My theory about the source of the magical elements of this world was not easily testable, given that I would need to go to space to collect a sample, but that did not really matter. I was content to have some kind of answer, any answer, to the question of magic’s origin that seemed somewhat rooted in logic.
The people of this world did not question things the same way I did. Sure, there was magical research being done, but as far as I could tell those people were simply rehashing the same pieces of magical knowledge over and over, historians and philosophers more than scientists. When I had discussed magic with my mother, Sharma, she had always focused on the reality of magic, as opposed to questioning about why it even existed. Perhaps it was my personal context, coming from a world without magic, that pushed me to want to understand it deeper.
Earth science could not answer what this magical element was, and frankly that was well beyond me in this life anyway. Future scientists could explore that further. I was more than happy to have a practical understanding of the lifecycle of magic, if that could give me better insight into problems of magic and magical distribution.
If I supposed that the ring of the gas giant was made up of a vast amount of both the blue and red element, giving the ring its violet color when viewed from afar, then I could assume that, on occasion, some of that material was ejected from the ring, slung out by collisions or gravity.
The blue element was more weakly bonded, and easily crushed into finer particles. It, presumably, would atomize upon entry into the atmosphere, distributed on the wind and the bulk of it settling in the oceans, where it would enter the cycle of life through blueclams and possible other molluscs. Perhaps there were other concentrators I had yet to discover on land in regions closer to the equator, or wherever the wind patterns forced a large amount to settle.
The red element was much harder. Presumably, every now and then a substantial piece survived entry through the atmosphere, and would go on to touch down as a meteorite. This was how I suspected dungeons were seeded. Clearly, though, the larger pieces that became dungeon cores were not balanced properly to life on this world. They affected things around them too drastically.
Yet, my understanding of dungeons was that they were not a big enough deal that people seemed to know or care about them. No one seemed to be doing anything about them at all. That led me to come to two possible conclusions.
Either dungeons were a relatively new circumstance, meaning that something had changed which resulted in more core matter landing on the surface, or some natural balance which used to handle the core matter was no longer in place.
The former was problematic, as it could lead to an existential threat if it continued. The latter, though, was somewhat familiar. Human civilization was advancing on this world, slowly but surely. The rise of humans on Earth had been incredibly disruptive to ecosystems, and our hunting was likely a large factor in the Quaternary extinction event for much of the world’s megafauna. Whether or not humans could be blamed for hunting them to extinction, our widespread presence and hunting certainly blocked survival and evolutionary pathways for many species and possible future species.
If something similar was at play in this world, now, I would never really know. It would not be observable in one human lifetime, particularly so early in the process. As far as I knew, there was not much of a fossil record that was discovered and recorded by the humans of this world that would let me study the past. Many humans were not even literate, and there was no printing press, so records and libraries were scarce.
As always, every possible answer led to more questions. Nonetheless, I was incredibly excited by my insights and theories.
Treepo and I decided to camp out on the western side of the peak, and I spent several days there freely playing with magic like I did in my youth. With access to fast-restoring MP and ice, I was able to try new things that were otherwise impossible for me.
Ice could be manipulated almost the same way that I was able to manipulate stone. I could not quite reshape the ice like I could stone, but I could shave down larger pieces into the orbs, darts, and discs I mostly used as projectiles. I stored these in my inventory, along with some large blocks. Ice would be very useful to have if I relocated back to the south.
When I tried to reshape ice, the material I transformed simply ended up dissolving into snow. I also was not able to use fire magic to directly melt the ice or snow into water, which made sense, as “fire” magic would actually be the control or manufacture of carbon dioxide, and there was no carbon in the ice.
However, when I tried to further dismantle the snow, breaking it apart into the core molecules of H2O—a feat I probably could not have managed in any meaningful quantity prior to further advancing my skill in 4-point magic—I was left with a bowl of water.
I frowned. I could feel in my gut I was close to a breakthrough.
Ripping some stone from the ground, I started refining it the same way I had as a four year old boy. Earth magic and using stone as projectiles was one of the first things I did in this world, and I had become good at creating projectiles that were uniform, expelling the impurities in the stone and leaving only silicon oxides. This helped me to create “stacks” of items in my inventory, although I had gained a more intuitive sense of what my inventory stored and relied less on the display windows I initially discovered with the skill.
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Like I had done to turn ice into snow and snow into water, I used my double-advanced 4-point magic to tear apart the stone to its base molecules. When I was finished, I was left with a white powder. I stared at it for a while, thinking back to what I knew about chemistry, and pushed some magic into a 3-point magic circle to confirm. This was pure silica, SiO2.
With a force of will, I tried to compress the powder back into an orb of solid silica, and surprised myself by failing entirely.
Meditating on my failure, I focused on what I could remember about silica. The first thing that came to mind was how humanity melted it into glass. I focused my mind as to why the application of heat turned the powder into glass. The heat restructures the molecules in such a way that… Wait.
I looked at the silica, a white powder like the snow. Snow was just tiny pieces of ice. If I packed snow together, it would just be a snowball, but when melted and frozen, it became clear ice.
What if I crystalized the molecules with magic?
Silica was a material I had been controlling for most of my second life, so I started with that. I recalled that pure quartz crystal was transparent like glass, a crystal that was basically just the purest form of silicon dioxide rock. Rather than just trying to brute force the silica powder back together into stone, I instead focused myself on the task of connecting each molecule of silica together into a construct that took on a pattern. As I manipulated them, binding the silicon in the simplest way I could with oxygen, the powder bit by bit built itself up into a quartz crystal. I leapt to my feet in shock at my success.
“Woo!” I screamed, startling Treepo, who had been napping beside me.
I rolled the quartz in my hand, fascinated with the results of my experiment. It was still too difficult to shape the crystal in the way that I wanted, but I was able to reattach the molecules. I was confident in time that I could figure out how to better guide the overall shape of the construct as I formed the crystals, but if not, I could grind them down into the shapes I needed as well.
The crystal was beautiful in its simplicity. I held it up to the sky, studying it. Can I sell this? Magic crystal, also known as beast crystal, was used as jewelry in this world, and was basically just crystalized magic. Would crystalline silica have value as jewelry?
…Isn’t that what many gemstones are? I could not recall the specifics, but I was pretty sure certain gemstones were effectively just more complex crystalline structures of silica and other elements. Something to experiment with later.
Setting aside the quartz, I looked back at my bowl of water, and I set my mind to the same task. The structure was different, as water was a monoxide instead of a dioxide, but once it clicked, I quickly crystalized the water. The task was mechanical and had nothing to do with trying to pull the heat out of the water, which was how I had tried and failed to make ice so many times. Instead, the cold of the ice was a byproduct of the structure I was creating.
My hands grew cold as I held the product of my success. I had finally done it. I created ice with magic.
* * *
After resting overnight and recovering some of my magic, I recognized that this would not be possible for a weaker mage. It had taken a tremendous amount of MP to form the ice, as it had the quartz, and it probably would not have been viable at a lower level of advancement.
However, that was where enchantments and my newly created magical circuits could come into play. I had long thought that there was a lot of potential profit to be made with refrigeration. With deepwater pearls and the right engraver, I had a future fortune on my hands.
I set those thoughts aside for the future when I might return to the Horuth Kingdom. I still had one more thing I wanted to try before I returned to Teichar. I knew I could not use the same technique to create iron or steel projectiles that I could control with magic, because they were not oxides in that structure. Nonetheless, I took some of the ferric oxide out of my inventory and set my mind to forming it back into some kind of solid structure.
It quickly came to my attention that my rust was less pure than silicon dioxide or H2O. As a powder, my ferric oxide was almost immediately bonding with water in the air and taking on the red tint I was familiar with. It took an even larger force of will to use my magic to force the molecules of Fe2O3 pure as I reconnected them into a structure, but when I was done I held a shiny black shard in my hand. I looked at it with curiosity until I finally recognized it as hematite. In my former life, I had worn a hematite ring as a teenager because I thought it looked cool.
As with my quartz and ice, I was able to manipulate the hematite with my magic, and it was another possible projectile. However, hematite was pretty fragile and it would shatter on impact. The shards were sharp, though, so that had some uses. I could tear up an enemy pretty violently with a hematite projectile. Unfortunately, it took a lot of MP to form them in the first place, and it ultimately likely would not be worth using these in battle too often.
Though a lesser success, it was still something to explore as I further pushed my magic towards triple-advancement and mastery. I would need a thousand skill points still before that, which would not happen until my level was closer to 50, and that was if I solely focused on 4-point magic. In truth, mastery in 4-point magic was not likely until well past that. Unless I could farm more skillfruit…
I grinned, plans upon plans forming in my head. After spending the winter away from the war, I was finally starting to feel more like myself, and I was looking towards my future again with clearer vision. There was still so much to do, so much to learn. I collected my experiments, and I packed them all away to explore further when time permitted. For the moment, I had a mountain to descend. I bade goodbye to the ocean and the violet rings of the gas giant in the sky and began making my way back to Teichar.