That evening, after meeting up with the twins for dinner, all four of them return to Emily’s room.

  “You guys get fancy magic doors? No fair,” Tom grumbles as Emily is mana into her door.

  “Wait, you guys don’t?” she asks, stepping through the doorway.

  “No, we just have normal wooden doors with handles and a lock. We have to carry keys around with us all the time.”

  “Sucks to be you I guess,” Emily says distractedly, staring at the rge, sealed crate taking up most of the free spa front of her.

  “Woah, how much did you buy?” Hester asks incredulously, walking around to ihe crate from all sides.

  “A fair amount. I need a lot of tools for what I want to do, I don’t really have enough space here,” Emily sighs, jamming a thin pieetal into a gap in the crate to pry it open.

  Dropping the lid of the crate to the floor and pulling apart the side walls, a rge jigsaw puzzle of metal parts carefully slotted together is revealed. Seeing the exposed maes, Emily grins with glee.

  “Thanks freeing to help me set this up. I don’t think I would have been able to manage alone.”

  “Of course,” Juliana chirps happily. “That’s what friends are fht?”

  Tom aer agree with her and approach the crate.

  “Where do we start?” Tom asks.

  “Well…” Emily sets about guiding the group to take apart the carefully stacked pallet, moving the maes to specific points along the walls.

  Halfway through the set-up, as they mount a steam geor the size of Emily’s torso into the er, Hester asks a sensible question.

  “How exactly are you pnning on running a steam geor inside a sealed room?”

  “Ah, there are three parts to that answer,” Emily starts excitedly. “First, these rooms are pletely sealed, as in no air get in and out when the door is shut. So how do you think we breathe right now?”

  All three of her friends pause what they are doing, leaning on various surfaces as they turn to face Emily.

  “Magic?” Tom says sceptically.

  “Exactly! One of the entments pced on these rooms must be cyg breathable air into the room, so I’m pretty sure even if I did burn coal in here, I’d be fine. But I don’t really want to risk that, so my main solution is going to be magic as well.”

  She quickly moves to her desk and picks up her notebook, flig through to one of the pages on spell creation research.

  “See, when I was looking at creating spells, I decided to look into runes a little bit to try a a basiderstanding of what I was w with. When I did, I looked at a few spells and the engraved magic crystals I own. Through that, I found this rune.” She fshes her owards her friends, pointing to a rune circled in the middle of the page. “This rune resent on all of the magic crystals, and I think it’s a simple activation rune. Obviously, I’ll o go to the library and read some books on engraving first, but I think if I carve this ruo a fire crystal, I should be able to use it to boil water and form steam without burning coal. This also should fix the third problem of supplying water if I use a water crystal in the same way.”

  She looks up at her friends with a manic grin, watg the cogs turn in their brains as they sider her per is the first to e to a clusion and speak up.

  “I guess that does seem feasible. I assume you’re relying on the ventition entments of the room to remove the excess steam?”

  “Yeah, I’m hoping they will be effit enough. If not, I’ll have to work out how to use ice crystals to dehe steam after it’s run through the system. It won’t be impossible, but it will slow me down a lot and ore points, so I’m hoping the ventition’s enough.”

  They tinue moving the maes into pce, finishiying the crate soon after. Tom aer move to the door after, ready to leave for the night.

  “Thanks for the help, guys!” Emily says gratefully, waving them off at the door.

  “No problem, happy to help,” Hester says with a smile.

  “Just show us when you make something cool,” Tom adds with a wave.

  Emily smiles and turns bato her room, fag Juliana who has stayed behind.

  “It’s gonna be pretty b to watch, I’m just going to be installing pipes and tubing for a while.”

  “That’s fine, watg you focus is fun and I always go grab my weaving stuff ter to keep me eained,” Juliana cheerfully responds.

  Emily shrugs aurns to her impromptu workshop. She gathers various pipes, tubes, and fittings along with a hacksaw and a file, moving the colle of items to the sturdy new workben the middle of her room. She takes a tube and measures the distand bends required to ect the first rge mae to the steam geor, then fastens the tube into the vi her workbench.

  She cuts the pipe to size, uses a file to remove the metal burrs left by the saw, and then fastens it to the geor with a bolted-shut pipe fastener. Repeating this for the run of pipe, she falls into a smooth rhythm, only breaking her focus on the middle to let Juliana out then ba again to collee things from her room.

  After a few hours, Emily sits on the edge of her bed admiring her hard work. Lining the walls of her room are several bronze pipes, eg every mae together. Between each mae is a valve with a pressure gauge o it; and barbed fittings are positio various points to allow Emily to ect tubes to the system.

  I’ll have to make some quick-release ectors ter to streamli a little. But it’s looking good!

  Satisfied with her work, Emily looks to the bed behind her, seeing Juliana’s sleeping form curled up underh the covers.

  I ’t believe she fell asleep while I was cuttial. She must be able to sleep through a hurrie.

  Smiling to herself and chug silently, she grabs her notebook from her desk and carefully leaves the room. She makes her way down the empty corridor, notig its dimmed lights, still on to allow visibility, but different to show the te hour. One quick teleport ter and she’s walking down the tral aisle in the library, surprised by the number of tables still full. Sitting down at ay one-person table, she pces a hand on the wood before her and makes a request.

  “Three B-grade and three C-grade on mana crystal engraving.”

  After the books arrive, Emily reads through them quickly, making notes on their tents and f a simple idea of how to achieve her goal. She orders another set of books, this time on refining mana crystals, in order to gather as muowledge as possible so she doesn’t waste time or points needlessly experimenting. An hour after arriving at the library, she stands up with purpose and leaves through the transportation rooms.

  Walking out of aransportation room, she looks around the desote hub and picks one of the only two open ters to go to. Behind the ter stands a tired-looking woman with long dishevelled hair, a pair of gsses sitting crooked on her face, and rge bags under her eyes.

  “Hello, how I help you?” she asks with a lifeless gaze that begs to be left alone.

  “I’d like to buy five lesser fire and five lesser water crystals please.”

  The clerk nods silently and pces the payment terminal on the ter before Emily. Theurns to the wall of drawers behind her and takes out ten rough fiip-sized gems, glowing with a mix of enting crimson and cobalt hues. Emily taps her silver crest to pay, watg her total reduce by fifty, tig down to ‘63’.

  “Will that be all?” the clerk asks with a sigh while handing over the ten shards of fire and water.

  “Could I also buy a kilogram of bck iron and a kilogram of white iron please,” Emily requests apologetically.

  The clerk stares at her silently for a few seds before sighing again and turning around while gesturing loosely towards the payment terminal again. Emily taps it again, redug her points by a further twenty-five.

  Ouch, money goes as quickly as it es. I may o look at taking some side jobs if I want to mess about with mana crystals more. Maybe after I reach sed circle. For now, I’ll just reduce my experimentation if it es to it.

  The clerk returns with two small fist-sized ks of white and bck metal, handing them over and gazing at Emily with a silent question.

  “Thank you,” she says with a small nod, turning around to leave the hub, leaving the poor woman alone.

  Returning to her room, Emily pces her magical supplies on her desk, taking only the white iroo her workbench with her. She pces a small tray under her vice to gather the valuable metal filings and cuts off a small sliver. Using a set of files, she slowly fashions the white iron stito a small der with a sharp point and grooves to fortably fit her fingers. After a light sanding and rubbing down with a damp cloth, she returns to her desk with the new metal pencil, files, and a pair of flip-down magnified lenses.

  She opens her notebook, then takes one of the fire crystals and pces the rest of the crystals into a drawer along with the bd white iron. Staring at the notes on crystal refining, she lifts the crystal along with a small delicate file. Gazing through the lenses h before her eyes, she carefully runs the file along any specs of remaining bck iron or imperfes on the gem, gathering the removed powder in aray. After twenty minutes of delicate filing, she is left with a small glittering gem, void of any visible imperfes.

  I don’t have the tools to try cutting it right now and I’m not sure it’s big enough to have a stable core. This will have to do for now.

  Pg down the file, she picks up her white iron pencil as out a small flow of mana into it. Seeing the ethereal blue glow envelop the metal, she grins before stopping her mana flow and flipping her o a page on ruaking a final look at the activation rune, she takes a deep breath and steadies her hands. Pushing mana bato the engraving tool, she gently touches it to a clear fa the gem and starts carefully drawing the rune. As the tool’s tip passes along the smooth surface of the gem, the mana within cuts deep, leaving behind a solid blue glowing line.

  The activation rune slowly forms on the crystal, however after Emily finishes drawing half of it, the crystal begins to heat up and vibrate. Microscopic cracks begin to spread from the engraved lines and the iy of the crystal quickly decreases.

  Shit.

  Reising the immi colpse of the crystal, Emily drops the engraving tool onto the desk and remembers an excerpt from one of the books on crystal engraving.

  Should a mana crystal begin to lose iy, a detonation of the stored magic power is immi. The best method tainst the detonation is to have a tai array prepared. However, should a crystal colpse without proper preparations made, the safest solution is to form a barrier around it with mana and attempt to smother the detonation. This method should not be used if at all possible due to….

  She brings her hands together, holding the crystal in her palms, and pours mana into her palms. The moment a sealed bubble of mana forms, she feels an intense force pressing against her mana and frantically pours in more power to maintain the seal. A few excruciating seds ter, the pressure disappears, and she opens her hands to reveal the finely powdered remains of a crystal. She lets the powder fall into the tray below and wipes her brow with a sigh.

  Damn, what did I d? I don’t think the shape of the rune was wrong, maybe too much mana? Does the element of my mana matter like with spells?

  As she siders her failure, she pulls up the system to check her mana.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  [Mana:] 133/360

  _____

  Wow, that was a lot. I see why there was a warning about using this method, a normal mage would be drained by that.

  With a sihought, Emily’s maa pours out of her cortex, shifting form as it flows down her spihe new males intic circle fortably, bringing a smile to her face.

  Good, let’s try again.

  She pulls another fire crystal out of the drawer as about refining it with a file before engraving it. This time, as she lifts her engraving tool to the gem, she pulls upon her uanding of fire and imbues elemental mana into the tool. The smooth silver metal heats up slightly as a warm e glow forms around it.

  Drawing the ruo the gem again, this time she finishes eighty per t of the rune before the crystal starts to destabilise. She follows the same process of sm the detonation with her mana aing the powdered remnants of crystal fall into the tray below.

  So, matg the mana’s element helps but doesn’t solve the issue. Less mana this time.

  She refills her mana again, redug her maa stores to only twenty and not managing to fill her mana all the way.

  I only have enough in me for one more failure, I’ll meditate after this.

  After refining a third gem, she reduces her mana output while engraving and mao finish the full rune. Grinning wildly, she moves over to the steam geor and opens the front grate, pg the crystal into the empty coal chamber.

  Time for the moment of truth.

  Iing a small amount of mana into the engraved rune, she watches as the air around the gem shimmers with heat. She ’t help the small ugh that escapes as the temperature gauge on the geor shoots up.