"This is getting interesting," Laelia murmured as she sat in her personal library, surrounded by shelves packed with handwritten books. Every month, more volumes arrived specifically for her and her researchers, documenting the latest discoveries and advances in every field they could acquire. Some were reports from universities, others were private research journals, and a few were copies of books that had only recently become available through the System. For someone like Laelia, who could never resist learning something new, the constant arrival of new information was almost impossible to resist.
Her library had become one of the quietest places in the entire facility, despite the enormous amount of research taking place around it. Hundreds of handwritten books filled the shelves, with subjects ranging from mana theory and mana engineering to biology, metallurgy, physics, and even agriculture. Laelia had never been satisfied with specializing in only one field because she believed that the greatest discoveries often occurred when seemingly unrelated subjects were combined. That habit had made her unusual among scientists, but it had also become one of the reasons the European governments valued her so highly.
She took another sip from the cup sitting beside her and allowed herself to enjoy the tea for a moment. It was not an ordinary tea, and the fact that she was drinking it while working on an important problem showed just how much she valued its effects. The tea had been discovered only a year earlier by an adventurer exploring the island of São Miguel, far from mainland Europe. The island possessed an unusually favorable combination of soil and climate, but nobody had expected it to contain a plant that would become one of Europe's most protected resources.
The adventurer who discovered it had initially been excited simply because he could not identify the plant. However, his training had taught him that an unknown plant was not something an adventurer should casually touch, harvest, or consume. Before becoming a licensed adventurer, every applicant had to complete both a course and an examination, with survival training being one of the most important parts of the curriculum. Among the many lessons they received was a simple rule that could save their lives: if you cannot identify a plant, leave it alone.
That rule was repeated so often that experienced adventurers could recite it without thinking. Unknown plants could contain poisons, parasites, magical effects, or properties that were dangerous even without direct contact. Or worse, harvesting could ruin the plant. Instead of experimenting with them, adventurers were taught to record their location and report the discovery to someone capable of properly identifying it. The government had even prepared standardized contracts for these situations so that adventurers could submit discoveries while having a clear method of receiving compensation.
Those contracts were important, but the instructors emphasized something even more strongly. Unless an adventurer was dealing with someone they personally trusted, the safest option was to sell the discovery directly to the government. Private companies could manipulate inexperienced adventurers in countless ways, especially when the discoverer did not understand the legal value of what they had found. Once the information had been handed over, proving that the discovery had actually come from the adventurer could become extremely difficult.
The problem became even worse when the value of a discovery was uncertain. A contract might state that the adventurer would receive proper compensation if their information proved accurate, but that still left the question of how much the discovery was actually worth. In many cases, thirty thousand silver coins was considered a reasonable minimum payment for a verified discovery. Yet the company receiving the information could simply claim that the information was inaccurate, incomplete, or worthless, creating an argument that could drag on for years.
System contracts could prevent many of those problems, but they created another difficulty. Most private companies were unwilling to sign them unless absolutely necessary, because there was no law forcing them to accept such contracts. Some companies even demanded that the adventurer pay the System's contract fees themselves. That could place an inexperienced adventurer in an impossible position, especially when the company had enough political and economic influence to make obtaining loans afterward considerably more difficult.
There were certainly trustworthy private companies and ancient families that would never stoop to such methods. Even so, the government remained the safest option for discoveries whose value was unknown or potentially enormous. Government agencies were required to use System contracts during official exploration, and the state covered the associated costs. The adventurer who discovered the strange tea plant therefore made the sensible choice and reported the location instead of attempting to profit from the discovery himself.
The government investigation quickly confirmed that the plant was something completely new. More importantly, the tea produced from it possessed an extraordinary effect that immediately attracted the attention of the Ministry of Technology. The plant could clear the mind of anyone who consumed the tea and significantly improve their ability to concentrate. At first, the effect sounded useful but hardly revolutionary, yet the scientists quickly realized how valuable such a resource could become.
The government wasted no time establishing a plantation on São Miguel. Because the plant was classified as a resource of national importance, the authorities treated the location almost like a military installation rather than an ordinary agricultural site. A permanent force of ten thousand soldiers was stationed on the island to protect the plantation. The naval base nearby was also upgraded, and an entire fleet was stationed in the region to ensure that nobody could simply sail in and steal the plants.
The reason for such extreme protection became obvious once Europe's scientists began testing the tea. The strongest reaction came from researchers who consumed it while working on difficult problems, because the effect allowed them to maintain concentration for far longer than normal. Scientists who had previously spent hours struggling to organize complicated ideas suddenly found themselves able to work through them with remarkable clarity. Before long, several major breakthroughs were directly or indirectly attributed to the increased concentration provided by the tea.
The demand quickly became ridiculous.
Researchers did not merely request more tea after experiencing its effects. They demanded it, because they considered it one of the most valuable tools available to them. Every laboratory wanted a supply, and every scientist who had managed to obtain some immediately understood why the government had turned the plantation into a heavily guarded facility. The fact that Laelia had decided to open a cup while working was therefore a sign that she considered the problem in front of her extremely important.
She placed the cup down and returned her attention to the enormous tome sitting open before her. "Okay, that should work," she whispered, tapping one of the diagrams with her finger. "But how am I going to translate this from device to device?" The question had been bothering her ever since she finished reading the book five hours earlier.
The tome was devoted entirely to runes, and Laelia had spent almost the entire day absorbing its contents. The knowledge inside had immediately sparked an idea that she could not ignore. If the principles described in the book were correct, she might be able to create a communication device that could function even outside the cities where the existing communication infrastructure was concentrated.
The possibility was enormous.
Since the arrival of mana, communication had become one of the many technologies that humanity had been forced to rethink. The System and the mana-filled environment had changed how devices functioned, while the collapse of much of the old global infrastructure had made long-distance communication significantly more complicated. Laelia believed runes might provide a solution, but only if she could solve the problem of transferring information between separate devices.
Her first prototype was already sitting in the neighboring room.
Unfortunately, it had exposed almost as many problems as it had solved. The device could perform most of the functions people expected from a modern phone, including storing contact information and establishing calls. From a purely functional perspective, it worked. The problem was that nobody would ever want to carry the thing around.
Laelia walked into the next room and looked at the prototype with a tired expression. The entire rune array had been carved into a slab of extremely expensive mana steel that stood roughly half a meter tall and thirty centimeters wide. The material alone had cost an enormous amount of money, and producing the slab had required the blacksmiths to work on it for nearly half a month. Every section had been hammered thousands upon thousands of times during the forging process.
In total, the smiths had struck the metal at least ten thousand times.
That process was itself part of another experiment. The blacksmiths had discovered that prolonged forging appeared to influence the amount of cultural energy contained within the material. By repeatedly hammering the mana steel, they were essentially forcing more energy into the metal. Theoretically, that should make the finished material considerably more durable and capable of enduring greater amounts of damage.
Laelia had immediately claimed the finished slab once the blacksmiths completed their experiment. She needed the strongest material she could obtain because runes had an unfortunate weakness. Although the runes themselves could perform extraordinary functions, the process of carving and activating them placed additional stress on the material beneath them. If she wanted the device to survive repeated use, ordinary metal was simply not going to be enough.
She stared at the enormous prototype and sighed.
"The functions are fine," she muttered, picking up her notes. "The problem is everything required to make those functions possible." The device worked, but it was far too large and far too expensive to ever become practical. If she wanted to turn the concept into something humanity could actually use, she would have to find a way to make the runes smaller, reduce the amount of mana steel required, and somehow solve the problem of transmitting information between separate devices.
And that was where the real difficulty began.