Magnus was walking through the hold to discuss the construction of the castle with old Tobias when Tobias's room door flew open.
Bang!
"YOU ARE A CHEAT! YOU HAVE TO BE CHEATING! IT TOOK ME FIVE YEARS TO LEARN HOW TO MANIFEST HALF AN IMAGE! TELL ME HOW YOU ARE DOING THIS!"
Chronos zoomed past Magnus with old Tobias close behind him swinging his resonance hammer around like a mad man.
He considered going after them then shook his head.
"I think I'll wait for them to come back." He wisely decided.
Entering the room, he sat down and took out the blueprint for the castle to review it once more.
Nearly an hour later old Tobias stomped into the room still fuming while Chronos carefully followed him. He was tiptoeing around the edge of the room keeping an eye on the resonance hammer that was still in old Tobias's hand.
"Welcome back, I need to go over the castle plans with you. The abnormal conditions in the wasteland aren't limited to the weather they extend into the ground as well. This is causing the engineers significant problems." Magnus said.
Taking the castle's plan, old Tobias spread it out on the table.
The engineers wanted to extend the hill and turn it into a plateau large enough to hold a large castle while applying magic to the cliffs that would form. The cliffs would have both defensive magic and trap magic embedded into them.
The castle would have five sides with the point extending into the wasteland and a tower at each point.
On top of the towers would be large thunderlance ballista's. Even though it was called a ballista it looked nothing like one. It had a round movable base ring and mounted on top of the base ring was a short barrel or pillar, on the end of the barrel there were five large spikes extending twice the length of the barrel.
The barrel held the power for the ballista, and the five spikes would channel and shape the lightning into a large lance. When fired the lance would explode at the point of contact sending lightning bolts into everything around it.
It was a very destructive weapon that could cause serious damage to an attacking army however it required a great deal of power to fire it once. Normally this power was built up over time and stored in the barrel, but it could also be charged externally by a mage in an emergency.
But emergency charging wasn't used very often as it would damage the thunderlance ballista or at least that should have been the way it was.
As Chronos got a good look at the castle's plans he noticed that the ballista's on the towers were linked to the castle through a set of wires and channels that seemed to carry power to the ballistae.
That was unusual but the castle itself was even stranger.
Most castles were built on the surface with only a basement attached but this one had a large portion of it built underground with the only ways to reach the more secretive underground portions being secret passages through the elite quarters or the castle lord's room.
Underneath the plateau were a network of passageways connecting rooms for blacksmithing, enchanting, magic gear, and storage for various things including replacement parts for the ballistae and a cistern.
In the center of it all was a room marked as the power core room with various magic circles surrounding it. It had a small hole a meter across in the middle of the room that went all the way down until it connected to the ley line underground.
"Am I supposed to be seeing this?" Chronos hesitantly asked.
If what he was seeing was true, then the real secret of the crucible castles was that they pulled spirit from the ley lines that crisscrossed the world to change the environment around them and power everything in the castle.
Any mage could tell you that ley lines existed but as far as Chronos knew nobody knew how to pull spirit from them.
The spirit was too dense and any attempt to pull spirit from the ley lines would result in a flood of energy that could kill almost anything it would touch but somehow the Leybound Crucible Knights were doing exactly that.
Thinking about it now the leybound in the knight's name was a dead giveaway to what they were doing. It was just so outrageous that nobody had made the connection.
Both of them looked at Chronos for a moment.
"Hahaha, I don't think there's anything to worry about." Magnus busted up laughing.
"I think it's a little late for that question. I've already taught you some of our methods." Old Tobias pointed out as he chuckled under his breath.
The thought of one of the Beklaedning clan betraying the nation was absolutely absurd, even more so when the one asking was the son of the Silver Spear Maiden.
The bonds between pack members were so strong that none of them would willingly betray the pack and right now the pack included the nation. Unless the nation betrayed them first there was no chance of them turning against the nation.
"That was a good laugh, now come take another look. You might be able to see something we're missing." Magnus pulled him closer to the table.
Chronos hesitated for a moment before nodding and taking another look at the plans.
The first page was the castle, but the second page detailed the surrounding land and the flow of power through the ley lines. But what it showed was that the ley lines kept shifting positions and moving spirit in strange ways.
"Hm, is something moving the world crystals?" Chronos asked.
"World crystals? What are those?" Magnus responded.
Chronos blinked at him. How could someone who worked with ley lines not know about world crystals?
"World crystals are crystallized portions of the world's power. They determine what the environment looks like and assist in channeling spirit through the environment."
"Oh those, we call them lord crystals in Leighla Kingdom. I didn't think it was possible to move them, but it would explain some of these strange movements. However, it doesn't explain all of the movements like here, yesterday this ley line was moving towards the southeast but in the last two hours it moved to the southwest. Ley lines don't move that drastically." Magnus said.
"There are two paths here and here." Old Tobias interrupted and placed several marks on the map around the ley line. "The geography in the wasteland starts making more sense when you realize there are multiple paths for spirit to flow through and depending on which path it's moving through it changes the weather. I think there were more lord crystals in the past now the wasteland is trying to make up for a lack of crystals."
"I see, that's troubling. Our crucible castles need some level of stability to operate if we can't find something to link to, we're going to have problems later on." Magnus muttered.
"Do you have to link to something?" Chronos curiously asked.
"Yes, to use the strategic class spells that crucible castles are famous for we need to link to an element in the environment or they won't activate. Normally we do this by linking to a ley line but if they constantly move then we can't link to them." Magnus said.
That made sense. Strategic class spells were normally cast by a circle of mages with at least 100 people in it to assault cities, but they needed a rank five mage or multiple rank four mages to guide the spell.
The crucible castles were famous because they could use strategic spells without needing the higher-ranking mages.
Unfortunately, one of the requirements for strategic spell activation was linking to an element and without it this would just be a normal castle.
"How do you normally link to an element?" Chronos had an idea, but he needed more information before he could make a judgment.
"We use structural enchanting. It's a form of enchanting that allows a building or object to cast a spell through perfect form instead of runes or material. We leybound crucible knights are the only ones who actively use this type of enchanting.
It was originally discovered by hedge witches when they shaped their gardens in certain ways, but they don't use it on such a grand scale as we do." Old Tobias started going into his lecture mode as he talked about one of the greatest secrets of the Leighla Kingdom.
It was a very complex lecture regarding environmental changes and castle structure and how they affected each other. Overall, it gave Chronos a headache.
From what he could understand by creating a building or item in just the right way it would resonate with the laws of the world and cause a magic effect or spell. The crucible knights took advantage of this by turning an entire castle into an enchantment capable of casting strategic spells.
And because every environment was different, every castle made by the knights was different, giving them different spells for each location.