Cthulhu Gonfalon

Before he entered this world, Sui Xiong was someone who was not really interested in current events. This was not because he was cold or elitist. He had been dragged by his friends to donate blood before. When there were disasters, he had offered donations and did not hesitate to help those in need as well. When he could not witness any bad happenings, however, he was not the sort to waste time investigating as he was extremely busy. Sui Xiong had to work, and he had to settle trades and his accounts. He also had to draw to earn extra income, but he still had to spend time to play games and converse with his in-game friends…

Sui Xiong did not really spend time gossiping about external news. To illustrate this, he did not even remember his own birthday unless his mother reminded him yearly on the phone the day before. The only days that he would remember would be holidays that were publicly celebrated, such as Qing Ming, Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day and New Year’s Day Spring Festival. He’d also remember holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Christmas which his games would organize events for. To someone who could even forget his own birthday, hot societal topics were nonexistent to him.

Who said that digitally savvy people had to be news-oriented? The reality was that Sui Xiong could not even remember the last time he read the news… Furthermore, other than studying art at university, he had also been indifferent towards anything else. Thus, no matter how much he thought, he also could not link the plight of the Commonwealth workers to any current affairs of his past world. In the end, he gave up trying to figure it out.

“Although something’s definitely not right, I still can’t figure it out. I’ll return to this issue another time.”

In any case, being able to be compensated for overtime was already considered decent. Furthermore, the workers from the Commonwealth could actually earn a sizeable amount should they choose to work overtime—this was satisfactory for a typical, average citizen. Thus, even if they envied workers from the Republic, they did not have much reason to rebel. Of course, even if they wanted to, it would be difficult as they would have to abandon their wives and children back home to do so.

In the camp, after taking a leisurely stroll, Hopes felt rejuvenated and was ready to continue working.

Previously, they had realized that the mine was not that big, and the total number of discovered silver ores was not that high either. However, the difference between silver ores and secret silver ores was rather small, and inexperienced workers would not be able to identify them. Thus the mine’s effectiveness was lowered.

Sui Xiong felt some sort of pity for the workers as they continued working tirelessly.

“If the weight of silver and Mithril is significantly different, one could actually start from there…”

He pondered on whether to copy Archimedes and come up with a simple buoyancy tool. It would be easy to make such a tool. One need only put the silver ore into a basin filled with water and gauge its weight by calculating the amount of water that spilled out. From there, one could determine the different weights of silver and Mithril. This idea was derived from simple secondary school physics, and even the muddle-headed Sui Xiong could think of it.

However, after experimenting with a few ores, Sui Xiong felt that it was not very effective. For example, during some tests, he found that silver and Mithril had almost the same weight. This was ridiculous as the defining features of Mithril were “hard” and “light.” With the same shape, Mithril weighed less than ten percent of normal silver ore, which was how it had earned the idiomatic description of “strong like a dragon’s scale but light as a feather”—of course, this was an exaggerated description, but as it mentioned, Mithril was extremely soft yet strong. Sui Xiong had once thrown a huge piece into water, and it had floated to the surface!

Why was Mithril so light yet silver ore so heavy?

Sui Xiong could not understand this and sought the advice of others who knew better.

He found the God of Forging of the half-orcs, Steel Lion Morani.

Upon hearing his query, Morani laughed, then told Sui Xiong that he had made a huge mistake.

Mithril was a strange object, and its weight would vary according to its purity. When its purity was lower, it would have a similar weight to normal silver ore. As the purity increased, its weight would decrease. When its purity reached the level of “thousand pure gold,” it could float in water easily.

“In this case… the purer it is, it could even become as light as an actual feather?” Sui Xiong asked curiously.

Morani shook his head, “I thought about that before in the past as well and did some experiments with that hypothesis in mind. The lightest it can go would be to approximately the weight of cork. I didn’t have the means to continue these experiments and… I also haven’t found any conditions which would make the Mithril even lighter.”

Sui Xiong understood now, and he laughed at himself bashfully, looking at his invention.

It was clear that the purity of most Mithril was not able to utilize the weight method to identify it. In a bunch of ores, only a rare few would be so lightweight that it could be easily identified. The “easy solution” that he had thought up was only feasible in theory but not in actual reality.

“Actually, to select ores, the best method is to use magic. Mithril and silver’s biggest difference lies in its’ uniqueness and magical quality. If one could make a tool to measure the ore’s degree of magic, it would be easy to differentiate them.” Morani piped up, seeing Sui Xiong’s dilemma.

“Even if it is an ore?” Sui Xiong asked.

Morani thought hard before replying, “Yes, probably. As compared to weight, the magical conductivity of Mithril is less affected by its purity. Thus, when making enchanted weapons, one usually uses about ten percent of Mithril to elevate its magical conductivity and allow the weapon to have some magical properties. The weapon can thus conduct magic as a full entity. For Mithril ore’s purity, it would also be similarly high.”

He thought about it again and mentioned that an experiment could be done to prove his point. Thus, the two gods found some silver ores and Mithril ores to test their magical conductivity.

As per Morani’s words, this experiment showed that there was a difference between the magical conductivity of silver ore and Mithril ore. This difference could be identified by average magic and only required one to be a mid-level wizard to do so.

Looking at the experiment results, Sui Xiong couldn’t help but laugh.

Although he had not created the tool yet, Sui Xiong had confidence that he could create it successfully now. This would greatly improve the efficiency of the workers in the camp.