Steel and Mana

Inside the University of Avalon, within the grand chamber of the Primary Research Hall, the air was warm, keeping the cold and the howling blizzard outside. It has been a hell of a freezing weather in the past two days, causing even Avalon's citizens to mostly stay home and only come out when it was unavoidable.

At the center of the room, atop a reinforced, stone pedestal with built-in brass measuring scales, sat the worm's CC core that was brought back from the frontlines. It was ugly, compared to any other cores Merlin had ever seen... It was the first one that looked so... Irregular. Unlike standard variants, which took the shape of gemstones or quartz, this one was bulbous, with a lumpy body disfigured by translucent streaks of fourteen thick tendrils jutting from its surface like frozen roots. Each of these weird protrusions was curling outward in a different direction, and by Leon's descriptions, they were connected to the flesh of the beast, stuck in some kind of arteries.

"It can't be..." Merlin muttered as he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, flanked by his chosen team, everyone looking at the readings.

The team he assembled consisted of professors and chosen researchers who helped Avalon advance, whether by distilling fuel from oil or improving lives through the invention of a new lamp, so it wasn't strange that Edmund was also part of this chosen group, aiming to make another new discovery. Of course, the others were no less capable, though only Merlin alone had the first-hand knowledge about magic, which was probably the most crucial part for this research.

"Are our devices malfunctioning?" Edmund asked, offering a reason because the results they were seeing were wrong, but his voice remained calm despite it all.

"Noo... I personally checked it..." Merlin shook his head, "We measured enough CC, and we have the knowledge from all the other countries. It is a natural law. CC weighs one point five kilograms and that is that..."

"Then..." Someone else murmured, scratching his chin, but in the end, they remained silent.

Edmund and two assistants stepped forward, carefully lifting the core with anti-gravity tongs, not wanting to touch it by hand and gently lowering it onto another scale, just to be sure, but... the readings were the same. The number made everyone frown. Edmund even leaned in and tapped the gauge as if it might be stuck, but it wasn't.

"This is… absurd," murmured another. "It's heavier..."

"And by a lot," Edmund agreed, and after trying to lift it without the rune-decorated tongs, it was... heavy.

"Is it even CC?" Another voice asked, making Merlin's eyes flash.

"It is," Merlin murmured, "The feeling is the same, but... The tendrils." All eyes went to the curling protrusions as he pointed his finger. They were like lightning bolts frozen into ice, irregular and connecting to the core at different points. "We know that the monster eats it, I think, this is the concrete proof for how it happens," Merlin continued cautiously, "these are not deformities. Well, not just simple deformities."

"We should cut one off," Edmund offered, studying one of the tendrils for a moment, looking at Merlin, "Isolate one and do the same measurements."

It was the logical next step, so they bought out the same tools they used to work with when it was about portioning CC, and began to cut. It took both hands of two of them and careful, deliberate moves from multiple researchers, doing their best to make the cut the cleanest they could. When it was done, the tendril came off clean, and no matter how many times they witnessed it, it never ceased to amaze them. Whenever CC was carved, no residual pieces fell off, nor was any dust created. It wasn't even like cutting... it felt like... pushing their tools through jelly, however weird it felt, seeing that the CC was, to all eyes and senses, solid. When the tendril came off, the separated piece was immediately placed on the scale, and the readout flashed the exact constant-weight ratio for pristine CC. No deviation... it was at the weight it should be.

"Interesting..." Edmund stepped closer, eyes narrowing. "We should do it again, with another one!"

One by one, three more tendrils were severed and weighed. Each time, the result was identical, and each tendril was, for all intents, a separate CC fragment, with the weight of any other type of CC. Then, when they measured the core's weight, it once again changed, this time lowering.

"We now have why it weighs more..." Merlin smiled, his eyes flashing with myriad ideas, "Even if they are connected, the tendrils count as individual CCs, not part of the core yet!"

"Even as they are being fused to it?" Edmund asked, watching the core where one tendril was firmly attached to it.

"Yes," Merlin tapped the chalkboard where he began writing out his ideas with the back of the chalk between his fingers. "This," he said, drawing, "is not one crystal. It is fifteen. One parent core, the body, and fourteen satellite fragments. They have not yet merged; that is why our initial readings are 'wrong.' Well, not wrong, we just didn't expect to weigh them individually!" He gestured to the lumpy specimen on the pedestal. "These tendrils are probably not as weird as we think. My theory is that they are mid-fusion pathways. The monster, or the monster's core, was in the middle of digesting them, drawing them inward, probably from the beast's own body and blood. No wonder they eat it! They've likely found a way to break CC down and feed it to their own core. What we are seeing here is perhaps how the beasts evolve and grow..."

"It could reinforce other theories we had of the monsters," One of the other researchers, a thin man, spoke from the back. "This proves that there is a natural feeding behavior based on CC absorption and would mean they nest at places where it is plentiful."

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"Mhm," Edmund nodded, thinking, "It would explain their growth, too. By description, we never had such a monster try and come through... It was too big. There is a chance that this worm did not enter our world already being at this size... It reached it here."

"I think the same thing," the man said, frowning. "By eating our CC."

"I also agree," Merlin said simply, nodding his head. "What I am afraid of is what this means for the spring campaign? Are there more of them? How big are they? How much did they feed in the past decades?" While speaking, he stepped closer to the core, studying its branching structure. "It may have consumed dozens of smaller veins before it was killed... Or maybe one. We can't tell if its size is on the low end or not..."

"More reason to wipe them out." Edmund stated, his voice almost commanding, "They can't be left alone anymore."

"Yes..." Merlin's tone was calm but cold. "They can't be left alone and allowed to grow..."

"Can we predict how old it could be or how big others may be...?"

"I don't know," Merlin answered Edmund's question, "There are too many unknowns yet, so I don't think we can have a precise number... To fill the blanks... we need some tests."

...
....
......

The outside storm, with its strong wind, rattled against the tall windows as Merlin's chalk was hitting against the blackboard, murmuring to himself, doing calculations and referencing books in his mind at the same time. Especially when he was accessing a special book, supposedly left behind by God Wayland himself. To his surprise, whenever he felt himself stuck, a new idea came to him... Like a whisper, causing him to be lost in his own thoughts. In the end, only two figures remained behind by then, being Edmund and Merlin...

"It's eight o'clock," Edmund said quietly, looking at his watch, trying to warn Merlin, knowing the Prime Minister of Avalon was a new father, promising his wife to be... responsible. But, right now, he was lost in his theory, filling the blackboard with such a complex magic formation and different, substitute runes that made Edmund's eyes spin.

"I know," Merlin answered while mumbling, "Just a bit more... I am so close...!" Then he paused, tapping a stick of chalk against his palm. "We know CC reacts only to magic or to other CC. No hammer, no heat, no pressure will change it, and steel will break first if we make them clash," he said slowly. "So, we just need the same magic waves the monster uses... the resonance of the beast that consumes CC is the bridge to it all... No wonder they blow up so easily, our main weapon is all about waves, and it has to be resonating with their cores, creating a loop which feeds into itself and then causes a chain reaction and then..." he continued, way too excited.

"I can not understand a word..." Edmund rubbed his eyes, muttering to himself.

"I think," Merlin added, clearing his throat, finally stepping away from the board and watching the formation he came up with, "I can mimic it. I mean, the monster's variant!"

"Mimic... it?" Edmund gulped, sitting up straight.

"Oh yeah!" He began sketching sigils again, tight loops intersected with waveforms Mikan discovered, and then they were used as the Camelot's primary weapon. He was writing them up, over and over, until they began overlapping on the board. At the bottom, he drew a stylized rendering of the core itself, tendrils branching from it like a crown of frozen lightning, explaining it to Edmund. "Magic moves as a wave, and waves can be tuned. The worm's body must have generated a very particular pulse, one that matched the frequency of the CC it wanted to fuse. And if I am right, it is a universal frequency."

"..." Edmund's brow furrowed. "Like… a tuning fork... just for magic and not an instrument?"

"Yes! But... Closer to a… continuous vibration," Merlin clapped, grinning, and his eyes lit up again, "more like a sustained wave emitter!"

"..." Standing, Edmund was trying to make sense of Merlin's drawing, but most of it was going over his head, "You're talking about using magic to make CC flow... As far as I understand... Flow like… molten glass?"

"Um!" Merlin smiled faintly. "Exactly. No wonder you are where you are, yet still so young."

"Prime Minister Merlin... You are one to speak..." Edmund answered, but began blushing like a tomato nonetheless. He was proud of his achievements... but he never wanted to let it go to his head; that was something he learned from his parents, a lesson he held onto dearly.

"Anyway," Merlin waved a hand, "Now that I have this... I won't go home until I test it!" he said, slapping the blackboard, grinning from ear to ear.

Knowing there was no way to argue against it, Edmund just began helping with whatever he could. The core was placed at the center of the chamber. At the same time, Merlin worked quickly, occasionally stopping, muttering as he rechecked an angle or altered a symbol by no more than a hair's breadth and then continued creating the magic circle from his own mana. By the time the circle was complete, the clock showed it was closer to ten than nine. Seeing the brightly glowing, blue formation held in the air by Merlin's magic, Edmund couldn't help but gulp and get close to the wall of the chamber.

"If it explodes," he murmured, "I'm telling the Sovereign this was your idea."

"It is my idea," Merlin chuckled as he closed his eyes and began the hard part, focusing his own magic and aiming it at the core. Slowly, the circle came alive more than before as the runes making it up began shimmering and pulsating in a continuous sequence.

Then, in answer, the core also began to glow with a soft, inner pulse, responding to Merlin's magic. Edmund watched as the still-connected tendrils began to brighten fractionally, followed by a muted hum rising in the room from the core itself. And then... barely visible even to trained eyes... the tendrils moved.

"Incredible..." Edmund whispered as it was a slow, liquid-like flow, yet they were still... solid. Each tendril sank by no more than the width of a hair into the central mass while the surface of the core itself dimpled and smoothed in minute undulations. Indeed... It was like glass in the slowest imaginable melting possible.

"I knew it!" Merlin's laugh echoed before gulping it down, so he wouldn't lose his concentration. "There…" he whispered. "It's happening."

"Yes!" Edmund moved closer, eyes wide as saucers, "It's… flowing!"

Next, Merlin adjusted the wave, which resulted in a shift in the tone of the core's rumbling. The tendrils responded, their slow descent quickening fractionally before stabilizing again. After nearly ten minutes, Merlin released the spell, testing multiple configurations of his magical waves. The moment it was gone, the tendrils froze in place once more, but if someone would measure them, they were no longer where they had been an hour ago. Each had sunk just enough that their bases were visibly shorter than before.

"Incredible..." Edmund exhaled, repeating himself, grinning. "You… you actually did it."

"Well, yeah," Merlin wiped the sweat from his forehead, "But not fully."

"What do you mean?"

"There were multiple times where I had to readjust," He explained, letting out a long breath, "This is super delicate... I will have to make more tests because there is a certain speed at which it feels stable. Anything slower or quicker, and I felt like the core may snap."

"Snap...?" Edmund flinched.

"Yeah." Merlin nodded, biting his lips, "And if that happens... The core may just break apart... or turn into CC dust... or go critical."

"You mean..."

"Boom." He said, glancing at Edmund, "Probably with enough force to wipe out the whole city."