After finishing a heating stone with 9 layers of interlinked heating layers, I realized that unless I wanted to set up the whole water pump system, which I still didn't really know how to go about completing since I'd never done anything mixing runestone and physical systems like piping and whatnot, the easiest thing to do was just to take a bath.
That way I could just dump a bunch of water in a bath tub from the stream, and then just heat it all up using the new heating stone. Or maybe heat it up one batch at a time? I wasn't honestly sure if 9 layers would be enough. Thinking this, I decided to make one more heating stone just in case. If it didn't end up being needed for water heating I could use it for cooking regardless.
I got to work on a new magic crystal, this time managing a perfect ten from the ten-layered crystal I had grabbed, and then with both heating devices finished I set out towards the river bank with my bucket and the two stones, figuring I could alchemize a bathtub once I got over there.
I set down my things by the side of the stream, and then paused, turning back to fill the bucket and set a heating stone under it to get the process started. "Let's see how long this one takes to boil…"
Thankfully battery circuits could be inbuilt into rune layers, so the capacity of the crystal wasn't bad, though its expenditure was outrageous. And filling the stone I also realized another piece of the puzzle which I'd been neglecting—my inner mana stores might not be enough to fuel these stones for long. Just filling up this one nine layer crystal took about a third of the free-floating runes in my lungs, and I felt rather drained from it afterwards, as well.
"Ah," I scratched my head. "Hopefully I have enough for a bath, it'd be really embarrassing if I have to stop halfway through this because I've run out of mana…" I shook my head, and then set out about gathering sticks to alchemize a new bathtub.
After about ten minutes of gathering I had a nice pile going that I hoped would be enough, and meanwhile the bucket had finally started boiling as well. The wood it was made out of didn't seem to appreciate being used to boil water, and the bottom seemed to be scorching while the sides were warping in the heat, but thankfully the combination of the water and the dry heat meant that nothing had caught fire yet.
I deactivated the mana crystal and was pleased to find there was still about half of the mana I had instilled in it left, and then started about the process of pouring my mana into the various sticks to start the alchemy process.
I was very interested in rewatching this process with my new rune vision, and my eagerness was not at all disappointed. I found that the process of pouring mana into the sticks was not at all what I had expected.
Normally when I put mana into the rune stones, runes came from my lungs, flowed out towards my fingers, entering the stone and that was it. But unexpectedly alchemy was actually a completely different process. Instead, runes from my lungs first entered my heart where they underwent a subtle change that made them like the runes that my heart circulated in my body, and only having completed that process did they then flow into the sticks I was focusing on.
Having observed these two different rune systems long enough, I preemptively decided that I would name the lung runes "mana runes," and the heart runes "heart runes." Mana runes come from the air and while I have some control over them once they are inside me, they don't undergo any fundamental changes.
Heart runes on the other hand, seem to be fundamentally mine somehow. Even once they have entered the sticks they remain under my control as long as I'm close enough, and they can even exert some influence over the runes already present in the wood. It seems like this is the reason why, when shaping the alchemized wood, it softens and responds to my intent—because in some way the wood has also become a part of me.
"Weeiiird." I took a breath, looking over the wood slowly transforming into the shape of a bathtub, as I worked more and more sticks into it. "I did not expect alchemy would be so different like this. Then why was it so easy the first time?" I wondered. "Even pouring mana into the rune stones the first time was harder than me pouring heart runes into the wood. Is it because heart runes are more fundamental or is this just some kind of talent that I have?" I scratched my head wondering, but eventually shook it.
"Just another one of those unanswerable questions, I guess," I sighed. It took more time than I had expected to shape all the sticks into a bathtub since they had to be alchemized one by one and then integrated, and I still had to occasionally deal with the problem of bugs hidden in the wood resisting my heart runes as they tried to infiltrate the sticks.
Realizing that the water I'd already spent mana on was cooling, and that the alchemy was also taking more mana than I thought it would, I called things quit with a far shallower bathtub than I would have liked, but if I wanted to bathe now before waiting for my mana to slowly recharge again, then I'd have to economize.
"Alright, let's get all the water ready, and then do this thing." I poured the now only somewhat warm water into the bathtub, then filled up the bucket again to get it ready for the next batch. I heated up water about three more times, until my mana was getting dangerously low, and then took my clothes off, to find some solace in the water.
Since I'd heated the water to boiling each time, even with some time to cool, the temperature wasn't too bad now, though the amount of water certainly left something to be desired.
"Also I forgot about soap." I complained, letting myself ease into the warm water. "Even if I wash off some of the sweat and dirt, I'll probably still be stinky." I sighed. "I wonder if Violet has any spells that make me smell good…"
"I don't think I've tried it before, but I probably could." A monotone voice came from behind me.