Chapter 1128 Elemental Extraction, Invisible Richest Man
Soon, Xia Duo arranged a series of protective spells in the laboratory. Of course, the focus was still on avoiding detection. He didn't want to just refine some high-grade mithril today and have someone come to his door tomorrow.
In order to reduce the possibility of being spied on, he even locked up this small magic net in the casting area, and only used the micro-magic net spread out by his own arcane fire to cast spells.
"If someone can find out in this way, then I will admit it!" Xia Duo said harshly.
Then he controlled the strings of the magic network to build an energy circuit. When the spell took effect, the entire laboratory was immersed in a strong light.
Even Xia Duo, a spellcaster, was unable to judge the current state of the target—that is, the mithril ingot brought by the Arcane Law Federation.
But he didn't care. He had seen this situation more than once. If necessary, he could ask Niya to observe and record it for him when he returned to the Tower of Time.
This is just the glow produced by the extremely intense reaction of elements. It cannot be penetrated by the naked eye or even magical vision. However, through special detection magic, many details in the reaction process can be understood.
As for the details, Xia Duo knew it without observation. After all, he had already studied this spell quite thoroughly.
The so-called "element extraction" does not actually "take" mithril directly from the mixture, but starts from the elemental nature of the substance mithril and stimulates the state of the sample substance to the critical state of [matter-element].
(It is necessary to extract the majority of mithril in the sample. If other substances are in the majority, then other substances are extracted)
Some of those non-mithril substances will directly disintegrate into elements and dissipate directly, while some will be attracted by the framework of [Mithril - Elemental Essence] and transform into mithril.
The last part is to maintain the original state. What it was originally, after leaving the critical state, it will still be what it is. In layman's terms, it is "impurity".
Of course, during the extraction process of mithril itself, these three results will also occur. Of course, for mithril, converting mithril means maintaining its original state. In fact, it will only produce one result, and that is -
A small part of the mithril is gone!
Through multiple extractions, the impurities are reduced again and again until reaching a limit, which is also the upper limit of the purity of mithril that can be advanced by the [Element Extraction] spell.
At present, Xia Duo has not tried extreme extraction, and he doesn't know how pure mithril can be extracted with this spell. It's not that he doesn't like extreme extraction, but the limit is too far away, and he doesn't have that much time or energy to do it.
Test this.
This is an attempt with diminishing marginal utility. You may try it in the end, but it may not be much better than the first-class product.
After Xia Duo tried it more than ten times before, he gave up decisively. In addition to the mithril consumption that he couldn't accept, the theoretical infinity was also an important reason.
Theoretically, there is indeed an upper limit of purity that can be extracted, but theoretically it cannot reach the upper limit, similar to the limit problem of [1/2+1/3+1/4+...] summation.
The more times of extraction, the closer it is to the limit, but can a normal human continue to extract infinitely?
Even if it is possible, with such a spellcasting tool that has unlimited time and energy, when the number of samples is reduced to a certain level, it is possible that they will all dissipate in a critical state.
This is the gap between theory and practice.
…
As for this time, Xia Duo only plans to refine these mithrils to first-grade products.
On the one hand, he does not want these mithrils, which have a relatively high purity, to suffer too much loss.
On the other hand, these mithrils are used for magic items customized by others. As long as they can meet the basic requirements, no matter how high the purity is, others will not pay extra, so why should he be thankless!
Soon, the first extraction ended, and the elemental glow that filled the laboratory suddenly dissipated. It took Xia Duo a while to recover his eyes from the contrasting darkness.
He first checked the target mithril ingot. Except for some irregularly distributed tiny pits on the surface, the overall shape did not change much.
Immediately afterwards, he cast another spell to measure the current weight of the mithril ingot. Including the previous purity test, if the Arcane Federation was not short of weight, then he had consumed at least 100 grams of mithril in this extraction.
100 grams is naturally insignificant compared to 10 pounds, but this is not the end of one or two extractions.
"well--"
Xia Duo sighed and cheered up again to start the next round of casting.
…
Ten rounds of extraction in total!
Xia Duo still has some experience in this. From standard mithril to third-level mithril, it only takes two rounds of extraction, but from third-level mithril to first-level mithril, it takes at least ten rounds!
After ten times of casting 9-level spells, Shado replenished Arcane Fire with ten times of arcane energy. His current upper limit of arcane energy is only enough to cast a 9-level spell once.
If you want more, you naturally need to supplement it with arcane crystals, and this is the meaning of the arcanist's daily accumulation of arcane crystals.
Fortunately, he used his own arcane fire to cast spells, which reduced his mental consumption a lot. When he was extracting elements in the Tower of Time, in order to save arcane energy, he used the external magic network to cast spells, which was much more difficult than this.
After ten rounds of extraction, the originally regular and complete cube in front of Xia Duo had become riddled with holes.
This time, Xia Duo did not measure its weight. He just weighed it with his hands and roughly judged that it should weigh more than 3 pounds in the temple.
Although this is not quite in line with the ideal value that Shado hoped for, for the current Netheril, it is already a great harvest!
Deacon Tom from the Arcane Federation said before that level 5 members can purchase high-grade mithril at the welfare price of standard mithril, 10 pounds of third-grade grade or 1 pound of second-grade grade.
This also shows to some extent that in the economic system of the Arcane Federation, every time Mithril is upgraded to a higher level, the price will skyrocket tenfold.
Chateau's extraction this time changed from 10 pounds of third-grade mithril to 3 pounds of first-grade mithril. The price soared 30 times. If he sold these 3 pounds of first-grade mithril and then purchased third-grade or even standard mithril,
Continue extraction.
Repeated many times, he can definitely become the richest man in Netheril!
The wealth that technological leadership can capture is beyond imagination!
Of course, if he really does that, the butcher's knife may fall down very quickly!
No one wants their hard-earned wealth to be quickly robbed by others in this way. The water in Mithril is too deep for Xia Duo to be able to grasp it for the time being.
He even suspected that the fact that there were so few high-quality magic items on the market might be a clue that someone was using this method to seduce first-class mithril.
Excluding the few "legitimate" sources, someone must have mastered the refining technology of first-class mithril.
Of course, Xia Duo doesn't have to worry yet. There is a Mystery Ruins in his territory. This is a fact that almost everyone knows.
It is possible to find a lot of first-class mithril in any ancient elven ruins. As for the specific number, only the discoverer himself knows.
But it would not be good if we shipped goods in large quantities. It would be almost straightforward to announce to others that I have the information, so how could other people tolerate it?