AK – The Alchemy Kingdom

The second tool was the true challenge, aside from being hidden from sight, the tool had to contain the beasts and their attacks, lasting for some time (a few days) and be able to be taken by the Adventurers without revealing their secrets. The last requirement ended up causing a huge commotion amongst the students and disciples.

Many said upfront that such a thing would be impossible, others also pointed out that it would be unwise to let others take a valuable tool, which also raised another requirement, the “takeable” part shouldn’t be expensive. Karl prevented his mother from intervening and let them continue the rucks for a few more minutes, surprisingly, the commotion slowly died down as they started to discuss the problem in groups. Reiner gave her son an acknowledgment smile showing that she understood his intentions, for Alchemy everything was possible and challenges shouldn’t be seen as barriers, but steps to take them even higher.

Sometime later, Karl urged them to present their ideas and don’t mind the last requirement, they should just take one problem at a time. After hearing their ideas, he was again proud of their progress, although most ideas lacked pragmatism, they didn’t falter in terms of basics and creativity. Again, the chosen idea based itself on a bubble barrier, after all, the element was ideal to block specific things. In fact, other elements also had blocking properties, especially earth and wood, but even wind had some interesting shielding properties. But in terms of flexibility and efficiency to deal with specific attacks, the bubble element was better.

A barrier that could contain the beast and its sound attacks was easy to craft with bubble and wind MQ crystals. However, this was also a problem, they only have two of each type of crystal. They could spare two MQ wind crystals but only one MQ bubble crystal since the other was being used in the camp’s barrier. The impossibility of deactivating their barrier was clear to everyone, so they had to find a way of sharing the crystals between the tools.

Because of their limited resources, there was already a discussion about sharing Arrays and crystals between tools. A few concrete ideas have even appeared, like having a tool of multiple functions with a manual selector. For example, instead of having a hardening tool and a magic shovel, they could group the designs in an earth construction tool and manually change between functions, thus saving resources. Others also advocated for a crafting design solution, like paring two Arrays in parallel to use a crystal between them, which would serve both Arrays at the same time.

This last idea ended up solving their current problem. If the bubble and wind crystals, fixated inside the coat, were left in an easy position, the user could place the second tool on top of the crystals and activate it. Of course, the designs would need to be perfectly aligned to avoid mismatching the positions, and the user would also need to be really careful with the placement. With that temporarily solved, they moved on to the most complicated challenge, making the tool “takeable” and undetectable.

After 20 minutes of eager discussions, Karl decided to intervene, they were missing a crucial point.

“Remember the process to erect a barrier, you’re discussing how to make the barrier last without the bubble crystal, but is the crystal really necessary to keep it going?”

Strictly speaking, the bubble crystal was used to get the protection barrier property, while the Manifestation Rune was responsible for creating the barrier, but only the magic energy was needed to maintain it. Of course, in the long run, the bubble crystal was being used to constantly reinforce the property, especially when the barrier was being attacked, but the tool didn’t need to keep working for long.

When they started to ask the right questions, Karl decided to present a new Rune that he had been learning for a few weeks.

The Contain Rune had the effect of containing magic energy temporarily, its concept is Retention, like a space for storage, with the aspects of absorption and containment. The Rune’s capacity and maximum time of storage were proportional to the drawer’s comprehension of the concept and ability to imprint it.

In a few minutes, a lot of good ideas popped from the groups. Karl chose to go with the proposal of separating the tool into two parts, a creator and keeper for the barrier. The creator part just had to replicate the previous protection barrier. As for the keeper part, they would need to design it to make the barrier last for a few days.

One positive point was that they could craft smaller barriers to keep bats restrained individually, which would save on energy and keep it working longer. Karl waited for all ideas before giving his own, which was inspired by an early proposal, to add some Absorbtion Arrays to gather the environmental magic energy to help to power the Array. Actually, the ideal solution was to just use an energy crystal and an Extraction Array to keep the barrier working but that would reveal some of their secrets.

The last part was making it undetectable. Of course, the containing barrier couldn’t be hidden but they would mistake it for a bubble created by a Mage. The part that actually needed to be hidden was the Arrays and Runes powering it. They took a lot of time to come up with a feasible solution, this time even Karl didn’t have an idea, but fortunately, someone pointed an interesting direction, which improved until they got a solution. The result was surprisingly something simple and non-Alchemical, using a structural decoy to hide the design.

First, they would need to ask the crafters to make a net of straw fibers with a specific design. Then, they would draw the Arrays in the net and paint the rest of the net in the same color. The decoy painting wouldn’t influence the drawings because the magic energy only flowed by imprinted ink. Some proposed to use forest vines since they were stronger, but Karl made a point of making it fragile so that it would be destroyed if someone tried to test it too much. Lew would tell the Adventurers to only cut the net once they were ready to contain the bat in another way.

In the end, after the net was deactivated, nobody would be able to distinguish it from a normally painted net of low quality. Of course, other instructions would need to be followed to make the tool last a few days. Don’t temper or touch it too much, keep the beast hidden and stable to avoid inciting attacks that would weaken the barrier, and move fast. The Alchemy Department would also give priority to finishing a prototype of the barrier to see how long it would last.

A few things could also improve the design. First, being drawn by Karl, with mastery over the concepts and higher spiritual energy, he would be able to draw stronger and denser Arrays, which would contain and transfer more energy. For now, they could also spare a HQ energy crystal, using its dense energy could also improve the barrier’s durability.

A week passed and the department had diverged all available personal to help Karl. With regards to the durability of the tool, the containing barrier only broke after four days with approximately six small sound attacks per day. Aside from this attention point, everything else was adjusted to the expected point. Now, they only had to test it in the real situation.