Chapter 24

Be careful what you wish for

Altogether, the samples are not enough to make nine greater golems cores and the accompanying mana sources, and I have to take some shards from the warehouse. Three per site may not be enough, but I do not feel like hunting magic beasts at the moment and our stock are already at an all-time low.

I use farsight to follow the archivist’s directions, and to his credit they were excellent: in less than half an hour I have located all three. It baffles me how someone who has never stepped outside the city manages to be such an excellent guide, but this is a mystery I will leave for another time.

I teleport to the first one and put a marker called ‘spider experiment one’. I put some simple animal trapping and give them to the golems to place in the forest. I only built snares and cage traps, partly because adventurers come around this place… and mostly because holes and golems do not mix well together.

I have not thought of what order to give them. It cannot be too complex, but I need to gather information… I know! Every time an animal is captured, they are to throw it into a web then collect another. To keep a tally, I also order them to carve a mark on the wall each time they feed a prey to the spiders.

As they are just a mass of earth, the constructs should not be under the risk of being attacked, but just in case I prioritize their survival and order the collection of the silk glands of any dead arachnid.

As I am about to leave, I realize they are going to have a lot of downtimes, so I might as well have them wash and spin the silk. For this purpose, I dig a small hole in the rocky surface and fill it with conjured water. As for the spindle, a few straightened branches will do the trick.

There is a village near the second place, so I make a detour to learn about how they usually deal with their eight-legged neighbors. Unlike adventurers, they live there and I would rather avoid doing something that might impact their livelihood.

Thankfully, my worries were unfounded, the only interaction the locals have with the multi-legged pests, are when they fund a culling, once or twice a year. It seems they have been doing since decades ago, back then the arachnids had proliferated so much, a good chunk of the forest had to be burned down to drive out the beast.

Now that I know that, I have no need to be reserved. I make more or less the same arrangement as in the first site, but with two notable differences:

Firstly, they are only to feed the spiders once per day – other captured animals are to be freed, or if this is not an option, offered to the villagers.

Secondly, still in deference to the villager, any spider found leaving the nest is to be killed immediately.

The final place, it is quite far in the mountains and near wyvern territory. Here, there is no need to hold back. I go crazy with the trappings, but make sure to leave some written warning signs around the most dangerous ones.

This time, I ask them to feed every captured prey to the spider, and take up to three webs instead of one… Oh, I might as well tell them to put an X on the wall every time there is none to collect.

With the first and last sites, I intend to get a rough idea of how much and how often the colony eats, as well as how much silk they can produce. The second site is useless though, it is more of a, community service.

Two sites are not enough to collect data, and the parameters are too extreme, but this is the best I can do in such a short time. If I were to make an actual rearing site, I would need some special cages, crops, a rat farm as well as some serious security. Arranging this would take months… and that estimation does not take into account the inevitable failures.

My work is done here; I teleport back to the Magic Department. Since the master is not in his office, I look for his familiar magic circuit – I should definitely learn those of every person I interact with on a daily basis, but it is not as easy as it sounds – and meet with him.

“How did it go with the artisans?” I ask.

“Very well, my lord. Considering the dimension of the desired crystal, they estimate the production of at least one vat per week once they eliminated the kinks.”

I must have misheard something, but I would swear he only said one. “Only one per week? Starting when?”

“The design is complicated and the artisans fear steel might deform due to the intense heat. The prototypes will still be made of steel because there are no better materials available at this time but… Anyway, the first model should be ready early next month, or in three weeks at best.”

That long? I do not know much about forging so I was under the impression it would take far less time. I will need one giant crystal, between two-thirds and three-quarters of a ton I think, and as many large size mana sources as possible. By my estimation, even with three dozen of modern mages helping, it would take at least one or two hours to charge the spell.

I draw a large shape with my hands and ask. “Do you have an estimate of how long it would take to grow quartz this size?”

“That’s gigantic, bigger than anything anyone has ever seen...” He mumbles pensively “A day gets us a crystal about this big, then a week should be around this… one time four times four…” He looks at me and answers convincingly. “Two months, sir, at the very least.”

“You have done a great job.”

The sacrifice to quell the dragon/calamity is scheduled in five months… although there is always a risk of the beast awakening earlier.

“Give priority to growing these, everything else is secondary… How long would it take to make crystals the size of a fist? I mean yours, not mine.”

“The alchemists can do that with their current equipment… in around two weeks, I think.”

“Have them produce crystals this size as fast as possible and give them our early prototypes: it’s not something they can buy or create by themselves.”

He looks at me puzzlingly.

“Rig them with every conceivable observation spell. We are the ones who gave them the method, but they adjusted far too quickly, and their information is unbelievably accurate: they probably know things we do not. We have no choice but to rely on them for now, but I want us to have our own production line as soon as possible, and good as theirs if possible.”

The master looks at me proudly. “You’ve really grown so much in such a short time. I am sure in a few years, you’ll become even more devious than me!”

Is that really a compliment? I probably would not have been able to think like that if I were not under so much pressure. I worried that at the rate things are going, by the time the crystals are ready, it will be too late. If we are lucky, it will be because we have opened the vault or solved the bag’s riddle… if not, there will be no one left to care.

I wonder, can I truly die? Well, it is not something I want to make a habit of, so I hope I will not find out anytime soon.

“Master, we do not have time to be picky with our means. Our priority is to kill the dragon, but theirs is to make money. Even if it appears like we have time at the moment, I want us to every conceivable thing to speed up the production.” I take him by the shoulder. “For the first few giant crystals, reliability is key, but for everything after that use an experimental approach!”