Year 2, Winter, First Month, Third Week.

In the Council meeting before the explosion.

“… Then, after we get Tael away, we would proceed with the explosion, Karl?”

“Hmm… Before, I said that I had a way of causing a massive explosion but it would be costly and very dangerous, so we left it as last resort.  Let me briefly explain how I could do it…”

Everyone listened attentively as he explained.

“My mother should also know about it because it’s one of the most common questions we get from the Alchemy’s students… Without going into the technical details, the energy or elemental crystals are basically accumulated materialized energy, and the different quality levels (low, medium, high, unique) represent the energy concentration levels of the crystals.. ”

“When they learn about the Focus Runes, which uses magic energy to increase the concentration of energy, the first idea that comes to mind is using the Rune to improve the quality of crystals. Dismissing some conceptual problems, like the absence of some elemental properties in the lower level crystals, the idea has a fatal flaw. It’s fine to use the Rune to increase the energy or a property concentration after extracted from the crystal, but if one does it inside the crystal, it might cause an accident.”

“Long story short, the crystal’s structure is formed to hold a specif amount and density of energy. If one tries to put more energy into it, it would only leak, like a full pot, but if one tries to increase its density… The crystal would, at some point, break, which wouldn’t be dangerous for a LQ crystal, but for MQ or HQ crystals, the reaction of releasing a big amount of dense energy would be… explosive.”

Seeing the Councillors’ excited faces, Reiner understood that they missed a crucial point, so she added.

“You can’t look at this as an easy way to craft a powerful weapon… Besides being extremely wasteful, since we would lose a powerful and rare resource that could last for years, the rupture has other dangers… Tell them, Karl.”

“Mother’s right, the reaction might cause unpredictable changes in the material world, I can’t estimate the results, maybe even permanent damage could be done to the environment or to the affected people. So, it can only be used as a last resort… It would be better if we could use a MQ crystal instead of a HQ. In addition to it being less dangerous, we only have two HQ crystals, which we need to create the barriers…”

Time was of the essence, so Omero pushed to conclude the meeting.

“So it’s settled, we should use one of the MQ energy crystals.”

However, Karl’s complicated expression told them it wouldn’t be that easy.

“Unfortunately, the effects of rupturing a MQ energy crystal wouldn’t be that powerful… I think it would be enough to kill or neutralize a Fighter, but I don’t know about Mages…”

The Councillors turned to Lew, after all, he was their expert in Kingdom-related things.

“Ahen… If it’s only or barely enough to kill a Fighter we would need luck to kill a Mage. If it’s a regular Invoker, it would work if the Mage doesn’t know about it, but if we face a hybrid Mage or a Commander, it would be difficult to kill the Mage. Usually, low-level Mages don’t have high physical resistance, but they all know life-saving spells. The spells might have a high cost of resources and even hurt the Mage, but they wouldn’t hesitate to use it once they feel threatened… In my opinion, we should try to evaluate the situation before deciding which crystal…”

However, Karl still seemed troubled by something.

“There also another problem with using the HQ crystal… I can’t guarantee a safe distance from it, probably, it would affect a one-kilometer radius. The barrier might hold off the worst of the explosion, which is the high-density energy, but it might not block physical reactions…”

The scared Lonni decided to add something.

“We could hide and protect ourselves with the shields, maybe even run…”

But Marlen dismissed his desperate idea.

“We should try to protect ourselves with everything we have, but that shouldn’t be our primary plan. Also, running if them out there isn’t wise. Once we leave the barrier, nothing can guarantee our safety…”

Karl looked like he had something to add, but seemed to be conflicted, so his mother stepped up.

“There’s an option, but it’s also far from ideal… We discussed in our brainstorming sessions possibilities to respond to many types of attacks. One of the good ideas would be using a physical barrier. The MQ earth crystal has barrier property, but takes a lot of energy… Even so, it’s a solid option because we could use the Arrays around the outpost to craft it, Karl can confirm if we would be able to create it fast enough…”

“Hmm… We could, I mean, I would need an hour but we could… The problem is the energy cost, we only have two HQ crystals, one is being used by the protective barrier. So, if we use the other to create the explosion, we would need to use the rest of the MQ energy crystal to power the earth barrier, but that would be a close call…”

Lew hesitated but decided to intervene.

“Actually… I have a HQ crystal. It’s for my protection, like a life-saving item, but I would give it up to save everyone…”

His heart was pained to give up on such a treasure, but he already decided to support them the best he could, and more important than paying his father back was fighting for his conviction. Before they finished the subject, Karl decided to give the last warning.

“I would do my best to prevent any backslashes but we should be certain of it, like I said, the consequences would be unpredictable… In the worse case, we could all die…”

Everybody considered it carefully. However, for those who tasted freedom, there were worse fates than dying, after all, the moment they decided to fight against the Kingdom for their freedom, they already chose to risk at all. Omero again tried to press forward.

“So, it’s decided, we will try to evaluate the situation and chose the crystal accordingly… But how could we check their strength…”

The Councillors started to throw in ideas, everything from attacking them to trying to craft a tool to check their strength appeared. However, Marlen and Omero already knew what had to be done. Marlen painly nodded in agreement before Omero spoke again.

“I can do it… I will go out and try to extract the information from them.”

Everyone felt that sending him was wrong, they shouldn’t let an elder go and he was an important figure, if something happened to him… However, nobody could think of a better idea, no one else was capable of facing the enemies and entice them to talk. In a few minutes, they rounded the plan and started to move.

After locating the enemies and Tael, they decided on their rescue route, and thus the plan was put in full motion. Karl managed his disciples as they were extra limbs. Faster them ever before, they started drawing Runes in stones as the crafters polished and prepared them to replace the other stones in the ground. They didn’t know the exact situation, but they were told enough to understand this was a life-and-death situation, so mistakes could cost lives. Fortunately, errors were quickly corrected and they advanced as planned.

If they had time, Karl would design a less costly and stronger barrier, but time was of the essence. They quickly modified the heating circle to form an earth barrier around its outer circle, the changes were hasty but should work. The actual modifications were just an adjustment to the Direction Array (triangular form) to direct the effect outside the outpost instead of inside it, and the replacement of the internal Arrays for generating warmth for an Extract Property Array (star form) to get the barrier property from the MQ earth crystal. The Manipulation Array (smaller triangle inside of a bigger one) was, however, maintained.

After Karl learned the Manifestation Rune, he could have replaced the Manipulation Array in the heating circle, after all, the purpose of the Array was to manipulate the heat from a fire that was kept going inside of the Array and transfer it uniformly inside the outpost. With the Manifestation Rune, they could use magic energy to manifest the heat directly. Although the solution might be easier, because it would dismiss the need for keeping a fire going and better control the temperature, the costs would be greatly increased, transforming magic energy into other things was costly.

Different from the protective barrier, which was manifested using the Rune, the earth barrier could be formed by manipulated earth, just like the heating circle, thus saving on energy. Of course, the best solution was to manipulate the earth around the outpost, but they didn’t have time for modifications, so the earth for the barrier would come from inside the Manipulation Array, where the previous fire was. In terms of cost, it wouldn’t be a big problem, the barrier would just take a few extra minutes to solidify itself. To secure enough loosened earth on top of the Manipulation Array, workers were tasked to dig as much soil as they could.