AK - The Alchemy Kingdom

Chapter 71: Magic Barrier

Year 2, Winter, First Month, First Week.

The Council members sat around a simple stone table near a fairly isolated border of the outpost, for now, that was all they could afford. After a week of putting off fires all around their new home, they finally found time to meet up and decide their next steps. Strangely, the new Council member was the first to speak.

First, I would like to thank everyone for trusting and giving me this chance, I know my past isnt the brightest but I promise to use all my knowledge to help us escape the Kingdom

Lew stood up and sincerely bowed to everyone. They decided to keep the tradition, so Kanin was the first to report.

With the additional help, we finished processing all the harvested crops. Adding the Kingdoms crops we have enough staple food for five to six seasons Now, until we arrived at our new land, theres no reason to keep the entire department going, but I would still like to keep some people working with me on a few projects Even after building the basic facilities, I think we could spare some space to plant a few fast-growing vegetables. Since Karl adapted the heating circle to warm the entire outpost, the low temperature wont be a problem, also, it wouldnt hurt to supplement our reserves... As for when we leave after winter, I talked with Toni and Alfeur, they said theres a lot of useful resources in the Forest, so I would like to do some foraging to help on our reserves. We might even find some rare plants

Everyone agreed with Kanins proposal to keep the Farming Department going with fewer members. Since they didnt have to work for the Kingdom anymore, the lack of manpower stopped being a problem. Next, it was Katlyns turn.

The last week was hard on the Hunting Department. Im sure everyone is tired, but practically all hunters are suffering from magic poisoning and too many have wounds We still need time to recover, if it wasnt for Sanias team going out every day, we wouldnt have anything to report... They mapped the space of ten kilometers around the outpost and found the first MT beast

Surprisingly, the Council members remained calm, they were getting used to handling the problems. Katlyn continued:

We still need to check the rank and the exact location of the beast, but we know its probably around here, nine to ten kilometers from the outpost.

Katlyn pointed to a section in her drawing. For the last few days, she was using Sanias descriptions to draw some landmarks near the outpost. Besides asking for more recruits, Katlyn didnt have anything else to report. Then, it was time for Alfeur to speak.

Most of my trained workers had to take some time to recover too, but with a few extra hands, we should finish building all the basic facilities before the end of the month. The Forests resources are great, but were having some difficulties working on them We also need to find a solution for our temporary camps, we dont have enough materials to build tents Our current resources are enough but we need to consider the future, it could be a few years before we managed to establish a trading route, it would be good if we could convince Arnold to stay

Reiner took the cue and started her report:

Most of our efforts were focused on adapting the heating circle to cover the entire outpost and adjusting the magic barrier. The levels of magic energy inside the outpost are still dropping, unfortunately, the barrier can only keep the high-density energy outside from entering, but the levels inside still need to decrease naturally Next week, we should be working with Arnold to either convince him to stay or make use of him as much as we can. After that, we are opened to the Councils requests

Mary was the last one to speak, she looked a little older, probably the last weeks had weighed on her.

The Health Department is exhausted, the cases of magic poisoning didnt drop. We dont have enough healing beds for everyone, so we have to rotate them, but even so, five people died from the poisoning, mostly elders Fortunately, the more severe cases decreased and we shouldnt see any more deaths

The Council meeting kept going until the sky turned dark. In the end, the Chairmen decided on a few urgent and secondary actions for each department. *

***

Karl looked at his eager disciples and smiled. A few concerns about a lot of people learning too much appeared in the last Council meeting, so he decided to stop doing the open lessons. Of course, he would still present the tools publicly but he would refrain from explaining the technical details, which he would still do for the disciples. After the magic re-drawer and the locater, the magic barrier was the new sensation in the Alchemy Department. Since only his direct disciples knew how the tool worked, the others were betting and making long discussions trying to guess how it worked. And now was time to finally explain it. *

Lets first look at the major Array (without the powering part), we can easily separate the whole Array in three parts: Defining the characteristics of the barrier, generating the barrier and positioning the barrier. Remember to always analyze it from the outer to the inner parts. Just some points before we start, we are using a bubble crystal because one of its properties is a protective barrier. The difference of this barrier is that it bars specific elements to protect what is inside, so we also need to supply the information of the elements that it should bar. Last, besides that were using mostly Runes, to transform the property into something real (Manifestation), make it stronger (Focus) and bigger enough to cover the outpost (Stimulation). *

The first part is the Array that defines the characteristics of the barrier. We use the Combination Array (One smaller circle inside of another circle) the get the property (protection barrier) with the right characteristics (bar beasts and dense energy). So, we combine three Arrays, the Property Extraction (outlined pentagram) to get the protection barrier property, and two Signature Extraction (pentagram) one to get the beasts blood signature and the other for the MQ energy crystal signature. Combining the three, we have the property: a barrier that protects from beasts and dense energy. *

Next, we need to create the barrier physically by manifesting the property from the last step. So, we just need to use another Combination Array to combine the property from the last step with the Manifestation and Focus Runes. We didnt need to use the Focus Rune here, but I decided to add it to make the barrier stronger.

After we combine these Arrays, we already have the barrier, so we just need to place it in the right position. To do it, we just need a Direction Array (Triangle). I added a Stimulus Rune inside the Direction Array to help making the barrier bigger so it could cover the entire outpost. Take note that I could have added the Stimulus Rune before, but its always better to leave it for last, because of the consumption of moving something bigger.