On the morning of July 19, Jin, Elsa, and Saki went to Hourai Island. Berthie returned to Kartze Village, where Reinhardt was waiting for her.
Stearleana was also in Hourai Island. She had gone there after returning to her home in Goa, in the Kingdom of Celuroa, on the 16th.
“Ah, but if it isn’t Jin and everyone else.”
Stearleana had been given one room on the 3rd floor for her to use as her laboratory. Jin and his friends turned up there.
“What brings you here today?”
“There’s something I’d like to hear your thoughts about.”
“Ah, what is it?”
Jin told her about making Magi Crystals artificially. When Stearleana heard that, she started jumping up and down in joy.
“Alright! That’s what I wanted to do! What I really love are crystals, beautiful gems, and magi crystals, not materials for making golems!”
From there, they moved onto the details. Jin was the first one to speak.
“So you know about the Mana Tanks that golems use? They work by storing Mana in Magi Crystals. Do you know the principle behind them?”
“Well… It’s a bit embarrassing, but I’m using them without really knowing how they work.”
Some technologies are derived from empirical rules and some are derived from theory. The Mana tank was one of technologies discovered after a long period of trial and error.
“Everyone, try to think about how Mana is stored in a Mana Tank.”
“…I have no idea.”
After thinking for a while, Saki gave up. Stearleana followed soon after. But Elsa was still thinking. Eventually Elsa raised her face and replied in a soft voice, seemingly unconfident.
“…By filling gaps, perhaps?”
“I think that’s the correct answer.”
Jin saw Elsa’s answer and realized that they seemed to be on the same page. However, Saki and Stearleana were still struggling to grasp the idea. So Jin decided to deliver an easy-to-understand explanation.
“Let’s say I put several big round stones into a box. Well, after it’s filled with round stones, would I still be able to put something in the box?”
“Hmm? But if it’s full, then you can’t put anything else in it, right? …Ah, wait. You can still put sand in it, huh?.”
Jin nodded at Saki’s answer.
“Ah, so that’s it. Well, you mentioned sand, but you could still put water in the box, right?
Stearleana voiced her mind after hearing their explanation.
“Then, what you’re trying to say is that the things we know as Mana are actually very tiny?”
“I think so. All substances are made up of what we call ‘molecules’. Molecules are like grains, but they are so small we can’t see them. But Mana is much smaller than that. And I guess Ether is even smaller.”
Jin revealed his theory.
“Most substances can contain Ether and Mana, but I think Magi Crystals are a material that can contain a lot of Mana and are easy to carry around. Of course, since you can write Magi Formula on Magi Crystals, it is sometimes said that they’re efficient when used as tanks.”
“I see. I think I follow somehow. Though I’ll need a little more explanation on these ‘molecules’ you mentioned. Please, go on…”
“Now, what would happen if we were to put a lot of Mana in a regular stone?”
“…It would turn into a Magi Stone, right?”
This time it was Saki who shared her deductions. Jin nodded.
“If only I could, though… I’ve tried to do that before, but unfortunately, I haven’t been successful yet.”
“I-I see. So not even you can do it, Jin…”
Saki dropped her shoulders. But on the other hand, Stearleana was burning with a fighting spirit.
“But that’s why it’s worth it! It makes you want to find out more about Magi Crystals, and to find a way to replicate them, right?”
Jin nodded…
“Yeah. We’ll first have to try several things.”
…And then asked Reiko to prepare several Magi Crystals.
“First of all, I’ve been wondering why Magi Crystals have different colors depending on their attributes.”
Jin said that as he looked at the colorful Magi Crystals placed on the workbench.
“Well, that may be just a matter of course, but what’s the difference between Magi Crystal and Magi Stones? Is it just the amount of Mana they contain?”
“Most of the Magi Crystals are transparent or translucent, while the Magi Stones are opaque. I think there’s something there.”
“Ah, could it be…?”
After hearing Stearleana’s statement, Elsa seemed to have come across something.
“I think Magi Crystals are ‘crystallized’ after all. In other words, since they have a regular molecular arrangement, it’s easier for them to contain Mana. But Magi Stones are different.”
Since Saki and Stearleana weren’t familiar with the term “crystallized”, they didn’t seem to be able to fully understand Elsa’s statement, so Jin provided a supplementary explanation.
“Crystals are, essentially, molecules… Which, as I said earlier, are the small particles that make up a substance. A crystallized substance is one whose molecules are lined up in regular patterns. For instance, most common crystals and gemstones have their molecules arranged in hexagonal patterns.”
That analogy seemed to have worked, as the two of them nodded profusely at Jin.
“To put it in another way, we could say that the gaps in their composition are lined up neatly. Which would be easier to drive on, a straight road or a winding road?”
“That’s our Jin for us. I wouldn’t have been able to come up with that analogy myself.”
At least, being a crystalline material seemed to be a big factor in whether it was easy for something to contain Mana or not.
“Then, the next question is whether Mana will naturally enter such stones and crystals.”
If they were able to understand their mechanism and reproduce it artificially, they might be able to make artificial Magi Crystals.
“Is that… Is that something that can be understood?”
Saki’s tone of voice sounded as if she lacked self-confidence.
“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.