Half an hour of fiddling with the new magnification stone and reading the appropriate course materials later, I had pretty much figured out the basics of how it worked.
"So you connect it to specific layers in the magic crystal and then you can draw the runes directly on the stone, huh?" I looked at the stone, twiddling my fingers excitedly. "I guess there really wouldn't be any other way to inscribe runes onto magic crystals otherwise. I was kinda wondering how that would work."
I had pulled out some of the new magic crystals that Violet had brought for testing and had been astonished to find out that the simplest one I could find still had six layers. Compared to the 2-3 layer minimum crystals that the course recommended, I was truly rolling in it, especially considering there were a fair few medium-grade crystals thrown in as well.
"Now, what should I start on next? I've figured out interlacing, more or less, so that shouldn't be a problem. I guess I could start on the 12 hour light stones Violet wanted? If I fall short it shouldn't matter much because they'd be nice to have around here as well…And actually!" I sat up as an idea struck me. "I really want to figure out how to create light stones that automatically switch between recharging and emitting based on solar levels. That way if I put them outside they just automatically come on every night like those solar-powered yard lamps from the real world"
I rubbed my hands together eager to get started. Indeed if it was just making a simple light layer and interlacing it with a bunch of batter layers to reach 12 hours there really wasn't anything new to learn, but if I could start to mess around more with logic runes and figure out some basic automation then that would be a huge step forwards towards the kinds of things I really wanted to make.
I pulled out one of my light stones for reference and started scrolling through the encyclopedia page for all the available logic runes, so I could start ideating on how I could achieve the effect I wanted.
"So obviously it's the same as my solar lamp—with the reversal rune and the switch rune, but we need something to activate the switch…?" I murmured as I inspected each logic rune carefully. "I suppose really we need like a sensor or something, right? Normally for solar-powered stuff you're constantly absorbing energy and that's basically a sensor, but for this it only absorbs when it's shut off so…" I sat back and tried to think this through.
"What if there was a second layer that also had a light rune, but the switch was activated so it was absorbing energy, would that work…? Can you even have multiple spell runes in a single device? Isn't that supposed to be like the secondary rune ring or whatever, I'm not sure if that's…"
I closed the encyclopedia page and went back to the intermediate course, scrolling through the lesson entries to see if there was anything about multiple spell runes in a single device.
"'Interlinked Devices?' What is this?" I stumbled across a lesson entry towards the bottom of the intermediate course. "Is this what I…? 'You may have noticed by now that with the use of omnidirectional interlacing multiple rune devices can overlap and interfere with one another within the same space. Done without proper precautions this can halt or even damage the two rune devices, but by utilizing the proper interlinking techniques, multiple devices can be synchronized and utilized together, even to the extent where multiple 'devices' can be housed within the same magic crystal.'"
"Ok! Sweet! This is exactly what I want. I guess the encyclopedia sticks to the definition '1 spell rune=1 rune device,' but really this is just getting multiple spell runes to sync together."
I scrolled down through the page skimming through the content as I tried to continue my brainstorm for the automatic solar lamps. "So say you have a second light rune. It's basically acting as a separate device dedicated solely to absorbing power, which then gets shared with the device dedicated to outputting that power in light. What we want then is for the light outputting device to turn on once the light inputting device stops receiving power. Thus when it's dark out the light inputting device, which is no longer receiving power tells the light outputting device to turn on, and bing we have a night lamp."
"So basically…Ahh, I wish I had paper!" I scrambled around desperately for some paper, but there was nothing around, not even when I got up and thoroughly scoured the crate Violet had brought. "Ahh she was just here I should have asked her for some!" I scratched my head in frustration and could only give up with a sigh.
Sitting back down I eyed my magnification stone for a moment, the brand new intermediate wand lying right next to it, but then shook my head. "No, Naomi, the encyclopedia was very clear that inscribing on the stone without linking it to a magic crystal could damage or break the stone." I sighed. Turning back to what I was thinking about before I got up.
"Ok, so, what do we need we need L2, this is what I'm calling the light inputting device. L2 sends the energy over to L1 through the interlinking whatever. The channel that receives that energy needs to then have some kind of conditional. When the energy comes the light is…" I stopped to try and make sure I had it right. "off, because it's sunny out, yup. Ok, and then when the energy stops coming it flips a switch rune and the light spell rune is then activated.
"Hoi. Ok, I think there's a logic rune for that, it shouldn't be too bad. Now where…where do I put the battery layers, because assuming we have one layer for each spell rune, if it's my six layer magic stone, we still have four more layers free for additional battery circuitry, but they need to be interlaced into a particular device. Or do they? If I interlink them, would it be a third…? Ahh, I don't want to think about that, I'll just throw them into L1, that's what's spending the energy, so that should make sense right?"
My brain was starting to hurt and I still didn't have any paper to write my ideas down on, so in a fervour to get something down, I pulled out the six layered crystal and connected it to the magnification stone. "Ahh, whatever, I'm just going to start with L1 and if I screw up, it's whatever I have plenty of stones."