175 Searching for Magic 5 (1/2)
While Remian and Petrov were debating the fate of the world for Mindy to learn, Alexei was investigating the Black Ruins at Three Pines Peak. He had already explored the area yesterday; today he was going to look inside several buildings he had hunches about. The whole process went on for a few hours…
”Fascinating. Some day, I'd like to come back here and look into this in greater detail.” He mentioned as they were taking a break for lunch.
Behind him, two of his students exchanged meaningful glances.
”Can you make any sense of it?” Ruth asked. She and Sandra were supposedly showing their guests around but really, the magi seemed to know more about these weird buildings than they did.
”Well, that's a transmission tower for sure.” Alexei pointed. ”Those three are certainly mana-gathering foci. That place there appears to be a manufacturing plant for some light machinery. This open cage here appears to have been a garden.”
”Wow. Really?!” Sandra bounced. ”So those pipes with holes aren't some sort of music instrument?”
”I believe they're for irrigation.”
”And I thought this was an instrument maintenance facility.” Sandra stared. ”I thought this whole town was an arts center.”
”Hardly. Looking at the way the roads lead to that building, I'd say the manufacturing plant was actually the main focus of the town.” Alexei squinted. ”Whatever they did here, it used a lot of magic. Those towers… their mana channels are six times larger than the ones regularly used at Ecclesia. What kind of devices would require that much power just to assemble…?”
”What kind of garden would need a cage like this and pipes with holes? I mean, there's plenty of land all around.” Sandra added.
”You're welcome to stay with us.” Ruth put out the invitation directly. ”All of you. You can teach us how to properly investigate these ruins.”
”Can you even afford to properly investigate these ruins? How much funding do you have?” Alexei asked.
”Uh… we don't actually have funding. We just get Guild Points…”
”Guild Points aren't going to pay for the experts and the equipment you'd need for ruins like these.” Alexei snorted.
”Just how much funding would we need, do you think?”
”This?” Alexei shook his head. ”It could take several years. Each year, you'd need to hire experts, rent specialized equipment, bring on an entire support staff… it's good you already have a settlement here, that would cut costs greatly… but shipping heavy equipment here from Ecclesia or Ceres would be costly, so perhaps… ten million lir a year?”
”What if we could handle the shipping ourselves?” Ruth asked. ”Use Mindy's airships?”
”I did see a Sky Galleon back at Kara-Goth.” Alexei mused. ”I suppose you could save a million or two from shipping costs if the airships are all manually powered. But the basic problem is that shipping, equipment and experts… everything and everyone will need crystal power, and crystals are heart-crushingly expensive these days. Some equipment couldn't run on anything less than a purple crystal. That's as much power as a thousand yellow crystals can provide, densely concentrated, very rare, and very, very expensive.”
”Simply putting in a thousand yellow crystals or a hundred people's mana wouldn't work?”
Alexei shook his head. ”The concentration density wouldn't be enough.”
”Where would we even find purple mana crystals?!” Sandra groaned.
”You might not have to worry about that. The same experts who own the equipment usually keep stock for expeditions. You just have to pay them.” Alexei explained. ”By the millions.”
”What about red crystals?” asked a voice behind them.
Alexei, his students, Ruth and Sandra turned to see Darian arrive.
”Red crystals…? You mean, the legendary Dragon Emperor's crown jewel?” Alexei mused. ”If you manage to steal it, the power contained in that thing should be able to cast twenty Tier 4 spells all by itself, without assistance. That's roughly two hundred fireballs' worth of mana, unaided. That level of density… it's probably going to destroy the equipment if you tried to use it.”
”But supposing someone managed to steal that red mana crystal, how much could it sell for?” Darian asked.
Alexei frowned. ”Such a crystal would be priceless. Last week, a fresh, standard Tier 4 purple crystal was sold in Ecclesia for 1,600,000 lir. A Tier 3 blue crystal sold at 80,000 lir. Using the ratio of twenty fold increase from Tier to Tier, math tells me that a Tier 5 red mana crystal should theoretically sell for 32,000,000 lir. But that was last week, before the war broke out. Why?”
”Oh… nothing…” Darian said, with an innocent look on his face, one hand in his pocket. ”Just curious.”
***
”You want to what…?” Remian blinked.
Ten minutes after lunch and ten minutes before takeoff, Darian had approached him out of the blue. ”I said, I'll bribe you to drop the search for the Source of Magic.”
”Darian, do you even know what 'bribe' means?” Remian had to ask.
”Sure. I'll give you something, so that you'll do something for me. In this case, I happen to know that you need high level mana crystals or millions of lir to fund your investigation of the Black Ruins.” Darian said frankly. ”I can offer you that.”
”How?” Remian frowned.
Wordlessly, Darian took his hand out of his pocket, and opened it.
Red light gleamed for a bare moment before Remian yelped and hurriedly covered it up with his own hands. ”Don't show that sort of thing out in the open! How did you even get that?!”
”It's really valuable, isn't it? Doom said if we gave it to you, it should be enough to make you quit your search. You can sell it and hire experts to investigate these ruins and everything. Won't that be more worthwhile than chasing rumors and legends?”
”Probably. But this trip isn't about money. It's about ending the war and saving lots and lots of people.” Remian tried to explain. ”We can't just take bribes to give up and let all those people die.”
”Well, you can't do it. You don't even know where to go or what to look for.” Darian said pointedly.
”Maybe not, but we know we need to head south.” Remian answered. ”All we really have to do is follow the mana density. As long as we head towards wherever it's thicker, we know we're getting closer. It's not called the Source of Magic for nothing.”
Darian grimaced and lowered his head. ”Drats.”