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Both new games were priced at five silver marks.
With four employees now working the floor, Caelan had Oliver man the counter to handle sales. Students consciously lined up to buy, though most were content to observe first. Only those with deep pockets bought the games without hesitation.
Caelan took out a new ranking runestone from his pocket and replaced the old display.
First Clear Hero Ranking
Elemental Contra: Quinn of House Stormcall
Super Mario: Quinn of House Stormcall
Tank Battle: Karrum Ironhammer
Salamander: Quinn of House Stormcall
Chronicle of the Fierce Tortoise Warriors: Cassius of House Everflame
Crimson Fortress: None
Squirrel War: None
(The rankings for individual games had shifted slightly, but the changes were too numerous to list in detail.)
Watching the players gradually immerse themselves in the new titles, Caelan smiled. He retreated into his newly decorated office, closed the door, and pulled over a large crate of blank runestones.
It was time to get back to the assembly line.
Yesterday, several more merchants had approached him. Some were willing to place pre-orders and wait; others wanted to buy tens of thousands of units on the spot. Caelan had been forced to refuse them.
Even working overtime, his limit was about ten thousand engravings a day. Although his speed and mana capacity were increasing daily, he was still a bottleneck of one. No one else could do the engraving—at most, they could help him move the heavy crates.
Caelan felt a wave of anxiety. If he released Street Fighter and it became a hit, would he be condemned to work day and night forever? Engraving Fierce Tortoise was fast enough, but Street Fighter required significantly more mental energy and complex structural weaving.
He had to find a solution.
But what solution existed, other than rapidly increasing his own strength?
Caelan had tested himself yesterday. His mana rank had reached the Third Circle. That put him on par with most of the elite students in his grade.
But what was his rank twenty days ago? First Circle.
From First to Third Circle in twenty days. He even felt the faint stirrings of another breakthrough. Caelan didn't know how to describe this terrifying speed, nor did he dare tell anyone. He worried that if the truth got out, he might be treated as a threat—like the "extinct" illusionists of the past—and extinguished by a large fireball before he could truly grow.
This surge in strength was both exhilarating and terrifying.
He hid in the office, engraving until darkness fell outside. He lost track of time.
Knock, knock.
Caelan raised his face—numb and expressionless, the standard look of an overworked factory hand. "Please, come in."
His hands didn't stop. They continued to mechanically engrave the tablet in his grip.
The door opened, and Tessa, the new employee, spoke apologetically. "Boss, a few more merchants are asking for you."
"Tessa, please tell them that our current order volume is too high. I'm too busy to handle new contracts right now," Caelan said helplessly. "Please give the same reply to anyone else who comes later, and inform the other staff."
"Okay."
The door clicked shut.
Caelan stretched his stiff limbs and stared blankly at the wall for two minutes. Then, remembering his agenda, he quickly opened a drawer. He pulled out the various colored extraterrestrial meteorites and arranged them on the desktop. Next to them, he placed several small boxes labeled by color: Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, White, and Purple.
Inside the boxes were powders ground from these respective stones.
Caelan began to analyze his materials.
Purple Light: He had been surprised to learn that the standard runestones used for batteries were actually extraterrestrial in origin. Because they were abundant and reusable—recharging slowly over time or manually with mana—hundreds of thousands of years of accumulation had made them the least valuable material on the continent.
Blue Light (Black Mithril): This was the most expensive type. Used in almost all high-end enchantments, its function was to enhance the "stickiness" of magic, allowing runes to adhere more easily to objects.
Caelan carefully used his mind palace to extract one gram of Black Mithril powder. He injected it into a blank runestone. The tablet immediately flickered with a faint blue light.
Based on his experience, Caelan knew this tablet could now hold the full data for Street Fighter. The graphics would still be slightly inferior to the arcade version, but it would work.
However, capacity wasn't his main problem. He could solve capacity issues by compressing the illusions or simply using a larger, cheaper runestone tablet. Runestones were everywhere—more common than granite or marble back on Earth.
What he needed was speed.
If he couldn't speed up the engraving process, he would have to delay major game releases or accept his fate as a human printer.
Green Light (Phantom Sound Stone): This was his hope. Since it could break the visual shackles of the Weave, perhaps it held other surprises.
He pulled the green stone closer. It was the lightest of the bunch. History said it had no reaction to elemental mana, though it allegedly benefited Illusion, Sound, and Wood magic. However, excessive absorption permanently reduced the spell power of those elements, making it undesirable for combat mages.
Caelan didn't care about combat power. He only cared about rank and utility.
He tested the green powder. One box glowed; the other contained powder from a stone he had already drained. He tried to inject the powder into a runestone using mana.
As expected, it failed. The green powder refused to integrate with the stone.
Red Light (Gold-Veined Stone): Used to improve the hardness and toughness of weapons.
This powder required high-temperature smelting to activate. Caelan considered heating it and injecting it, but dismissed the idea. Runestones were heat-sensitive; even a slight scorching from a fireball would crack them. High-temperature injection would shatter the tablet instantly.
Even if he managed it, making the tablet physically tougher didn't solve the engraving speed issue.
Yellow Light (Fortitude Stone): This powder worked exclusively on runestones.
Injecting it via mana greatly enhanced a runestone's durability and, more importantly, its capacity. Normally, a Size 6 runestone had a capacity of 100. With a gram of Fortitude powder, that capacity jumped to 1,000.
For Caelan, this fell into the same category as Black Mithril: useful, but not a game-changer. Runestones were cheap. If he needed more space, he would just buy a bigger tablet.
He needed something else.