That evening, after meeting up with the twins for dinner, all four of them return to Emily’s room.

“You guys get fancy magic doors? No fair,” Tom grumbles as Emily injects mana into her door.

“Wait, you guys don’t?” she asks, stepping through the doorway.

“No, we just have normal wooden doors with handles and a lock. We have to carry keys around with us all the time.”

“Sucks to be you I guess,” Emily says distractedly, staring at the large, sealed crate taking up most of the free space in front of her.

“Woah, how much did you buy?” Hester asks incredulously, walking around to inspect the crate from all sides.

“A fair amount. I need a lot of tools for what I want to do, I don’t really have enough space here,” Emily sighs, jamming a thin piece of metal into a gap in the crate to pry it open.

Dropping the lid of the crate to the floor and pulling apart the side walls, a large jigsaw puzzle of metal parts carefully slotted together is revealed. Seeing the exposed machines, Emily grins with glee.

“Thanks for agreeing to help me set this up. I don’t think I would have been able to manage alone.”

“Of course,” Juliana chirps happily. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

Tom and Hester agree with her and approach the crate.

“Where do we start?” Tom asks.

“Well…” Emily sets about guiding the group to take apart the carefully stacked pallet, moving the machines to specific points along the walls.

Halfway through the set-up, as they mount a steam generator the size of Emily’s torso into the corner, Hester asks a sensible question.

“How exactly are you planning on running a steam generator inside a sealed room?”

“Ah, there are three parts to that answer,” Emily starts excitedly. “First, these rooms are completely sealed, as in no air can get in and out when the door is shut. So how do you think we can breathe right now?”

All three of her friends pause what they are doing, leaning on various surfaces as they turn to face Emily.

“Magic?” Tom says sceptically.

“Exactly! One of the enchantments placed on these rooms must be cycling breathable air into the room, so I’m pretty sure even if I did burn coal in here, I’d be fine. But I don’t really want to risk that, so my main solution is going to be magic as well.”

She quickly moves to her desk and picks up her notebook, flicking through to one of the pages on spell creation research.

“See, when I was looking at creating spells, I decided to look into runes a little bit to try and get a basic understanding of what I was working with. When I did, I looked at a few spells and the engraved magic crystals I own. Through that, I found this rune.” She flashes her notes towards her friends, pointing to a rune circled in the middle of the page. “This rune was present on all of the magic crystals, and I think it’s a simple activation rune. Obviously, I’ll need to go to the library and read some books on engraving first, but I think if I carve this rune onto a fire crystal, I should be able to use it to boil water and form steam without burning coal. This also should fix the third problem of supplying water if I use a water crystal in the same way.”

She looks up at her friends with a manic grin, watching the cogs turn in their brains as they consider her plan. Hester is the first to come to a conclusion and speak up.

“I guess that does seem feasible. I assume you’re relying on the ventilation enchantments of the room to remove the excess steam?”

“Yeah, I’m hoping they will be efficient enough. If not, I’ll have to work out how to use ice crystals to condense the steam after it’s run through the system. It won’t be impossible, but it will slow me down a lot and cost more points, so I’m hoping the ventilation’s enough.”

They continue moving the machines into place, finishing emptying the crate soon after. Tom and Hester move to the door after, ready to leave for the night.

“Thanks for the help, guys!” Emily says gratefully, waving them off at the door.

“No problem, happy to help,” Hester says with a smile.

“Just show us when you make something cool,” Tom adds with a wave.

Emily smiles and turns back into her room, facing Juliana who has stayed behind.

“It’s gonna be pretty boring to watch, I’m just going to be installing pipes and tubing for a while.”

“That’s fine, watching you focus is fun and I can always go grab my weaving stuff later to keep me entertained,” Juliana cheerfully responds.

Emily shrugs and returns to her impromptu workshop. She gathers various pipes, tubes, and fittings along with a hacksaw and a file, moving the collection of items to the sturdy new workbench in the middle of her room. She takes a tube and measures the distance and bends required to connect the first large machine to the steam generator, then fastens the tube into the vice on her workbench.

She cuts the pipe to size, uses a file to remove the metal burrs left by the saw, and then fastens it to the generator with a bolted-shut pipe fastener. Repeating this for the next run of pipe, she falls into a smooth rhythm, only breaking her focus once in the middle to let Juliana out then back in again to collect some things from her room.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

After a few hours, Emily sits on the edge of her bed admiring her hard work. Lining the walls of her room are several bronze pipes, connecting every machine together. Between each machine is a valve with a pressure gauge next to it; and barbed fittings are positioned at various points to allow Emily to connect tubes to the system.

I’ll have to make some quick-release connectors later to streamline it a little. But it’s looking good!

Satisfied with her work, Emily looks to the bed behind her, seeing Juliana’s sleeping form curled up underneath the covers.

I can’t believe she fell asleep while I was cutting metal. She must be able to sleep through a hurricane.

Smiling to herself and chuckling silently, she grabs her notebook from her desk and carefully leaves the room. She makes her way down the empty corridor, noticing its dimmed lights, still on to allow visibility, but different to show the late hour. One quick teleport later and she’s walking down the central aisle in the library, surprised by the number of tables still full. Sitting down at an empty one-person table, she places a hand on the wood before her and makes a request.

“Three B-grade and three C-grade on mana crystal engraving.”

After the books arrive, Emily reads through them quickly, making notes on their contents and forming a simple idea of how to achieve her goal. She orders another set of books, this time on refining mana crystals, in order to gather as much knowledge as possible so she doesn’t waste time or points needlessly experimenting. An hour after arriving at the library, she stands up with purpose and leaves through the transportation rooms.

Walking out of another transportation room, she looks around the desolate hub and picks one of the only two open counters to go to. Behind the counter stands a tired-looking woman with long dishevelled hair, a pair of glasses sitting crooked on her face, and large bags under her eyes.

“Hello, how can I help you?” she asks with a lifeless gaze that begs to be left alone.

“I’d like to buy five lesser fire and five lesser water crystals please.”

The clerk nods silently and places the payment terminal on the counter before Emily. Then she turns to the wall of drawers behind her and takes out ten rough fingertip-sized gems, glowing with a mix of enchanting crimson and cobalt hues. Emily taps her silver crest to pay, watching her total reduce by fifty, ticking down to ‘63’.

“Will that be all?” the clerk asks with a sigh while handing over the ten shards of fire and water.

“Could I also buy a kilogram of black iron and a kilogram of white iron please,” Emily requests apologetically.

The clerk stares at her silently for a few seconds before sighing again and turning around while gesturing loosely towards the payment terminal again. Emily taps it again, reducing her points by a further twenty-five.

Ouch, money goes as quickly as it comes. I may need to look at taking some side jobs if I want to mess about with mana crystals more. Maybe after I reach second circle. For now, I’ll just reduce my experimentation if it comes to it.

The clerk returns with two small fist-sized chunks of white and black metal, handing them over and gazing at Emily with a silent question.

“Thank you,” she says with a small nod, turning around to leave the hub, leaving the poor woman alone.

Returning to her room, Emily places her magical supplies on her desk, taking only the white iron over to her workbench with her. She places a small tray under her vice to gather the valuable metal filings and cuts off a small sliver. Using a set of files, she slowly fashions the white iron stick into a small cylinder with a sharp point and grooves to comfortably fit her fingers. After a light sanding and rubbing down with a damp cloth, she returns to her desk with the new metal pencil, files, and a pair of flip-down magnified lenses.

She opens her notebook, then takes one of the fire crystals and places the rest of the crystals into a drawer along with the black and white iron. Staring at the notes on crystal refining, she lifts the crystal along with a small delicate file. Gazing through the lenses hovering before her eyes, she carefully runs the file along any specs of remaining black iron or imperfections on the gem, gathering the removed powder in another tray. After twenty minutes of delicate filing, she is left with a small glittering gem, void of any visible imperfections.

I don’t have the tools to try cutting it right now and I’m not sure it’s big enough to have a stable core. This will have to do for now.

Placing down the file, she picks up her white iron pencil and lets out a small flow of mana into it. Seeing the ethereal blue glow envelop the metal, she grins before stopping her mana flow and flipping her notes to a page on runes. Taking a final look at the activation rune, she takes a deep breath and steadies her hands. Pushing mana back into the engraving tool, she gently touches it to a clear face on the gem and starts carefully drawing the rune. As the tool’s tip passes along the smooth surface of the gem, the mana within cuts deep, leaving behind a solid blue glowing line.

The activation rune slowly forms on the crystal, however after Emily finishes drawing half of it, the crystal begins to heat up and vibrate. Microscopic cracks begin to spread from the engraved lines and the integrity of the crystal quickly decreases.

Shit.

Recognising the imminent collapse of the crystal, Emily drops the engraving tool onto the desk and remembers an excerpt from one of the books on crystal engraving.

Should a mana crystal begin to lose integrity, a detonation of the stored magic power is imminent. The best method to ward against the detonation is to have a containment array prepared. However, should a crystal collapse without proper preparations made, the safest solution is to form a barrier around it with mana and attempt to smother the detonation. This method should not be used if at all possible due to….

She brings her hands together, holding the crystal in her palms, and pours mana into her palms. The moment a sealed bubble of mana forms, she feels an intense force pressing against her mana and frantically pours in more power to maintain the seal. A few excruciating seconds later, the pressure disappears, and she opens her hands to reveal the finely powdered remains of a crystal. She lets the powder fall into the tray below and wipes her brow with a sigh.

Damn, what did I do wrong? I don’t think the shape of the rune was wrong, maybe too much mana? Does the element of my mana matter like with spells?

As she considers her failure, she pulls up the system to check her mana.

¯¯¯¯¯

[Mana:] 133/360

_____

Wow, that was a lot. I can see why there was a warning about using this method, a normal mage would be drained by that.

With a single thought, Emily’s machina pours out of her cortex, shifting form as it flows down her spine. The new mana settles into her magic circle comfortably, bringing a smile to her face.

Good, let’s try again.

She pulls another fire crystal out of the drawer and sets about refining it with a file before engraving it. This time, as she lifts her engraving tool to the gem, she pulls upon her understanding of fire and imbues elemental mana into the tool. The smooth silver metal heats up slightly as a warm orange glow forms around it.

Drawing the rune onto the gem again, this time she finishes eighty per cent of the rune before the crystal starts to destabilise. She follows the same process of smothering the detonation with her mana and letting the powdered remnants of crystal fall into the tray below.

So, matching the mana’s element helps but doesn’t solve the issue. Less mana this time.

She refills her mana again, reducing her machina stores to only twenty and not managing to fill her mana all the way.

I only have enough in me for one more failure, I’ll meditate after this.

After refining a third gem, she reduces her mana output while engraving and manages to finish the full rune. Grinning wildly, she moves over to the steam generator and opens the front grate, placing the crystal into the empty coal chamber.

Time for the moment of truth.

Injecting a small amount of mana into the engraved rune, she watches as the air around the gem shimmers with heat. She can’t help the small laugh that escapes as the temperature gauge on the generator shoots up.