"Okay, this should do it," I said, putting a block of Groveheart with a ritual inscribed on it into a pot of water.

The Lightning idea was a bust. I confirmed Lightning Mana did not in any way act as actual electricity, which didn't make any sense to me. It behaved more like a kind of plasma that attempted to travel towards the ground through the easiest route that it could. It was more like someone's idea of what Lightning should be instead of what it actually was.

In this attempt, I was going to try to pull the sodium off of the chlorine directly, using a Metal and Air Mana ritual. By treating each atom individually, I should be able to split the salt apart.

I had already tried a Metal ritual on its own, and that didn't work. It did, however, make one side of the pot saltier than the other, which told me something was happening. I just needed to treat the chlorine as a gas to remove it.

I think.

"Wouldn't it have been easier to find a different way to dissolve the material components?" Novi asked.

"No, shut up. I can make it work. Did you chop up some of the Ashenflare?" I asked, patting my hands off on my cloak.

"Yeah, I finished that part like an hour ago. I figured I'd let you have the honour of… Oh." I looked up to see what Novi had reacted to and saw that the sky was now visible through the roof. The sky had grown overcast at some point, and raindrops were starting to leak through. "I'll repair that, one moment."

"As soon as I'm done with the Whisperash, I'll spruce the place up a bit. We should get you to make a version with your Strand, I bet it would have slightly different properties than mine," I said while making my way over to the mortar filled with Ashenflare Leaf flakes. The leaves glowed red, and the air simmered above them from the heat they were giving off. "After you're done, you can get to work on the other Trivial material. I have a feeling that we'll both be needed for the Very Easy one."

In my hand, I compressed Mana aspected towards the Argent Bastion together in the shape of a pestle. Once I squeezed enough in place, it began to crystallize. Then, with the crystalized Mana, I began grinding up the leaves. It needed a lot more than I had expected it to in order to get to the point where it acted as a solid object.

This should theoretically grind the Fire out of the Ashenflare. I was supposed to use a mortar made of Mana as well, but I didn't have confidence in my ability to hold two Mana constructs together at the same time. I was barely able to prevent the one I was using now from exploding in my hand.

While I was grinding away, I realized that the air was starting to smell like bleach. I knew it would work and that Novi was worrying over nothing. I blocked my nose off because even if I wasn't affected by the chlorine gas, the smell was rather strong.

I had to wonder how Mana affected things on a molecular level. Obviously, it had macro effects, but the fact that I could still perform chemistry of any kind meant that molecules still existed as I should expect here.

Maybe atoms were made of Mana? That would make a kind of sense, after all, Kaelzar had to have created the universe I was born in. If everything at the particle physics level was just Mana-based interactions, that would explain why it felt like scientists back on Earth were barely scratching the surface of particle physics.

I should ask Autumn what physics was like on their home Plane. That would help me differentiate between Kaelzar-created dimensions, such as this one, and naturally occurring dimensions.

Assuming their dimension was naturally created. I couldn't actually conclusively say whether it was.

I stopped grinding for a moment to check the powder. It had finally lost its dull red glow and was now ash coloured. I was pretty sure it was ready.

I gave it a taste. The flavour was exactly what I expected, given its appearance.

I confirmed that it was, in fact, Ashen Leaf, which has practically no interesting properties. All of the Rathe values were one, and it didn't do anything except conduct Ash Mana slightly better.

The only difference from what the product would have been had I used a mixture of Nature and Cold instead of Argent Bastion was that it was labelled 'Ashen Leaf (Argent Bastion)' by my Core, rather than just 'Ashen Leaf'.

Maybe it was only the final product that had different qualities? Well, no need to fret, I'll find out soon.

Growing a pile of Runaspriggan Flesh, I pulled the water out with a forceful application of Water Mana, then ground it up as well.

Once the two powders were complete, I went over to what used to be brine, but was now concentrated sodium hydroxide, and poured them in together, mixing the solution until the powders formed a mush that began to blend.

Finally, with the product I needed, I ran it through a cotton strainer, then rigged up a vacuum filter using a one-way Air Mana circuit on the side of a flask. Air could enter the flask through the top, where the drying mush would sit, and be forced out through a hole on the side.

I didn't even need to set up a pipe through a vacuum pump. As long as I kept feeding the circuit Mana, it would only allow air to travel one way while sucking up any in the flask.

While I was finishing up with that, I looked over at what Novi was doing. She was boiling something over a hot plate while being very careful with the temperature. The other Trivial material we decided to make was a kind of self-repairing resin, which was distinctly not sap because I refused to taint anything we made with sap.

Stoneflow Resin worked by creating a durable sealing layer over whatever it was applied to, which would attempt to return to its original shape if scratched or damaged. Unfortunately, it wasn't all that flexible, so that meant it couldn't be applied to my body.

It would serve as a great sealant for the bottom of the boat, though.

After a couple of minutes, I tapped what was originally a mush but was now a dry, puck-like mass of plant matter to check that it was done. I broke the puck up and ground it back into powder.

Transferring that powder to a mould, I added just enough freshly manifested water to leave the powder damp, then filled it with a 70:30 mix of Nature and Sound Mana, before completely sealing it. I had to make the mould very thick so as not to disturb the Sound Mana at all while it was doing its thing.

I then started the process over from the beginning because I was certain it was going to go wrong somehow.

I had completed the second attempt by the time I was supposed to open the first one.

Opening the mould, I immediately knew something wasn't quite right. Because I was fairly certain it wasn't supposed to be vibrating. Letting out a sigh, I began building a sound-damping chamber.

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Ten minutes later, I was standing outside in front of a stone box with two separate chambers with an insulating layer in between them that was packed with straw. The inner chamber had ribbing like the ones you see in an anechoic chamber, except padded with cotton instead of whatever soundproofing foam those chambers usually use. The outer layer was made of compacted granite, which I shaped using Earth Mana.

The fact that I could remember what those chambers were called, but could barely remember what I was doing just yesterday, would confuse me to no end. Where was the Memory Stat? I needed someone to add that to the system.

Within the damping chamber, I set the mould and started prepping another batch.

Luckily, that new batch didn't need to be used. When I opened up the mould, it was a solid silver substance that made absolutely no noise when flicked. It was also… Not heavy, but moving it seemed to take more force than it should, as if it carried more inertia than it should.

That was probably the alteration caused by my Strand.

"Hey, you done yet?" I asked Novi as I walked back inside.

She was in the process of pouring the resin down her throat and just gave me a thumbs up.

"Cool," I said, then popped the block of Whisperash out and shoved it in my mouth. It tasted like nothing. In fact, I could barely tell it was in my mouth as I chewed. My Core spit out some information about the substance at me.

[Silver Whisperash Bark] Description: A variant of Whisperash Bark created through Graftfusion of Ashen Leaf (Argent Bastion) and Runaspriggan Flesh. This material has high contact serenity and creates a noise-dampening field around it. Silver Whisperash Bark has traded Whisperash's presence-dampening property for an increased inertial weight that may be disabled by applying Nature Mana.

Structure - Quiet Bark Origin - Runaspriggan Flesh + Ashenflare Leaf Mana Structure - Silence, Stillness, Ashen, Silver Tier - I.5 - Wrought AMSS Profile (Rathe-Scaled) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Blunt Resistance: R3 Pierce Resistance: R3 Shear Resistance: R3 Elasticity: R3 Mana Conductivity: R1 Mana Capacity R1 Mana Resistance: R3 Mana Compliance: R1 Mana Generation Rate: R1 Non-Mana Conductivity: R1 Heat Tolerance: R1 Cold Tolerance: R4 Kinetic Sheen: R3 Contact Serenity: R8 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Soul Reactivity: -10% Might +5% Fortitude +26% Grace

The first thing I noticed was that the substance's Tier wasn't displayed as usual. It was Wrought, which was technically lower than Glacivein Muscle, but it had a point five increase in Ascension level. I supposed that was because it was a first Ascension material that had been altered by a Strand, which I shouldn't have until the Second Ascension.

Kicking my boots off, I grew myself a new pair made of Silver Whisperash, making sure to add circuits that would allow me to disable the inertia increase. I tested them by stomping on the ground, and they produced absolutely no sound.

I giggled, then realized what I could probably do with them.

"Be right back!" I yelled to Novi, running outside into the rain and down to the beach, remembering to send her the memory of how I got the Whisperash to grow properly just before I arrived at the waterfront.

Standing out in the rain, I pulled as much Mana into my muscles as I could without burning them out. I could feel the power building in them, the connective proteins snapping under the tension. Then I released that tension, flying as fast as I could out over the water.

As my foot touched the surface of the water, the Glacivein Muscles caused the surface to freeze slightly, and the high Contact Serenity provided by the Silver Whisperash meant that I could kick off that patch of ice with my full weight.

Running across the surface, I raised my arms in victory. I was flying across the ocean like a character in a Murim manhwa.

Then promptly tripped on a wave and tumbled into the water.

Kicking downwards, I pushed off platforms that froze inside the water to get myself back to the surface and ran back to the beach.

That could have gone better. I think that I just needed to practice a bit. I'd get a handle on it eventually.

I ran out into the water again, giddy as a child who had gotten a new toy to play with.

"Are you ever going to finish building the house?" Novi called down to me when I had returned to the beach for the third time.

"Yeah, yeah, coming," I yelled back up and ran towards the bluffs. By pressing my foot against the surface then and kicking upwards, I was able to make it most of the way up the wall before I fell and had to take the long way up.

I'd figure that out eventually.

While taking the path up, I spent a moment checking the notifications Novi and I received for creating the materials.

Profession Level (Greenweaver) Increased +4 (16) +8 Wit, +4 Spirit, +4 Arcana, +16 Eidetic Drops

Profession Level (Greenweaver) Increased +1 (17) +8 Wit, +4 Spirit, +1 Arcana, +4 Eidetic Drops

I put the drops straight into Grace. Now that I had a material with good Contact Serenity, I wanted to take advantage of it.

Milestone Achieved: ? - [Wrought] Tier plant material created through Draincasting & Interlinking Graftfusion. Species Level (Runaspriggan) Increased +5 (57) +5 Might, +15 Wit, +20 Spirit, +10 Fortitude, +15 Arcana, +10 Grace

Ah, the system didn't even know what Ascension it was supposed to be. Figures.

Once at the top of the bluffs, I started growing scaffolding around the house and walked out onto it. As I walked, I added extra Mana to the wall and imbued it with my Strand. A silver sheen grew along the surface as I passed.

The scaffolding was barely even a leaf thick, but with my new boots, I weighed barely anything.

On the outer corners of the house's roof, I drew symbols that meant 'Increase Durability' from Wondersprout and circled them. I didn't need to build a whole domain; I just needed to increase the strength of the building slightly.

Returning to the bluffs, I kicked the scaffolding with the side of my foot, and it collapsed down to the beach below.

Just as I started walking into the house, again a message appeared in front of me.

[Zone Event] Name: [Merfolk Migration] Description: [Merfolk have begun their migratory cycle to the Island of Broken Tales. Every day at noon, a wave of merfolk will arrive and do their best to secure the Island. Survive daily, increasingly powerful waves of merfolk until you are able to purchase passage on the Frightened Mare or find another way off the island.] Reward: [Eidetic Coins based on wave difficulty]

Uh oh, that didn't sound good.

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