Dan walked into the workshop, William having called him over, saying that he wanted to update him on something. He was more than happy to listen to what his old friend had to say, it would help with getting his mind away from what might be happening in Lonely Ridge Village.

  Dan entered the big workshop and glanced around, his eyes soon falling on William who was standing with Francis next to a table with a few dull rocks, they looked to be discussing something quite passionately.

  "So," Dan said after greeting them, "Why did you call me here? Do you have a working prototype for the cannons?"

  "No, not that, not yet at least." William waved his hand dismissively. "This is about something else, it's about these!"

  Saying that, William lifted one of the rocks on the table. Dan looked at it, then at the other with a bit of confusion, then an idea flashed through his mind as he realised what he was looking at.

  It was one of those rocks left from the mana crystals after Voyager consumed the magic from them. They had 2 boxes of those on Voyager, one was the first to be brought by Nik, while the second was carried in by Voyager after William saw them from the bridge. Dan should have known that the Magical Engineer wouldn't be able to hold himself back and that he would start experimenting on it as soon as he had the chance.

  "It's the leftovers from Voyager consuming mana crystals right?" Dan asked, making sure, "What did you realise about them?"

  "You see," William began explaining, throwing and catching the rock in his hand, "The reason they caught my eyes in the beginning was how rare these should be. As far as I know, this might be the first time someone got his hands on them!"

  "Really?" Dan asked in confusion, "But mana crystals aren't that rare, no? A bit expensive, but they are still quite plentiful."

  "Yes, mana crystals are just what you've called them, but we aren't talking about mana crystals are we?" William said. He then glanced around before going to bring a mana crystal that was on a different table. "If you tried to use these normally, you'd have to either grind them to bits and add them to whatever you were making, or use them as is. And in that case, do you know what happens?

  "They turn to dust." William didn't even wait for Dan to answer. "Useless dust. This might be the first time a mana crystal is left intact after all its mana was extracted, that was why I got interested in it, in what properties it might have."

  "And I guess you found something out?" Dan said, knowing that the man wouldn't just call him for nothing.

  "Yes," Francis said, "And it's quite significant at that. We're going to need quite a lot of these for our future projects, the possibilities are endless honestly."

  "Well, don't keep me waiting, what does it do?" Dan didn't expect so much to come from something that appeared to be nothing more than dead rocks.

  "Okay, okay we will get there." William smiled. "As you might have guessed, the first thing we did with the rocks was try to inject some mana into them. They were mana crystals after all, so why wouldn't they take in mana again? Surprisingly, it worked wonderfully, even better than we thought. No wastage, no overheating, and no other expected side effects. That was already a great achievement in itself, but then we tried to go for the next logical step, to see if we could retrieve the mana we put, and that's when we realised how great a discovery we've actually made."

  "You were able to retrieve it normally?" Dan guessed.

  "Not just that!" Francis cut in, overtaken by excitement, "We got the same amount we put in, that's unheard of in this world. Every other method of storing mana loses a lot of it while charging and discharging. What we have now is something many countries would kill for."

  "And that's not even the most important point," William said, clenching his hands around both stones he was holding, "The stone didn't turn to dust after we used the mana in it again, whatever way Voyager used to consume the mana from it, it changed the mana crystals entirely. We tried that again and again, charging and discharging it continuously, and still the same as it was. It should have a limit, but I doubt it's something we need to worry about in the short term."

  "So it's a battery?" Dan caught up to what was getting them excited.

  "Yes, a perfect battery that doesn't heat up, doesn't lose energy at charging or discharging, and lasts quite a bit," Francis explained, "This is going to make things so much easier for us. It's going to be the cornerstone for many of our future projects."

  "But there are already things like this out there right?" Dan asked.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "There are, just not as perfect, and quite expensive to make" William nodded. "While these? They are just leftovers from Voyager consuming mana, it's essentially free, unlike what the other types are like."

  "Well, now I'm looking forward to what you're going to make with this." Dan chuckled.

  "You have no idea how much this is going to change the game," William said seriously, "Batteries are one of the most important inventions in the history of earth, and it's going to be even more so here with these rocks, magic is way more versatile than electricity after all. We can either use it just to power things like electricity if we want, or use it for different things entirely. I would need to work on the runic side of things some more, and probably raise the tier of my skills a bit, but we're going to achieve that eventually."

  "As we all know," Francis said, "The possibilities with magic are truly endless, with these batteries and the right runes, we can do some pretty crazy stuff. I'm sure that we would be able to make so many different kinds of weapons that would seem out of science fiction. Ice guns? Plasma rifles? Light sabers even? I'm sure that we could make all of those and more."

  "That means that we are going to need a huge amount of them," Dan said thoughtfully.

  "And we know just where we left a huge pile." William smiled at him.

  "Yup," Dan agreed, "We don't even need to worry about the Harvesters taking them, they were just a pile of dead rocks after all. They would be of no interest to them."

  "We will return for those eventually," William said, "For now, what we have should be enough. And if we ever need more, we can just have Voyager consume a bit of the mana crystals we have on us here."

  "What are you going to do with this next?" Dan asked, he was curious about what they had in store for these rocks.

  "We will start by doing more tests on them," Francis answered thoughtfully, "We will push them even further, see how they would do under stressful situations, and how many cycles of charging and discharging they could take. Maybe even see if they could take in mana with different attributes? Only after we're done with all that would we start looking at using them to power things, and building something with them at the core."

  They talked some more about that before Dan said his goodbye and wished them good luck as he left. He walked for quite a while just thinking about what they had talked about and the future projects that awaited them with these on board. Then suddenly, he had a thought as he stopped and sighed heavily.

  "Just a few moments of peace, this is all that amounted to," he murmured.

  Even after talking with the two for so long and hearing such interesting news from them, as soon as he was on his own, his mind didn't take long before his worry about the people on shore returned to him.

  Deciding that he should find something to do, to keep himself away from overthinking, he thought for a bit before heading to where the natives were. He was looking forward to meeting them and seeing what they felt about Voyager.

  ***

  Corgan looked at what he had just read then looked at Tosig as he asked, "Are they serious about this?"

  "It seems so," the head of the Dynasty's intelligence agency answered seriously.

  Corgan looked at the file again with a deep frown. On it Marriage Proposal Between the Crown Prince and the Princess was written. Which on itself wasn't much of a surprise, that had been something even commoners knew about. A story that the Dynasty published last year and might have been looking into for years before that.

  The fact that the Empire was seeking a marriage proposal between their prince and the Dynasty's Princess wasn't that surprising, the two nations had been trying their best to amend old grievances and put them behind them. And with Ocean Dwellers wanting that even more than both of them, the Empire sending such a proposal didn't seem that outlandish, almost expected.

  The new thing about the matter, that the unassuming title hid, was when the marriage was to happen.

  "This is too fast," Corgan said as he tried to hide his frown, "I know that the old Emperor is still young, there is no reason to push this hard for the Crown Prince to get a wife, something is off about this."

  "It is weird," Tosig said, "And unfortunately, we still have no answer for why they are pushing things this fast, we are working on it, but nothing yet."

  "Wait a moment," Corgan said as a certain fact made itself known to him, "Why are you telling me this? I'm just a retired old man, why are you bringing this up with me?"

  "I'm sure that you already know what reading such a file means," Tosig said, the faint hint of a smile appearing on his lips for a second before disappearing. "You will be joining as one of the Princess's guards."

  "Well, that's just my luck." Corgan massaged his head. He didn't try to argue, when something like this found its way to you, you can't just say no to it. "Who are they sending as an escort? Is it the King?"

  He truly wanted to see the King of the Oceans. He wasn't that active on the ocean, so he never saw that ship, but he hoped to see it. He wondered which one would be stronger and more magnificent, the king or the weird ship that had saved them from those pirates.

  "They might," Tosig answered, "But even if they aren't sending it, Ocean Dwellers should be coming with us too, just in case."

  "That's good to hear," Corgan sighed in relief.

  Having the masters of the oceans and the world's second biggest ship in one fleet was going to be interesting.