Blacksmith vs. the System

I would have loved to have Spencer's direct assistance while experimenting with the crystal, as he was the one who had used the material the most, even awakening his new class variant through it. But, since he was busy preparing for his upcoming ascension, I decided not to disturb him.

Especially when I had his experimental records, each written in enchanted paper and bound in leather harvested from the beasts on the surface. They looked nice, but more importantly, they were properly indexed.

I had to admit, while Terry was the most creative one among my students, Spencer was the best one to delve deeper into one topic, his diligence and intellectual rigor making his experiments easy to convey, more than making up for his absence.

Spencer and his growing team experimented a lot with the material, trying to find a way to use the crystal. Admittedly, the amount of experimentation they had put on the material was nonsensical at first, as despite its qualities, everything they discovered could be achieved by using wood or metal better.

It was like the material had no value other than ease of use, which, on the surface, didn't justify the time they spent on the material. But, considering it was used to unlock a whole new branch of classes for the farmers, it was hard to judge their choice as an inefficient one.

I was certainly happy having all those notes rather than starting my experiments from scratch.

Crystal samples arrayed on the table beside me, each encased in mana-sealed glass to prevent errant leaks or reactive pulses to prevent contamination. However, I didn't experiment with them directly, instead flipping the experimental notes rapidly. I had my own notebook open as I checked the observations and redid the calculations. It wasn't in anticipation of a mistake, as Spencer had long proved himself to be extremely diligent.

However, in science, it was possible to do everything correctly and still arrive at the wrong conclusions. Sometimes, framing the data was the real challenge.

Most of the details about the material were predictable. It showed that, unlike most inert materials, the organic crystalline lattice reacted to mana based on its structure, similar to how metals reacted. The general patterns and shapes seemed to confirm what I had detected.

Unfortunately, his experiments also showed that, under stronger mana infusion, the structure of the crystal seemed to distort. I leaned back. That reaction was not good news, certainly not for the purpose I had in mind.

"When exposed to raw mana," Spencer had written next, "the crystal grows without elegance, like a weed. That can be leveraged to induce growth by strictly controlling the direction of the mana it exposed, inducing patterns of growth. However, a high Intelligence is a must to achieve anything significant with that method."

I smiled as I read that, feeling wistful. Clearly, it was that quality that ultimately led Spencer to unlock his variant spell. Even if the material had proved useless for any practical purpose, that alone made it a treasure.

The notes went on about various reactions on the growing nature of the crystal, including its reactions to various ordinary stimuli like heat, particularly how it reacted to extreme cold and heat. It shattered when the temperature dropped below minus one fifty Celsius for a long time, and melted when the temperature surpassed a thousand degrees Celsius, though both fluctuated under various mana densities.

It was interesting, because all experiments had shown that, once the crystal was subjected to extreme conditions, it lost its ability to grow, turning inert. That was peculiar, especially since I had no idea where its reactivity came from.

The fact that neither my skill nor Spencer's had any information specific to the crystal helped.

Still, whether that reactivity could be destroyed or suppressed without losing the shape was another question, one that Spencer's experiments failed to come up with answer.

I continued to read, going through various parts. "Attempts to bind the crystal to physical catalysts have shown limited success. The materials react to vitality or mana differently enough to warp the structure, even without additional skill use, draining the vitality of the wood." That part wasn't too much of a problem, as, considering the function I wanted to use it for, destroying the reactivity of the crystal was a precondition.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

However, the last part was the most interesting part. "Regarding the reactivity, I theorize that the crystal is made of proto-living carbon-based structures with limited self-replication. However, the exact nature of those structures was yet to be determined."

Following that note were several lines. Not the data itself, but which books had contained the data related to those experiments, followed by the conclusions he drew.

That ended his detailed report on his analysis.

I paused for a moment, assessing it. From a general perspective, his experiments were structured well, and I could see exactly what he was looking for. A good attempt. But it could be better.

Not that I was blaming him. While their stats and skills helped them to learn far faster than they would before the System, they were no substitute for a systematic education, particularly when it came to proper experimentation; which required a lot more than a few months of condensed thinking.

It required a confusing mixture of discipline, rigor, and wild thinking that bordered on madness. It was especially relevant when he was working on a topic blind, with no guidance from me or the skill. I could see that his whole experiment setup was based on two directions; my own experiments on alloy solidification and how it relates to mana, and general working principles of Nurture and its advanced variants.

It wasn't a bad choice, especially since from most perspectives, the crystal was right in between living and inanimate. Approaching it from both sides made sense. The problem came from the steps that followed.

A smart approach, one that generated results, but the deeper I read, the more the fundamental deficiency became apparent.

He never stopped to assess the strategic value of his experiments.

It was not a mistake I begrudged him for. It was difficult to stop halfway to reassess, especially when one approach was still generating valuable results. I had seen people wasting their whole careers in such pits, let alone a few weeks of research time, supernaturally enhanced or not.

Especially since all that research wasn't a waste. There were dozens of leather-bound tomes, each filled with experimental data penned by his assistants.

Data that I no longer rely on others to process.

"It's time to put Intelligence to a real test," I muttered, feeling strangely excited. Intelligence had many uses, but in a world without computers, no part of it was as valuable as pure data processing capability for me.

I went through the raw data, Wisdom and Intelligence playing perfectly as I went through tome after tome, processing the raw data in many ways that they hadn't thought of … or likely even aware of. Soon, I had identified some anomalous points, the kind that Spencer's follow-up experiments had not touched, likely treating them as outliers.

Always a dangerous mistake to make.

I had spent a full day going through the data, finding all the different ways to interpret it to pin down some of the other qualities of the crystal. Qualities that I had confirmed later through my own experiments.

One of those experiments had been about turning the crystal into an inert structure, which turned out to be a flash freezing, followed by a rapid dip into the flame. Repeating the process several times without crossing temperature limits had functioned well enough, confirming the viability of using the crystal as a material.

And, when shaped correctly and then turned inert, the crystal acted just like I had hoped, adding a hexagon pattern that worked to contain mana.

Success.

Admittedly, a mathematical modeling of the material based on an existing experiment was not the most time-efficient method. I already had the rapid heating-chilling cycle in mind, and a simple experiment would have allowed me to confirm its viability. The ability to use magic for every part of the experiment meant that the cycle of trial was merely in seconds. The experiment itself, I could have wrapped in less than an hour, rather than the majority of the day.

But, I did not. The reason was different than why I hadn't used my new skills on it, be it Rune Harmonizer or Mana Detection. I avoided using these skills to avoid contaminating my train of thought and prejudicing myself toward Spencer's analysis.

I had relied purely on calculating from the experimental records for a simpler reason. I wanted to see the viability of using my Intelligence and Wisdom in tandem to solve a materials problem; the kind of problem that would have actually given supercomputers some trouble due to their complexity.

The result was even better than I had expected.

"A perfect grade," I muttered as I cracked my fingers, and reached for a piece of crystal, this time ready to use my skills.

The first experiment was over. The real work of trying to turn into a viable product that could be scaled was about the beginning … or not, I corrected as I felt the shift from the dungeon, warning me about the birth of yet another dungeon monster.

"Inconvenient," I muttered, annoyed that my experiment was interrupted just as it was getting good.

Those corrupted monsters had no respect for proper science!