Kays Translations

Chapter 210: Diamond Dust

The private audience with His Majesty the King was scheduled for this time tomorrow.

I invited Axel and Ijidol to come with me, but both of them politely refused.

I would have refused too, if I had been allowed to.

Brother Alex saw the look on my face and smiled.

“You can't refuse, Julius.”

The only consolation was that he promised to accompany me.

Already depressed about tomorrow, I headed for the icehouse.

Naturally, Axel and Ijidol followed me.

Brother Alex had other business, so we parted ways in the common room. He was probably going to see Princess Daniela.

When we separated, I thought the smile on his face looked even broader than usual.

It was good to see that the two of them seemed to be getting along so well.

“The stone materials have arrived. This is the kind of stone most commonly used here in the royal capital, right?”

I tapped one of the blocks.

It answered with a clear, high-pitched note and had a reassuringly solid feel. The material was dense and seemed very durable.

Promising.

“It's the same stone used for the walls of my building, isn't it?” Ijidol said. “The colour definitely looks the same.”

The stone had a slightly bluish-grey colour.

I tried moving one of the blocks and immediately discovered how heavy it was.

If I made the stone lining too thick, there was a real possibility the floor would give way under the weight.

I activated Craft and cut the stone down to the thinnest width I thought would still provide enough durability.

Axel and Ijidol watched the entire process intently.

“I still don't understand how you're cutting stone like that.”

“I'm using a skill. Think of it as cutting it with magic.”

“A skill? I've heard about those before. Can every magic-tool maker use it?”

“Probably not every one of them, but my sister can.”

“Hmmm.”

Both of them made the same thoughtful sound.

I couldn't tell whether that answer satisfied them.

Maybe they wanted Craft themselves.

Unfortunately, there was always an element of luck involved in acquiring a skill. They might be able to learn it, or they might not.

Their stares made me a little self-conscious, but I needed to work quickly and carefully.

I couldn't afford to take my attention off the material.

Concentrate.

Concentrate.

After thinning the stone as much as possible, I cut it into matching rectangular slabs.

Ijidol watched the pieces pile up and raised his voice in admiration.

“Amazing. You can do something like this too. If they're all the same shape, you can line them up on the wall like tiles.”

“Exactly. But before we put the stone in place, we have to install the magic circles.”

“Oh, so we finally get to see a magic circle,” Axel said. “I've actually never seen one directly before. I'm looking forward to it.”

Ijidol looked just as interested.

Good.

I had been a little worried that forcing them to tag along while I did this kind of plain construction work would bore them, but apparently that wasn't the case.

By the time we had prepared enough stone to cover one entire side of the icehouse, some of the royal magic pharmacists—now recovered from their three-day Panacea ordeal—had come to help as well.

“I'd heard the rumours, but Julius-sensei really can make magic tools.”

“Look at those stone slabs. They're beautiful. Not even a fraction out of place—they're exactly the same.”

That was an exaggeration.

If you looked closely, there were tiny differences between them. The discrepancies were simply small enough not to cause any practical problem.

Making every piece perfectly identical would probably take ten times as long.

I didn't think that level of precision was necessary for this icehouse anyway. There would be adhesive filling the gaps between the stones.

For now, I would finish and test one wall.

What I did with the remaining surfaces would depend on the results.

When making something new, getting everything perfectly right on the first attempt was extremely difficult.

If that was the case, it was much faster to make a working prototype, identify whatever went wrong, fix it, and keep improving from there.

I turned to the large steel plate I had prepared and began drawing the magic circles.

The walls of the icehouse were large. There was no reason to make the magic circles tiny.

In fact, a larger circle ought to be more convenient if I wanted the cooling effect to spread across a wider area.

I needed three magic circles.

The first was an ordinary cooling magic circle.

The second was an enhancement magic circle that strengthened the effect of the cooling circle.

The third was an energy-saving magic circle that reduced the amount of mana consumed.

Enhancement magic circles had existed for a long time, but they were inconvenient because they essentially offered only two settings: on or off.

Because of that, output-control magic circles, which allowed much finer adjustment, seemed to be more commonly used in modern magic tools.

The cold-and-warm-air blower used one to adjust its airflow, and the shower magic tool used one to control the water temperature.

I drew the three circles on the steel plate and linked them with magic ink.

With that, the basic assembly was complete.

But before sealing anything inside the wall, I needed to test it.

It would be a disaster to discover a problem only after everything had been installed and covered with stone.

“Let's run a test straight away. Could someone bring me the magic stone?”

“Can you really activate it while it's exposed like this?” Axel asked.

“More or less.”

Unless someone was a magic-tool maker, they had probably never seen bare magic circles being activated directly.

No—judging from the astonished expressions on the royal magic pharmacists, perhaps even ordinary magic-tool makers rarely did this where other people could watch.

I was breaking out in a cold sweat on the inside, but I tried not to let it show.

I fitted the magic stone Axel had brought me into place.

Cold air immediately began spreading through the room.

“Oh, it's getting cooler…” Ijidol said.

A moment later, his expression changed.

“No, it's cold!”

Shivering, he hurried away from the cooling assembly and retreated towards us.

A white, mist-like haze was rising around the magic circles.

The moisture in the surrounding air was being cooled so rapidly that it was turning into tiny ice crystals.

Diamond dust.

Beautiful!

“Hey, Julius,” Axel said, “it's getting pretty cold in this whole room. This is safe, right?!”

“No. It doesn't look very safe.”

This was not the time to escape reality.

The cooling effect was becoming far stronger than I had expected.

The enhancement magic circle was terrifyingly effective.

It was not something that could be used casually.

No wonder enhancement circles had fallen out of favour.

And I had just learned something else.

The larger the enhancement magic circle became, the stronger its effect seemed to be.

I hadn't noticed that during my test at the townhouse because I had only used a small circle there.

I hurriedly removed the magic stone and stopped the system.

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