"No, wait–you're spreading the elemental absorption across all barrier layers at the same time, but that's going to create problems that'll mess up the whole structure."
Malachi looked up from the parchment he'd been writing calculations on for the past hour, his face somewhere between frustrated and curious. "Then how would you do it? The absorption has to happen at multiple points or the energy conversion won't work well enough."
I leaned over the table, pointing at the diagram we'd been working on. "One after the other instead of all at once. The outer layer absorbs and converts first, then passes the leftover energy to the next layer inward. Each layer handles a different elemental signature, so there's no problems because they're not all trying to process the same magical frequency at once."
