The next morning.
Alice was in her workshop, crafting a new doll. Meanwhile, Lili, leading Shanghai and Hourai, directed all the dolls in cleaning and putting the final touches on Alice's little shop.
The previous day, Alice, Ais, and Lefiya had spent their time in the Dungeon as a trio. On Lili's end, she had brought Bell along to work on constructing Alice's cottage. Adventurers made for excellent labor.
Even though Bell had only been an adventurer for less than a month, his physique was steadily growing stronger. Compared to Lili, Bell simply had more natural talent for being an adventurer.
Most importantly, he never complained about hard work and was quick and efficient with his hands.
Today, Alice's shop was finally built and ready to open. Saying it was 'built' was a bit of a stretch—it was more like adding a small, extra room to serve as the storefront. The room wasn't big, its walls made from smooth, sturdy, and thick wooden planks. Inside, it was currently empty, devoid of any furnishings.
Sunlight streamed in through a large display window. The ornate, beautifully patterned front door stood open, letting the dust stirred up by the cleaning float out into the air.
That said, the shop would still need another day or two before it could truly open.
First, Alice hadn't yet made the dolls meant for display in the big window.
Second, there wasn't a single piece of furniture in the room. Lili planned to discuss with Alice after cleaning was finished—should they make some furniture themselves, or go out and buy it? The room was small, so they wouldn't need much, but a counter, plus some sofas, chairs, and tables for customers were essential.
Alice's dolls were going to be custom-made going forward, so they needed a proper place to discuss orders and set the rules with clients.
Once the inside was clean, Lili stepped outside with a broom, intending to tidy up the area around the house as well.
As a side note, the barrier that used to prevent people from entering around Alice's house was now gone. Originally, Alice moved here to hide from the Loki Familia. But now that she was on good terms with them, there was no need to hide anymore. Besides, her little shop would need customers later on, so keeping the obstructive barrier was pointless.
However.
Even without the barrier, the surroundings weren't exactly appealing. After all, it was the former ruins of a disbanded Familia. The area looked practically like the outskirts of town.
Truthfully, in Lili's opinion, even if Alice only accepted one or two orders per day, or even per week, and didn't need a large clientele, the best location for a shop would still be in the center of Orario, or perhaps in the Babel Tower.
At the very least, the environment there wouldn't be so overgrown with weeds. Maybe later she could discuss with Alice about fixing up some of the more dilapidated spots around here, turning Alice's cottage into a proper little estate.
But for now, this would have to do.
Lili swept the dust at the entrance, broom in hand. Cleaning in the outskirts was much harder than in the city.
The main reason was that she was the only one doing it.
Unlike crowded urban areas where everyone cleaned their own space, there were no sanitation workers in Orario. Out here in the outskirts, left uninhabited for so long, exposed to wind and sun, much of the dust had settled into a layer of soil, accompanied by plenty of spiderwebs.
Lili only planned to clean the immediate area around Alice's shop. The rest, she wouldn't bother with—not even the small church across the way where Hestia and Bell lived.
Basking in the morning sun, Lili hummed a nameless tune, cheerfully cleaning away. Soon, the area around the entrance to Alice's cottage was spotless.
But in an instant, all her hard work was undone.
With a loud 'Boom!', a massive explosion sounded from Alice's workshop on the second floor of the cottage. Lili immediately looked up to see the second-floor window shattered, black smoke billowing out.
"Lady Alice!?" Lili cried out in alarm.
Just as she was about to rush inside, Lili saw Alice appear at the broken window, leaning on the frame and gasping for air.
"Cough, cough..." Smudges of black marked Alice's beautiful face, and the tips of her lovely, short golden hair were slightly singed.
"Lady Alice! Are you alright?" Seeing Alice's somewhat disheveled state, Lili quickly called out.
"Hmm? Oh, Lili." Hearing Lili's voice, Alice finally noticed her on the ground below. Waving a hand to clear the smoke from her face, she replied, "I'm fine... cough, cough..."
"Just a minor... experiment that didn't go quite as planned..."
Alice turned back to look at her smoke-filled workshop. She raised a hand and gave a gentle wave, setting the mana within her into motion. A soft breeze sprang up, sweeping all the smoke out through the window.
Looking at the charred doll on her workbench, Alice felt a deep sense of frustration.
"Making this new power system stable is so difficult... How did that crow from the Earth Spirit Mansion manage it?"
"And what's the deal with all this fusion and fission anyway?"
Back in the Dungeon, Alice had used the 'water' element to produce hydrogen and oxygen, then ignited the mixture with the 'fire' element, creating a powerful energy transformation attack strong enough to blow the Goliath to smithereens.
While Alice intended to seal away that particular attack, the lack of magic crystals—which could serve as a doll's core—left her unable to stop thinking about the power systems used by the kappa of Youkai Mountain and the crow of the Earth Spirit Mansion from her memories.
So, she wanted to experiment, to see if she could reduce the scale of the hydrogen-oxygen explosion and make it explode continuously. Then, she could harvest the powerful shockwaves generated and use them as an energy source for her dolls.
Producing hydrogen and oxygen was simple—just inscribe the relevant magic circles inside the doll. Igniting the mixture was also easy, requiring only a basic 'fire' magic circle. Once ignited, the hydrogen and oxygen would undergo a massive energy transformation.
Furthermore, since the hydrogen and oxygen were converted from the 'water' element, which itself was transformed from Alice's mana, the entire process was, in essence, a transformation of Alice's own mana.
Therefore, the shockwave produced by the explosion could also be collected and converted back into mana.
Convert the energy from the explosion into mana; use that mana to activate the magic circles and produce more hydrogen and oxygen; let that mixture explode again, then convert that explosion back into mana—a perfect, 'eternal', perpetually moving core that would never lack for energy. That was the brilliant idea Alice had come up with.
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