A week later, the three carriages' worth of furniture was finally delivered to the wood. The couple came over to witness the comotion. Siori asked puzzledly, "Why did you buy these furniture? Are you going to use that thick table as a dining table?"
Smiling, Claude replied, "I'm going to set up a study inside the hut, so I'll need some space to store the books I buy. The weather is also getting rather cold, so it's rather troublesome for me to go to the lab to read. I might as well make a study for myself so that I can save myself the trouble to go all the way there just to fetch some books. As for that square table, I'm going to use it for maps or large drawings inside my study. A small desk wouldn't be able to fit things so big after all."
The couple returned and were probably inwardly rebuking Claude for being a choosy beggar. The furniture seemed like they would cost at least five thales and that was akin to double Claude's monthly salary. The couple only earned a total of less than three thales per month. Siori earned around one thale and five riyas while his wife, Lancy, earned only one thale and two riyas.
As far as Maria was concerned, the old couple were living out their retirement in the wood and even used the land there for their own chicken coop. Had it not been for the fact that their children worked with her elder brother, she wouldn't allow them to stay there. The salary she paid them was already a kind gesture.
Claude didn't waste the prior seven days either. Every day after school, he went to the town's open market and stores to purchase anything he could need for his experiments. He bought the things in the name of restocking the inventory of Maria's herbalism laboratory, so he didn't draw much attention to himself. However, the shopping sprees amounted to quite a sum and he had almost finished spending his savings, save for the nine shaliuns he had left.
The other matter was as he expected. He didn't hear anything about a murder being committed in Mermaid. Even Eriksson, who claimed to know the ins and outs of everything that occurred in the docks, hadn't heard of something like that. The bearded man called Edmigar had vanished from Whitestag without leaving a trace and anyone noticing.
During that time, Claude, Welikro and Eriksson also went to Hurian's store once to buy malt candy for his little brother, Bloweyk. Hurian didn't recognize Claude as the young masked magus and spoke to Eriksson with a face full of smiles as he introduced the various goods he offered for sale.
Naturally, they didn't enter the secret room. However, there were two to three trash-grade magic items displayed on the outer shelves. The chubby man promoted those magic items the best he could and managed to hook Eriksson's heart, but as the price offered was far too high, Eriksson had to leave without purchasing them.
The workers who transported the furniture over moved them into the room on the first level which Claude cleaned up and arranged them in positions per his request. They also installed the blinds and curtains which were made of refractive cloth. After Claude checked the work, he tipped them three sunars each, much to their delight, before they left.
When everyone was gone, Claude wiped the furniture down with a piece of cloth. He laid out the materials and stuff he bought over the week orderly before finally sighing in relief. With everything ready, he could finally start setting up the alchemical formation array at night.
The nights in the wood were incredibly quiet. Currently, it was about eight at night. The town was still quite merry, but in the wood, it was all quiet. The old couple had gotten ready to sleep by then. The later they slept, the more money they would waste, since the oil for their lamps cost quite a bit. They weren't rich young masters like Claude who could afford the luxury of reading books throughout the night. The money Claude spent on oil would be enough to sustain the couple's monthly expenses.
Claude stood on the platform on the second level of the hut. He looked at the distant chicken coop as the lights within were blown out. He had meditated after taking a short rest during the night. Life in the wood was much better than life within the red-bricked mansion as nobody here interrupted his magic studies or meditation sessions.
After making sure of the surroundings again, Claude went downstairs. He ensured that the doors and windows were shut tightly before entering his study. After shutting the doors and pulling the blinds on the windows, he cast Luminous Pearl and blew out the oil lamp on his desk.
The room was as bright as day under the spell's illumination. Claude pulled his backpack out from under the square table and took out the materials required to set up the alchemical formation array.
After wiping the square table clean with a piece of cloth, he put the cleaned magistone tablets above it into a hexagram shape. After that, he started engraving the complicated runes on the tablets and linked the six of them into one. Following that, he carved in the locations where the fire crystals had to be placed as well as the runes to control the alchemical formation array.
Though there was much to do, Claude didn't have to use his own hands to do them. Landes mentioned in his diary that using Magus' Hands during the setting up of an alchemical formation array was far more efficient than using one's own two hands, not to mention being more accurate and requiring less effort.
The first step was drawing the various runes and mana channels on the magistone tablets. The mana channels, as their name suggested, would allow mana to pass through and connect the many runes together for a desired effect. These couldn't simply be drawn with ink. Landes stated that it was best to use magic beast blood to draw the channels. If magic beast blood wasn't available, magus blood could be used as a replacement as it contained traces of mana as well.
Aren't they treating magi like magic beasts by doing so? Fortunately, the amount of blood required wasn't much. It also had to be treated first before use. According to Landes, magus blood couldn't compare to magic beast blood, which contained mana from birth. The mana in magus blood on the other hand was of postnatal nature as a result of training, so the mana within would easily scatter into the air.
Claude stood at the side of the table and glared at the hexagram on the table formed from the magistone tablets. Behind him on the shelf, the box of whiteroot powder automatically opened. A silver scoop flew through the air to scoop up some powder and poured it into a glass tube, which was later filled up to two-thirds with distilled water. A silver stirrer then flew into the tube and started mixing the solution nonstop.
By the time the mixing was more or less done, the glass tube was moved to Lorist's front and placed on the table. Claude stretched out his own hand to take a small silver blade and used it to open a wound in his finger. He watched his blood drip into the glass tube as his other hand stirred the solution within it nonstop.
Soon, the solution within the tube turned pink. Feeling that the stirring was more or less sufficient, he dabbed some healing potion on his finger to seal the wound. After that, he stepped straight once more and cast Magus' Hands and Fine Control to turn one of the hands into a small brush, which he used to paint the mana channels and runes with the pink solution as ink.
He wasn't confident that he would succeed if he drew all that with his own two hands. Human hands could hardly keep up to the brain in terms of speed after all. Though people could imagine how something should be drawn, the hands might not produce the desired result. Magus' Hands on the other hand removed that concern entirely. Claude realized that any rune he could visualize could be drawn perfectly with Magus' Hands on the magistone tablets like exact copies.
After only half an hour, the magistone tablets were covered in runes and mana channels. Claude cast Fine Control and turned one hand into a chisel to start engraving the runes onto the tablets.
The hard magistone tablets seemed no different from tofu when the magical chisel cut into them. Lines of consistent width were easily made on the tablets and the whole process took less than ten minutes to complete. After that, Claude used Magus' Hands to pick up the bottle of skystar dust and filled them into the newly carved out spaces evenly, before infusing some mana into the engravings.
Dark blue smoke began to waft up from the skystar dust in the engravings. They formed into a misty fog in mid air evenly. When all the skystar dust rose into the smoky cloud, he stopped infusing any more mana and waited for the dark blue mist to dissipate.
Not long after, the mist above the tablets gradually turned light blue, then completely invisible. At that moment, the six magistone tablets had combined into a single unit with a hexagram on it. They could no longer be parted. The engravings on the magistone tablet were dark blue like the skystar dust and looked like they were fused into the tablet.
The rune and mana channel engravings weren't drawn just to fuse the six tablets into one. Even a large piece of magistone tablet required those engravings. Their true usage was to form a barrier which would protect the magus from any harm coming from within. It would also help restrict the range of effect of the alchemical formation array.
The next thing on the list was the placement of the fire crystals. That was a rather simple affair. One fire crystal had to be placed on each corner of the hexagram. He turned one magical hand into a chisel and engraved openings to place the fire crystlas in. But this time around, he didn't fill them with skystar dust, but crimsonblood dew instead.
According to Landes, the ideal mediums for mana in an alchemical formation array were crimson dragon blood and black dragon blood. Those two types of dragon blood contained essences of solarfire and hellfire, which were capable of bringing the heat of fire crystals to the highest possible point to completely burn away the impurities in the materials used and greatly raise the success rate of an experiment.
However, crimson dragons and black dragons had become creatures that existed only in myth. They had long gone extinct some two thousand years ago in the world of Faslan. Any other magic beast's blood that could be used for the engravings in alchemical formations also went extinct as a result. Later, the magi discovered crimsonblood dew, a mercurial substance, and used it as a medium for mana in alchemical formation arrays.
After filling up the newly carved out spaces with crimsonblood dew and sprinkling some whiteroot powder on them, Claude infused mana into the tablet again to fuse the dew and powder into one mana channel line after another. The crimson red and dark blue lines on the tablet intersected and formed a complicated, yet beautiful picture.
Finally, it was complete. The alchemical formation array had been successfully set up, much to his relief. Setting up one not only drained away his mana, but also a good portion of his mental power. Despite his fatigue, however, he still felt rather excited.
Calming his emotions of excitement, he went to the second level and meditated once under the moonlight.
It was around three n the morning when Claude finished that session. His state of mind was restored to normal. He returned to the study and looked at the formation array and made up his mind to perform one of the simplest experiments before going to sleep.
He would try to make a crystal container using the alchemical formation array.
First, he channeled mana into the fire crystals and link all six together. Soon, the temperature within the magistone tablet could be felt to rise nonstop. Claude cast Magus' Hands and used it to pick up an unprocessed crystal ore and put it within the alchemical formation array.
Under the high temperatures within, the rock around the crystal fell off like egg shells. The crystal itself also melted into a blob of transparent liquid. With Fine Control, the crystal liquid was split into three identically sized lumps and molded into three crystal test tubes of standard size.
Claude stopped the channeling of mana and waited for the three crystal tubes to cool before retrieving them from the alchemical formation array with Magus' Hands.