Chapter 79: Rebecca’s Breakthrough and the Mystery of Magic

“So this is the ‘Rebecca Crystal’ you managed to produce… Hmm, yes, it does look like the same thing.”

Sitting in his tent, Gawain nodded slightly as he looked over the large basket of material Rebecca had eagerly brought over.

Inside was a basket of dull, gray-black, strange-looking substance—some loose like sand, some clumped together. But no matter the form, countless tiny crystal fragments were embedded almost uniformly throughout. Compared to the first batch of “scrap” Rebecca had clumsily made, this batch clearly contained a much higher concentration of crystal particles, and their average size seemed significantly larger.

This meant Rebecca hadn’t just found the formula—she had also begun to grasp how to improve the production process.

Hearing Gawain’s words, even the stubborn, straightforward Rebecca suddenly felt a bit embarrassed. The viscount’s granddaughter scratched her soot-darkened face and smiled sheepishly, like a naive seventeen-year-old who’d accidentally made explosives in a cement kiln. “Hehe… Ancestor, do you really think this stuff deserves that name? Isn’t it usually only the really great people who get to name things after themselves?”

“These crystals are your invention. Aren’t you great enough?” Gawain gave the insecure N+1 generation great-granddaughter a look. “Sure, there’s still plenty of room for improvement, but this is definitely a reproducible ‘product’ now. The name ‘Rebecca Crystal’ is well deserved.”

Rebecca broke into a goofy grin. “Hehe, hehehee…”

“Enough with the silly giggles. Tell me how you actually made this,” Gawain said, half amused, half exasperated, looking at the stubborn girl. “Luck always plays a part in new materials, but I want to know how this stroke of luck came to us.”

“Oh, well, it really was a complete coincidence,” Rebecca scratched her head. “I basically followed the original formula you gave me, but when I tried to replicate the process yesterday, I failed several times. None of the proportions worked—then I suspected the furnace. We checked several kilns and found that one had a large chunk of its inner wall fallen off…”

“A large chunk fell off?” Gawain frowned, realizing the key to forming these ‘Rebecca Crystals’ might lie in those fallen kiln wall fragments. “So the materials used to build the kiln also took part in the reaction?”

“That’s one reason. Because the kilns use runic heating, quartz sand was mixed into their construction. Besides the quartz sand, another important factor was the stone from the Dark Mountains.”

“Stone from the Dark Mountains?” Gawain repeated.

“Yes. I compared several batches and found two main differences in that particular kiln’s batch: first, the quartz sand from the kiln’s construction mixed into the raw materials; second, the limestone used came from the Dark Mountains. The other batches used limestone from the Whitewater River or timber yards to the west, and even with quartz sand mixed in, those didn’t work…”

Two conditions: quartz sand and limestone from the Dark Mountains…

Gawain pondered. These conclusions came from Rebecca’s careful comparisons and were reliable. So what role did these two materials play in the process?

Quartz sand made sense—it’s a weak but genuine magic-conductive material, extremely cheap, and one of the raw materials for making synthetic crystals. But what about the limestone from the Dark Mountains?

Why wouldn’t limestone from other places work?

He threw these questions at Rebecca, who was caught off guard.

The viscount’s granddaughter hadn’t thought about these details at all. She scratched the back of her head. “I was just too excited to think about it…”

“The Dark Mountains were once shrouded by a magical storm, and even now many places there bear the scars of elemental tides,” Gawain stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps that process altered some minerals’ properties… giving them the ability to participate in magical reactions?”

Without more experimental data or theoretical guidance, Gawain could only make this bold guess. But whatever the true reason, one thing was certain: “Rebecca Crystals” were absolutely unique in this world—at least within the Ansu Kingdom.

Who would bother digging up stones and burning them in the Dark Mountains otherwise?

“After confirming the key was quartz sand and Dark Mountain limestone, I tried several methods to increase the crystal yield and quality,” Rebecca continued. “I found that increasing quartz sand raised the crystal output, but many crystals shattered upon cooling. Increasing limestone improved the crystals’ ability to store magic, but beyond a certain point, they wouldn’t crystallize properly. Temperature and firing time also had huge effects… There are so many variables to test, I couldn’t finish them all at once, so I just fired a batch using the best method I found. Here they are—right in front of you.”

Gawain asked bluntly, “Could an ordinary person complete this process?”

“Yes, but most don’t understand the ‘cross-comparison’ and ‘control group’ methods you taught me,” Rebecca replied. “So they just follow the instructions blindly, often mixing up proportions or misremembering firing times—the timing control for crystal firing is much stricter than for bricks.”

Raising the average skill level of the workforce was imperative.

But the territory didn’t even have a few qualified literacy teachers… Everyone who could read and write was already overworked. Where would they find people to form a new education team?

Hire from Tansang Town? There weren’t many literate people there either! Those who could read and write were either merchant children or “respectable” staff like stewards and clerks in noble households. Why would they want to come to this godforsaken place to pioneer? They weren’t serfs or poor folk with nothing to lose…

Gawain rubbed his head—a habitual gesture whenever a new problem arose, as if checking his receding hairline…

“Ancestor?” Rebecca spoke cautiously.

“No, it’s nothing. These are long-term problems to solve,” Gawain waved his hand. “For now, keep producing using the ‘optimal method.’ When you have time, try better proportions. In any case, the more crystal particles, the better—just as important as steel production. Also, find a way to extract the crystals from the black residue. You can try crushing the material and washing it with water—the crystals are harder and heavier than the residue, so they should separate easily.”

Rebecca nodded as she listened. When Gawain finished, she grinned and leaned in like a mischievous kitten, whispering, “Um… Ancestor, I heard from Aunt Hetty that you plan to make these crystals into explosive magical devices?”

“Something like that,” Gawain glanced at the ever-imaginative girl. “What ideas do you have?”

“You want to use the detonation runes from the Gondor-style crystals on these, right?” Rebecca’s eyes sparkled. “But have you figured out how to trigger the explosion?”

Gawain frowned—that was exactly what he’d been pondering.

The detonation runes in the ancient Gondor crystals, like common small runes, are non-self-charging magic arrays. In other words, they need an external magic source as a “starter energy” to trigger the explosion. In Gondor crystals, this energy comes from the crystal itself, but in the “Art One” concept he envisioned, that energy was missing.

The magic stored in Rebecca Crystals can only be used as explosive material—it can’t be extracted for other magical reactions. So the detonation runes attached to Rebecca Crystals must be powered by some other magic source as “starting power.” But where would that come from?

Use another energy-storing crystal as a “detonation battery”? That would defeat the purpose of being cheap.

Use a mage’s magic to activate the runes? That would ruin the goal of making it usable by ordinary people.

“Just say it. I can tell by your expression you have an idea,” Gawain said, looking at Rebecca. She wasn’t the type to keep things bottled up; even if he didn’t ask, she’d probably blurt it out.

“Well,” Rebecca didn’t hesitate, “I studied that detonation rune and found that the starting magic it needs is actually very, very small…”

Gawain nodded. “Of course. Since it’s meant to self-destruct when the crystal is about to fail, the starting energy must have been optimized countless times.”

“Then I discovered something else,” Rebecca continued. “The ‘rune trigger’ I invented produces a small burst of magic at the moment it closes. It’s weak, but definitely there…”

“Wait!” Gawain interrupted sharply. He sensed he’d caught a long-overlooked key point. “You say the rune trigger produces magic when it closes? Are you sure it’s not just magic leaking from the underground magic network?”

“I checked several times. I’ve had strong magic sensitivity since I was little, so I ‘saw’ it clearly,” Rebecca emphasized, nodding firmly. “The rune trigger produces extra magic at closure. And it’s not just the rune trigger—any time a complete rune set is broken apart and then reclosed, there’s a momentary magic burst. It comes and goes in the blink of an eye, but if you want to detonate something, that blink is enough.”

Gawain fell into deep thought, nearly making Rebecca nervous to death before he suddenly snapped out of it. “Ah… Excellent, excellent. Then follow your idea—combine your rune trigger with the detonation rune and give it a try. You can have Hetty help, just say I told you to.”

Rebecca’s face lit up with joy. But just as she was about to leave, she suddenly remembered something. “Oh, Ancestor, have you thought about what to name this explosive device?”

Gawain thought for a moment, then answered solemnly, “Art.”

Rebecca blinked. “Art? What does that have to do with art?”

Gawain’s expression remained serious. “It’s just called Art.”

Rebecca rolled her eyes but thought the ancestor probably had a deeper meaning. She nodded happily. “Okay! Art it is!”

Rebecca left cheerfully, but Gawain sat in his tent, restless for a long time.

He toyed absentmindedly with a pen, turning it over in his hands. When he finally realized what he’d done, he saw he’d scribbled a line on a scrap of paper:

Magic. What exactly is magic?

(Wait, did I just update another chapter?)

(End of chapter)