"Your parents live in a castle?"
Dream was surprised as they walked up to a huge wooden structure. Idona smiled and responded.
"My dad is a class 3, and a rather powerful one at that. Plus he's an important military advisor, earning him a high position."
"If he has such a high status, why doesn't he live up in the Tree?"
"Because the rest of his family is down here. He settled for this place instead."
"Cause this is 'settling'."
"Come on, they should be inside."
Smiling and pushing open the gates, Idona happily walked into the property. Dream just followed behind while observing the place.
[Well wouldn't you know. She's taking you to meet her parents.]
'Hmm, maybe I should head to the factory...'
[No! Escort her, you fool! Time to snare yourself another woman!]
'You and the two girls are enough for me, thank you very much. Besides, Iris would probably kill us both if I brought Idona back home.'
[Hm, yea, she probably would.]
'Let's just find a time to head out. I really do want to research those energy crystals. Besides, Idona's visiting her family. I'll be in the way.'
As he had the conversation with Sophia, he and Idona walked into the courtyard of the property.
"Hmm? Who are... Wait, Xyla?!"
Out of nowhere, a woman came walking towards them. She was stunned upon seeing Idona, and the two of them faced her. Idona casually looked at her and waved.
"Hi Casia."
"You...It's been a while."
"It has. Do you know where Dad is?"
"He's in his study."
"Figures."
"Are you going to tell me who this is?"
The woman, Casia, pointed to Dream.
"Oh, this is Dream. He's my partner."
"Partner? Like..."
"N-Not that kind of partner. He's a magician. We work together."
Idona blushed as she prevented a misunderstanding. Casia just looked at her with narrow eyes for a bit before turning to Dream.
"Dream."
"Yes?"
"Are you a class 4?"
"Nope."
"How powerful are you?"
"I could kill you without lifting a finger."
"...That's bold."
"It's also true."
"Casia, I don't suggest you test him." (Idona)
"...What about you, Xyla? I can't sense your power... Don't tell me you advanced?"
"I did. I'm a class 4."
"...So you really did. Father will be happy. Unfortunately, you can't become a Ljosfar."
"I don't care about that. I'm a Magus instead. But enough of that. I want to see mom and dad."
"Sure. Go to dad's study. I'll grab your mother."
"Okay. Dream-."
"You go see your parents, Idona. I actually have some things I need to take care of."
Dream cut in, using this opportunity to part. Idona thought about it for a second before nodding.
"I guess you are busy. Go ahead. I won't disturb you."
"Thanks. Have fun. I'll let you know when Vythica contacts me."
"Ok."
Saying bye, Dream took to the sky and flew away. Idona watched for a bit before turning and entering the building.
..........
Soon, Dream was up in his factory.
In front of him was a table with dozens of wooden crystals on it. These were all the crystals he pulled out of the tree, and they amounted to a little over 50.
"These things must be very precious, but there's just so much in that Tree."
Dream spoke as he fondled one of the crystals.
[We had already discovered over 25,000 of those crystals, and that was just in the part of the Tree that we searched.]
"If it weren't for their difficulty in pulling out, I would've been able to take more."
[We also had to watch those streams of mana filled with auras. Those were elves who had connected with the Tree. If they discovered you or a significant decrease in the Tree's power, they would go crazy.]
"Luckily we were strategic in pulling these out. Nobody noticed, otherwise that Ancient would've brought it up. Oh well. Let's check these things out."
Dream put the other matters aside before letting loose his influence. He also assembled his globe network, bringing out his full magical power.
"So if my guess is right, then this crystal is the solid form of mana. How to form such a thing, I'm not sure. But I can imagine that it takes massive amounts of mana."
[I'm thinking the same. This crystal is present in the 4th dimension. However, the wood that's bonded to it is not. So the crystal is independent of the wood.]
"So it's definitely a 4D energy. And since it's 4D, we should be able to take it out of the 3rd dimension."
[The problem is that the energy is, again, bonded to the wood. We were barely able to shatter the crystal with liquid mana. To disperse it and move it freely will take a lot of force.]
"Luckily my soul is sufficiently strong. Or should be at least. Let me see if I can seep my influence into it."
Saying so, Dream held up the crystal and activated his skills alongside his pure influence and globe network. All three attempted to pierce through into the crystal, but after a while, only his influence was able to do so.
"Damn, this crystal is tough."
Dream cursed as he tried to exert control over the crystal. He tugged and pulled and squeezed, but even after using a bunch of energy, he was only barely able to deform the crystal.
<[Arcana] has leveled up!>
"Huuhh... A level up. Well at least I know it's magical. But damn! This thing won't budge. It's like whenever I try to control flux..."
[I can imagine this crystal has a much higher concentration of flux than liquid mana.]
"And it's bonded together extremely well. If I want to control this crystal, I'll need to be able to control flux better."
[Or we can enchant it.]
"Can we?"
[It would be very difficult, but this crystal is still energy. Although our liquid mana would be inferior, we could still try to use it to extract energy from the crystal through external...]
"...Hm? Sophia?"
[...]
"What happened?"
[...So, totally different topic. Believe it or not, our production has slipped in the past week or so.]
"Gone down? How?"
[I'm not sure. Either way, just now two of the enhancement bots somehow lost their power. And not electrical power.]
"Hmm... Where are they?"
[Right here.]
Dream looked up and turned around as his mana controlled two bots to fly over.
[These two lost their ability to fly and enhance materials. And not just them, but many others have had their efficiency lower over time, albeit not as much.]
"Hm, these are one of the first bots we made for enhancement. Let's take a look."
Dream raised his hand, placing it on one of the bots. He scanned it in its entirety, and he quickly found what was wrong.
"It's enchantments? They've degraded... So enchantments can be worn over time."
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[I'm thinking more over use than time. Our enchantments don't leak and are incredibly efficient.]
"Mm. I guess degradation makes sense, though not conventionally. You would think it's because of something like entropy as with regular materials. But we know that's not the case."
[Will.]
"Bingo. Like spells, enchantments are loaded with the Will power of the soul. Stronger Will means stronger enchantments. But that Will is expended when the enchantment is utilized. And without a Will to keep it together, the enchantment will degrade and lose its power."
[What about weapons that adventurers use? They're not are crafted by powerful people yet we've heard nothing about enchantment degradation.]
"Probably because the enchantment is utilized alongside someone with a Will. Those enchantments are like pipelines, while the user is the water. They pump water through the pipes, so the pipes have nothing to do but guide the water. But if you were to have a machine do the pumping?"
[Eventually it would run out of power.]
"And in this case, the pipes are acting as the guide as well as the battery. These bots have had nothing to replenish their power, so their enchantments have been worn down. It doesn't have a regenerative Will like us."
[...So this is a problem. A lot of our machines use mana cores and are purely mana-based. All of our non-reactor-driven ships are purely mana based alongside our enhancement and construction bots.]
"The ship problem can be solved rather easily. We just need to have someone onboard drive some of the enchantments, like a human battery. As for our bots... we can make the construction bots purely mechanical, but for anything like enchantments and enhancing, we need mana bots. In the future, we'll have to refresh the enchantments occasionally."
[This is only happening now, so at least Will doesn't get used up quickly. Plus, these are first generation bots. The bots that we enchant now will have the benefit of your stronger Will.]
"Mm. How about you bring all the bots over. I'll do a recharge and maybe some small upgrades."
[Ok.]
............
A few hours later, Dream finally sent the last bot away. He slumped down in his chair, a tiny bit tired.
[I didn't expect you'd want to make more bots. On top of doing more liquid mana enchantments.]
"They'll last longer that way. And they're more powerful now."
[There's also an additional few thousand bots we need to worry about.]
"But we need those to accommodate the extra resource intake."
[Only because you launched another 700 mining teams into the animal continent. At least they're almost entirely mechanical, but still.]
"The animal continent is an untouched mining haven. If I had the materials, I would send 7,000 mining teams into it, not just 700. Luckily, most of them are probably going to head to the mountains."
[That's where the dwarfs are.]
"I'm sure they can share."
[...Well once we find some good spots, we'll be able to ramp up production by several times. Until then, the spots we find will be excavated by multiple teams at once. In fact, I'll send over some mining teams to the ones on the human continent to support.]
"Alright. How are those mining spots doing anyway?"
[If you're asking whether or not those spots still have materials, then yes, they do. They can supply us with far more than what we currently have, and that's just one.]
"Have they been discovered?"
[Of course. But the guardian bots are able to either scare people off or kill the monsters. No problems have arisen.]
"Good. Now, let's get back to this crystal. Didn't expect to get sidetracked."
Dream spun on his chair and faced the table with the crystals on them. He picked up the fragments of the one he broke.
"I should be able to more easily manipulate the smaller crystals. But even these fragments are difficult to deform."
As he said that, Dream exerted his influence on the crystal, trying to split or squish it. But even these small movements took lots of power.
[Remember that your Arcana skill is different from your Magic skill. You're trying to control energy as you did before, but that may not work, especially now that you're trying to control flux.]
"I'm not sure that there's any special technique to develop. I mean, the only thing different about the new and old skill is the way the signatures are formed. And although this new signature allowed me to control new energy, I have no idea how. So for now, I just need to brute force it. I'll gradually get better, strengthen my soul, and then I can develop new techniques."
[Maybe. Try another way to brute force it though. Maybe try controlling smaller chunks of crystal.]
"I can do that."
Nodding, Dream began to bring out some liquid mana in Aegis' storage and move it over to the crystal fragments. He then did as in the Tree and bombard the crystal with mana.
Eventually, Dream was able to break the fragments into smaller pieces. He then broke those smaller pieces into even smaller ones. Once had had pieces the size of his fingernail, he stopped.
"Let's see what I can do with this."
Smiling, Dream took the finger sized crystal and manipulated it with his influence.
This small crystal was clearly much more easily manipulated, and Dream was able to split it in half with a bit of effort. He then took the halves and split them once more. Then he took the quarters and split them into eighths.
This got Dream thinking though.
"Hey, what's the smallest building block of mana?"
[...Am I supposed to answer that?]
"It'd be pretty cool if you could."
[I'm sure it would.]
"...Could it be a particle? Or is it energy? And what would this energy be?"
[Well, physical forces are all particles. Photons carry the electromagnetic force, gluons carry the strong interaction, and W and Z bosons carry the weak interaction. Those forces are considered 'energy' even though they're the exchange of particles.]
"So what about things like heat?"
[Heat is the transfer of energy.]
"And energy?"
[The quantitative property of a system.]
"...So it's a property, not something physical. It's like an attribute. It can be counted and measured, but not held. It's a concept."
[Correct.]
"So mana. It's not only a concept, but a physical, or magical, manifestation. It's tangible. Energy isn't tangible. So it's a material."
[According to normal logic, of course.]
"Sometimes we just have to make assumptions. Anyway, I wonder how small this can go. Are mana particles smaller than matter particles?"
As he pondered, Dream began splitting the crystal pieces into smaller bits. Every time he did, it got easier and easier, so he split faster and faster. And with his ability to sense small objects, he was quickly able to reduce the crystal pieces into sizes comparable to Aegis' steel particles. But once he reached this point, he was only able to go a bit smaller before barely being able to sense the pieces anymore.
Though when he got to this point, he discovered something.
"I can more clearly sense the crystal pieces than other mana when at smaller scales. Usually I scan things with liquid mana, but the liquid mana isn't dense enough to be able to provide smaller scale observations. But this solid mana..."
[It's denser, so that would give us better observation ability. Since the solid mana is in small pieces, we're able to more easily control it. Try converting the crystals to your own like with mana and see if you can observe things through it.]
"Yes."
Dream smiled and quickly did what she said. He was thinking the same thing.
"Okay. Converting... That's a lot of energy to convert, but okay. Now use influence to observe... Whoah."
<[Arcana] has leveled up!>
<[Arcana] has leveled up!>
<[Arcana] has leveled up!>
<[Particle Manipulation] has leveled up!>
<[Particle Manipulation] has leveled up!>
<[Particle Manipulation] has leveled up!>
....
When Dream finally took full control of the crystal, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
"I can see particles so clearly. The wood that was bonded to the crystal... It's like I can see the molecular structure."
[Previously your sensory scale was easily smaller than 100 nanometers. Now it's gone to under 10. The only problem is that you can only sense things that are within the crystal.]
"We can move the wood out and place the crystal over some other matter. Since these pieces are so small, I have no problem hovering the crystal through a bunch of matter."
[But to get anything done we need to be able to see more. Like Aegis' particles. We can't possibly use such a small chunk as a microscope and go to every one of his particles. It would take too long.]
"Then we get more pieces. Once I took absolute control of the solid mana, it became much more easily manipulated. Though it takes a few times more effort to do anything with it than with liquid mana, we get better results. I can just keep breaking it down until we have tons of pieces, take control one at a time, and then use them all."
[Mm. Good plan. Though I hope you're ready for some exhaustion, cause those crystals are going to suck the life out of you.]
"If it weren't for the fact that this came from the Tree, it wouldn't be so hard to convert this stuff. The Tree had its own signature bonded to the mana, and it was very powerful. That'll probably be the hardest part of this whole thing."
[Do you want me to call over the girls? They can help supply some energy to your soul so you at least don't pass out.]
"Huh. That's a good idea. Sure."
[Calling them now.]
"Hmm... I'll start breaking the crystals more until they get here."
Saying so, Dream went back to halving chunks of crystal.