I raced through the countryside between the village and Dawnhold, Darren clinging to my back and a decent supply of steel in my [Item Box]. Given that I'd only just had my armour remade, I was going to be irritated if we forged a higher rank version of corpusclite. Especially if it was less... gungy and gross. Then again, there was no guarantee that a higher rank version would have the same liquidish properties that made corpusclite useful for flexible armour. We'd just have to see what we came up with, but I was sure Grover could find a use for anything.

Cluma was, as expected, waiting outside the institute; there was no way she was going to let me do science unsupervised. I was just thankful that she wasn't trying to dress me up this time. Though she had, for some reason, dressed herself up. Or dressed herself down, possibly.

"Cluma, your clothes have a hole in them," pointed out Darren helpfully, jumping off my back and running up to give the leather-clad catgirl a hug.

"All clothes have holes in them. How else are you supposed to wear them?" I pointed out logically.

"But... hers has an extra hole in. And there's another one on her bum!"

A long time back, when I was poor and couldn't afford clothing beyond what mum made for me from cheap fabric, I'd been thankful that thanks to the Law I could walk around in low-quality outfits without suffering discrimination. Was the Law helping Cluma wear that in public? Could she not imagine people mocking her for it? But answering why she could didn't help understand why she did.

"It's okay, it's supposed to," said Cluma, winking at me.

"Okay, I'll bite. Why?"

"Paying you back for what I did to you. You did say this was what you should have made me wear, right?"

I filed that under deeply suspicious. How was it payback? She wasn't embarrassed about it at all.

Ignoring her choice of clothing, we proceeded to the mana concentration chamber, met by Grover and Kari.

"That's an interesting outfit, but it looks impractical. How do you pee?" asked Kari, looking Cluma up and down.

"I don't. I have to take it off."

"Really? Then what's the point? It looks easy to move in, but that's true of plenty of other stuff."

"I made Peter wear something silly last time, so I'm apologising by wearing something silly myself."

Kari grinned, her tail swishing slightly. She'd given up trying to hide it, but still appreciated not being the only weird one in the room. What she didn't do was show any suspicion towards Cluma's claim. Was that really all there was to it?

"Hah. Trying to undo whatever title the System saddled you with?"

Cluma, surprisingly, didn't look ashamed this time, but just grinned back. "Nope. It was a trait, actually, and I decided I want to keep it."

I filed that under epically suspicious. Doubly so when she glanced over at me when she said it and gave me another wink. She doesn't wink! What was she plotting?! Unwilling to get involved, I ignored the pair, turning to Grover instead. As with last time, he seemed completely and blissfully unbothered about any matters of fashion.

"Shall we get started?" I asked, taking out an ingot.

"Of course. Let's start with something simple and see what fire affinity mana can do."

"Okay. Darren, over to you."

Darren grinned the grin of a [Pyromaniac] who had not only been given permission to play with fire, but was being paid for doing so.

We stashed the experimental ingot in one corner of the room while everyone hung back in the opposite corner, but the temperature still soared, leaving us sweltering in seconds. The ingot crackled and clunked as it morphed into fire-touched steel, then continued to heat, glowing a dull red at first, but brightening as we watched.

"I think we're going to melt before that ingot does," I exclaimed. The greater mana density meant the heat Darren was producing was far above our first experiment, and to make things worse, we were in an enclosed space instead of outdoors. "We need protection from the heat."

"Okay lad, stop for now," said Grover, much to Darren's disappointment. "I have to admit, I wasn't expecting the heat to be quite so intense. We'll need to think up some containment. Let's try with air affinity."

Air was not as innocuous as I'd expected. A breeze whipped around us as Darren concentrated the affinity mana on a fresh ingot, but as Darren worked, it strengthened until it felt like we were standing in a hurricane. When the ingot of air-touched steel took off and started flying around the room at high speed, we once again were forced to abort for safety reasons.

"This isn't going well," pointed out Cluma. "I thought I was going to need to talk Peter out of flooding the room with space affinity, not dodge flying ingots of metal."

"Life, maybe? That shouldn't have deleterious effects."

"Do you know what effect raw life affinity has on people?" asked Cluma.

"No."

"Then why do you think it isn't dangerous, but do think space is? You don't know the effects of either."

"Because life is used... to... heal..." I started, before stopping to think about how complicated healing was. How easily 'healing' could kill if it went wrong. A blood clot on your skin would stop you bleeding to death. That same clot inside your heart or brain could be fatal. The [Heal] spell must be insanely complex to be able to repair a body safely. Or did raw life affinity have the same effect? Was it hardwired for safety somehow? Such a thing didn't sound plausible, but this was magic we were dealing with, so logic didn't always apply.

"Okay, perhaps we shouldn't do that either. I think we need to run some outdoors tests on plants or animals to find out what sort of effects raw mana of different affinities has on them before we risk exposing ourselves."

"Oh, raw life affinity is fine," chimed in Kari. "That's an experiment I've been running for a while, seeing how exposure to life affinity affects plant growth. Exposed plants grow faster and are generally healthier and more vigorous."

"Umm... I'm not sure I want to grow faster, even if I am almost fully grown," said Cluma. "And what would it do to anyone who already is? Would Grover end up human sized?"

Grover gruffly chuckled at the thought. "I'm afraid I agree with the gal. Just because something isn't dangerous doesn't mean it's desirable."

"I'm sure a one off exposure won't hurt anyone. I was bathing my plants for an hour a day for weeks before I saw any effects."

"In ambient mana densities," I pointed out. "We are not currently in ambient mana densities."

"Fine. Be boring," she muttered.

"Not boring. Safe!" chided Cluma.

"How about we move outdoors, and Darren and Kari can work together to generate different affinities at a safe distance, and I'll join in to help compress it. See if we can use numbers instead of density."

"It won't be enough, if our efforts at making mana-reinforced steel were any indication. But we can try for space and time affinity. I couldn't find out any information on what it would do, but if you try it now, we'll have Darren around to shield us from any stray mana."

I glanced at Cluma to see what sort of reaction that would elicit, but she didn't immediately shoot it down. The problem was that no-one had sufficient information to know if it was safe. But a supervised experiment here was the safest place to try.

"Okay. Now is as good a time as any."

One quick relocation later, into a large, empty field, I stood with a steel ingot on the ground at the maximum range of my [Expert Mana Control].

"I'll keep walking forward until I succeed at manufacturing space affinity mana, wait to see what it does, and then start moving forward again until either the steel ingot changes or someone spots anything that looks unsafe. Darren will be keeping any space affinity mana I create well away from us. Anything I've missed?"

"Nope. Let's get started."

Space affinity was hard to create, and I stood no hope of succeeding at the extremity of my range. It wasn't until I'd closed half the distance that I felt the mana respond to my twisting. And, as the mana twisted, space twisted with it.

"That's... interesting," commented Cluma, covering first one eye, then the other, then shifting her head from side to side.

I had to agree. It was interesting. The cloud of spatial affinity mana was clearly visible, the ingot and grass behind it appearing as if they were being viewed through turbulent water. Parts of the ingot shimmered out of visibility, flexed or crawled across the ground. I still had no idea what the effect of standing in the middle of that would be, but was now even more determined not to find out.

With each step, the distortions grew, but Darren did an excellent job of keeping the mana contained, and long before I risked exposure, the ingot emitted the telltale clunk. I hesitated for a moment, hoping for a ding, but alas, none came. With Darren's help, I let the mana dissipate harmlessly into the air before we walked over to see what we'd made.

"It looks smaller when you look at it from above," said Cluma, jumping and ducking.

Contulite Ingot (Rank 3)

Weight: 10kg

I did a loop around it, the ingot apparently turning to face me as I moved, although it did seem to get further away when I was standing what should have been edge on.

"Well... Have fun with that, I guess," I said, not wanting to get close to the thing myself.

Kari made some more scientific observations. "Whichever direction you look at it from, it presents the largest possible cross-section. But the further your angle is from that cross-section, the greater the perceived distance."

Grover stood stroking his beard, deep in thought. "My skills are telling me I can use this stuff to reinforce portals. Make them stable, so we no longer require monster cores to power them. But they aren't telling me how. I'll need to talk to some people, but imagine freely traversable portals. People could commute to the other side of the continent!"

Woah. Forget a road network. If we could do that, we could link all settlements together. People could casually wander anywhere. That would certainly fulfil the request Vyre had made.

"Okay, time next?"

We followed the same procedure, but this time, the time affinity mana had no visible effect at all.

Clunk.

ding

Class [Eldritch Mage] advanced to level 24

Class level increased intelligence by 1

Class level increased strength by 1

Class level increased dexterity by 1

Class level increased endurance by 1

Yay, got a level that time, but this time, the ingot looked completely unchanged.

Tempulite Ingot (Rank 3)

"That didn't seem to do anything?" said Cluma. "If you want something safe to try in the mana concentration chamber, why not that?"

"That would be a spectacularly bad idea," I said, looking at the damage with [Soul Perception]. [Mana Sight] had made me suspicious, the flows in the grass around the ingot having changed, and [Soul Perception] confirmed it. The grass around the ingot was dead. Even space affinity hadn't done that.

"Hmm? Why?" asked Cluma.

"Because that just killed off a few square metres of grass."

"Oh... It still looks okay to me?"

Kari cast a spell I didn't recognise over the area, and a patch of grass grew from toe height to ankle height over the course of a minute, leaving a perfectly circular patch surrounding the ingot that remained exactly as it was. "Yup, dead as a doornail. I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. What do you suppose would happen if your blood was flowing at different speeds through different parts of your body?"

"Hehe. My face is funny!" exclaimed Darren, staring into the ingot and pulling faces. Maybe he'd appreciate a mirror for a present?

...Wait.

I looked between Darren and the ingot, taking a few seconds to work out what I was seeing, then knelt down and, staring at my own reflection, stuck out my tongue. A second later, my reflection stuck its tongue out.

"Having fun there?" asked Kari.

"No. Well, yes, but that's not the point. Look at the reflections. They're time delayed!"

Kari, alas, didn't pull funny faces, but simply waved. Grover mirrored her. At least Cluma joined in, sticking her own tongue out at the ingot and laughing at the result.

"Well, that's interesting. I don't have any immediate ideas for what to do with it, but I'm sure someone can think of something. Anyway, there's something you've neglected to tell me, lad. What are these new materials going to cost me?"

Ah, right. I was sufficiently interested in the results of these experiments that I'd forgotten my ulterior motives. "We need gear to fight a hydra."