Frostbound
Chapter 314 - Electricity Effort

Gabriel

There was a mustiness in the air that Gabriel still had yet to get used to. The smell of wet fur wasn't the most pleasant and he worked hard to keep his dry all the time.

His control over snow usually made that easy. Slicking it off before it could melt and soak his clothes.

Except it wasn't his furs that were smelling. It was Miles who couldn't keep them dry, but it wasn't like he couldn't do anything about it. Having power over wood didn't help in that regard.

"This goes here and this goes there," The man also liked to mumble to himself. "Gabe, plug that wire into the intake please."

And he liked to order people around who weren't his subordinates. They were supposed to be working on this together.

His need to impress is waning, but it's still an issue.

Admittedly, Miles used to be a lot worse. When he first got hired, he spent many a night working in order to have something to show for his efforts. There were also many times Gabriel walked into the workshop to find him slumped over the desk sleeping.

Now that it had been a while, and he'd fought in the South, that urge to please lightened somewhat. Now it was just his own urge to figure it out that drove him, and it seemed like it wasn't any less pushy.

"You enchanted the catch plate and wires, right?" Miles asked, stopping what he was doing to look up for confirmation.

"Yes, Miles." Gabriel droned. It wasn't the first time he'd asked.

"Don't give me that tone. I'm just making sure. I don't want it to blow up like the last one." Miles resumed his work on the 'Mana Generator'.

Gabriel still hated the name. It implied that it generated Mana, which it did not. It took mana and converted it to electricity. A more apt name would be Mana Converter or Mana Turbine.

"I still don't understand why we can't use steam," Gabriel said. "Fire and water. Bam, easy."

"Fire and water he says. Fire and water!" Miles grumbled, "Maybe it's because you don't feel it, but being up in the ass end of nowhere is butt ass cold! You were there when the pipes burst from our first steam engine attempt yet you still ask."

Gabriel was there, but he didn't agree with giving up on that design so easily. Sure, the water did freeze and the pipes did burst, but that was all fixable. Probably.

"No, it wasn't fixable," Miles said. This wasn't the first time Gabriel had brought it up. "The fuel needed to produce the heat is astronomical. The effort to keep the water from freezing is no less a daunting task, not to mention the wear and tear on the turbine. The temperature difference from the frigid air on the outside, the hot steam inside, and the blazing hot friction involved where the fans rub the containment frame. It was bound to fail."

"We could keep it next to Vincent's forge. That way the cold won't affect it as much." Gabriel pointed out.

Miles puttered while talking, "You know that's not a long-term solution. If this works, we'll need to produce enough electricity for the whole City and even if we surround his forge with steam generators, it won't be enough. Especially if that lift Abigail wants gets put in."

While Gabriel loved the Cold and had come to love their new home, it did make things a bit hard sometimes. The plans they got from The Admiral involved a regular steam engine that converted the movement of steam into electricity.

The efficiency wasn't great, but it worked, and that was what they were going for. The only difference between the new and old engine was a tweak to include tolerances for the mana involved, which was harder than it looked.

Miles had mainly been trying to work out communication, which left reinstituting electricity by the wayside up until now. Now that nearly all of their plans required it, that was their main focus.

You would think it would have been easy, but Miles was currently working on their sixth attempt and the idea of Steam had been dropped completely.

After failing four times, he'd moved on to a different idea.

Before trying to remake the steam engine and seeing the new designs, Gabriel would have thought it would be the work of a few hours. Grab some water, light a fire, connect a rod to a piston, and bam, one steam engine right up. Or a turbine if you were feeling spicy.

That had been woefully idealistic.

As Miles said, there was the environment to consider. The cold froze the water and created all kinds of problems. For the fire to be hot enough, the metal used for the reservoir had to be treated and even then, it sometimes created problems of being too hot.

The Cold mana in the area reacted badly to the Fire mana from the flame. It kept trying to snuff it out which required more and more fuel to keep that from happening.

It was also why Frostheim went through so much firewood. It wasn't just because of how cold it was, but also because the magic in the air was against them.

Even if they were in balmy Florida, which was supposedly now a series of Islands instead of a peninsula, there would have been problems. Before, all that was required was to regulate the interaction of the flame and the water to make sure pressure didn't build up and make the thing explode. There was also the wear and tear on the moving parts as well, but that was a given whenever moving parts were involved.

Now, there were the interactions with the magic to consider. The flame wasn't just producing heat anymore. It also produced Fire mana. Same with the water. Even in small amounts, it water still held Water mana inside it.

It wasn't just the transfer of heat, but also the conversion of mana. Water mana into Steam mana, by way of Fire mana.

Now, when using mundane, mana-scarce materials, there wasn't that much mana to consider and things worked about as one would expect. It was using higher-grade materials that things got wonky.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Water wasn't all the same. Water from one lake contained a different amount of mana from another. Even water from the same lake taken at different times had different mana levels.

That difference, though sometimes small, threw finely tuned machinery out the window. That exact problem caused their third failure when the turbine ripped itself apart due to an imbalance.

Gabriel still believed it was worth continued research. They'd only been at it for a few weeks when Miles completely shifted gears into a different generator.

This new generator, the one Miles was finishing up now, was Runically enchanted and set to run completely on mana. No moving parts, no steam to consider, and certainly no turbines to get bent or warp from the temperature differential.

Miles did most of it, as his Profession allowed for a great leeway in his abilities, but they'd called Chris in a few times to get the Runes right. Gabriel nearly had to physically pull the man away from his forge, but he eventually came around to lend a hand.

Gabriel was worried for him. His brother was bottling everything up again, somehow thinking if he spent enough time in the forge, he would walk out perfectly fine one day. If only he would talk about it.

The deaths played a heavy role on his brother, especially Alice and Allison. That much was clear to nearly everyone in the family, but no one knew what to do about it.

Their current solution was to give him time and space, but that didn't seem to be working. He wasn't as bad now that they were home and months had passed, but it still wasn't great. There were times Chris went off with his hammer just to hit stuff.

Gabriel had a feeling that it was going to get worse before it got better.

"Gabe. Gabe. Earth to Gabe!" Miles called, breaking him out of his thoughts.

"What?"

"We're ready to test it," Miles said.

Gabriel looked over all the hasty Runes and the various pathways carved around the room and tried not to frown. Miles was more of a doer rather than a planner. If Abigail had been in the room, she'd have had an aneurysm.

"You still haven't accounted for the Mana Gathering Formation," Gabriel said.

Miles waved a hand dismissively, "Proof of concept comes first. How many times have I told you that."

For this generator to work, it needed massive amounts of mana in order to convert it into electricity. Mana goes in, and electricity comes out. With the end goal being to power the City. To do that, along with the massive efficiency loss, quite a bit of mana was needed to power everything.

Their plan was to combine the generator with the Formation so that the Gathered Mana would be funneled into the generator.

Nowhere in the current markings or Runes was set to connect to an outside Formation. Instead, there was a plate they were going to use as the input by putting a few Mana Crystals on top of it. Their own mana would have worked, too, but they weren't bottomless and they hardly had enough.

"Alright," Miles said and gave it one last look over, "Mana gets sucked out of the crystals here, follows the path down and around to here, where it then gets stripped of its affinity."

Stripping mana of its affinity was easier said than done and was the first notable efficiency drop of the generator, but they had to. Otherwise, converting it into Lightning Mana was an absolute nightmare.

The mana gathered from the air, while mainly that of Ice and Snow, was riddled with other affinities. Wind, Water, Light, Solar, and whatever else was there at the time.

Shoving that mixture of mana through a Lightning Rune was bound to fail, if not explode. Fire Mana was close to Lightning in that they were both expressions of energy, which meant converting Fire mana to Lightning mana was a lot easier than converting Earth or Water.

It was also a lot faster, as there was less conflict between the two types.

With a mixture of mana not of one solid type, the conversion was done at different rates and resulted in various outcomes. Usually, all of them were bad if what you needed was pure Lightning mana, or at least close to pure.

"Then it gets turned through here, and stripped again, just to make sure."

Redundancy, Miles claimed.

"Then into the Lightning Runes."

At this point, they were hoping the Formation didn't melt down. One from the power and two from the energy level of the mana.

"Then it gets turned into all the same density and purity."

Which was also easier said than done, but the work to unify it into Neutral mana helped make this step easier. The same mana running through the same Rune had similar results.

"Then it gets stored, waiting until it's used."

Now, storing Mana directly was much easier than storing electricity in batteries. There were Capacitance Runes along with crystals and gems that could store mana well, which they pulled from one of the surrounding dungeons. Albeit rarely.

They were easier to get ahold of than to reproduce batteries. They hardly had the infrastructure of the chemicals needed, let alone a way to manufacture them.

"Then, it flows through here into the mana coil."

Miles took the idea of a Tesla coil and altered it to fit his needs. Lightning mana did not mean lightning. Same as Ice mana did not mean ice. You could gather Ice mana and not have ice start to build up spontaneously. At least not until sufficient quantities were met. Enough mana of one type would start producing its effects on the world.

The Coil was designed to concentrate the Lightning mana all in one place in sufficient quantity in order for it to result in actual lightning. Similar to how a Tesla coil arced out when enough electricity was run through it.

The coil would 'arc' into another plate designed to catch it.

"Then it gets regulated," which was an understatement if there ever was one. The amps running through the wires had to be specific and any alteration could either not supply enough power, or fry whatever was on the other end. Enchanting the length of coil was a nightmare. The simple heat resistance enchantment took over a day and that was after Connor had his way with it alchemically.

"Then bam, the lightbulb works!"

Yes, all of this was to light a lightbulb.

"Are you ready!" Miles said excitedly while lowering his goggles.

Even if Gabriel said no, he would go ahead and do it anyway.

"Yes." He said and lowered his own goggles. This was bound to be... bright.

Miles placed a few large crystals on the plate and the mana began to flow out of them and into the Formation. They were lucky that the crystals held mostly neutral mana already. The Mana in the air was a lot more jumbled up.

The strain on both affinity strippers was light, as the mana was nearly all neutral already and it flowed through both without issue.

The mana took on a purple hue and the air became charged after it ran through the Lightning Runes and was converted. The build-up of Mana was palpable on the coil and it began to glow.

The mana was nearly pure energy at this point and that started to affect things. The wires held, as that was how they were designed, but that didn't state what else happened.

His hair started to stand on end, his eyes squinted as the room brightened considerably, and it began to get a touch hot. More than a touch, really, as steam started rising in the air.

As it built and built, the energy signature growing, Gabriel assumed it was going to explode. Just as he thought that an arc of lightning discharged into the plate a moment later. It was brighter and louder than expected, but within tolerance, or so Miles muttered. Gabriel could barely hear him over the thunderclap.

The charge was captured and sent running down coils upon coils of wires and the bulb at the end flickered, flickered again, then came alight.

"Yes!"

Then it exploded and glass was sent everywhere. A burnt toast smell saturated the room as the filament burned up near completely.

"No! No! No!"

The Formation shut off and Miles took the crystals away. They were drained slightly, but not empty. Enough for another test before they needed to get another handful

Miles ran over his work, "The amplitude was too high. Too much variance."

The discharge of Lightning mana wasn't smooth. One bolt wasn't equal to the last, making the electricity gathered inconsistent.

A problem Gabriel had pointed out before the test started.

"Why don't you try Wind mana and a turbine? It's less... finicky." and destructive. Gabriel called while popping his ears. The Lighting was anything but quiet.

They would run into the same problem as the steam engine and would have to make sure the turbine didn't fail, but Wind was steadier than Lightning.

They didn't have the knowledge to make a Solar panel nor did they have the materials.

Miles was obviously upset. This was failure number six. "I might as well try a fluble crank at this point."