Since the refugee dwarves made it back to their homeland safely, I packed up the mana crystal and moved it to it''s chamber in the new lab where I''ll grow it for a few more years until it''s 12 feet tall. We''ve moved most of the crystal slag down the mountain already and we''d slowly built up a stockpile of argon, so I was ready to do testing on the new growth apparatus and grow the crystal. Thanks to having dedicated helpers, things went well, and after 10 days, I''d used up a few months worth of argon production.
We''ve been producing a steady supply of cryogenic nitrogen and oxygen, and that has drastically improved the rate of fluorite mining, to the point where our stockpile of crushed fluorite is getting pretty big. Even with years of growing artificial fluorite, we won''t get through all of it. The fluorite is mostly being stored in it''s crushed natural form, with a growing stockpile of clear fluorite glass powder. In short, each stage of processing is incapable of keeping up with the previous stage.
We''re mining much more than we can initially process, then the initially processed stuff is also outstripping the production of artificial fluorite. The only stage that is easily keeping up is the crushing of natural fluorite, which I purposefully designed to be very large, if only so that the natural fluorite wouldn''t overheat the area and drain all the mana.
As long as we actually have places to store everything, I don''t expect this to be an issue, but I''ll keep an eye on it. They haven''t resorted to using the intermediate stockpile area down near the artificial fluorite growth area, so we''ve still got quite a bit of space. For all I know, the deposit might run out before the stockpiles fill up.
While I was looking over all the fluorite facilities, I noticed Tiberius was in a lot of different places, but rarely was actually down near the actual fluorite testing lab I made for him. I put off investigating that until I had finished looking over the other facilities, but when I finally went down and checked, I saw why. There were four holes, about the size of the crystals he uses for testing, blown through the wall separating the innermost testing area from the intermediate room. Inside the room, the walls were nearly completely destroyed, and lots of damaged quartz lay scattered about.
Basic testing of my mana regen rate showed that, indeed, the innermost room now had higher natural mana levels, to the point where testing new things would be dangerous. An interrogation later and I found out why. I had previously tasked Tiberius with ways of determining exactly how the lead doped fluorite crystals worked, and he did that. Over the course of a few weeks, he''d figured out that, essentially, they increase in mass when exposed to mana, up to a point. That point, as he later discovered, is based on the ratio of lead to fluorite in the doped crystal, and the total crystal size.
The larger the crystal, the higher the upper limit on mass multiplication, and there is a sweetspot of doped lead. Too much or too little lead, and the multiplication decreases. After getting the details of that he, somewhat unsurprisingly, decided to start trying to weaponize it. He tried letting mana into the room while the crystal was spinning on the end of a string. The string would snap and the crystal would usually break on impact, along with a chunk of the wall.
That... is concerning. More than the weaponized aspects, I''m more concerned about conservation of mass and energy. How does an object suddenly get more mass? When it does so, and breaks, losing some of it''s mass, why wasn''t there a massive explosion? That mass had to go somewhere, right? Why was it only a kinetic impact?Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.
As I briefly thought about those questions, Tiberius mistook my silence for intrigue about his weapon ideas, and started to elaborate about all sorts of ideas he has for it, interrupting my train of thought. Most of his ideas were... inadequate, but I did pitch him an idea, just to give him something to do rather than work on his hairbrained ideas of trying to make isolated mana sources for trebuchets, and other convoluted schemes.
If you could come up with a way to encase a lead fluorite crystal in two halves of quartz crystal and in the shape of an artillery shell, once the shell leaves the barrel, the two halves of quartz will fall off, and the remaining shell can gain a significant amount of mass due to exposure to ambient mana. That''s a way to actually weaponize these. The difficult part is figuring out how much of which part you need for it to actually be better than just a plain lead shell. Though, thanks to the lower mass inside the barrel, it should have a much higher exit velocity as well... Either way, I gave him some ideas, and he can salvage what quartz he can from the damaged room to try to make it work.
From what I recall, artificially grown quartz is a bit of a pain. It was used a lot in the semiconductor industry on earth, and required high heat and pressure to actually grow, and it took a long time. On the other hand, it actually would be useful to have for various purposes. However, we''d need a lot of it. We''d also need a lot of soda ash, which is something we''re already using a lot of and have a limited supply of. If we weren''t a volcanic island, then we''d potentially be able to convert limestone into a larger supply. Given our lack of trade partners though, that''s unlikely. So, any artificially grown quartz is going to have to go on the wishlist, rather than anything I could work on currently.
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After a few days of thinking about it, I don''t think the crystals violated conservation of mass. The mass was artificial to begin with, sustained by an outside source of mana. The mass didn''t disappear, it''s just that mana stopped being converted into it. As to why that mass is only temporary, I have a really, really far flung theory about it.
Given that most of the other physical laws seem to be the same as earth, my guess is that through one mechanism or another, the lead doped fluorite is somehow interacting with the Higgs field, and causing the particles in the area to have a heightened mass. If I combine that with relativity, an object travelling at a constant velocity is indistinguishable from one that is stationary, so increasing the mass of the in-air projectile doesn''t actually slow it down, but it does multiply its kinetic energy. Though a spinning object is under acceleration, and as such, does appreciably notice a change in force when its mass increases, causing the strings they were tied to to break.
Beyond that, there is actually a very, very cool application for these crystals. If I can cut a particular sized wafer of the crystal, and also make an equal mass counterbalance, I could use these crystals to make a meter that measures mana. If I can mass the crystal in a mana free environment, then I could make the meter only measure positive values of mana by measuring the displacement that a balance sees based on the increased mass of the wafer.
Since the testing chamber is already damaged beyond repair, I can salvage a bunch of the quartz bricks to make a chamber that will be relatively mana free where I can try to get an accurate mass measurement the wafers to make counterweights. A functional meter for reading ambient mana levels will be invaluable for a lot of projects. Especially when it comes to very low values where I''d have to wait for a significant amount of time to see how quickly I regenerate mana. Even then, biological processes might make my internal mana readings less accurate than an instrument that''s only purpose is to measure the levels.
So, that''s what I''ll try to make next. It''s unfortunate that a manometer is a device for measuring pressure. Manaometer doesn''t really roll of the tongue either. I guess I''ll go with manascope for the name.