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Music for today:
Undertow
https://youtu.be/r-SYxAPYGys
Chapter 508: Cooling An Organic Furnace
Late Afternoon - Late Fall : Year 39 : Poseidon, Draconic Continent
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"Reon!" Turning as an idea settled, I scanned the cavern over my wing. "I got an idea for you!"
Suddenly hearing the rustling of papers before the echoing tap of a clay artifact being set down, my eyes lifted to an opening in a nearby column—lit with a bioluminescent glow—before Reon poked his head out. "What is it?" He looked a little nervous at first.
"What are your thoughts on an artifact that could control the temperature of the aquifer?"
His brows furled with the settling of his posture. "What do you mean?"
"You were saying the heat would be a major problem over time because there was no way to stop some from seeping into the water, and warming the aquifer." It was our biggest concern with the city. -If the aquifer warms, keeping the cavern cool would become an impossible task.- However, "If I could make an artifact that keeps the aquifer cooler, would that not solve our problem?"
He was much more hesitant than I was though. "Well, I suppose..." Sitting down, his expression grew calculative. "If you could figure out a way for the artifact's output to adjust to the amount of heat the city generates.. I suppose that would work in theory. It just.. sounds like it'd be impossible in practice..."
"How so..?" My head rocked.
"You'd need a way to spread the cold through the entire aquifer. Without a way to keep the deeper sections of the aquifer at a similar temperature to the surface, the ecosystems fed by that deeper water would freeze while we try to fight the heat in the main cavern." Getting more averse to my idea by the second, he lifted his wing. "Plus, if it ever fails, and neither you nor Hera weren't around to fix it, the city would boil or freeze itself to death."
"Hm..." -Fair points...- Like all artifacts, regardless of whether it did everything perfectly or not, it'd inevitably need some level of maintenance. -So long as the mana is moving fast enough, it should stay clean...- Much like how a river could continue to flow even after the water got below freezing, -But...- The need for a failsafe was undeniable. -How can I make it so someone besides me or Hera can control or perform maintenance on it though?-
I needed the artifact to essentially be controllable from a distance.
Something simply never heard of before...
"Hm..." But with memories of technology from Earth, it didn't take long for me to have some ideas. -I wonder if that'd be possible...- Putting a halt on my thoughts, I coiled, "~Hera, how much influence do you have over the core?~"
"~Minimal.~" She paused before I could feel the mana in the cavern shift again. "~If I touch the core directly, I can somewhat push things around, but it's purely from my mana bumping into, and stirring it. I'm not controlling anything.~"
Because her signature was essentially ambient, the core didn't reject it, however, just because she could get her mana inside didn't mean she could suddenly control it like it was her own.
"~I tried to tether to it as well, thinking maybe if I put a bit of my soul in, and tethered to it like an apostle, I could control it enough to 'posess it', but...~" It was way too much for just a fraction of herself to control.
Though, I didn't need her to be able to have near that level of control. "~Do you think you can try and keep it's mana from flowing directly upward for a little bit? I want to dig down within a hundred meters of it, or so.~"
"~M..maybe...~" She paused with some hesitancy as her presence moved again—this time stopping directly over the core—before, *Wooooom* The mana entering the cavern ebbed with a wave of stillness. "I-Is that good enough, you think?!~"
Hearing her raise her voice as if trying to speak over the roar of a jet engine, I moved immediately. *VWOOOM* "~Hopefully!~"
Boring straight through the middle of the cavern's central platform, the ground beneath me opened wide as if moving aside for me—quickly expanding into a large round room before a smaller hole appeared in the middle. *KWOOM*
But the hole wasn't empty for long.
Hastily grabbing an reorganizing the loose metals in the rock, I refined what I chewed through into a dark-silver alloy that would eventually function as an extension of the artifact below.
It wasn't complicated. Effectively looking like rifled gun barrels starting around a dozen meters wide, and progressively being shrunken and layered within one another, they were effectively identical to the ringed channels of reincarnation runes, just formed into a vertical spiral rather than a ring.
To put it simply, instead of being used to guide souls toward the inner rings, I was using the flow of mana through the channels to generate and control the flow of mana in the core itself. -In theory, mana will drain into this from the core,- Being the path of least resistance, and much like water draining from a bath tub, -Will generate something like a vortex in the core.-
So long as I had a way to control the flow at the top, I had a way to control the flow within the core from afar.
And even with almost a hundred meters of dense mythril still separating the end of it from the core, I could already feel it working.
"Hoof..." While Hera was still holding off a majority of the mana, what was making it past her was treating the channels like a highway, accelerating until it exited beneath my paw and blasted over me like water erupting from a fire hydrant. -She'll have to do the final stretch...-
While, thankfully, the mana ripping across my scales lacked the flesh-dissolving properties I knew from the aquifer, it was still hard to focus or control anything after a certain point.
So, I moved to pass the torch.
*Woom* Creating what would eventually be the top control valve, I made a small pillar, about thirty meters tall, and capped it with an artifact made out of diamond so meticulously strengthened, it would function like a plug that could control exactly how much mana could escape from the coiled mana highways.
And thankfully, I finished right before Hera reached her limit.
Finally letting go of the unfathomable current, mana surged up through the channels like a broken dam flooding a valley, slamming into the top artifact with so much force it made an audible thump. *Wooom*
-Holy shit...- "Thank goodness it's working..." The plug, alongside the progressively mana-strengthened alloy the tube was made of, was somehow enough to leave the mana reaching the surface not much different from if the channels didn't exist at all.
However, the pressure in those channels was about to get way more intense...
After giving Hera a moment to catch her breath, I had her extend the tube the rest of the way, moving slow enough for her to also monitor the strengthening of the tubes themselves before... *tink-Vwoom* The channels reached the submerged space around the core, and the internal pressure exploded.
Though, it seemed to be holding strong. "~You think the flow this generates will be enough to keep souls from settling in it..?~"
I nodded without thinking. "~More than likely, but it's not done just yet.~" Going on to explain exactly how I wanted her to expand the channels around the top section of the core, and add a very specific array of hyper-simplified temperature control runes to it, it started finally coming together.
"~Interesting... ~" When opened, mana would rapidly flow up through the channels, generating a current in the core, and forcing mana to channel through innumerable temperature control runes that would drop the surrounding temperature. "~And when you close it completely, the natural expulsion of mana from the core will clean them...~" Like pressurized water flowing out through holes in a colander.
And it worked perfectly.
The greater the flow allowed by the valve at the top, the greater the cooling affect. And if it ever needed maintenance, all you'd need to do is briefly shut it completely. -When it's closed, the runes around the core will be cleaned, and when it's opened, the sudden release of pressure will clear the main channels.-
Effectively, the valve was a fancy thermostat for the entire cavern.
However, I did underestimate just how effective the runes cooling the water would be.
"~U..Uh...~" Cautiously backing away from the core as the water within the inner chamber began freezing, Hera spoke with a deep concern. "~Is it supposed to be getting this cold..?~"
"~Y..Yeah," Quickly shutting the valve again, my mind started shifting gears. "We still have to add some metal rods that will spread that heat throughout the aquifer.~" Like Reon had said, without a way to spread the quickly and evenly, it would be extremely difficult to actually control the temperature changes from the surface without overshooting it. -Metal rods would probably work, but I wonder if I could figure out a proper heat pipe...-
That wasn't a small undertaking though.
Continuing to have Hera help me with the space closer to the core, we took another week coming up with a shared design before boring and filling small tunnels with giant heat pipes.
But while certainly a bit of a struggle, it worked like a charm.
Eventually reopening the valve just enough for everything to turn on, a very sudden, firm current of mana began escaping the top of the channel, spreading out and entering the heart of the cavern in a fashion that mirrored the inflow of air from upper channel.
Reon noticed the change instantly. "Holy..."
But while, in terms of volume, the mana entering the cavern wasn't that much more than normal.. the valve wasn't even at one percent of its maximum... -At it's max, this thing might seriously drain the core and drown the cavern...-
While more mana into the cavern would never really be a bad thing—especially since the generated flow thinned the shell of the core and allowed it to absorb more mana from below—at fifty percent, the valve was pulling more mana into the cavern than the core was taking into itself.
Though, so long as I had a way to ensure the valve couldn't be turned that far, I didn't find that as a point of concern... -There's no way the city will ever need anywhere close to that...-
In terms of cooling power alone, one percent was way too much for the unpopulated cavern, to the extent that Reon had to turn many of the old structures of the city into small forges just to mimic the heat of a living draconic population.
But by the sounds of things, he wasn't too upset by it. "It's actually pretty nice to be able to do live tests for how I'm managing the heat."
It was effectively giving him the chance to do some live experiments to figure out how effective his methods were. -I just need to make sure only trusted people can get to it.-
And for now, that was Reon.
Temporarily sealing the top entrance to the chamber with the artifact, I made some other symmetrical entrances on the sides of the platform near the water, and gave Reon a medallion that could open them—briefly showing him how it worked, and give him warnings of what not to do.
Though, it wouldn't be like that forever. Once construction properly got underway, Hera and I planned to assign a few trustworthy to it because the mana in the chamber was definitely a little excessive for him, especially as it would inevitably be opened wider over time.
But it was more than enough for now. Taking one final week to make sure everything was in working order, Hera finally started making her way out of the aquifer, and after making several, currently one-way space runes on the central platform, I moved back to the shore of the aquifer to greet her, and see her for the first time in a little over a month.
At long last, it was time to catch up—to see what she had learned about her new state of being, and hopefully figure out how we would return to the outside world.
Though, it seemed like my concerns about her not being able to leave more mana-dense areas were.. substantially unnecessary.
In the near-month she had spent in the aquifer... "Vasilias..." Her scales were practically no different from solid, crystallized mana.
And well.. while indescribably beautiful...
"I feel like a waterlogged sponge..."
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