"So, what's the plan," she said, looking excited.
"We're going to start with something simple," I said even as I started thinking about what to try. I had already designed several experiments, but every single one of those relied on mana under my direct control as I played around with the broken enchantment. I had no idea how to replicate it directly.
"First, let me warn you. Experimenting is a slow process. It might take hours and days before I make even the slightest progress," I said. That warning could change her mind, but it was better than the alternative.
The last thing I needed was for her to blame me for misleading her.
"Don't worry. Unlike what Eleanor claims, I'm not a child with poor attention span," she replied. "Now, what do I need to do?"
The answer was simple. I pointed at the forge. "Can you imbue the flames with some excess mana," I said.
She frowned. "I don't know. I never tried. I usually try to cast more effectively, not less."
"It'll be a good experiment for you too, then," I said.
"Sure, but why do you need it?" she asked.
"I'm wondering if I can forge a mana-infused ingot," I said.
"Do you think you can do it?" she asked, even more excited than I had expected her to be.
"Maybe," I suggested, careful not to feed her excitement even more.
"Good, because they are quite rare in the System Store," she replied. "If you can figure out a way to do it, it would bring us considerable income."
I frowned, though it was not about her already staking a claim on the results of a possible success. That, I was used to. In academic research, the results were usually split between the university and the organization providing the grant, leaving nothing but a couple papers for the researcher.
Also, the world was too dangerous for me to have sole possession of anything truly valuable.
No, I was frustrated, because she had lazily confirmed another thing that I had only theorized about. I had thought that I knew how much living in a small town had been holding me back. Learning the enormity of my mistake was not fun.
I ignored my spiraling frustration as I pulled an ordinary iron ingot, one of the many Eleanor had provided for my experiments.
While such ingots had been used a lot during the first days of Cataclysm — often to hastily forge piles of weapons that shattered helplessly against the monsters — lately, they were only used to make arrows, javelins, and other disposable items.
And, even then, they were used against weaker targets. Anything dangerous required a better alloy that had been forged with dungeon products. They couldn't even be used to repair the weapons from the System.
Those ingots could be purchased from the System store directly — which was the cheaper method — but Forge offered a more expensive alternative, using some of the dungeon products to turn ordinary metal into alloys that could hold the enchantments; and, as a result, could be used to repair enchanted weapons.
However, it was not even popular before the repair spell started to become commonplace. After that, it had fallen completely out of favor.
During the last few days, I had used that method several times to forge a few different alloys, which only worked when I followed the System instructions to the letter, and any diversion easily ruined it.
Still, it hadn't been a waste. I used Inspect every step of the way and reached some conclusions about how it worked. Essentially, those dungeon products dispersed across the alloy, which effectively functioned as foreign particle inoculation by allowing the metal to crystallize around it. Once the metal cooled around those particles, they dispersed, providing the metal some kind of extra energy that reminded me of Health.
Not exactly the same, but similar enough.
I wasn't planning to replicate it using Mana. That much had been a mere curiosity. But, somehow trapping mana into ingots was the best way I could come up to leverage Maria's sudden offer to help. It was a long shot, but maybe Intuitive Forge would help bridge the gap.
While Maria continued to experiment with her magic, focusing steadily on the small flame dancing on her palm, I pulled several papers and filled them with formulas.
Unfortunately, to my shame, they were less about representation — I still didn't know enough about metallurgy to accurately model a completely new process — and more about convincing Maria that I knew what I was doing.
Hopefully, it would be enough to convince her that I was actually working for something rather than poking around blindly.
While I was scribbling the notes, Maria finally spoke, barely ten minutes after she started. "I have done it. One elemental spell, with extra useless mana. It's easier than I had expected."
"Only because you're talented," I said. I had no idea about the difficulty of it, but when it was doubted, going with a compliment felt like the safe choice. "Now, you need to make that flame larger and apply it directly on the metal, infusing it with mana."
"That sounds … easy," she said. "That can't be all, right?"
I chuckled. "Not even close. Do you want me to explain what we are doing?"
"Sure. I don't have anything else to do. And, I can have a break from demolishing you in chess."
A little bruised pride was certainly worth the assistance of a high-level fire mage. I didn't even know how much I would have to pay if I needed to hire someone to do the same.
"Fair. Now, onto the lesson. Melting the metal could only be defined as a preparatory step. Only when the metal is properly melted, which is iron in our case, can the alloy-making process begin properly."
"But, don't we only have iron there? I thought alloys were a mixture of multiple metals."
"Not necessarily. The common definition is a metal mixing with another substance. For example, steel is made from a mixture of carbon and iron, and the carbon comes directly from the coal."
"Is this what we're doing?" she asked.
"No. The first round is essentially a control group for our experiment. I want to see how iron and mana interact without any external factors. I'll observe the process through my perk. That way, I will know how it works in its natural conditions. That way, I can measure the success of our upcoming attempts."
"Can you detect mana?"
"Only when it's interacting with a metal directly, like enchantments. But, it's just the outer structure. Their inner aspects are inscrutable to me." Well, that was not completely true after I received Inspect, but I didn't mention that.
With that, I quickly shaped the molten metal into fifty coins, split into ten equal groups of differing sizes, five coins in each group. Maria looked like she was about to ask something, but I gestured for her to be silent.
Stretching my Inspect into multiple groups was not difficult, but I couldn't split my attention. Instead, I quickly scribbled a long line of data. Only when the mana dispersed completely from all coins, I stopped.
"What was that?" she asked.
I smiled. "It's simple. Each column represents one coin. The numbers are between zero and one. Zero represents no mana, and one is the moment you stopped infusing mana."
"But, why are there five samples for each size? Is there anything different in any of them?"
"Basic scientific principles. Having multiple samples will give me a better idea of the underlying process, and make sure my conclusions are scientifically accurate."
"Sounds like a lot of extra work," she said. "Does it really make a difference?"
"Yes. It's often that the underlying data has some unique problems that affect the process. For example, one of the metal coins could have an air bubble or some other impurity. Drawing the wrong conclusion could ruin everything. Duplicates help reduce the risk."
"Sounds like a chore," she said.
"It often is. That's why I miss having my own students. That way, I could throw data collection to them, and deal with the fun parts."
"Nothing about math is fun," she replied heatedly.
I chuckled. "I feel like I'm about to agree. I still need to calculate the correlation and the confidence intervals. It's going to be a chore."
"I thought you liked math."
"Not this," I answered even as I jotted down the formula for how to calculate correlation. "I need to calculate this for every group by hand. Even the most basic analysis requires thousands of calculations. Without a spreadsheet program or a math engine, it's going to take all night."
"No, it won't," she said with a smug smirk.
"What do you mean?" I asked, and she smirked as she wrote the numbers underneath each column.
"Here are the results."
"What is — ahh, Intelligence," I said.
"Exactly," she said, her smile wide. "I told you, I'm amazing at math."
While I didn't treat anything that could be copied by a spreadsheet proper math, I wasn't moronic enough to actually say that. Especially since she had just done the work of a computer with ease. "Yes, you are," I said with a big smile.
"Good, now that you're finished with the boring stuff…"
"Not exactly. We still have another experimental round," I said, feeling far more enthusiastic. "But, first, do you want me to explain what exactly I'm trying to find?"
"I already told you that melting the metal and mixing the components is more like step zero. The real process starts when the metal starts to cool down. Just like how ice doesn't melt immediately, all of our molten metal doesn't exactly freeze at once. It starts with tiny seeds spread in its structure, called nucleation," I started explaining.
She nodded, listening carefully.
"The second step is the crystal growth. Once the nuclei are formed, they start attracting the surrounding atoms, creating patterns in the metal. There are many factors for the shape of those patterns, from cooling methods to shape."
"Is that what we are trying to do," she asked. "Trying to trap mana in crystal patterns?"
"Somewhat. The process doesn't stop even after the metal cools down. The metal continues to change even after cooling down, slowly settling down into a more stable state, usually affected by the chemical structure. It's called solid-state transformation. Ideally, we need to make sure that the mana doesn't escape even after that process is complete. But, you're right. The initial objective is to trigger some kind of crystal structure that keeps the mana in."
"Sounds complicated," she said.
"Frankly, it is," I answered. "If it wasn't for my Perks and the help of Skills, I wouldn't even dare to attempt it. Normally, discovering a new usable alloy requires the combined efforts of hundreds of people, state-of-the-art equipment, and years of effort. We're using skills to bypass a lot of those steps."
"Interesting. You're really good at explaining. No wonder you're a professor."
"I wasn't really good at the beginning, but that's what a decade of experience gives you," I replied.
She froze. "A … a decade. How old are you?" she gasped. "I thought you weren't much older than me."
I smiled. Of course, it was impressive that I started teaching that early. "I'm thirty-two, but I started teaching when I was seventeen, during the second year of my doctorate," I said proudly. In a world filled with people obsessed with stats, it was rare that I found a chance to brag about my greatest achievement.
"T-that's good," she said, blushing slightly, but looked relaxed. Why her reaction had changed like that, I had no idea. But then, I shrugged. She looked happy enough, which was all that mattered.
I had experiments to run!