Before we returned to Kembora City, we hiked around the far side of the mountain to verify if the new ship had actually launched and left, which would indicate that it's safe for us to return to society. The third ship did seem to have launched an was missing, so we made our way back to the city. I felt some nostalgia as we hiked down the mountain to rejoin society, because it reminded me of when we returned with Zaka after I'd been exiled for a short period of time.

On our way back to the city, we stopped briefly at the old cave. There was some evidence that someone had been snooping around recently, which means it was probably Elora. I don't have proof of that, nor do I know exactly what she planned to do had she found us, but it's probably for the best that I avoided that interaction.

Unlike the last time we returned to society, things marched along quite well in our absence, with all the various industries continuing to produce their products and build new buildings. All the more evidence that we're in a good position to transition our leadership to a more hands-off and goal-oriented style of governance.

Before we look into implementing the government level changes, we do want to get caught up on everything that happened in the couple of months we were gone.

Zeb and I took three days getting caught up on everything that happened while we were gone. We each did our own investigations into different areas of importance, of which there were quite a few. Most, but not all, of the locations were seemingly visited by Elora. In some, her presence was implied based on circumstantial evidence, and in others, it was an explicit visit. Considering she seems to have visited the underground portions where we grow fluorite and mana crystals, it does leave me a little worried.

Specifically the fluorite growth chambers have me more concerned than the mana crystal ones. The mana crystals require far more stringent conditions to grow, and creating a vacuum pump to mimic our ability to use stoneshaping to pull a vacuum would be difficult. The fluorite, however, doesn't suffer from the same stringent conditions. So, I think, we should prepare for the possibility that the mainland will start their own fluorite growth processes in a few years time.

Of all the places she snooped, she never went to the mint or the record archive, but she did go to the prison, which surprised me somewhat. The prisoners there aren't really a threat, nor do they have much information to share, but perhaps she didn't know that at the time she visited. In any case, it does seem like she decided to collect pretty comprehensive knowledge of our island before leaving, but managed to seemingly miss the treasure trove of consolidated knowledge I'd been writing down from Earth for months.

Zaka even commented on the fact that, while he'd liked to have restricted her movements around the island, it was pretty apparent that doing so would be impossible without risking casualties and a complete breakdown of diplomacy between our nations. They could have, for instance, thrown her in prison, but that would undermine our diplomatic excuse for getting rid of her in the first place.

The good news related to a lot of the snooping around the island is that it takes time to build up and copy our industry. Even with a larger workforce and potential schematics for how everything is built, it will take time to start producing things in a similar manner, especially without access to stoneshaping, which has been a great advantage to us. In fact, based on what I've seen of the Elven continent, they'll likely have to team up with one of the other races to actually replicate anything we're doing, as the overgrown forest would make replicating our heat-based industry difficult.

Plus, there is inherent danger in just replicating our industry willy-nilly. If they start experimenting with different fluorite additives without proper safety protocols, they'll probably end up killing everyone working on the project. I suppose, depending on how things work out, that might end up putting the final nail in the coffin for the elves being the top dogs in society. If they have the humans replicate our fluorite growth process, and a human puts silver in, everyone there is dead. Depending on the size of the crystal they grow, everyone in the nearby city would probably be dead too after a short while. That would likely ruin that coordinated relationship should it happen.

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Thus is the nature of technology though. Eventually it will spread, whether you want it to or not. I never thought we could keep all this a secret forever. I myself planned on sharing it in the form of an academy on the island anyway. I had just hoped that we'd pass the power transition point before then.

After some reluctance, and two days of discussion, Zaka approved the plans for overhauling our government on the condition that we do the legwork to select most of the individuals, save the military personnel, and he'll simply have final say on whether they get the position. Considering we're making him into a king, that does seem like how it should probably go anyway, so we agreed.

Unfortunately, we laid out a lot of positions that we have to fill. The good news, however, is that we don't have to do much to inform the public of the change. The only two groups that do need directly informed are the fisherdemons and the industry workers, since they elect their ministers. For almost everyone else, things will proceed pretty much the same way as they used to, other than perhaps reporting to someone new.

To save time, Zeb and I split up who will try to find individuals for which minister position, and then cross checked each other's selections before presenting them to Zaka for approval. With a few thousand individuals to select from, it wasn't actually that long of a process. It was quite easy for us to narrow down our lists, because, frankly, most demons simply aren't up to the caliber necessary for the tasks they'd be in charge of.

It became quite clear to us that the pool of individuals capable of being a minister in charge of something really was only about 50 demons in total on the whole island. So, interviews took up nine days of our time as we tried to filter options down for the various ministers.

After Zaka approved the ministers over the course of two days, we took another ten days to fully lay out what each minister was in charge of. By then, the two elected ministers were also selected and had their jobs explained as well. One of the first decisions made by this new governing body after that was to expand city hall such that each department had a set of offices. Zeb's department already had it's own set from before. Basically, it became a question of what does each department need to have to operate, and what kind of expansion to the building needs to take place to accommodate all the offices.

This meant that we'd likely have to displace some housing to make room for the expanded government building, and that we should potentially plan for more expansions in the future preemptively. I'd jotted down to Zeb what I thought I needed, which essentially was a proper space for all the documents I'd been having stored with all the science I could remember, before I headed out to resume work on the tank design.

Since I've been gone, we should have grown three of the extra large crystals for me to do testing with, but after arriving, I simply had a single crystal to work with. Tiberius had claimed and subsequently broke the other two crystals doing his experiments. I technically only needed one crystal to do the copper rod diameter tests to collect data for establishing an empirical formula for the heat transfer efficiency and stability of the hybrid crystals, but I'd liked to have had at least one additional crystal for verification that the formula I derive actually has predictive value.

The next large crystal should be done growing in another 22 days, so it's not that long of a wait, but it is unfortunate, considering the tests themselves usually only take a day or two before I break the crystal by taking it to it's limit.

The results from the copper rod diameter tests were somewhat intriguing. Below about 1/10th of an inch, the amount of mana that leaks into the crystal begins to drop off faster than expected. In essence, the ratio of heat transfer to mana leakage increases, making it better for heat transfer than leaking mana too far in.

Based on the results from these tests and the previous ones, there does seem to be an interesting possibility that we could insert many fine wires into the crystal to function as heat sinks without causing much disruption. That's just a hypothesis that I'll have to test moving forward. It does have an unfortunate side effect, however, of making the heat sinks more brittle and prone to breaking, so there is a downside that I'll have to consider.

Before I really finalize my design choices, I have a few tests that I'd like to do on two more crystals based on the results from these experiments to determine the durability of some of the choices.

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