Chapter 454: Deduction, Examination, Experiment, Verification (2/2)

“Well, well, I think you can understand a little when you think about where you can find them.”

“What do you mean, where you can find them?”

“If you can understand the process and reproduce it artificially, you can make an artificial Magi Crystal. As far as I know, you can collect fire-type Magi Stones near a volcano in Kaina village. They have also found earth-type Magi Crystals.”

That was something that happened last year.

“You can find all sorts of attributes underground in Hourai Island, right?”

Jin nodded in response to Elsa’s words.

“Yes. There seems to be a point in this island’s underground where quite a lot of Ether can be found.”

At that moment, Elsa shared her thoughts one more time.

“If Ether is combined in a certain way, will it turn into Mana?”

“What did you say?”

When Jin heard those words, he stared at Elsa. In response to Jin’s gaze, Elsa looked down a little.

“I see… So if Ether is like an atom, then Mana is like a molecule?”

Elsa was able to see the logic behind Jin’s murmuring.

“Yes, that’s what I wanted to say.”

Since the other two once again seemed to have lost them, Jin started to explain.

“Atoms are… Well, they’re like building blocks. Imagine atoms are like pieces of wood. By themselves, they may not look like much, but when combined, they can become furniture, or even a house.

That analogy seemed to have been easy to understand.

“Ah, I see! So fire-types, water-types, earth, wind, and so on… Each of them have a specific combination of Ether, right?”

Saki spoke with a hint of happiness in her voice, and Stearleana…

“The way they’re combined sounds like magic, it’s like some kind of spell!”

That notion of Ether and Mana was very good for both of them, so Jin could omit getting too technical about it, which he was glad about.

“Ah, could it be that for Magi Crystals, the shape of the gaps in the crystals matches the shape of the mana for each attribute…?”

Jin believed that the theory they had arrived at was pretty solid.

One could see it like positives and negatives, or like males and females.

Jin hypothesized that Magi crystals are those in which Ether is incorporated into the Mana whose attribute matches that of the crystal-like shape of their composition.

The only flaw in that theory was that it may not work for all attributes, but other than that, it sounded consistent enough.

“If so, there must be a Magi Crystal without Mana, right? I have never seen such a thing…”

“I’ve heard a lot about Magi Stones without Mana.”

Stearleana and Jin both seemed puzzled.

“But without Mana, Magi stones will just turn into regular stones, right?”

“Ah, but their colors might be a little lighter than usual…”

Since he doesn’t use Magi Stones so much, Jin seemed to be a little lacking in self-confidence about them.

“So, should we give them a try?”

Elsa came up with that idea. Certainly, since they didn’t know what happens to a Magi Crystal whenever it loses all of its Mana, they could try experimenting with them to see if they could learn something.

“Yeah, let’s do that.”

Therefore, they decided to use the smallest Magi Crystal on the workbench as an energy source to activate some magic. Then they would use as much of its Mana as possible.

“Alright, Magi Jammer should do the trick.”

Magi Jammer was certainly a tool that consumed a lot of Mana.

Jin asked Reiko to bring a prototype. In the meantime, he briefly explained what kind of thing a Magi Jammer was.

the activation of magic? It sounds very interesting.”

“So you were developing something like this, Brother Jin.”

“Here you go, Father.”

Reiko came back with it while they were speaking.

“This used to be an Ether Converter that I remodeled. Well, then…”

Its remodeling consisted in making it so that it used Magi Crystals as an energy source, and changing the intermittent drive to suppress the consumption of Mana into a continuous drive.

“Alright, Activate.”

Jin activated the modified Magi Jammer.

“If you’re near this, you shouldn’t be able to use any magic.”

“Really? Let me try… Light Ball! …Ah, it’s no good. I really can’t use magic.”

“Hmm, it’s fascinating. I’d like to ask you more about this later.”

Saki is particularly interested in the origins and effects of magic. This could be easily seen from the fact that her alchemy thesis was also “About the workings and power of engineering magic.”

The Magi Jammer, which had been modified to increase magic power consumption, stopped working after approximately 10 minutes.

“Okay, let’s see what happened.”

Jin confirmed the part of Magi Jammer that was expected to have taken in the Mana from the Magi Crystal.

“This is…”

There was nothing on the place where the Magi Crystal was supposed to have been.