When he woke up from his short rest, he gathered all the weapons he had created and began the initial trials.
He started with the weapons he had done the shoddiest jobs on -the ones with the most misaligned edges- and used [Imbue] to force his energy into them.
For a moment, a bright luminescence radiated from within the weapon's handle, before suddenly dimming.
A split second later, a few cracks began to appear on it, and the reddish-brown color it once had slowly turned to a shade of grey.
Before Lucius could even place the weapon on the ground, it began to disintegrate, leaving only ash behind.
"Sigh, I was afraid this would happen," he whispered to himself as he dusted the weapon's remains off his hands.
Next, he tried Imbueing only the stone head, and for a moment it seemed to be working. Though a few seconds after that, it began to glow brighter, and brighter until eventually shattering.
"Okay, it wasn't as if I was expecting this to work on the first few tries anyway," he whispered to himself calmly, before putting the shattered weapon aside.
If he wanted to prevent the materials from shattering under pressure, he realized he would have to carefully control the amount of energy he was injecting. Which was easier said than done as he was already imbuing them with the minimum threshold he could manage.
He attempted to reduce the amount of energy a few more times, before noticing an emerging pattern on all the weapons that shattered.
It seemed that their initial breaking point was the area he was injecting the energy from, which was obvious enough, however, it highlighted something less obvious. The pattern that the weapons were shattering along, were identical to the patterns with which his energy traveled through them.
~So, maybe if I spread out the pattern a bit more?~ he thought to himself. Yet another concept that was easier said than done.
Sure he had control over the general direction that his energies were traveling in, however, he had no such control over the small tendrils with which they moved. It was a skill he would have to develop from scratch, and thus far he had never attempted to do something so sophisticated.
Hours, upon hours passed.
On his breaks, he shared more anecdotes about samurais with Zhayen and Alpha before going back to work. And on other breaks, he ate some of the meat from the remaining Gargan corpse in his room.
The few hours became a whole day, and what started off as just a little experimentation became a burning obsession.
He was beginning to figure out that the magical energies of this world weren't all that different from electricity in his old one.
It wasn't just that he lacked the control to guide his energies in the right direction, it was that the materials he was using had natural areas of resistance. And as a result, his energies took whatever paths had the least of it.
Another thing he realized was that even if that natural resistance wasn't present, the material would only hold his energies for a short time.
This was made apparent when he injected a small amount of energy into one of the larger rocks in storage. Although the energy was not enough to shatter it, the rock only retained the solar energy's trademark glow for but a few seconds.
"I'm running out of materials," he whispered to himself. Before taking out the final weapon he had at his disposal.
An axe.
He had already tried everything there was to try, it was clear that what he was missing was not from his lack of control over [Imbue] but something else entirely.
Going on a hunch, he began to etch patterns on the stone axe's head, hoping that the hollow points would act as areas of low resistance. It was a shot into the darkness, but it was better he try something new than continue doing the same mistakes.
So after etching an arbitrary pattern on the stone axe, he began to slowly inject energy into it.
Initially, the energies moved in the hap-hazard manner they usually did, but once one of the tendrils touched the hollow point, the energies began moving along the patterns.
Lucius's tired expression slowly turned into one of joy, it felt right that he shout something like 'eureka' at this moment.
However before he could even stand up to celebrate, the stone head shattered.
"But still, I was onto something," he whispered to himself after some thought, a small tired grin still present on his face.
From what he had seen, the axe head had shattered due to an overload, not because the energies had gone rampant.
It was just that once it reached the end of the circuit he had etched onto the stone, it had nowhere to go, and the stone head could not handle that much energy for long periods of time.
"I'll need something to store the energy. Something to act as a capacitor, or better yet a sort of battery," he whispered to himself, before going into his pouch.
Only then did he realize that the batteries he had been wanting to use, or more clearly, the mana stones, were not there.
~Right, I already used them for helios,~ he thought to himself in slight irritation. Just then, he remembered the bag of glowing rocks that the warriors had collected for him.
There was no evidence that they were glowing due to mana, in fact, it was more likely they were glowing due to some sort of algae-like organism. However, that odd effect they displayed at the entrance gave him some hope, so he attempted to Imbue them with energy.
Though his hopes were quickly shattered.
Whatever these rocks were, they acted as if they were ethereal to his energy. It wasn't a matter of the level of resistance being too high, but rather that his energies didn't even register them as objects.
Of course, he was certain this property would be interesting to study, but right now he was still bent on solving the magical weapons issue.
"But even if this worked, stone just isn't a good material for this. A few minutes of exposure at best, and it'll disintegrate. No... I need better materials," he whispered to himself, trying to remember if he had ever come across something that seemed strong enough.
Just then he recalled a place that might have materials like that, a place that seemed alien-like, with trees made from very interesting materials, and no doubt had other such oddities that might work.
"But sneaking past the border the Immaculate Council Forest created will be dangerous," he whispered. Though even as he was saying that, he was already planning to do a bit of reconnaissance so he could retrieve a few materials.
"Well, if they want to fight me, I'll have no choice but to fight back. Who knows, I might even collect a few mana cores while I'm at it," he whispered to himself.
