Prologue: Joanna (Part 5)

A wand-quality magic crystal!

When she put it through a test kit for evaluation. It was classified as a 3rd-grade mortal class, with an affinity for Fire and Air manna; 3 cubic cm's, and 20 grams.

She'd finally produced a wand-quality crystal and a multi-element crystal at that! A single element affinity crystal was worth at least 10,000 credits, or roughly 100 silver coins!

In comparison, her 10 silvers annual salary for her past job was a pittance!

A gold coin was worth 1000 silver coins, a silver was worth 1000 bronze, and a bronze was worth 1000 coppers. Her monthly rent was 400 bronze, and her annual student loan payment was 5 silvers annually, to clear 100 gold's worth of debt. In comparison, each set of reagents was 5 silvers, while the total cost of equipment she'd had to buy to produce crystals was 20 silvers. The average salary of a menial labourer was 20-50 bronze per week.

Magical crystals were exorbitantly expensive, considering they could be cooked up using commonly available materials: magical beast blood from one or more creatures, and one or more monster cores.

However, they were notoriously difficult to make due to the highly complex alchemical reactions required to form a coherent and stable crystal capable of resonance. Resonance was the key in crystallography: a magical crystal was useless unless a magician could actually conduct manna through it, requiring them to 'resonate' their souls with the crystal during spell casting.

With a part of their soul in the crystal, the magician was able to conduct and direct manna through it, with an element affinity increasing the magician's ease of channelling a particular magical element depending on the magician's skill. Having a crystal with an affinity in one element was miraculous enough, a rarity of 1 in 10 crystals, and a double affinity having a rarity of 1 in 100 crystals. However, the risk in channelling a crystal was fracturing if the crystal was overloaded, causing a soul wound to the magician.

Therefore, crystals were classified into 4 categories: substandard (unfit for human use), mortal (7 grades), earth grade (capable of holding an independent soul fragment; 49 grades), and sky grade (capable of holding a complete tool spirit and an independent manna channel). Alchemists, like all craftsmen, were classified as: novice, intermediate, apprentice, journeyman, senior, masters; with each category divided into beginner, early, medium, high, and peak.

Joanna was trained as a wood mage and specialised in spellography( the creation and study of spells and energy flow); her job had been to enchant wands as the last step of a production line. A job that had been advertised as a chance for her to be creative and express her intelligence and knowledge in many interesting ways, but had turned into a snooze-fest of summoning and adding a low-tier spirit to a prefabricated grimoire before fusing the grimoire into a prefabricated wand using a low class spell, as the end process of production of earth-grade wands.

A job that had put food on her table only until the cost of continuing her studies and research privately had pushed her into overdrafting her credit account with the bank, and even taking loans from sharks to be able to buy as quality instruments and reagents as she could. This proved to be a black hole.

The only reason she was even qualified for the job was her uncommonly large manna pool for an E-tier magus, allowing her to enchant 1 wand per day, whereas normal E-tier mages could only produce 1 wand every 2 or three days. Her 10 silvers salary was enviable in a city where the poor were paid in coppers, and the average annual wage was 20 bronze coins. But for her compatriots, 100 silvers was a low wage due to the high cost of magic research.

Technically, she was an early intermediate alchemist, capable of potions and pills, due to her university education.

However, to produce a mortal grade magical crystal, one needed to be at least at the Apprentice level. As such, it was a testament to the forbidden grimoire that she was able to use a magic circle to replace most of the processes that an actual alchemist would have to perform during crystallization.

Using the demon to shore up her own insufficient soul strength and technical expertise was another cheat. A cheat possible due to the grimoire, it scared her to try and imagine how powerful The Book really was. She was certain that Gilgamesh was way more powerful than she could currently comprehend, and each step would be balancing a razor edge.

She quickly placed the crystal on the open market, elated when she got an evaluation of 200 silvers, for the base crystal quality, with its value doubled by each elemental affinity. This gave a grand total of 800 silver, minus the 25% store fee, she'd made 600 silvers in one go!

She watched the digits of her bank account change, out of the red and into the green, before leaving the lab and ordering pizza delivery.

She had a smile on her face.