Markets and Multiverses (A Serial Transmigration LitRPG)
Chapter 391: The Artificial Sun (2)

The next day, our parents wished us good luck, before the four of us brought the core of the artificial sun to a special workshop the council had set aside for us. Elder Veridian had set it up in advance. The moment we announced that we had succeeded, we had been told to bring the artificial sun to the new workshop. There, waiting for us, were the alteration essence mages with the biggest essence pools, waiting for us.

Through our efforts, the Artificial sun had a core. It no longer needed the delicate, careful craftsmanship of Felix, Sallia, and me. The framework for the whole thing was built, and all we needed to do was pour fuel into it.

“So this is the object that is supposed to bring hope to the city?” asked one of the assembled Mages. She was a stunningly beautiful elf, with emerald eyes and cherry-red hair. She gave the artificial sun a curious look as we entered the workshop.

“That’s right,” Anise said, as she puffed out her chest in pride. “We made it together!”

“I’ve heard a bit about the ‘sunlight’ that you have been experimenting with,” the elf said, as she turned to me. “I suppose this is the final result? How does it work?”

“We’ll explain when everyone is here,” I said.

The elven girl nodded and waited. More of the mages who were supposed to be assembled here drifted in, until we had the full group here.

Twenty people. Elves, fox-people, Elder Veridian, and even two other council members - although I barely recognized them by their voices. 

After I confirmed that everyone was here, I started to speak.

“I’m sure the council has already roughly outlined what we’re trying to do, so we’ll be brief. Many of you already know of ‘sunlight.’ This orb is something that the four of us have created during the raid season. It constantly emits sunlight. As long as it has enough alteration essence, it will constantly, endlessly emit sunlight.

“Furthermore, the larger it gets, the more sunlight it will diffuse. We’ve added in a few other things, which will ensure that things like roofs and distance will be less of an issue than they should be for getting sunlight to the entire city. We just need to get the size of the artificial sun higher. Its maintenance cost will also increase, of course - that’s life. But the maintenance cost won’t increase by very much in comparison to how much essence it will generate.

“All we need to do is get through the initial steps. We need to get the artificial sun as big as possible so that we can get our essence generation online. After that, every single citizen in the city who has any sort of affinity for the four essences will constantly generate more essence. This is the hope the four of us have come up with - a way to truly guarantee that even in the future, there will still be a way forward.”

I saw the twenty mages nod at me. They were in the room with us, so they could probably already feel their essence reserves as they gradually rebuilt themselves from scratch.

“How big does the sun need to be before it starts paying itself off?” asked the pretty elven woman.

“Based on our estimates, the twenty of us in this room should result in a very slight deficit of alteration essence at first, if you exclude our natural essence regeneration. However, the deficit should be very small,” I said. “By the time the sun is large enough to hit forty people, the sun should be making a profit. By the time the astral tides end, the artificial sun should have already recovered the essence we spent on it. From there, the further the sun expands, the greater the profit per day will be. Someday, I hope that the sun will cover the entire sanctuary, since that would probably multiply our essence production by a few orders of magnitude. Of course, that’s a long way off. But I do think doubling our annual essence production by the end of this astral tide season is realistic, even if we are careful about how much essence we invest in the sun per day. After that, it’ll get easier and easier to devote some essence to growing the artificial sun. Within a century or two, we might really hit the ideal goal of the sun covering the entire sanctuary,” I said.

I saw a few other mages start to grin as I spoke of my vision. Of my hope for the future. Of course, there were also some that looked worried. As if they were afraid that something would go wrong and lead to a huge waste of resources and essence. Those that looked more worried asked me more questions about the artificial sun - how much essence it would cost to strengthen it, where the original resources for the artificial sun had come from, and so on.

I did my best to be honest - even when it came to more realistic and less optimistic estimates for how much essence the sun would produce and consume at various stages of growth. After all, I didn’t want to paint an unrealistic picture, only to send this sanctuary into the grave. This was a matter of everyone’s life. I had to be careful, even if my friends and I had already sacrificed decades of experiments and our one and only chance to grow stronger in the hero trials for this.

After going over estimates for nearly an hour, the other mages seemed convinced. The pretty elven girl, as well as Elder Veridian, both smiled at me.

“Let’s get started,” said Elder Veridian.

The next week was painful. The only thing the twenty of us did was eat essence heavy food, then dump all the essence into the sun. Then, we would do our best to exercise, so that we would have room for another meal - and then dump our essence into the sun. Again, and again, and again, we ate, absorbed sunlight, and poured essence into the sun. By the end of the week, my stomach was starting to protest - I had definitely eaten more food than I was comfortable with.

Even more depressing was our living conditions. Nobody wanted to waste a single ray of sunlight, especially during the early stages of the sun building plan. We all slept in a single room with the sun. 

We barely left the room, except when we needed a toilet break. We had meals delivered to us, slept in cramped conditions, and got heartily sick of each other. But even though it was unpleasant, and even though most of us desperately wanted out of that room, we held on. Because this was the hope for the future.

And it worked. Despite the protests of my stomach, the strong desire to escape this room, and the wish that our beds were a bit further apart… despite the week of unpleasant conditions, our efforts had produced results.

The artificial star had swelled in size. It was now nearly as tall as I was. It was also producing enough sunlight to touch all of the mages working on the artificial sun with us no matter how we were positioned in the room.

From there, we finally had real confirmation that the artificial sun would work. Instead of consuming a small amount of essence each day, the sun was now actually producing essence. Even if the people here didn’t eat any essence food, and we didn’t factor in my Market-based abilities, this room would generate more essence per day than it consumed.

Morale shot up when we realized that. The sun’s range expanded. After two weeks, the artificial sun, coupled with the distorted lens, could now reach beyond this workshop - it was large enough to creep into neighboring buildings as well.

In order to maximize the potential of the artificial sun and its sunlight, every single alteration essence user in the city was tested again, and based on the size of their essence pool, they were placed into similar nearby workshops. We started to rotate who would throw essence into the artificial sun each day, maximizing the amount of essence production as we ate ourselves sick. The bigger the sun got, the more people were getting sunlight each minute. The more people were getting sunlight, the faster the essence grew. The faster the essence grew, the faster the sun grew…

Just like that, months passed by. The sun started to take on a larger and larger size, and I started to feel a growing sense of excitement.

It was working! We were doing it! The sun kept growing, and growing, and we ate more and more food. However, by the time the astral tides ended, the alteration essence reserves for the sanctuary had only dipped a small amount. The past few months had been miserable, but they were worth it. The sun was now large enough to light up two blocks of the city, and we had even moved out of the overly cramped workshop and into slightly more comfortable places.

As long as the essence users of the city slept within two blocks of the artificial sun, they would be constantly exposed to sunlight, meaning they were always generating more essence. While sleeping conditions were still tight, they were nowhere near the cramped, miserable conditions we had endured during the early stages of the project.

We had fallen a bit short of my original target, of doubling the annual essence production of the city - but we had increased it by around 70%. That was still a massive upgrade in the city’s defensive abilities. More importantly, we had recovered most of the essence that we had spent constructing the sun, meaning the city wasn’t weaker than usual by the time monster raids could resume.

Even more importantly, the day the Astral tides ended, the four of us got something else. Something we had been looking forward to for a long time, and one of the reasons we had started on this path.

The day that the Astral tides ended, we finally got our Achievement rewards.