Meanwhile, Ben and Elvira were back inside their base. The two stood side by side, staring at the prototype slime farm.
They were deep in debate about how it worked—when a distant crack of red lightning lit up the cavern.
Both of them paused, turning their eyes toward the direction it came from. "Seems our pursuer's come. Do you feel it, my beloved?" Elvira asked softly.
"Of course," Ben replied. "I might not be some grand expert on mana, but even I can tell… that's probably Aether."
"You think we can beat them?"
"It's not about can or can't, Elvira. We have to. We need to strengthen our defenses—fast. How much mana do you think we'd need to block something like that?"
"Hmm… completely blocking it would take a lot," Elvira said, a glint of confidence in her eyes. "But redirecting it? That's a different matter." She smiled.
Ever since her last fight with Storm, she'd thought of countless ways to deal with lightning. And with the understanding of physics she'd absorbed from Ben's memories, her methods had only become better.
"Good. Focus on that, then." Ben turned his gaze back to the prototype farm. Only two slime exist for now—moving even one intact had been a massive headache.
"We'll deal with this later. For now, I'm gonna dig a few more escape paths in case things go south."
Elvira gave a nod. "Don't worry. It won't take long. I just need to tweak the magic circle to raise it's capacity" She turned toward Ben and raised her palm.
She didn't even have to say it anymore—Ben knew what she wanted. With a heavy sigh, he pulled out a few white gemstones and placed them into her hand. But Elvira still didn't move.
"Still not enough? Just take it from the warehouse than."
"I don't want this, my beloved. You know what I want. Come on, don't be stingy now. Our lives are on the line."
Ben hesitated, then muttered, "Fine. But remember how volatile this one is. Be careful."
He pulled out another gemstone—different from the rest. Still white, but with specks of violet dust swirling inside.
"Don't worry. I know what I'm doing," Elvira said, her eyes fixed on it. "But still no progress on making more?"
"Nope. That's still the only one. We really made it by luck."
Ben had asked Elvira to help him unlock a hidden skill on his pickaxe. With enough mana, he'd managed to make it glow. He struck it against the ground, expecting a surge of power.
But nothing happened.
They ran a dozen tests after that, trying everything they could think of.
Elvira tried imbuing it with each elemental type—fire, lightning, wind, even light—but the pickaxe remained stubbornly inert. She even tried to analyze its structure, scanning it with spells and runes, but no matter what method she used, it gave her nothing.
The only consistent reaction was the glow when it was infused with mana.
"My beloved… maybe we need to pour the mana in a specific pattern?" Elvira suggested, brows furrowed as she observed the faint shimmer crawling along the pickaxe's head.
"That a thing? Is that how magic works?"
"Well… yes and no." Elvira tapped her chin, her eyes distant. "You see, mana doesn't flow arbitrarily. It adheres to the structure of the enchantment matrix. Each artifact has a latent rune sequence—sometimes dormant, sometimes reactive—designed to resonate only when mana is directed through the correct pattern. If the influx breaches the glyph threshold or circulates without harmonic alignment, it destabilizes the core and—well, basically, it resets."
Ben blinked slowly. "…Huh."
"But wait," Elvira continued, waving a hand in the air. "Think of the artifact as a converging node. The runes act like sigil-bound capacitors, storing and amplifying flow. But they won't do anything unless you align the channels through the primary conduction lines—usually hidden in the etching. The problem is, if you push mana straight in, it doesn't sequence. It just—bleeds. Like dumping water on a broken funnel."
Ben kept staring at her, his face blank.
Elvira paused. "…What?"
Ben scratched his head. "So… it's like an electric circuit?" The only word register on his mind is capacitor. So he concluded it's like electronic circuit.
"Like, each rune has a purpose—one's a resistor, another's a switch, and mana's like current. You can't just dump power into it. You gotta feed it through the right path. Otherwise, it just shorts out."
Elvira blinked, then slowly grinned. "That's… actually a perfect way to put it."
Ben smirked. "And you said I don't understand magic. But you definitely suck at teaching."
With that understanding, Ben got to work, trying to apply it himself. Unfortunately, his mana control was… bad. Really bad.
Even shaping it into a simple square was a struggle, let alone keeping it steady while moving it in a specific direction with exact angles and a tiny margin for error.
"Can't we just make the flow move on its own, like follow a preset path?" Ben asked, clearly frustrated. "I mean, that's how electricity works in a circuit board."
He wasn't an electrician back in his old world, but he'd listened to enough influencer talk to know the basics.
"Yes, but that only works if we already know the exact mana pathways. It's—"
"Stop. Your explanation's just gonna make it harder to understand."
Elvira puffed her cheeks, mildly offended, but didn't argue.
Since trying to control it precisely was going nowhere, Ben gave up on finesse and decided to just go wild. He let his mana surge and twist freely, pushing it into the pickaxe in erratic, chaotic pulses.
That's when something happened.
The pickaxe suddenly jolted—then shot forward like a cannonball.
By pure accident, it slammed straight into one of the white gemstones in their stockpile.
There was a flash. The gem crackled, pulsed, and changed.
The result… was the very gem Ben had given to Elvira just earlier—the one laced with purple dust, the only one of its kind.