"What are you thinking? The materials that can withstand Mind Storm are incredibly precious! How could I possibly waste them on you? This is just a simple flame vortex."
Betty glanced at Ren. "Besides, you're the master of the divine realm. I wouldn't dare use Mind Storm on you."
"Cut it out with the sarcasm." Ren shot her a look. "Come on, show me what our hand gre... magic bombs can do."
"Why do you keep calling them grenades?"
"Um, it doesn't really matter." Ren couldn't figure out how to explain it. "Let's just see how they work first."
He had no idea why that word kept coming to mind.
Maybe because they made a big boom when you threw them?
Either way, it was hard to match up with these magic bombs.
Betty wasn't satisfied with Ren's answer, but she didn't want to get into it right now. Instead, she looked down at the box full of crystals.
Diamond-shaped crystals.
All the same size, about as big as an adult's thumb.
From the outside, they looked like water crystals full of impurities.
Almost completely opaque and white.
"Using them is pretty simple. Just inject a little magic power and throw."
Before she'd even finished talking, Betty had already tossed the little thing.
When it hit the ground, magic surged, and suddenly a fire tornado formed in the area around the crystal.
It wasn't very tall, and the coverage was only about one square meter.
The temperature was decent though—Ren could feel the heat waves rolling over him from about thirty meters away from the blast center.
If it were an ordinary person, getting hit by this once would definitely be game over.
Even a mage apprentice would probably be done for.
For low-level magicians though, it would just be, well, kind of a pain.
But even so, Ren was totally pumped!
This was just a prototype!
The first time, without even spending half a day, they'd created this kind of bomb. That was pretty damn good.
"Nice! Really nice!"
Ren couldn't help but praise it. "So you just input magic power to trigger it and it explodes right away? How long is the delay?"
"No, I added a vibration rune too. The magic input only opens the first switch—you have to throw it and let it hit the ground to fully activate it." Betty said proudly. "If it was just one trigger, someone else might use it against you and end up blowing yourself up."
Ren heard what Betty was saying, but in his head he was thinking about those special WWII grenades where you pulled the pin but still had to knock it somewhere else before throwing it to make it explode.
Pretty similar concept, really.
But this way was better—double safety was safer!
"I didn't expect you to think of that!" Ren looked at Betty with what seemed like surprise, but if you looked closely, you'd realize Ren wasn't actually surprised at all.
The Goddess of Magic's little lab assistant—it would be weird if she didn't notice these details.
"Hmph, don't think you're the only smart person in the world." Betty snorted. "So, is it what you imagined?"
"Honestly, not exactly, but it meets my expectations." Ren smiled. "What's the cost on these things?"
"Just carve runes on discarded magic crystal lamps." Betty's expression was casual. "Material cost is basically zero, but the rune carving and charging—that all needs to be done by magicians, which is a pain."
"A low-level magician would probably need one to two days to make a single one."
"I mean this kind of low-level magic would take a low-level magician one to two days."
"The charging is what takes most of the time, right?" Ren thought for a moment and asked curiously.
"Yeah, exactly. Two-thirds of the time is spent charging." Betty nodded. "The more skilled you get, the bigger percentage of time goes to charging."
Magic power was everywhere.
But for magicians to use it, they had to absorb it into their bodies first.
To make magical devices like this, they needed to transfer the magic power from their bodies into the storage runes to power the spell models.
"That works."
After a moment of silence, Ren finally nodded. "Even though it takes a day or two, which is way harder than just casting a spell, the fact that you can store it and instantly detonate it when needed makes it really valuable."
"Yeah, really valuable." Betty didn't disagree.
"What if we wanted to use other magic? Like, say, vine entanglement. Could we just swap out the flame vortex for vine entanglement?"
"Of course, all low-level magic can use this approach."
Betty was totally confident. "We've basically started a whole new school of magical devices! Before this, all magical items required chanting and constant magic output from the magician, but now we can make them ahead of time."
"A low-level magician might only be able to cast 10 low-level spells, but they could throw 500, maybe even 1000 of these magic bombs."
As she talked, Betty got more and more excited.
"Yeah, a whole new school. If we didn't even need magic power to trigger them, that would be even more perfect."
After hearing Ren's words, Betty immediately shot back: "That's impossible! Only magic power can activate magic power. Without external magic power stimulation, no matter how much magic power is stored in the runes, it can't be released."
"Instead of thinking about impossible stuff like that, why don't you help me figure out what materials we could use to make mid-level magic bombs. These single-use consumables have to use the most common, cheapest materials possible, or nobody will want to use them."
Only magic power can activate magic power?
Ren thought about it, and yeah, that seemed right.
So it looked like users would have to have some magic power themselves to activate the storage runes and make the magic bombs explode.
"Let's not rush into mid-level research." Ren snapped back to attention. He had this feeling there should be other methods, but he didn't have enough knowledge right now, so he didn't dwell on it. "You go get the holy spirits to produce a batch of magic bombs and give them to that coffin-carrying girl too."
"Hopefully the magicians in the mortal realm will discover the huge potential here and start researching, developing, producing, and spreading it..."
Just relying on the divine realm to distribute them would make the God of Technology's reputation spread super slowly. But if mortals could learn this approach and spread it themselves, it would go viral!