The Harvester

Chapter 179: Inventing Magic

“So, before we start, did your uncle tell you how to bypass the security?” Wang asked as they stood in front of a table where Sonata was spread out. “I cannot find out with my appraisal.”

“Hm, there are two ways. One; if you hold it at the same time as an allowed wielder, then it won’t activate. Two; use a third-party device that I left back on Earth. And I guess there is a third one; to get spiritually linked to it.”

Old Wang let out a chuckle. “The third is a no-go, ain’t it? The second… hm, did you know you could request the System for a property that you might need from your original planet or world? Though it does require a fee.”

Rakna blinked. “That’s a thing?”

[Yes.]

“Yes.”

Alexa and the old dwarf answered positively at the same time. “…I feel like I should’ve been told a lot earlier,” he deadpanned.

“But, even without that, it should be fine,” Wang followed up. “We’ll go with the first method. Can you touch the ends while I examine this more closely?”

“Sure,” Rakna walked to the edge of the table and placed his hand on the scarf.

Old Wang then brought out an old-looking box and pressed a button on it. The lid sprang open and several layered magnifying glasses came out of it. A few other compartments with more advanced-looking tools opened on the sides and the dwarf picked two that looked like very small soldering rods with thin cables attached to them.

He leaned over the scarf and lined it up with the loupes. He then switched a small lever of the box on and a sound of electricity built up steadily. “Now, let’s see,” he muttered and used a needle and a power-charged tool to take apart a very small section of the scarf.

He spent about three minutes digging into the material until he grabbed a pincer and extracted a microscopic piece that released a blue glow. He put it on a small plastic plate and used an even stronger magnifying glass to inspect it while Sonata rebuilt itself.

“This is…” He whispered and walked to another section of his smithy with the piece.

“What is it?” Rakna asked as he let go of the scarf.

“Hm,” the old smith mused as a small scanner showed him the composition of the miniature shard of material. “There is a very intricate chemical compound in this… How is this… No…” He gradually became more and more shocked. He ran to a big crate in the corner of the room and pulled out a large device.

He rushed back to the bench table and placed it on Sonata. The object lit up after a few inputs and scanned the entirety of it before projecting many graphs and results. Old Wang’s jaw dropped and Rakna scowled. He was not even sure it was written in any language; that’s how incomprehensible it was to him.

But Evelyn seemed to be better off. Her eyes widened. From her upbringing, she had been taught to read this kind of data. She could also tell that a lot of it was unreadable for the scanner. But the other results painted a very shocking picture in her head.

“Um, sir, you said chemical compound… is it one that…”

“That self-replicates, self-analyzes, and self-generates? Yes,” Old Wang affirmed stunned. “Forget about what I said, kiddo. Your uncle is not a genius. He’s a… I don’t know, a mad genius scientist.”

“What do you mean?”

“At first, I thought it was thanks to the System’s item conceptual conversion that your weapon gained the ability to recreate its own material and absorb others. But I was wrong. This is an ability it had from the very beginning. Even when it was in your world without magic.”

Rakna physically paused when he heard that. “…but he never told me about something like that.”

“He either wanted you to have the surprise or he had no idea of what he actually made. He crafted a chemical compound that can record molecular structures down to the last atom and mimic that material with a simple supply of energy. This is literally a world-altering breakthrough!” Old Wang said excitedly.

“Of course, this ‘Eion’ thing is the main reason why your weapon is self-sufficient but even without it, you could use any other sort of energy source to do the same thing. Imagine; you would just need the structure of a material, record it into the compound, then feed it until it grows to be a perfect copy made out of stabilized energy. It’s like feeding a cell that can indefinitely grow as long as we give it food.”

“Take your magic for example,” Old Wang raised a finger. “You use your mana and element to build a recreation of an object and then you reproduce a real material’s characteristics with it.”

“Wait, are you implying that-“

“Yes. Your uncle managed to invent magic with science,” the dwarf replied and laughed spiritedly while wiping his sweat away. “By Hephaestus, this is unbelievable…”

“{Good god, your uncle defies all logic. He might be the smartest being after the legendary Wolder Kristan,}” Fray couldn’t help but say. “{He truly is unrivaled.}”

Rakna sighed deeply. “That old man might as well be the main character of this universe…”

“Sadly, I don’t think I can recreate this compound,” Old Wang said. “Hm, with your permission, can I send a sample of it to a good friend of mine? If it is ever recreated, I assure you we’ll give you full credit, and if you don’t want it, you will for sure get a huge portion of the Talys made out of it.”

“Money?” Rakna’s ears perked up at that. He squinted his eyes. “How much are we talking about?”

“Billions. This is revolutionary. Not only is this ‘like magic’, but it’s better than some applications of actual magic and it doesn’t need mana to operate at all. We could sell the patent to a trustworthy company and they would make hundreds of billions out of it across the Plateaus.”

“I’m fine with sending it to your friend…”

“Splendid, then I’ll-“

“But,” Rakna interrupted him. “Tell him to keep it a secret even if he discovers how to make the compound.”

Old Wang furrowed his eyebrows. “Why?”

“We’ll monopolize it,” the therian declared. “If you agree, you, your friend, and my group will make our own company to both produce and sell this thing.”

The dwarf blinked a few times. “You do have some ambition…” He muttered and stroked his beard for a moment. “Hm… but it’s not unrealistic. Heck, with something like this, only a fool would fail to make a working business,” he said and grinned. “I’m in, kiddo. Monopolizing means more share for me, and that means more resources to improve my skill. I’ll all for it.”

“It’s decided then. Talk to your friend about it and if he accepts, you can give it to him.”

“I’ll do so,” Old Wang nodded and took a few more samples from Sonata with Rakna’s permission and stored them in a safe container. “Now, back to business. Can you put the Skulking Angel blood on the table?”

Rakna nodded and pulled out the splintered stone from his storage.

“All right. This process is going to be less complicated than I first expected. At the outset, we can’t just melt Sonata down. It wouldn’t work since it would just mess with the memory of form and force it to fix itself. So, we can’t just mix the blood into it as you would to metal.”

“But before we proceed to that step… let’s make the accessory that will go with it,” Old Wang said and turned to Evelyn. “Do you have any idea of what you want it to be?”

“Eh? Um…” The succubus was taken aback. “I’m not sure…”

“Can you not make a weapon out of it? Like a copy of the original Sonata?” Rakna asked something he had been curious about ever since he learned his weapon could reconstruct itself.

“Yes and no… As I said before, your weapon has a lot of things going for it. One of them is the coordination between the pieces that compose it. In other words, they communicate. They’re like a swarm of bots. They automatically determine the main body and detach from what is not. The removed parts still ‘belong to the swarm’ but are technically inactive. They might even lose their power over time and expunge the compound. It is probably another of your uncle’s fail-safes.”

“However, as long as we use the Skulking Angel’s blood, it might not lose its energy source, but it will be incapable of evolving or rebuilding itself. It is practically useless to make a weapon.”

“In that case…” Evelyn pondered. “I wouldn’t mind it to be a ring or a necklace.”

“Okay. Let’s go with a necklace if you don’t mind. I have some pre-made already around here so it would be easier for the most part,” Old Wang said and opened a drawer where he grabbed a small case.

He took out a beautiful ornated necklace from it and put it in the care of Karna’s flames, for him to heat, and then focused on the Skulking Angel blood.

“Now, to use this blood, it’s also a bit tricky,” he said and grabbed a blank piece of paper. He put the petrified blood on it and started drawing a circle around it.

“Is that a transmutation circle?” Evelyn asked curiously and he nodded.

“Correct. This is a basic circle. It will fix the damaged quantum lock on this. You will understand what I mean right after,” he added and finished the circle. He infused a bit of mana into it and the runes shined for a moment before dying down. “Done.”

“That’s it? Doesn’t look any different,” Rakna commented curiously.

“You will see the difference thanks to this,” Old Wang retorted and help up a weird large cup with a sectioned bottom. He put the stone inside and looked at his spectators.

“Close your eyes,” he instructed and they did as they were told. A second afterward, they all heard a splashing sound and when they opened their eyes again, the original stone had been split in two that perfectly filled the container they were in.

“I see. So, their blood works the same as their live bodies.”

“Yes. When Skulking Angels die, their blood becomes unstable and can’t return to an organic state. The transmutation circle was to resolve that issue,” Wang explained and picked the stones. “Which reminds me, I haven’t told you yet why this works for binding two items, right?”

“I assumed it was because Skulking Angels have a constitution that affects space and time,” Rakna said. “Was I wrong?”

“You’re not. It essentially boils down to the fact that Skulking Angels are connected to every part of their body, broken off or not. To be clear, if you were to look at only one of these pieces of blood right here, the other one would still turn to stone.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Skulking Angels are just that,” Old Wang said laughingly. “They’re the epitome of interesting. But we digress. It’s time to finish things up. For the necklace, I will just need to either coat or mix the blood into the metal. That’s why Karna is heating it as we speak. But, as I mentioned earlier, it’s a different story for Sonata.”

“The reason I said it would be easier than I expected is the compound. We already confirmed that it can absorb and replicate other materials. So, it shouldn’t be any different with the blood.”

“How do you want to do that?” Rakna asked back. “Sonata has requirements to absorb more.”

“Not if we overload it,” Old Wang retorted and once again fetched something. It was a perfect cubic object with smooth edges. “The reason it has limitations for the absorption process is that it needs to accumulate energy to assimilate a material as well as strict regulation from the System. As you Hosts would call it; it’s a nerf.”

“In theory, it should be possible to bypass it by overloading the weapon with so much energy that nothing could possibly fail to be assimilated. And that’s where this thing comes in,” Wang pointed at the cube which he put right on top of the scarf. “It’s compressed psyranium. It is a rare but handy thing that can gather all kinds of energy daily and release it all at once.”

Old Wang then proceeded to clip on a few wires to the scarf and the cube. “It’s ready. I will turn it on and we will close our eyes. If possible, also engage it to change form at the same time. It would help the process.”

“Understood.”

“Let’s do this one at the same time,” Old Wang said and pulled the hot-red necklace out of the fire. He placed it in a round stone bowl and put the second blood piece with it. “You can close your eyes now,” he said and placed his finger on the psyranium. “The signal to initiate the form change will be easy to get. Ready?”

“Yes.”

The old dwarf smirked. “Let’s try it then,” he declared and pierced the cube with his mana. In the split of a second, an ear-piercing electric noise resounded followed by the sizzling sound of a liquid being poured onto a hot surface.