AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Chapter 73: Magic forge

Year 2, Winter, First Month, Second Week.

After leaving Arnolds soon-to-be blacksmithing area, Karl was exhausted, any expectation that he could do anything else before sleeping for a good ten hours was merely wishful thinking. However, being able to finish a usable prototype in only one day, even with his disciples help, was a big advance from spending a week or two over it. In fact, Karl already had an idea for the design, he only needed Arnolds help to improve it. And even though the design was a little complicated, he only had to draw the Runes, his disciples took care of the rest. After teaching them for almost a year, the disciples system was finally working, and once they learn how to draw Runes, Karls workload would be further reduced.

Actually, he could already start teaching them the most basic Runes, with her learning speed, Anya shouldnt take more than a month to learn the Sharpness or Toughness Rune. However, he decided to refrain from teaching them until they established a foothold in their new home. Mainly because of two reasons, without dividing their time between studying and helping Karl, the direct disciples had been more helpful and he was too strained right now.

The other reason was a little more complicated, by spreading his craft, Karl was taking some risks, any of the new Alchemists could leave them and teach others how to craft magic tools. Right now, that risk was almost non-existent, because they barely survived their exploiters, but once they escaped and established their own independent community, the problem would surface. To escape Kingdom and build their home, he couldnt keep the knowledge to himself and he also didnt want it, in his vision, Alchemys ascension was impossible without sharing knowledge. So, keeping the Runic symbols a secret was his way of compromising while having some insurance.

Although Karl made an effort to leave the future problems to the future, the situation still caused him unease. Fortunately, Master AI promised to teach him some advanced Arrays that would help him keep the craft a secret from outsiders. At first, Karl wanted to learn it right away, but after discovering that it would take him at least a couple of months to master it, he decided to leave it for later. Right now, they needed to focus on escaping safely.

Back to the forging tool, the simple prototype had the potential to take blacksmithing to another level. In Arnolds own words, it was an Origin blessed ground-breaking creation. The foundation of blacksmithing was working with heated metal, so the tool simplified the process while solving some problems that Karl never imagined existed in the first place.

Apparently, blacksmiths used visual analysis of the metal color to decide the right temperature for forging. However, with proper adjustment, the magic tool could work at a precise temperature and, according to Arnold, distribute the heat perfectly around the metal piece. This by itself, appeared to be a huge gain in terms of pattern and quality. The other clear benefits were in the resource and efficiency area, which was by no means less important. In the bigger picture, everything went back to resources.

In the first discussions about the design, using a fire crystal was the first idea to come up. However, the warmth property was something available only in MQ fire crystals, which was currently a limited resource, and also being used in the heating circle.

The second challenge of using the fire crystal was that the warmth property was a little wasteful in regards to the area of effect. Most people didnt realize it, but Karl always tried to look at things from an energy efficiency perspective. Fire is, after all, overbearing and difficult to control, so more energy has to be put into controlling it. For the heating circle, this was actually a positive characteristic, since the warmth spread willingly, it took less energy to expand the tools area of effect. But for the magic forge, this would work against them, which wasnt too difficult to overcome or even too expensive (in terms of energy). However, at this time, Master AI decided to offer a better option. Much like Karl did with his disciples, Master AI waited for crucial times to intervene.

The magma element had an interesting property inherited from fire and improved for solid materials due to earths influence. The ability to control thermal energy was the most basic and yet stronger property of magma, which meant that instead of irradiating heat like fire, the magma element could directly control the thermal energy of objects, in different degrees according to the objects composition, of course. Fortunately, the stronger the connection with earth the easiest was for the magma element to control its thermal energy. And minerals have one of the strongest connections with earth, being only behind the earth element itself.

Controlling the thermal energy directly, meant thoroughly heating the metals and not wasting energy with environmental dissipation, it was like this crystal was created specifically for this task! Another fortunate point was that they had two magma crystal which was offered by Keller without them even asked for it. If this wasnt Origin intervention, then what was it?

Even though they only had LQ magma crystals, the property thermal control was available from the lowest quality crystal. Having such a property available in LQ crystals, made the magma element very useful and powerful, just like lightning. However, this wasnt that unusual, Master AI had already explained that hybrid elements were more powerful in LQ crystals than basic elements, which was compensated by the unexistence of Unique quality hybrid crystals, after all, nature is balanced and so on.

Using such a powerful and appropriate resource, made completing the magic forge only a matter of testing and adjusting. The Array would only need a couple of Runes (Stimulus and Focus) to increase the effects power and reach, and a few pre-setted thermal levels (temperatures), which would be determined with Arnold's help. Even so, the design would have to be divided into three parts.

The first and most external one would need to be the pre-setting of the temperatures. After discussing with Arnold, they settled for four possible temperatures. So, before using the tool, Arnold would have to select a temperature. The two most obvious ways of creating the four options were either to draw the four Arrays and use a removable place-holder in the final design, where Arnold would place the chosen Array, or draw the four Arrays directly on the design while making them selectable with an Activation Array. Although the first option seemed a little more simple and avoided some mistakes like possibly activating two options at the same time, for the sake of avoiding calling a crafter who would guarantee the removable parts would fit perfectly, they chose the second option.

The first part would be drawing the four Arrays, which would be a simple combination (Combination Array) of the Focus Rune and an Activation Array. The Rune power (defined when drawing it) would dictate the thermal level, the Activation Array (rectangle form) would allow the effect to work when pressed, finally, the Combination Array (a smaller circle inside of a bigger circle) would combine the effects making the Rune effect dependent of pressing the activator.

The next part was making the four Arrays selectable, which could easily be done by an Addition Array (similar to Combination Array, but with a narrower distance between circles). The most obvious difference between the Combination and Addition Arrays was that the former merged or joined the effects while the last only grouped them. If they used the Combination Array instead, they would merge all level options and make the Array unusable unless all of the activators were pressed. Just like when two liquids are mixed they cant be easily separated.

Finally, the last part would be getting the thermal control property with a LQ magma crystal inside of a Property Extraction Array (outlined pentagram) and direct the effect to the object using a Direction Array (triangle form). This part of the design would also have a Stimulus Rune to help to spread the effect over the target. To combine the Stimulus effect, Karl just drew another Combination Array. And thus, the design of the first magic forge was complete.