Cthulhu Gonfalon

The new tool that Sui Xiong created was, in essence, a freely adjustable metal frame. One could put the silver ore into the frame and adjust it to secure the ore, turn the knobs and land the probes on the ore. Afterward, one only needed to use the magic crystals to allow magic to flow within the probes. At the top of the probes, there were magical arrays that were sensitive to magical powers. It would emit lights of differing brightness according to the intensity of the magical conductivity of the ore. Thus, through this, one could estimate whether the ore contained Mithril and if so, the level of contained Mithril.

However, after some trials, Sui Xiong found that the contraption was not as useful as he had perceived it to be. More than once, it was unable to detect magic flow, yet the ore had contained Mithril. He continued to research and eventually came to the realization that this was due to the uneven spread of Mithril within the rock. If the probe did not touch the exact spot containing Mithril, magic would definitely not flow through the rock, and thus the results would be inaccurate. How then could this problem be solved? Sui Xiong’s engineering skills were extremely mediocre and could not even compare to ingenious secondary school students. Thus, although he considered the issue for a long time, he still could not come up with a proper solution.

Sui Xiong decided to consult Morani who smiled and shook his head.

“Actually, many before you have thought of a similar solution to yours. This was the main problem that had stunned them as well. The uneven division of the Mithril elements severely impact the testing of the ores. For example, an ore may be half stone and half Mithril, how would one test it then? No one has gotten a proper solution yet, thus we can only rely on human labor to do the identification. All we can do to speed up the process is to first separate those with and without Mithril content before dividing them into levels of purity.”

Sui Xiong had the realization that he was not the first person who had tried to be ingenious.

Whatever he could think of, there would definitely be people who came to the same conclusion. The tactics that he had used were also not out of the ordinary as compared to those of better wizards. Thus, it was unsurprising that he was not the first to try. Upon realizing this, Sui Xiong sighed in a resigned fashion.

“Actually, it’s not that this problem is completely hopeless. It’s just that the road to solving it is the complete opposite of your thinking method.”

“It’s a different way of thinking? In what sense?” Sui Xiong’s eyes lit up, and he asked curiously.

Morani did not reveal the answer immediately but instead chose to let Sui Xiong ponder on the issue.

Sui Xiong thought hard before answering, “How about breaking the ore into smaller chunks?”

“To blow up a piece of ore would be a difficult task.” Morani shook his head.

Sui Xiong thought again before replying, “Dissolving the ore in some sort of medicinal liquid?”

“That would be a waste of such liquids. Even if we could dissolve the ore, the Mithril can’t be dissolved.” Morani shook his head again.

Sui Xiong thought for a third time before quipping, “Creating a few holes on the ore?”

“And then?”

Sui Xiong was unable to respond further as he felt that it was rather useless to do so. He sighed in frustration and said, “Alright, I guess I’m just not intelligent enough to deduce the correct answer. What method could you be referring to?”

Morani laughed and with a wave of his hand, gathering a large amount of magic. This cloud of magic had about a foot’s length, and it condensed into a liquid-like structure. He then took a piece of ore—about the size of a fist—and threw it into the cloud of magic.

“In the presence of powerful magic, silver will slowly become Mithril. If there was already Mithril present, this conversion rate would speed up. In this kind of environment, stones like this would only require about thirty-odd years to fully become Mithril.”

Sui Xiong stared on in awed bafflement, unable to believe that this was a viable solution. He would never have thought of converting the ore rather than trying to identify its contents. This would be akin to the idea of removing the problem rather than solving it…

Sui Xiong stayed in a daze for a while before something occurred to him, and he asked, “If that’s your solution, how do we differentiate naturally-occurring and acquired Mithril?”

Morani was silent for a while before asking, “Is naturally-occurring Mithril common?”

“No, it is rather rare.”

“Do we even need to consider it then?”

Sui Xiong was stunned yet again.

Even if the ore was naturally-occurring, any trouble was worth it as it was valuable. In most cases, in reality, the miners did not consider the source of the Mithril—there simply weren’t so many cases of naturally-occurring Mithril in the world!

Sui Xiong himself had also been narrow-minded to have considered this unimportant question. This was akin to a chef’s disciple asking how to cook panda meat when his master tried to explain how to cook meat using common examples of pork, beef, mutton, chicken, dog, etc.

As he thought, Sui Xiong could not help but laugh. Afterward, he temporarily paused his focus on this matter and simply shared his newfound findings with Reif Kawat and Satan to allow them to set up the Mithril conversion pool as fast as possible. This conversion pool could also serve a second use of assembling the most important item to the Organization of Magicians—the Great Magic Pool. This referred to a facility that concentrated a large amount of magic for storage. The magic could then be used when needed.

To the mages, it was wasteful when they naturally produced magic that they did not need to use. If they could store their extra magic energy, it could be used when they required it, be it for research or war. For example, in a fight between two mages, if both had expended all their energy and one of the mages took out their chopper to threaten the other, the latter would have no choice but to risk losing his life. However, if at this moment, the threatened mage had the chance to use the magic pool and dial a number, at the speed of light, he would be able to use the stored magic to regain his fighting strength and use a reflective spell to emerge victorious…

Such an event had happened in the Mifata Federation before, and more than once too! Among all the magic federations in the world, the Mifata Federation favored the Great Magic Pool the most. Although it was not invented by them, they had developed it greatly over the years. Currently, all their magic towers had to be accompanied by a Great Magic Pool to allow the gods within to extend their enchantments.

The Republic of Northwest actually did have its own Great Magic Pool—it was built within the legendary necromancer Tu Ya’an’s magical tower’s compounds. Tu Ya’an did not mind sharing this pool with everyone else, but his magic was specialized towards the Dead Soul Spell. Thus, excluding Tu Ya’an and the tens of disciples under him, no one else dared to utilize it.

Chief Mage Satan all along had plans to build a great magic pool but had procrastinated due to his personal matters and eventually forgot about it. With Sui Xiong’s orders, he decided to end his procrastination and settle this matter once and for all.

Such an endeavor would definitely benefit the Republic of Northwest and the mages!