Regardless of what I thought, my father continued with his work.
He placed the large magic stone next to the battery and the smaller stones around the motor, arranging them side by side. Then, he picked up another "smaller" stone and placed it right in the center between the two.
As far as I know, magic stones, magic crystals, or monster cores—whatever you call them—must always be handled with care. After all, they are the "organs" that stored and distributed mana to the creature while it was alive.
Because they are sources of biological energy, they are treated with caution due to various risks; processing them requires a jeweler or a specialist using meticulous carving tools.
According to Mari, our father works in a craft-related field; judging by his workstation, you'd imagine something like a blacksmith. So, delicate work shouldn't necessarily be his specialty—unless it involves finishing touches.
Of course, this is just my interpretation—completely biased based on stories and games I've seen. I could easily be wrong, or perhaps—just as mana is far more versatile than usually portrayed in stories—the same applies to the kind of work my father does.
And while I was busy thinking all this...
*Bang*
My father just crushed the magic stone placed in the center.
"((◎д◎))"
.....
"MA–HMMM HMNMMHMMM"
Before I could shout in surprise, and a bit of indignation, my mother clamped her hand over my mouth.
*Bang, bang, bang, bang*
More hammering, more stones turning into (literal) dust with every blow. I'm sure my eyes must have gone wide as saucers watching him do it. It was a mix of surprise, relief, and a very mild sense of disappointment.
Surprise that nothing happened when he simply smashed the stones—and relief for the same reason. The disappointment came because I had been certain (beforehand) that the magic stones could be used for something other than feeding animals—maybe even as mini-grenades if combined—but apparently not.
"Don't be so quick to judge. It might not look like it, but your father had to try various methods before finding the right way to make the stones work the way Mari—and I imagine you, too—said they should."
My mother spoke calmly as she removed her hand from my mouth, signaling for me to keep watching but to stay quiet.
When my father finished turning the last magic stone into dust, he picked up a chisel and began delicately chipping away at the large stone. He carved it with more care and control than I had ever seen him display in his life.
After he had reduced it to roughly the size of the battery, he struck it with the chisel, causing it to break into several smaller pieces—though they were still larger than the other stones.
He placed four of these pieces above the motor, one at each cardinal point (or so it seemed to me). Then, he broke the remaining ones into even smaller fragments and placed them into the gaps on top of the battery.
He then picked up a... paintbrush? Pencil? Pen? The sharp point of a compass? I don't know what it was, but it looked like a type of fountain pen—though clearly, it wasn't one; it was hard to tell.
He used this "pen" to draw a circle around the engine using the dust from the stones he'd crushed, plus two more piles on top of the engine itself. He drew a line connecting the circle around the engine to the pile of stone dust in the center, and from there, he drew another line leading to the battery.
'Okay, even *I* can see he was making some sort of magic circle for energy transfer or something similar. But how he'd make the circle work—given that the stones were just dust and there was no circle around the battery to "link" it to the engine—or how my dad knew how to do all this... I haven't the faintest idea.'
And then came the strangest part—and the most worrying one for me (on many levels).
He pricked his finger with the "pen," let the tip soak up the warm blood, and repeated the process. Maybe it was just my imagination, fueled by my craving for fresh blood, but it seemed like the "pen" never ran dry, even after what I'm certain were minutes of delicate, painfully slow work.
When he "finished," he used the magic stone dust mixed with blood to draw another circle in the middle, closing it off with three X-marks (A/N: something like this –> 🛞).
In the center, he placed a large shard of red magic stone—I honestly don't know when he'd done it, but he had cut and polished it into a perfect crystal.
"Whew... that covers the bulk of it. Clara, come here; I'm going to make some final adjustments to the clutch and the transmission."
"Okay."
My mom walked over to my dad, while he went to the car to retrieve the pieces of metal he'd set aside earlier—the ones that hadn't gone into the forge. With his body blocking the view as he adjusted the gearshift inside the car, I couldn't see what my mother was doing.
Three seconds later, I was glad about that.
A blinding flash of light appeared; my father didn't even notice, but I felt it intensely. My little finger, caught by the light, hissed as if it had been dropped into a frying pan.
[–20 HP]
'WHAT THE H—!!!!'
"Uuurrggggghhhhh"
Stifling a scream of pain, I immediately grabbed one of the rats from the [Item Box] and drained all its blood in seconds, trying to suppress my groans so I wouldn't distract the two of them.
[HP: 110/180
MP: 10/145]
'Didn't my HP drop by 20? Why is it at 110?'
The answer was right below.
[Condition: Holy damage, Light poisoning (-5 per second).]
[–5 HP]
[HP: 105/180]
[–5 HP]
'Holy shit!!! That was just from a three-second flash; what would happen if it were a direct attack (☉_☉)!'
Now I have a solid grasp of the difference between resistance and vulnerability.
'Especially a Level 7 vulnerability.'
I thought this while looking at the state of my hand after those few seconds—in a word: bad.
The light had only hit my little finger, but the affected area seemed to spread like poison. A black, necrotic-looking patch nearly reached my middle finger within seconds.
The little finger itself looked as though it had been burned by acid and then dried over a fire.
'No wonder the pain felt like the drake's breath, if my finger ended up looking like this.'
Fortunately, the tingling sensation of recovery spread shortly after, and the dark area began to slowly recede. All of this must have taken about ten seconds since the flash—ten seconds that were just enough time for my father to finish fixing the gear shift and for my mother to finish doing... whatever it was she was doing.
"Now we just—? What happened, Nando?"
"Nothing major, I just banged my finger against the wall while using the flash, hahaha."
"Okay."
He didn't even question it; in moments like this, being a bit clumsy (just like most of the rest of the family) actually helps.