Pillar of Yita

In the following time, Fang Hong locked himself in his room to research self-detonating fairies.

He placed the explosive crystals he bought from Parker on the table—ten in total, each costing 240 Lycels, yes, the Papalarians never suffer a loss. This was the first time Fang Hong scrutinized these crystals, only to realize their inner structure was exceedingly intricate.

To reduce resistance, the crystals were designed in the shape of a triangular pyramid. The transparent interior was filled with spreading, twisting silver ash patterns that would appear mysterious and beautiful to the uninitiated, but Fang Hong recognized them as nothing more than three alchemical formulas overlapping each other.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he pulled down his wind goggles over his right eye, adjusted the glow of the wind lantern, closed his left eye, and pressed the magnified crystal lens with his hand, suddenly bringing the crystal closer to his view.

Thus, revealing the inner structure down to the tiniest detail.

The burden beast moved slowly in the dark underground; rhythmic oscillations filled the small cabin, the surface of the explosive crystal reflecting the lonely flame, at times rolling across the wooden table. At such times, Fang Hong could only protect the edge of the table with his hands to prevent them from falling to the ground.

But actually, explosive crystals were very safe, intense vibrations and impacts would not trigger the abundant magic power contained within. Yet, they were also very fragile; their hollow structure made them exquisitely delicate, so they could easily shatter and ruin the alchemic formulas inside.

In fact, Eteliria’s alchemists had figured out how to use alchemical formulas—mainly the detonation matrix, expanding configurations—to release the explosive magic power contained in these crystals long ago.

Humanity had always been trying to find alternative methods, but the research of the Invokers had not yet progressed an inch; it seemed alchemy was the only viable choice.

Fang Hong stood one of the crystals upright; at the base of the triangular pyramid crystal were three metal-lustrous copper rings, divided into many sections—a delay timer for the infusion of magic power. From bottom to top, they were the Talia Tick, one-quarter inch, and seconds.

This represented Eteliria’s timing method, with one Talia Tick roughly equaling four minutes, one-quarter inch—a scale on a Talia timing balance—approximating just over ten seconds, and seconds, the timing from Earth, brought about by the humans’ influence.

After the Stargate Era, Earthlings had tried to advance a unified system of measurement and timing on Eteliria, but such cultural differences proved hard to change, leading to a compromise in the end. They discovered that the natives of Eteliria had no smaller unit of time measurement, so they promoted the scale of seconds, which, after decades of development, eventually became the preferred choice for alchemists chasing precision.

These three copper rings actually served as the delay fuses for the explosive crystals. They required infusion of the correct magic power from an Invoker—or an adventurer, using a magic guided reactor. The miniature energy storage devices inside the copper rings would store the magic power until the specific moment.

Once the preset time arrived, the devices would release the magic power to the higher level in sequence—in simple terms, if an adventurer hadn’t set the Talia Tick, the magic power would go directly into the second ring, and if no one-quarter inch was set, the power would move straight to the topmost ring.

The top ring had twelve divisions, slightly less than one-quarter inch, which represented twelve seconds. For a crossbowman, a twelve-second delay was generally more than enough.

Parker actually had another batch with only one copper ring, with just the seconds timer delay fuse for the explosive crystals, which were much cheaper due to the lack of two sets of components. Still, Fang Hong thought since he was going to study these things, he might as well have the seller ’transfer’ the only batch of complete versions to him.

He carefully observed the crystal in his hands.

Speaking seriously, he couldn’t use the crystals sold to him by Parker, as naturally, they weren’t made from non-attribute crystals. Detonating them would require corresponding attribute magic power, which Fang Hong couldn’t produce.

However, magic power only affected the crystal’s attribute, not its internal structure. Fang Hong himself was a half crystal craftsman; constructing a batch of β crystals without additional specialized knowledge wasn’t necessary, as both the detonation matrix and expanding configurations were very basic configurations. Moreover, he had a more professional detonation matrix than Parker—bought from Lady Owl Elpaxin.

But the copper ring fuse below was the tricky part.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t make them, but using these explosive crossbow arrows required a whole set of specialized skills because they were too delicate; the slightest carelessness could cause damage. Alternatively, if the method of infusing magic power was incorrect, like the way a craftsman would differ vastly from that of the Nightingales, as they used different magic guided reactors, the wrong method often leads to wrong results.

But he couldn’t possibly learn all of the Nightingale—Crossbowman’s series of skills related to explosive crossbow arrows; setting aside the combat experience he lacked, it wasn’t necessary either.

Combat Artisans naturally had their own methods.

After arriving in Fenris and having several encounters with the Night Lizard People, he had just enough experience to learn the skill to use the fuses of the explosive crystals.

As for the part about magic power infusion, he would prioritize remodeling the magic power infusion pathway for the explosive crystals. They were originally made for the Nightingale, Crossbow Shooters, and Rangers, thus their magic pathways were naturally biased toward the operating methods of their professional magic guided reactors.

But change was not impossible, as these devices were crafted by craftsmen after all.

However, Fang Hong had not studied the relevant knowledge and could only rely on himself. He first disassembled the fuze of one of the crystals, recorded the configuration, and attempted to obtain the schematics. But his luck was somewhat lacking, as it took dismantling three crystals to get a single ordinary schematic. Even so, that was still just the original diagram; to improve it into a type that artisans could use, further modifications were needed on the schematic.

What to do?

Of course, the next step was to continue to understand the structural operation of the original diagram, adding his own ideas. The method was straightforward: keep disassembling the structure and reassembling it to deepen his understanding. Fang Hong opened a progress bar on the schematic and then began the work that seemed tedious to others but was somewhat enjoyable for him.

With the original schematic, he could reassemble the pieces. Then, disassemble and assemble, assemble and disassemble, repeating the cycle, enhancing his understanding through this process and seeking ideas and inspiration.

Fang Hong’s hands were constantly busy, silently watching the blue progress bar within the Summoners System slowly increase. There was a baseline error rate for this process; his error rate was actually very low, thanks to his excellent manual control skills, but by the end of the afternoon, he had ruined almost seven out of ten Explosive Crystals.

Only a pile of parts remained on the table, and the progress bar had exceeded ninety percent.

Fang Hong let out a long breath of relief; a ninety percent success rate was adequate for him. He swept his hand, scooping the scattered parts into a wooden box at the edge of the table. He had no use for these damaged parts, nor could they be recycled, but he could sell them to the Artisan Association. Recovering even a little bit of funds was better than nothing.

Fang Hong found that he was becoming more and more like Miss Sicape, which embarrassed him a little as he rubbed his head.

He didn’t plan to derive the schematics in one go; leaving behind a flicker of inspiration in his mind was enough. Now he was feeling somewhat tired. It clearly wasn’t a wise choice to deduce schematics when his spirits were not fully concentrated.

He rubbed his tense forehead, planning to go out for some fresh air and continue this work later in the evening.

Of course, to be serious, he did feel a bit of urgency.

After the conversation he had previously with Lonely White Field, he had seriously estimated the members of the team who could participate in the trial: Xiesta and Reed were naturally out of the question, far exceeding the level restriction of the trial.

It seemed that Hilveld’s level was also just at fifteen, which, he presumed, meant she couldn’t participate either.

Miss Atira’s combat profession had improved somewhat after the battle at Dolifen, gaining just over level ten; however, with her not insignificant life profession level also factored in, her character level naturally exceeded fifteen as well.

Tianlan, Gita, and Luo Yu were Trainees, only eligible for the trainees’ trial, not the official one, so it was also irrelevant. Fang Hong planned to communicate with them to see whether they were willing to participate in the trial or preferred to stay in the team, seeking their voluntary decision.

If they were willing to join the trainee trial, Fang Hong naturally wouldn’t stop them, since it was safe.

In the end, it seemed that only he and Parker were eligible to participate. He was a Combat Artisan, indeed, but as one, he actually had few measures at his disposal: two Walker III models, a pair of self-protection Reinforced Gloves, and the rest were just Clockwork Fairies.

On Parker’s side, she was merely a direction of Nightingale as a Crossbow Shooter with similarly weak close combat ability, not to mention the plethora of life professions she juggled, making her combat power even less. Although the trial wasn’t necessarily a success, and there was no risk in failure, Fang Hong didn’t want to waste time. He had asked the twin sisters before; Elisa told him that there was no reward for failing a trial.

Even the experience and knowledge gained during the process would be deducted.

Naturally, Fang Hong at least wanted to secure a minimum guarantee; as for higher goals, for such a small duo group, he dared not aim high.

Therefore, he wanted to rush the production of a batch of self-destructing Clockwork Fairies before participating in the trial, to add some aces up his sleeve for the upcoming adventure. Fortunately, time was more ample than he imagined, as modifying Clockwork Fairies didn’t take much time, and Explosive Crystals themselves were easy to make—depending on having the materials.

And he still had quite a bit of the materials needed, leftover from the trip to Dolifen, with the missing parts also potentially purchasable from Rain Listeners, who he believed would offer him a favorable price. Thus, it seemed that deducing the schematics didn’t need to be rushed right now.

Explosive Crossbow Arrows actually concentrated more than half of the related knowledge and skills on the operation of the fuse and Crystals. Once these two aspects were resolved, the remaining half was almost all about the skills in crossbow shooting itself.

But Fang Hong wasn’t planning to mount Explosive Crystals on crossbow arrows, so the remaining half of experience might as well be saved.

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