Factory of the Magical Variety

by Conglomerate

Chapter 13: Farming?

Just putting a chunk of Luxite in direct sunlight would work, but it would probably take upwards of several months to a year for it to grow to a usable size, even then crystals don't just grow from nothing. From what I understood, the top of a Luxite crystal catches sunlight, it then travels down the crystal and into the ground. This causes a reaction to take place, the heat from the sun causes a chemical reaction that produces Luxite from common elements in the ground. The new Luxite crystal pushes up and out of the ground 'growing' the crystal as a whole.

The reason Luxite was so rare here was either from two things, either the mineral content in the soil wasn't very saturated, or the sunlight from the smaller sun wasn't enough to sustain proper growth, or a combination of the two. The first reason was hard to fix, but the second reason was much easier to fix, especially when I get glass and/or mirrors. Since I've learned that Luxite here grows on top of mountains, it was pretty obvious that it was latter reason why they weren't very common.

I still needed a way to get glass and mirrors, glass was the easiest, just a simple refinement of some silicate, such as quartz or sand, and I could fabricate a large lens. Mirrors were a bit harder though, they required some sort of reflective material, be it metal, liquid, or something else. Plumbia might work, but I'd have to polish it quite a bit, if I couldn't find anything else that was better, I'd just have to work with that.

With those two things on my gather list, I left the base, this time with my original tech, swapping around a couple of commodities first. I now had the cannon, laser gun, and radio on my tech. I would search the forest first for any of these materials, but I wasn't counting on it. I mean, how likely was it that I'd find a chunk of quartz or some other silicate in the middle of the forest?

I found a large chunk of quartz in the middle of the forest.

It wasn't just sticking out of the ground though, but it wasn't very hidden either. After drilling out a couple of chunks, I had enough for one or two large lenses. Next up was some sort of mirror material.

Argentite was a good material, but I haven't found any trace of it since I got here, neither did I find any Cinnabar for Mercury. I guess polished Plumbia was what I was going with, as much work as that would be. It really was a shame that the Fabricator couldn't just fabricate polished Plumbia. I'd have to do it manually.

I had a large collection of Plumbia sheets infront of my tech, using a makeshift sander using a wheel with an inserter, I sanded the plates as best I could. I didn't have the finest sanding equipment, but it should do. I made sure to pour plenty of water across it while I sanded/grinded. Eventually I was left with plenty of mostly reflective plates.

These would have to do, the best part was though, was I could protect them from tarnishing with more glass. With all the materials needed, I set to work building a "greenhouse" for Luxite. In the center of it, I placed a Luxite chunk in the dirt, driving it further down with my techs weight. Next I placed a convex lens above it so that direct sunlight would converge directly on the crystal. Then, I placed mirrors around the crystal, so that indirect sunlight would still be reflected back into the crystal.

It looked like a telescope pointing straight at the sun, but it should work pretty well. By my calculations, I should be able to grow a single Luxite chunk every week, still slow, but much faster than any other method I could think of. There was just one problem though, the chamber also worked in reverse, so any light the Luxite emitted converged into a spotlight pointed straight into the sky. To fix this, I simply made a cover for it during the night, problem solved.

I only had two Luxite chunks to 'plant' and while I could break them up into more, smaller chunks, it would take longer for all those chunks to grow. I still needed the Luxite fast, and this was the fastest option, I only needed to wait a week. Besides, when I get more Luxite, I could plant more Luxite, as long as I had enough mirrors and lenses, I could produce Luxite very fast with the little space I had.

Speaking of space, in order to get full range of the sun, I had to place the Luxite chambers in the clearing above the ravine, a little obvious, but it's not like I had much of a choice. Besides, my tire tracks were everywhere anyway, if I was going to be found, then I was going to be found.

Since just waiting for the Luxite to grow wasn't a good idea, I had a lot of free time to do other things. I could go visit Zecora, I haven't seen her in like a day. It was getting dark however, so I placed the covers on the LGCs(Luxite Growing Chambers).

I didn't have much else to do, I guess I could fortify my base. I had enough Plumbite and Fibrewood to at least seal off the cave and add a door, maybe even fill out the floor.

I spent most of the night building my base, towards the end I had a decent supply of Plumbite, enough to use for other projects. I could always just repurpose the floor or walls anyway, thanks to the versatility of standard blocks. I could make a massive tech right now, I could always make larger wheels. I didn't really have the resources to equip it though, I could only make Lasers and cannons right now, guns were out of the question, I'd need more Titanite.

I also didn't have the resources to make shield bubbles, though I could make repair bubbles and batteries. I then realized I could have outfitted my techs with at least a repair bubble and batteries all this time. I can't believe I forgot about that. Quickly fabricating a few, I only needed one repair bubble for each tech, but I wanted to outfit the entrance with repair bubbles too, it would certainly make it harder to breach.

Another problem presented itself though, repair bubbles consumed energy, all the time. Sure I had enough batteries to store loads of energy, but I only had one solar panel. The only other source of energy I could fabricate was simple combustion energy, I'd have to refuel the generators whenever the batteries got too low.

Well, one solution leads to another problem I guess. I now had about three furnace generators in my base, I only had to refuel them about once a day. Unless something decided to attack my base that is, but that wasn't too likely. The repair bubbles were a little obvious though, they didn't exactly shine brightly, but they were pretty visible in the dark.

It was getting really hard to conceal myself now, I guess I could try contacting the ponies now, I was certainly in a position that could warrant it. It didn't really matter if I got discovered first either, as long as I didn't show hostile intentions I should be fine. I hope.

I still wanted to wait a bit though, at least until the first batch of Luxite was done. There was still so much more to prepare for. I also needed to stock up on Erudite, while most of the other resources were easy to get. Erudite was by far the most difficult due to it's distance and my lack of digging equipment.

With nothing else to do, I headed towards the Erudite zone. There were several things I could try, I could blast the Erudite out of the ground using my cannon. I could do some sick donuts in my tech. I could try to angle my small drill to try and dig the dirt. I could also simply hope for the Erudite to miraculously surface and allow me to collect it.

Sadly, no Erudite magically flew up through the ground into the air. There was really only one option that was the best, something I had been meaning to try. Detaching my drill from the front of my tech, I placed it into the claw of the inserter. It didn't exactly connect, but it did hold it steady. Of course, I couldn't just start drilling, it had no power, I didn't have a way to connect it to the tech's power supply.

With no way to do that yet, I was stuck with options one and two, the "fun" ones. Donuts in a six wheeled tech weren't easy, but it did cover or uncover a lot of ground, I got a couple pieces of Erudite out of that. I couldn't really go deeper with the donuts though, so with nothing else to lose, I simply fired the cannon into the dirt.

A loud explosion sounded out, scaring several birds out of a nearby tree. A spray of dirt and stone erupted from the impact, flying everywhere. When the dust and smoke cleared, I was left with three more pieces of Erudite, only slightly charred.

With enough Erudite to last a bit, I headed back. One thought came up though, if I could farm Luxite, what's stopping me from growing other crystals. I'd just need to find out how they grew and give them the perfect environment for it. A project for another time however, because I just realized I let off an loud explosion relatively close to a residential area.

I quickly sped off into the forest.

To Be Continued.

Author's Note:

Edit: Renamed Silver to Argentite.

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