Rebuilding Science in a Magic World

While I relaxed in the bathhouse, I contemplated Thermal Hands, and realized I probably need to do more experiments before I can come up with use cases for it.  I've only tested a coin so far.  What happens if I use wood, or a much larger piece of metal?  I should probably do more experiments to determine the extent of this new magic's effects.  I think I'll also want to raise my level back up to a higher value, if only for personal safety reasons.

If the merchant comes back this winter, which I would expect to be the case, we'll need to have fields for the new crops and livestock.  Those areas should be a good place to cut trees to gain more levels again.  Thinking about it, I'm starting to get a little worried about the available leveling resources on the island.  It's honestly something I should put more time into studying given the growing population.  One other source of levels that I've noticed is the sea life that we've been harvesting.  All of the regular fishergoblins have prestiged multiple times, and honestly, I'm surprised that none of them have yet to become hobgoblins.  Most of the sea creatures must not be worth very many levels is the only conclusion I can draw based on the limited evidence I have for that.

After my mana recharged, I tried out Thermal Hands to heat some wood from a stockpile.  I wasn't exactly sure what to expect, but the wood that was in contact with my hand started smoldering pretty early on, and caught fire not long after that.  I didn't even use that much mana, only a quarter of my total mana pool.

Next, I went out into the forest to find some damp wood.  That wood didn't catch fire despite using the remainder of my mana pool.  The wood started to release a lot of steam by the time my mana ran out.  It's only a hypothesis, but it really does seem like I'm adjusting the temperature of whatever is in direct contact with my hands, not the whole object I'm holding.  Dry wood doesn't conduct heat very well, making it possible to ignite just the surface I'm touching with relative ease, where as the water in the damp wood distributed the heat across the whole chunk of wood while simultaneously absorbing more of the heat energy in the water that had inundated the wood.

I decided to test this theory with one of the ingots of metal that I had smelted.  Not just anywhere though, I decided to bring it with me to the bathhouse, and test directly there where I can offload more mana into the ingot.

After I waited for my mana to reach full capacity, I started to heat the ingot.  Since I was submerged in the bath, I didn't notice any change in my mana for almost a minute, before it started to slowly tick downwards.  At that point, the ingot was noticeably hot.  It hadn't yet reached a glow, but it was radiating heat waves in the air.  As I allowed the temperature to climb more, my mana started to deplete even more while I was submerged in the bath, and I started to feel warm internally, despite my heat resistance.  As the ingot reached a moderate glow, my mana pool fully depleted.  If it hadn't, I'm not sure that I could have sustained it much longer anyway.  I felt like I was running a fever, and had lost 87 HP.

As my mana ran out, I instantly felt the heat from the ingot on my hand, and dropped it in the water of the bath, which then began ejecting steam at a rapid rate due to the ingot's heat.  I lost another 10 HP as the ingot burned me.  This is another guess, but the heat I was feeling during the heating process felt a lot like when I would touch a moderate sized mana crystal, or when I slept on the crystal pile, which might mean I was basically roasting my insides with mana conducting it directly towards my hands through my body.  Probably something to keep in mind as a potential danger moving forward.

These experiments were simply qualitative experiments.  In the future, I'd like to run some quantitative experiments to really nail down the fine details of Thermal Hands.  Since it seems like I'm basically adding a constant amount of heat energy when I'm using it, I could in theory calculate the heat energy I produce per second by attempting to boil water.  I could also attempt to calculate exactly the rate change of mana cost based on the object's temperature.  With that information, I could potentially calculate the exact heat energy needed to perform various tasks.  However, that would require a whole new lab, and rigorous testing of other materials to actually produce usable results.  Even then, those results have barely any use on this island.  I'll just have to shelf the study for now, like a lot of other studies I have planned, until we've reached a point where the value outweighs the time spent doing the study.

I started clear cutting the new field areas, and spent twenty nine days cutting down trees.  I did a little bit of experimenting while I was chopping trees.  Once I got through the bark, I tried using thermal hands on the wood inside a tree to heat it.  I found that I could soften the local area of wood as it started to steam, and could chop into it a few more times.  Of course, that used my entire mana pool, so it wasn't that useful, but if I ever need to cut down just one particular tree, it could speed up the process considerably.

I had mentioned that none of the fishergoblins had evolved, and we recently had one turn into a hobgoblin.  Namely, the fishergoblin who was doing the bulk resale was the first to evolve, which I suppose shouldn't be a surprise considering he was killing more fish than any of the others.

As for myself, it always gets harder to gain levels every time I prestige or evolve, so I shouldn't be surprised that I've barely gained anything despite felling a little over two acres worth of trees.  

<MYTHIC LESSER EARTH DEMON>
Level: 16
HP: 1644/1644
MP: 1041/1041
Traits: Mana Affinity, Earth Manipulation, Improved Dexterity, Heat Resistance
Magic: Improved Stone Shaping, Tectonic Sense, Improved Earth Spike, Thermal Hands

I hired a lot of goblins to handle the felled trees.  They sorted the good ones at the instruction of the carpenter, who then had to buy the wood from me.  I didn't want to seem like I was showing favoritism, so I had him pay for the wood, but I did sell it at a very cheap rate.  The rest of the wood I paid to have made into charcoal, while some of the bark was saved to be used at the bathhouse.

There is still more wood to be cut down for the planned expansions of the village, but I'm going to leave that to the goblins who've been working in the reservoir cutting stone.  Hopefully, they'll get stone shaping when they prestige.  As for me, I'm going to clean up the reservoir area with stone shaping, since they've been breaking stone with pickaxes.  After that, I'm thinking about going to see the inn that has been built along the new road, and then helping the road construction crew for a little while.

Cleaning up the reservoir took six days, and on the final day, snow fell on the mountaintop again.  I'm honestly quite surprised that the eagle doesn't mind the snow up there.  It's not a trivial amount.  I still plan on going to help the road construction crew, but I'll probably only assist for a short while, because I want to be back in the village when the trader or anyone else arrives.  The likelihood of them following the unfinished road isn't very high, since the path ends up being somewhat difficult through the craggy terrain if you aren't along the coast.  Once the road is finished though, it should make travel significantly faster than it would be following the coast, so I think the trade off is worth it.

The inn was pretty much a duplicate of the one I built in the village, but it was clearly more lived in.  On most days, it seems like around eight goblins are sleeping here as part of their hauling jobs to bring food and supplies to the road construction crew.  I myself hauled a wagon of food and stone to assist in construction, and am pretty impressed with the road so far.  They're doing a really good job.  Unlike the road we had going up the mountain, which consisted of stairs and a rail alongside them, this road is flat.  It still has slope, but that slope has been kept shallow.

The road going through the craggy terrain is impressive.  It cuts along the ridges and valleys, and Zeb has done some engineering of his own it seems.  Where they cut into the ridges to keep the road straight and flat, they've reinforced the cut walls with stone.  When I asked Zeb about it, he said they implemented that after the mudslides, as those were the locations that collapsed.  I gave him a little tip for building retaining walls moving forward.  Rather than building vertical walls alongside, like they have been, they should build them slightly sloped towards the cut direction.  It should be both easier to build and make it stronger.  They don't need to go redo the previous ones unless they fail, as a straight retaining wall is still pretty good.

As I worked with them for eight days, I got a pretty good feeling for how much longer this project will take.  I'd estimate another six months until the road reaches the natural harbor on the far side of the island at the current pace.  With that taken care of, I made my way back to the village.