Chapter 75: Unexpected Results and the Unexpected…

The faintly glowing substances in the darkness cleared away about seventy to eighty percent of Gawain’s drowsiness. Ignoring the fact that these grayish-black chunks would dirty his clothes, he plunged his hands directly into the large basket and began rummaging through it.

Soon, he unearthed several fragments that looked distinctly different from the surrounding material.

The light embedded within these pieces was brighter, more concentrated, and more stable.

At first glance, these fragments still appeared as black, hardened lumps. But within their loose structure were countless tiny crystals—no larger than a millimeter in diameter—that resembled rough, crude quartz. These crystals were the source of the glow. Gawain crushed one of the lumps carefully and picked out a few of these crystals. To his surprise, they still emitted light, and without the surrounding impurities, their glow seemed even stronger.

A sudden intuition prompted him to activate his magical perception. Instantly, faintly glowing, cloud-like clusters appeared in his vision: these crystals indeed contained a certain amount of magical energy.

Gawain held one crystal between his fingers and gradually applied pressure until it finally shattered. It was hard—almost as hard as stone—but somewhat more fragile than the natural crystals wizards used to craft staves or store magic. As it broke, its light vanished completely.

The magic dissipated entirely.

So what exactly was this?

Gawain furrowed his brow deeply. He wanted to rush off and consult Hetty immediately, but she was probably already asleep. Tonight’s unexpected events must have exhausted her, and with the day’s camp construction duties weighing on her, a good night’s rest was hard-earned.

Reluctantly, Gawain suppressed his curiosity and resolved to visit Hetty first thing in the morning.

The rest of the night passed without incident. The camp was enveloped in darkness and silence, as if the legendary Lady of the Night herself had descended…

Early the next morning, Gawain took the glowing crystal fragments to Hetty’s tent, only to learn she had already left for the laboratory. So he hurried to her magic lab instead.

The “magic laboratory” was located in the southeast corner of the camp, near the Dark Mountains. It was the only large building made primarily of stone and wood in the entire camp. Though unadorned, it was easily the grandest structure here. This wasn’t Hetty’s vanity; the lab’s environment had to meet strict requirements. Many magical and alchemical experiments demanded a quiet, stable setting, and stone walls made it easier to inscribe runes and magical arrays.

Wizards were practical creatures.

To outsiders, however, the sturdy, imposing building radiated an aura of mystery. Amber often suspected Hetty spent her days inside brewing potions and poisons like some old witch—but dared not confirm it, fearing a scolding.

When Gawain arrived, Hetty was busy among a pile of crystals. Her workstation sat at the center of the lab: a large round table divided into three sections. One section was inscribed with magical arrays and surrounded by various magical ingredients; another held bottles, jars, and alchemical tools; the third contained a single device—a crystal resonator purchased at great expense from Tanzan Town.

This device was designed specifically to study crystals and inscribe arrays within them. It was a masterpiece of wizardry, far more refined and elegant than the crude tools Gawain had seen among common folk in this era. The resonator’s core was a brass mechanism holding three natural magic crystals of different sizes. Around it were several adjustable artificial crystal discs, each backed by a gray-white vertical panel used for imaging.

This was the lab’s most expensive piece of equipment. Hetty handled it with great care, never even letting her niece Rebecca—a fellow mage who only knew fireball spells—touch it.

If Amber ever snuck in here, she’d surely get a beating…

Gawain watched as Hetty placed a pale purple crystal in the resonator’s center. Stimulated by the three magic crystals around it, the target crystal began to resonate. In the ambient magical field, this resonance created detectable “ripples.” These ripples were captured by the artificial crystal discs and projected as visible images onto the gray-white panels.

Two of the panels already displayed fairly clear rune patterns, and on a scrap of paper at the table’s corner, Hetty had sketched diagrams based on the projections.

She was studying the ancient military crystals brought back from the mountain treasury.

Hetty looked surprised to see Gawain. Usually, at this hour, he was inspecting construction progress or drawing plans in his tent.

“Ancestor? What brings you here?”

“There’s something I want you to see,” Gawain said, emptying the lumps embedded with tiny crystals from his leather pouch onto the table. He glanced at Hetty’s workstation. “Are you researching the arrays inside those ancient crystals?”

“Yes,” Hetty nodded, a hint of apology on her face. “But progress has been slow.”

She looked at the unremarkable fragments in Gawain’s hand. “What are these…?”

“Rebecca’s leftover ‘scraps’ from her last experiment. But I found something interesting inside,” Gawain said, rolling the tiny crystals embedded in the debris between his fingers. “These things respond to magic.”

“Magic response?” Hetty frowned, then carefully sensed the crystals. Her eyes widened in astonishment. “They really do?! What are these?”

“That’s why I brought them to you,” Gawain said, picking out one loose crystal. “Can your resonator reveal their structure?”

Hetty hadn’t expected Rebecca’s haphazard tinkering to produce anything like this. She thought Rebecca was just randomly burning stones in the workshop—even if Gawain had assigned the task, Rebecca’s wild ideas, like throwing grasshoppers into the furnace, made her skeptical. She gingerly took the tiny crystal Gawain handed her and examined it closely.

“Don’t you have any bigger ones?” she asked, frowning. “This is too small to study properly.”

Gawain shook his head. “This is the largest—about the size of a grain of rice.”

“Alright, I’ll do my best.” Hetty removed the ancient crystal from the resonator’s center—it had already been fully analyzed and no longer needed testing.

Using tweezers, she carefully placed the tiny crystal on the resonator’s base and activated the three magic crystals.

After a brief wait, faint, blurry lines appeared on the resonator’s surrounding “screens.” They were so faint and translucent that if Hetty hadn’t turned off the nearby magical crystal lamps, Gawain wouldn’t have seen them at all.

The crystal was simply too small.

“This structure… it really is an artificial crystal, and quite orderly,” Hetty said, scrutinizing the patterns. She cautiously infused a minimal amount of magic into the base. As the magic flowed, the projected lines brightened and shimmered with a rainbow-like glow. “It can absorb external magic and convert it into a stable form stored inside the crystal…”

She withdrew her magic and observed the projection’s changes.

Minutes passed, but the image on the panels remained unchanged. The resonator’s precise magic sensors showed no fluctuations.

“Magic stored stably?!” Hetty’s surprise deepened. “The dissipation rate… is so low?!”

Gawain stared intently at the resonator’s base. The tiny artificial crystal glowed with visible white light. Its brightness increased as it absorbed more magic.

He suddenly understood why he hadn’t noticed these crystals mixed in with the debris before. When freshly made, these artificial crystals were empty and inert—no magic, no glow. Over time, they slowly absorbed ambient magical energy, a gradual self-charging process. After two days, they finally emitted a faint glow at night, catching Gawain’s attention.

Hetty was captivated by the crystal’s peculiar properties. Excited beyond control, she continued pouring magic into it. Since the crystal was so small, it quickly reached saturation.

The tiny crystal began emitting a steady milky white light, showing no signs of breaking down despite being saturated.

“So this is an artificial crystal that can store magic?!” Gawain’s face lit up with delight, feeling as if he’d found a treasure. “How does its capacity compare to natural crystals? What about stability? It’s glowing constantly—what’s its self-loss rate?”

“Wait, wait, I still need to… I need to run proper tests,” Hetty said, her excitement matching Gawain’s but tempered by a mage’s discipline. She picked up the tiny crystal and moved toward an analysis magic array nearby. “The self-loss shouldn’t be too bad. Although it glows, that’s mainly because the ambient magic in the air resonates with the crystal. The magic stored inside shouldn’t be losing much, so it should preserve energy for a long time…”

She placed the crystal in a ruby dish with a groove and set it at the center of the magic array, preparing to extract the stored magic.

The array activated.

With a soft “pop,” the crystal shattered into a pile of fragments.

(End of chapter)