'll accept, but quite frankly, it's crossing a line to ask him to do this.
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It took 3 days to build the boiling and soaking tanks, and to collect the materials for each use. Then we spent yesterday boiling the tanks that needed that. Throughout the process I've been bleeding myself a little at a time into one tank. When Zeb asked, I explained why I was doing it. He then proposed he should bleed himself into a tank as well. I'm thankful he volunteered, and I'm letting him do it, but I still feel quite bad that he's doing it.
Regardless, the only tanks ready for testing are the boiled ones. The other ones need to soak for longer, or have more blood, before I consider them ready to test. With that in mind, I'm going to start by testing the mana damaging plant's boiled water.
I pour the boiled water around the crystal, and the crystal seems to dim as I fill the tank. By the time the tank is filled, the crystal is noticeably dimmer, which I consider could be a good sign. When I try to refill some mana from the water though, I'm greeted by nothing. No mana gained or lost. I pause and evaluate this for a little bit.
I'm hypothesizing here, but I'm guessing there is something in the mana burning plant that really wants to absorb mana. However, it only has a certain capacity. So it readily absorbed it from the crystal, and then when it was full, it stopped. Well, it's a failure for this purpose, but I'll have to mark down this hypothesis for later. At the very least, if I concentrate it, it could be useful as a weapon. Now I unfortunately need to not only drain the tank, but wait for the crystal to recharge before I do any further testing.