"Have you heard of the Skill known as [Spell Crafting]?" Cain asks, wondering how far back in the story he is going to have to start.
"Is that some form of Inscription? Or enchantment?" The Tengu asks, writing his notes.
"Neither, or perhaps both. Spell Crafting is the core skill to create and modify magical spells and System abilities. With it, you learn to modify the rune patterns that make up a spell, or an enchantment, which is the relevant bit today.
The edges of the enchantment that should have created dungeons here in the Awakened Zone tore, and pieces were lost entirely. I suspect it has to do with the relative power of the residents against the Ley Lines in some way, but I haven't had time to properly explore that yet.
The experiment that we did the other day was to create a form of curse to fill in the missing parts of the spell at the vortex. When the Crazed are created every midnight, the vortexes change, and I tried to reproduce that, but in a stable form. What happened was that the vortex did stabilize, as it does at midnight, but without the reversal in flow that keeps the occupants trapped. Instead, it spit them out at the point that I designated, but it sucked up the entire energy storage of the two Ley Lines, plus my companions and all the surrounding vegetation."
It takes the man a moment to finish his notes before he looks up again. "So is this dead zone still present and unrepaired? Can I see what remains of your spell?"
Cain nods his head. "The Ley Lines are mere threads at the moment until they recover, but I did get enough energy into them to stabilize them. The spell should still be there and stable, keeping new people from stumbling inside the vortex as well."
"And how much mana do you think it took to stabilize the area after the vortex used it all up to eject the occupants?" He asks professionally.
"Half a million, plus what it took from the surrounding area." Cain estimates and the man sighs.
"This isn't going to be an easy test to recreate is it? We don't know if the effect will be smaller or larger with a change in Ley Line strength, or even at what scale it might change between vortexes. It might even be scaled based on the number of occupants. What if we need tens of thousands per occupant and that's why the Dungeons can't be affected by our tests? If we needed tens of millions of mana to remove a dungeon it simply wouldn't be possible, since they aren't unstable like the vortexes are."
It is clear that this topic has been a longtime favorite of the researcher, and he ends up spending hours in conversation with the group before the Mayor comes in to interrupt their session.
"Duke Cain, about those new arrivals you brought. I believe we can help a lot of them out, and we have already tracked down the descendants of a few of the families thanks to the region's record keeping. How are things going on the topic of fixing or stabilizing the vortexes?"
"We have come to two possible outcomes. Either a large vortex on stronger Ley Lines will be proportionally easier to close thanks to the available mana, or the backlash will be proportionally larger, killing everything within hundreds or thousands of kilometers until millions of mana have been absorbed to restabilize the vortex and eject the current occupants." The researcher says happily.
"You really don't know how to break things to someone easily do you?" The Mayor asks, used to the idiosyncrasies of the city's mages.
"There wasn't enough data for that. We could try on a slightly smaller vortex next. The available information suggests that one on weaker Ley Lines with fewer occupants is more likely to be easy to stabilize. Of course, it could be exponentially worse, but that does seem unlikely, thanks to what we know of the size scaling of the vortexes." The Youkai shrugs, not sure what to tell the Mayor that will make him happy.
"Well, carry on then. I will take care of the others, so the mad scientists can do whatever it is that you all like to do for fun. Just please try not to kill off large areas of farmland, or multiple people in the area with your experiments."
With that, the Mayor heads back out, and the Mage gets an extra excited look, taking the man's sarcasm as permission to do additional experiments, as long as they are fairly certain that they won't cause mass death or destruction. That's a low bar when his expectations for success are so high, and the Mage doesn't see much of anything stopping them from trying again, except finding a suitably sized vortex and ley line intersection that is.
"We have a map here of the vortexes that we have managed to find. I will need to mark yours as altered to keep things current, so we can take this time to find a similar one and make plans to try again. Do you have any ideas on how to reduce the damage done? The Mayor seemed pretty adamant about that part, like Bamboo forests won't be regrown within the year anyhow.
"I think if we brought even more True Awakened with us, the extra mana should be able to reduce the collateral damage and stabilize the Lines before they get too out of control," Evangeline suggests, thinking hard of better ways to do this that don't risk killing half the Mage Association.
They can always use the summons as a spare mana pool, but that might not work as intended. It should, since the last time didn't hurt any of them, it only drained the Companions' mana dry, but there are no guarantees.
"We can try with my summons. I will call for a number of Mythic creatures to stand with us in the area and we will see if their mana pools will be enough to stabilize the lines. But first, we need to find one just as small and secluded as the one I tested, so we aren't risking local lives and livelihoods. You will see what happened when you visit the first site, everything is dead, drained of nutrients, not a single sign of life left." Cain explains to the researcher, who has moved on to checking his schedule to see when he will be able to travel without interrupting his ongoing tests.
"How about the next full moon? We are one day from it now, so that's four weeks' time." He suggests, not in a huge hurry, and wanting to gather as much data as possible for his report first.
