Carman once again sat alone in his workshop. On the table were various materials, from metals, to glass to sand, to others there did not seem to be any rhyme or reason for them.
Tossing two panels of glass into his Transformation circle, Carman used them to create two large glass beakers. Then Carman took the beakers and placed them one by one into his transfiguration circle after filling them with some of the seemingly random materials he had gathered. He mentally referenced the instructions he had purchased from his system, looking at the end product's chemical composition, before he started to strip all the unnecessary atoms from the materials in the beakers before combining the remainder into the structure he was looking for. It was tedious, but after he had the final product, the transfiguration circle did the bulk of the work on its own with little direction.
At the end he looked at the clear viscous liquids in the beakers. A-B Epoxy resin. He looked at the dust he had made using the atoms he did not need and compressed it into a brick for later. Adding some food coloring, Carman poured the two beakers together into one, and stirred it until the liquid was homogeneous.
He then placed the liquid into his transfiguration circle and sped up its curing. This was by far the most inefficient way to do this, but it was just his proof of concept. He was sure he would later be able to refine the process to be able to create solid epoxy in one go at a later time, but for his first attempt, this would work fine. Once it had finished curing, Carman used his transfiguration circle to transform the beakers into a sheet of fiberglass, and dispersed the green epoxy evenly throughout it with his transformation circle.
Drawing on his knowledge and tapping into the reservoir of records in his Electrical Engineering skill, Carman split the sheet into several pieces, and removed tiny lines of epoxy creating connections, forks, and nexuses. Placing copper, gold, tin, lead, and a bar of silicon he had refined from sand, and a ceramic plate, Carman created various components. Soon he had a circuit board for a laptop as well as a frame and keys made for the bottom half. While he wanted to make a touchpad for convenience, he decided to make a secondary device.
After more fiddling, Carman completed the memory sticks RAM and processor, though he needed to stop half way through and take a nap due to the amount of focus he had been putting into his work. Then came the part he was dreading.
"This is going to be a pain," said Carman as he tossed a chunk of iron into his transfiguration circle, slowly merging the atoms until he had a smaller chunk of silvery metal.
Placing a Condessence Crystal onto the circle to replenish the energy he had used to condense the metal, Carman used it to make another two atomic elements before combining them together into a few specific chemicals.
He then moved the small bars of chemicals into the transformation table. Along with more glass and copper, Carman created a sheet of glass with a network of countless tiny RGB LEDs. Then Carman took an Electro Crystal and transformed it into a thin sheet, placing two wires onto it. Carman tried to connect it to a bulb only for nothing to happen.
"The voltage should not be an issue, is the amperage too little to light it?" Carman poked the two prongs to a sheet of paper only for nothing to happen as well. "No amperage.. Oh, I am an idiot."
Carman placed a piece of Cor Lapis he had gotten his hands on in the other end of the circuit, in place of the negative end of a battery and the light bulb to suddenly glow brightly before burning out.
"Ok, electro energy needs somewhere to go when pulling directly from a crystal, just because it shocks stuff on contact doesn't mean it is constantly disbursing the energy like a balloon. Now I just need to figure out the exact amperage it outputs so I can channel it properly." Said Carman.
Without tools, Carman spent many days carefully testing the amps the electro crystal put out and adjusting his designs to fit the Cor Lapis and resistors he needed to add.
Eventually, Carman sat down, a sleek new laptop and wire mouse in front of him he had placed all the components together and was ready to push the insulated Electro Crystal battery into a slot on the side of the machine.
"Shizzzz, I forgot about the operating system! Wait… how am I even supposed to add that? I need another computer with…..uhhgggggg." Carman slapped himself before thudding his head on the table in despair.
"Wait, the shop has to have something…" Carman muttered as he frantically looked in his system shop.
Unfortunately, most of the books he could find were useless, as they required machines that already had an OS in order to work. Furthermore, the shop didn't sell finished products, only raw materials so it wasn't like he could buy a device with an OS. After some time searching, Carman found a book with the binary code for something called "Windmill 10."
"...." Carman stared at it, the icon engraved itself in his mind, Carman looked at the price, it wasn't expensive and Carman bought it.
-Scene break-
Ryuzu was worried, Carman hadn't left his workshop for days apart for school and the occasional trip to the toilet, she had heard crying and maniacal laughter coming from the hidden room he was working in. She then heard another burst of laughter, this time she was going down. It had been a week and he needed a break whether he liked it or not. As she descended, she worried what project had caused this much focus from the boy.
As she entered the small room, she found him laughing in delight looking at a laptop, she had seen him working on the components previously, but now it was lit up, a logo appearing in the center as a status bar loaded on the bottom, Carman was laughing and dancing around the room in celebration.
"Carman… are you well?" She asked.
Carman stopped and then ran and grabbed her hands. "I finished it!! I finally completed the code, I had to move the electrons one by one to program it, but I did iIIITTT!!"
Carman pulled her into a spinning dance of joy laughing like a madman, his overwhelming joy empowering his small form. Ryuzu could not understand most of what he was babbling about but she was happy that this project was finished so he could rest properly.
Carman looked around the messy workshop he ha spent the majority of his time in as of late. "So are you here to scold me and drag me out of here?" he asked
"Scolding is but a fleeting reproach, and regularly ephemeral in its impact. Nay, I come bearing ire tempered by concern, for you have abandoned the most rudimentary tenets of self-preservation." She narrowed her eyes slightly. "Pray tell, when was the last time you partook in proper respite?"
Carman opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it again before finally settling on a noncommittal shrug. "...Define 'proper'?"
Ryuzu inhaled deeply, silently asking the heavens to grant her patience. "Rest which does not involve you slumped over that desk, half-submerged in an ocean clutter." She crossed her arms. "I shall allow no further debate. You are to retire for the day."
Carman groaned, rubbing his face. "Come on, Ryuzu, I just finished a major breakthrough. Can't I bask in my own genius for a little while?"
"Your so-called 'basking' shall be the death of thee." She stepped forward and, with remarkable dexterity, reached around carman and swiftly snatched the laptop and held it out of his reach with her superior height. "Lo, the heart of thy mechanical obsession now resteth within my custody. Shouldst thou seek its return, thou shalt first prove thyself not wholly devoid of reason by tending to thine own well-being."
"You sure love using those olde English terms don't you?" Asked Carman only to be glared at by Ryuzu.
"Fine, fine, I'll clean up and head up to rest." Said Carmen.
Soon after tidying up the workshop, storing most of the items in his storage, Carman headed upstairs and fell onto the couch, exhausted. He fell asleep almost as soon as his head rested on the armrest.
After placing a blanket on top of him, Ryuzu sat on the couch and turned to the books she had bought recently.
Ryuzu picked up one of the books and scoured it again for the fruit the vendor had mentioned, had they been wrong? Was she missing something? The only mention of fruits were Grapes, Apples, Sunsettieas, and Bananas… but the rest… she was going to return this, along with the other books she had bought trying to figure out this "Citron" genre that she stored on the top of the bookshelf, out of Carman's sight… the only thing they seemed to have in common… no. Citron could not be a genre made up of these books, maybe she had just been unlucky and bought the wrong books? Maybe there was no such thing as a Citron genre, and the clerks were just using fancy words to convince her to buy these stories???
Horrifyingly, she was starting to feel excited when reading certain pages, these books were dangerous. Her face flushed as she looked at a page. No, she would not be corrupted. Forget this mysterious Citron genre, she was getting rid of this… this.. corrupting compilation of words before it affected her further, Mora be damned.
-2 hours later-
Carman awoke to the smell of fire. Ryuzu was standing in front of the fireplace tossing something into the blaze.
Carman watched, it was still warm out so he wondered why Ryuzu would light a fire, the Pyro flower should still be full from the one they had set last week, especially since he hadn't harvested it yet.
"Ryuzu? Why did you make a fire?" Asked Carman.
Ryuzu jumped before responding, "Ah, there were just some things I needed to dispose of."
"Dispose of?" Carman replied.
"Verily, I fell to the machinations of a silver-tongued merchant, leading me to purchase some potentially hazardous material I thought unwise to potentially expose you to." she said.
"Hazardous? In what way?" replied Carman. "And you incinerated it instead of trying to return it?"
"Yea, with prejudice. As for the reason for its unmaking, I shan't elaborate further." said Ryuzu while looking away.
"Okay..?" Said Carman as he tried to peer into the flames but Ryuzu shifted her body to block them from his view.
He shook his head, stood up and stretched. "Alright, well I've got to get to Livre's workshop, I am probably late for my shift as it is. I'll see you later."
Ryuzu watched Carman carefully as he walked to his room to prepare for work, hoping that the books in the fire behind her would burn up quicker.
-To be Continued