Chapter 159
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 159
Chapter Title: Natural Orichalcum
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Sigh... Orichalcum really is way too inefficient to extract like this.
It was just a tiny lump about two finger joints in size, but I was absolutely certain.
"That's..."
"I think we've struck it rich."
"No way..."
"Orichalcum. Even in mana veins, it's only found in trace amounts in the most unstable mines."
"The metal of the gods!!"
This might as well be the first natural discovery of orichalcum in history.
Berus's eyes widened to the point of tearing as he reverently accepted the lump I'd handed him, handling it like a sacred relic.
He turned it over in his hands, even bit it with his teeth, then dropped to his knees right there.
"Oh... ohhh... My god... To think I'd live to see and touch natural orichalcum..."
"And you want to give up on a place like this? Does that even make sense?"
"Ha... But no matter how good the ore is, it's still dangerous..."
"Then we'll fix that. Make it safer than a regular mana vein."
Unstable mana veins were dangerous, no doubt about it.
Especially when mana torrents on the verge of eruption reacted with external mana, they exploded spectacularly.
So just siphon off that energy beforehand and empty them out, right?
By conventional non-physical laws, controlling it would be like trying to tame a typhoon, but that didn't matter.
If I couldn't solve this, I'd never even get to touch the orichalcum.
Wuuung!!!
As a test, I used mana to create a magic circle and inscribed it across the area.
The wildly unstable mana torrents began channeling their energy in a uniform direction.
And their destination was the palm of my hand.
Wuuuung...
A bluish compressed mana sphere rapidly formed above my palm.
"What's that?"
"The energy torrents building up in the unstable mana vein. A truly rare phenomenon."
Though it wouldn't produce incredible minerals like orichalcum as a result.
This vein had probably cycled through thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of years of sustained energy flow, erupting and recompressing repeatedly to forge the orichalcum.
"First things first, we'll set up a magic circle to create a flow path. No point keeping the torrents bottled up anyway, so we'll divert them and use the energy separately."
With a plan in place, it was time to act.
No need to dig deeper.
I could just cast magic across the entire mountain to carve out channels for the mana torrents.
"I'm only explaining what I'm about to do once, so listen up."
"Oh... ohhh..."
"First, I'm installing a spell over the whole mountain. But it'll be massive and intricate, so I'll embed about four manastone pillars."
"Manastone pillars... You mean those huge columns made of mana stones?"
Without catalysts, the precision and stability of a magic circle installed on-site couldn't compare to one channeled through manastone pillars.
But the biggest advantage was longevity.
"A massive magic circle... But Young Master, from what I know, manastone pillars require huge amounts of mana, don't they? The upkeep costs alone would be insane..."
"They're everywhere here."
His eyes went wide at my words.
"Here? You don't mean..."
"Those energy torrents. We'll process them. Oh, you don't know how?"
"If people knew how to process that, do you think they'd have left it alone?"
"The stronger the torrents in this mine, the more stable and durable the magic circle becomes. If they weaken, the circle won't be needed anyway."
In other words, it would be the ultimate large-scale artifact, self-sustaining its own durability.
"Hmm..."
"I'll go procure the manastone pillars now, so you have one job, Berus. Gather all the laborers and undead. And..."
I sketched the mine's topography on the ground with my finger.
"Roughly here, around these spots. Dig in four places total."
"How deep?"
"Hm... Sorry to dump this on you, but at least ten meters."
"That's easy enough."
Mage Association Bergal.
The Bergal branch of the Mage Association was a public organization granted significant authority from the Alliance.
A mage dispatched from Bergal had detected the anomaly at Cascadia's mine and immediately reported back to headquarters.
Within hours, a man and woman arrived atop a massive wyvern and promptly declared the site off-limits.
Raida, the site administrator, and his counterpart Rabena.
The fraternal twins were thirty-one years old, the same age.
They might seem young, but their reputations preceded them even within Bergal.
Prodigies rare even on the continent.
Fifteen years prior, the Mage Towers had vied to recruit the siblings.
And with talent matched by tireless effort, their skills were far from ordinary.
Raida specialized in magic circles, while his younger sister Rabena excelled in control magic, preventing mana disasters and resolving problem areas as a specialist.
Naturally, they were the ones who had sealed off the Cascadia mine.
Frankly, even the twins hadn't expected a high-rank mage to shatter it so suddenly.
"It's broken..."
Raida closed his eyes, setting aside his book as his dejected sister muttered.
"It got interfered with not long ago, and it broke right away? These lunatics must be out of their minds."
He stood without hesitation, donning his robe.
"Y-You're going?"
"We have to. They clearly don't grasp how dangerous this is, so I'll go explain and reseal it."
"Ha... But that means there's a mage who broke our spell... Then..."
"It was a hasty setup, and if it shattered instantly, someone probably exploited a moment when nearby mana flows weakened it. A intact spell couldn't break that fast."
That made sense, but...
Rabena hung her head.
"I have a bad feeling..."
"Damn fools."
"P-People who die don't come back..."
Mana disasters were no light calamity.
Among disasters, they ranked among the most threatening.
She'd seen victims mangled by the aftermath, living in agony.
It had started as a routine support request, but inspecting the mine's mana bloodflow had revealed the truth.
This place churned with energy dwarfing any mana vein she'd seen, primed to erupt at any moment.
If it blew, the entire mine would vaporize, and who knew how far the disaster would spread.
Past incidents had left dozens of kilometers in ruins for decades.
And Cascadia's mana mine was the largest she'd ever encountered.
They'd issued warnings repeatedly about the risks.
Even money-crazed fools had lines they shouldn't cross!
And the seal broke in less than two days?
Natural degradation was possible, sure, but even weakened, a magic circle wouldn't shatter easily without someone delivering the finishing blow.
In short, someone had smashed an already compromised seal.
The culprit was obvious. The mine owner had every reason to resent the shutdown.
She understood.
But understanding didn't make it right.
To the twins, this fell squarely into unacceptable territory.
Typical noble greed.
Though she hated to do it...
"Wh-What if they refuse?"
Raida's face turned icy at his sister's question.
"What else? Forced enforcement. Regretting it after casualties mount is too late."
That's why they protected people from the blindly greedy.
The cloistered Mage Towers couldn't; only field-active associations like theirs could.
If they resisted, they'd subdue and seal by force.
He gripped his staff.
"Let's go."
Manastone pillars took the form of massive obelisk-like structures gleaming with pure white light.
Their sizes varied.
They looked like mere artworks, but in truth, they were enormous devices that maintained and repaired giant magic circles.
Usually, their long creation time made buying pre-made ones easier, but I didn't go that route.
The giant manastone pillar I needed had a slightly different structure from standard ones.
Even linked to my magic circle, ordinary pillars lacked the output or fine-tuning capability.
Crafting one required immense time and effort from a mage's power alone.
It wasn't something made easily.
But that didn't apply to me much.
I was a mage, but I had other skills beyond mere magic.
Wuuung...
Vast information flooded in, but I twisted and fused materials using my full breadth of knowledge.
Altering structures, blending in specific ratios like forging a new alloy.
Materials weren't an issue.
Stone for the outer shell was abundant nearby, and lunar stones or mana stones were already stocked by Berus for vein management.
Manastone pillars dotted the continent.
Like power poles or transmission towers from my past life.
But standard-efficiency pillars wouldn't cut it here.
Nothing in the world was perfectly flawless.
"Gotta give credit where it's due."
I boldly discarded a few advantages of conventional designs to shape a new structure.
Then embedded lunar stones in specific patterns and imprinted data algorithms.
Commands like routing energy through path two in scenario one, and so on.