I made another three node stabilizers and had Alex settle down once more. If everything worked out, this would be the last time. I only needed a suitable node for her. It turned out, there was one not too far from the path I usually took to my workshop. A slight northwards curve let me spot one with the aspects of earth and metal. It was perfect. Probably. Hopefully. Maybe movement might be even better…

Disregarding those thoughts, I picked it up in a jar and flew off again. During the trip, I made sure to stop at every node I could use to fill my wands. Finally, I reached my little cave and shifted inside. There was a little water near the entrance so I shifted to my metal form and bore a drain into the ground. I spent a few minutes removing some stone from the ground, making a slight slope for easier draining.

Then, I got to work. The node stabilizers were easy to make but for the transducers, I had to put in some more effort. First, I needed some coal to make alumentum. I dug a furnace into one wall, dumping a pile of wood into it. Igniting was a little troublesome but I somehow managed with a fire crystal. Then, I closed it off and let it burn. Hopefully, I would have a pile of charcoal in a few hours.

The next step was making a bunch of salis mundus. I had some leftovers but not much. I also needed some more balanced shards. They could be used for relays to guide vis from an energized node. It took me two hours to collect enough crystals for everything. The sun had already set so I decided to take a little break.

I woke up again before dawn and, after a little snack, got back to work. The charcoal was done by now and I set up a new batch immediately. Before moving on with the creation of alumentum, I decided to take a closer look at the essence I would need to prepare. The main ones were order and energy. There was also a batch of magic and aura. Order was not too difficult anymore. I had read an excerpt about easily available resources for certain essence and apparently, stone blocks chiselled into a symmetric pattern had a bunch of what I needed. I could do the chiselling with my excavation focus. Magic would be coming from vis shards, letting me get another bit of order if I found the correct ones. That left aura and energy. Energy was in coal, mostly. It was difficult to come by in this world, though. I knew from my lessons at Riggard’s workshop, that you could find some in filled up storage crystals. I had a guess that electric batteries also held some. Neither of those was cheap or easy to make. My best bet would be coal.

The real talon chipper was aura. There was a tiny bit of it in my shadows but one transducer needed about four times as much of it as a silverwood wand. However, no matter how much I looked and searched, I could not find anything better. I would have to settle with this subpar method.

I went through the resources I had on hand. With the two batches of coal, I should have enough for both the essence and the alumentum. I had to do some stone-cutting for the order essence but I could also push some of my own into my shadows as they burned. That would make it a lot easier. Salis mundus and balanced shards were plentiful, for now. I had a full jar of the former and a dozen of the latter.

The hard parts were the first I tackled. Though mostly, it was just spending time. While burning my shadows in the alchemical furnace, I started carving into some stone cubes, giving them simple patterns on each side. My alembic slowly filtered the essence into the jars I had set up. After some time, I finally had enough aura essence for the transducers. I started burning coal, instead. This was something I could just leave running over night, which was good since it was already night again. Another snack and I got some more rest.

By morning, I had enough energy essence, too. I started burning vis shards next, though I had very few from order nodes to distil. Still, with the symmetrically cut blocks, I soon got there. Soon being sometime in the evening, once again. This was taking much longer than I had expected.

At last, I was almost ready to start with the infusion process. I only had to make some alumentum and nitor. That was easy, however. Both could be made in the crucible by simply tossing the ingredients inside. Alumentum turned out to be a flame similar to nitor, though it was grey and basically did not flicker or burn in any way. It was also much more solid to the touch. The Thaumonomicon entry said it would activate with a strong impact, exploding violently. Or I could ignite it to fuel the alchemical furnace. It would burn out slower than normal coal but also hotter. Truly an interesting material.

Just as the sun was about to set, I was ready. After a simple dinner. The node stabilizer went onto the central pedestal with two pieces of alumentum and nitor sitting in the cardinal directions. Between the energetic flames, I placed a pile of salis mundus. Its purpose was to seal the magic inside the transducer and at the same time allow for a conduit to the outside.

I double-checked if I had enough essence for everything and found my preparations satisfactory. I pointed my wand at the infusion matrix. With a reality cracking shriek, the infusion activated. Essence was once more drawn into it as thin, colourful tendrils. First, the magic, then energy, then order and finally aura. As the last bit was brought onto the stabilizer, the alumentum and nitor started to slowly dissolve. The particles were absorbed into the soon-to-be transducer. I tried to observe the exact proceedings but it was still too difficult. It would be impossible to reproduce this without the matrix. The last part to be absorbed was the salis mundus. As the first bits of the rainbow-white dust rose, a bolt of purple lightning suddenly shot through the workshop. This one was much larger than any I had seen close up before and it directly struck the pedestal in front of me, turning the pile of salis mundus on it into purple goop. My eyes widened as I noticed the infusion alter start to draw on more essence. I quickly dumped a new pile of dust on the closet clean pedestal and it immediately started floating. This time, nothing went wrong, at least. The infusion proceeded as planned and with a crinkling sound, the node transducer was finished and dropped onto the pedestal.

I got closer and observed my handiwork. The stone base had not changed all that much. The top also still was a cut-off pyramid. Only the four spots for the seals on the sides were different. Instead of gold and brass lining the corners and surface, there was a fine white dust coating the inside of the square holes. I could practically feel the magic emanating from them. This was where the energy would be moving through to be used. It shone in rainbow hues changing with how the light hit it. Truly wonderful.

I put it in my storage and checked on my essence jars. Most of them were still full enough but I needed a little more auram. That was the one I had cut closest when distilling. I decided to push for it instead of resting and burned more of my shadow tendrils. Just in case, I got a little more as reserve. Then, I set up the infusion for the second transducer. I had to clean the pedestal with the purple good on it. It turned out to be liquid flux. Putting it into my storage dissolved the negative energy throughout my body for some reason and I nearly fell over. My head was pounding and my sight turned violet. After a few minutes, the symptoms receded and I could focus once more. I checked my Status and was relieved when I saw no flux overcharge. It might have just been the speed at which it flowed into me rather than the amount. Then again, I had not checked my Status while being incapacitated. At least I knew not to clean flux up with my storage. I sighed. That could have gone a lot worse.

I refocused and started the second infusion. This time, nothing went wrong. There was another larger crack of lightning but it went into the ceiling without damaging anything. I had to find a way to stabilize the infusion altar further before creating more complicated artefacts.

I had everything set for the nodes, now I only needed the lamps of growth. Those were not too difficult to make after the previous crafts. I needed to make an arcane lamp first, which was some light vis infused into a luminous substance encased in gold and glass. I had everything ready and made quick work of it. The substance I used was a fresh flame of nitor. I half-expected it to fail but there was no problem with the lamp. I made ten of them, putting one up in my workshop. It would light up the area thoroughly within a few hours. My magical senses saw vis move through the air and feel out the confines of the room. They brought visible light with them. The only problem was turning it off. At least having a closed-off room would prevent an area from being lit up. Or simply being far enough away from the lamp. I found the hole leading into my workshop was already small enough to prevent the mountainside from being lit up. I simply made a similar room to the oven, just a little taller, for me to sleep in.

With that done, I had to turn my arcane lamps into lamps of growth. That was another infusion recipe. At least it was simple, only needing some form of fertilizer as well as some earth vis shards. For essence, I only had to get some herba and light essence. That was no trouble to come by, either. It felt a little bit weird but one could put burning wood into the upper chamber of the alchemical furnace and then distil it into both of what I needed.

The infusion was also much more stable than the transducers. It went without a hitch, although by the fourth one I started to find more noticeable traces of flux in the surrounding air. Since it was late night anyway, I simply stopped to get some sleep. When the flux had not fully dissipated even by morning, I decided four lamps were good enough for now and took off towards the goblins once more. It was time to set up their first real farm and, hopefully, make Alex independent.