章 7: Crafting the mana-electrict circuit
It was one thing to have five thousand Esecs on the account.
But it was an entirely different feeling to carry around stuff I had just bought for nearly four fat ones, all the more when it was all stuffed into my backpack!
Walking back from the shop, through the cultivation district to where I left my bike wasn't even the bad part with how all of the people around me seemed to think nothing more of me but an adorable upstart with the tiny amount of mana I gathered.
The tougher part started when I got on my bike and then pedaled home, worrying whether or not even the slightest shake or slightest bump on the road would render the parts I'd bought broken.
This tension continued to grow as I reached closer and closer to my apartment building, peaking when I stoved my bike away and used the lift to get to my floor.
'Just leave it as it is,' I thought as I moved the backpack from my back to my chest, too scared to leave it out of my sight if I didn't have to. 'Trying to check things out only risks them falling out. Just be patient and do it back home!'
Seconds passed as the lift climbed through the levels of the building, only to a long, ugly screech of its brakes to announce I was now nearing my floor.
The next part was blurry.
Fueled by nothing but fear and anxiety, I walked down the corridor and stepped into my place before turning around and securing both the lower and the upper lock on the door.
Only when I carefully placed the backpack down on the bed and started to pull out all the parts before organizing them directly on the soft sheets that my anxiety finally started to fade.
'Nothing looks broken…'
Right as a ray of hope appeared in my heart, the reality came to slam me right across my face.
Even though it was still closed, the deep dent in the box of middle-scoped resistors pretty much assured most of the pieces were all but gone.
'At least it's nothing expensive,' I thought, already picturing out several ways in which I could overcome the lack of those particular resistors by fashioning out a slightly more complex part out of several smaller resistors.
The anxiety continued all the way to the point where I finally pulled out the last part from my backpack before taking a step back - all that the size of my room allowed - and looking down to carefully inspect everything.
Two tubes filled with spiritual powder. Six pieces of uniformly shaped Spricur stones. A metal case filled with nicely-arranged crystals, all placed within a special, foam cushion. And then, a big array of various electrical pieces, ranging from empty circuit boards, through capacitors, resistors, and transistors all the way to tables of all sorts and sizes.
My first instinct upon completing the inspection was to just throw myself into the fun of crafting stuff, the fun of making something by combining different parts in a specific way and with a specific purpose in mind.
Before I could do that, though, I pulled out a somewhat clean sheet of paper and one of the pens that used to be just part of my floor litter and now laid nicely arranged on the shelf I made just a few hours ago.
'I've only got around five hundred Esecs left from the loan,' I thought as I positioned myself so that I could still reach the paper on my desk while keeping the entirety of the collection on my bed within my sight. 'Combined with all my savings and food funds, that comes up to what, a fifteen hundred?'
I resisted the desire to roll my eyes.
I never considered savings to be money I could use… Unless absolutely necessary that is. And with my food money amounting to a mere hundred Esecs…
By all means and purposes, when looking at the balance of my account on the phone, I stared at numbers symbolizing wealth greater than I ever had to freely spend. And yet…
And yet, I couldn't help but feel even poorer than when I struggled to survive on whatever little money I could earn from my part-time and the institution.
"That means," I forcefully looked away from my phone before picking up the pen again as I started to list out every single part, tool, and possibly useful scrap I had on the paper, "I need to make every last element count."
Once done with the list, I picked a piece of white cardboard left over from my first crafting project, using it in lieu of a paper that I've pretty much run out by now. And bit by bit, while being as careful with the strokes of my pen as I could, I turned what started as merely a few dots and lines into a simplistic but extremely easy-to-read schematic of what I wanted to create.
"First, let's start with the circuit itself," I muttered to myself as I stood up, and picked just the parts I absolutely needed for the first step before neatly stacking them on the desk. A second trip enriched the collection on my table with the tools needed to process the elements I've gathered. And then…
Then, by plugging the soldering gun into the socket, I put it aside to let it heat up while following the schematic and stuffing a total of ten capacitors in line - as many as the width of the circuit board would allow.
Next came both the easiest and the hardest part.
First, I bent the pins of all the elements stuffed into the universal circuit board, making sure they would stay in place even if the circuit would be turned over… Because that's exactly what I did next.
I only knew as much about soldiering as I'd read about it from the internet and what little I remembered from when I would solder small stuff with my dad. As quickly turned out, theoretical knowledge with little to no practical experience… didn't work all that great in reality.
In my first attempt, I ended up heating the soldering agent on the pin of the soldiering gun for too long, rendering it too dry to make it usable.
The second, third, and fourth attempts went pretty much the same, forcing me to learn to adjust both the amount of the soldering agent and the soldering flux with just my eye alone before quickly transferring it over to where I wanted to make the connection between the hole in the circuit board and the pin of the element permanent and active.
By the time I completed this step properly for the very first time, my forehead was, once again, fully covered in sweat, both because of just how focused I was and how easily just this small, soldering gun could heat up all the air in my tiny apartment.
But just like with biking, once I got the hang of the process, repeating it ended up far easier than I initially expected it.
And so, one by one, I soldered all the capacitors in place, having to replace a brittle connection only four times during the entire process. Yet, even when I put the soldering gun away and pulled its cord out of the socket… I still had a ways off before calling it a day.
After soldering every element in place came the most meticulous and outright draining step, when I had to scrape off all the excess pathways on the bottom of the circuit board, changing the pathways from an interconnected mesh into a simple pathway.
A pathway leading from the empty socket for a power source that then split into ten different paths that then led into ten different capacitors.
With one side of the circuit now finished… I turned it around, before pretty much repeating the process by adding resistors of varying resistance factors in series with each of the capacitors, soldering them in place, and then carving out the paths.
By the time the circuit board was properly finished… I merely reached the half of the whole process.
'At least, the next part should be easy,' I thought, wiping my forehead from all the sweat before carefully bringing over two Spricur crystals, some more wires, and… tape.
This time, thankfully, all I had to do was add one Spricur crystal at the start and at the end of the circuit, using the first one to transform spiritual power into electricity while the other to do the same… but in reverse.
For a final touch, I simply redrew the simplest gathering array I've found in the crafting manual, using it to feed spiritual energy into the first spricur stone, before drawing the diffusing array and then attaching it to the very end of the circuit.
The moment I did so, a slight electric shock snapped at my fingers, causing me to drop the whole thing down on the surface of my desk. Yet, besides this strange punishment… nothing else seemed to happen!
And in the end, nothing else happened. Electricity didn't flash nor did it create arcs between the two plates of each of the capacitors. Mana didn't gush out from the circuit's end, filling the room to the brim with the mystical power.
None of that happened.
But one thing did change.
And it was the resistance the air offered when I tried to wave my fingers near the circuit's output!
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