Chapter 209: Uneasy question (1/2)
”Finally done,” Layn muttered, wiping his forehead clean from all the sweat. Even though he was no stranger to hard work, ever since he escaped from his original time, there was hardly any time when he had to put as much effort as he did today.
”Now, I should still have some time before the meeting,” he said softly, taking a quick glance at the position of the sun.
Given how there was no clock or anything else that could allow one to measure the time, Layn had no other choice but to use this most primitive and always accessible method. Obviously, that wasn't the case for him personally, but for everyone in the camp as well. As such, until some kind of clock would be mounted in the camp, there was only one moment of the day that could be set as the meeting time.
The sunset.
'I still should have about an hour,' Layn thought, loosely judging the speed of the sun and the distance it has yet to travel before hiding behind the horizon line.
The archmage then shook his head and took a step back. Given how he only took a glance outside, he could return to his workshop in just a short moment.
'Still, with no gold whatsoever, it's going to look plain,' Layn thought, pulling out concept art of what he wanted to create.
For outsiders, it was a simple decoration. A simple bracelet that one could wear only to make himself or herself a bit more beautiful. But for Layn, this kind of item held a much greater value.
'If I want to properly confess to Irea, it cannot be something average,' Layn thought, troubled over the complete lack of material. 'Wait, what if I tried to make it purely from the stone-dust?' he asked himself, moving his eyes to the spare bag of stones that remained as a surplus from the last trade with the overlord to the north. 'No, that wouldn't work,' Layn thought, shaking his head. 'While turning the crystals into dust is easy, reversing this process would be a pain, even for me,' he thought, giving up on the idea pretty quickly.
The problem was simple. Some reactions were simply irreversible. Just like burning a piece of wood was easy, turning the crystals into dust was on a similar level of hardship. Yet, when it came to turning a pile of ashes back into a block of wood, it was just as impossible as was turning the stone dust back into a mana crystal of the desired shape.
'While the stonedust can be used as the greatest part, I still need some kind of decorative agent to glue it all together,' Layn realized when a sudden idea popped in his head. 'Wait... While it's true that we have yet to discover even a single metal deposit in the area, it's not like we don't have any metal whatsoever!' he realized, standing up in one swift move.
But just as quickly as Layn got excited, his passion died off.