Back in the customer service area, Rosario finished writing the last observation and reviewed the stack of papers in front of her. She then looked at the three smiths, confused.

“Everything seems fine, but you forgot to measure items 5, 11, and 76; that’s the dark red crystals over there.” She pointed at the ones neither she nor the siblings had seen before.

Emilia seemed hesitant. “You see, before we get to those, I was wondering if—”

“Where did you find those crystals?” asked Noah.

“Noah, that’s not—”

“Stop beating around the bush. We’ve spent years trying to find out what behemoth makes them, and now a hunter who just came for a day trip finds a treasure of them. Look!” He pointed at the largest red crystal, the one Stefan had struggled to put in his backpack. “If she got one this big, it means there were tons of them! Did you see which root made them? What trees grew nearby?”

Rosario wasn’t sure where this was going and decided to stay silent.

“You’re making it weird, Noah. Just calm down,” intervened Emilia. “I apologize for that, but what he said sums it up; we have come across that type of crystal as well, but we can’t figure out its origin, and you know that for processing crystals, it’s very helpful to have information about the tree that generated them and the composition of the terrain it grows on.”

To Rosario, Emilia’s argument rang true. While no one knew why behemoth trees came to exist, it was common knowledge that the crystals produced by a behemoth reflected the composition of the soil. It was proven that both the original species and the elements in the soil had a role in the formation of a behemoth and the type of crystals it would form. It could therefore happen that the same species of pine originated two very different behemoths in terrains of different mineral composition, and these trees would, in turn, generate crystals with distinct properties. When crystalsmiths worked with raw crystals, they often used the knowledge given by the environment of the tree; for example, adding elements present in abundance in the soil could enhance the effect of a crystal weapon. Still, as far as Rosario knew, behemoths in general followed similar patterns of development, and small differences in mineral composition didn’t have that much of an impact overall.

“It’s the first time I see them as well,” answered Rosario.

“I think it would be easier if we show her,” said Carlo, at last.

“Right… of course,” Emilia stood up. “If you don’t mind, let’s go to my father’s laboratory. It’s in the underground parking lot.”

*****

In the meantime, Fatima guided the siblings to a clothing store on the second floor.

Despite the commercial signs still above the entrance, the interior had been remodeled to suit the needs of a crystalsmith. Tables with instruments stood in the center, surrounded by shelves which contained hundreds of colorful crystals both raw and processed, as well as bottles with reagents, rocks, animal bones, and pieces of wood, likely from behemoth trees. Some heavier equipment was in the back, the type used to press crystals into smaller forms. Displayed on the walls were dozens of finished crystal devices, ranging from small projectiles to larger items such as knives, daggers, and a bow with a set of arrows with crystal heads.

The crystalsmith apprentice began an explanation about the different items on the wall, which she had all made, when Franziska’s eyes stopped on a pile of metallic and wooden sticks of different shapes and lengths in a corner.

“Is that a magician’s staff?” she ran to pick it up. It was about her size but still light, made of silvery metal and well balanced, with the top showing an intricate design that resembled the roots of a tree. Nested between the roots were faceted crystals which gave off reflections of all colors as Franziska held the staff in the air. “It’s so pretty! Look, I’m a rainbow mage!”

Fatima laughed. “Yes, you could be a mage… or a magical girl!”

“What’s a magical girl?”

While Franziska wondered at the colorful light emitted by the staff, Stefan picked up another item from the pile.

“This one here looks like a spear.” He noticed at least five similar weapons in the pile. “Hey Fatima, why did you make so many? They’re good. You should put them on the wall and show them off.”

She blushed slightly. “I made those for practice. Well, I made the crystal parts, and Carlo helped me make the shafts.”

Stefan picked up another weapon which resembled a halberd, only the blade was made of solid purple crystal instead of metal. This meant it was created from purple needles, some of the hardest crystals found so far. They were commonly used to make solid weapons, but forging even a small knife was a laborious process. Grinding the purple raw crystal to a powder pure enough to be pressed together into a new form required a careful effort, or else the weapon could break on impact.

“This looks very well made,” he said absentmindedly, his eyes trying to find faults on the blade but finding none. “It must have taken you forever to grind the needles. The surface looks perfect.”

“I wanted to do a good job because it was my first commission. There is a guard who rides a motorcycle, her name is Leonie. She asked me to make a long weapon for her.”

“I know who you mean! We met her today. She’s nice.”

“She’s only mildly resistant to processed crystals and can’t get too close, so in the end I made her a spear with a retractable end. I used purple needles for it.”

“Makes sense. Solid crystals are less poisonous at a distance—” he was interrupted by his sister, who poked at him with the staff she was still playing mages with.

“And now turn into a donkey! Oh, I forgot you’re already one--”

Irritated, Stefan raised the halberd to give her a scare, suddenly realizing he couldn’t move the weapon. He turned around and saw Rosario holding the halberd and glaring at him with fiery eyes and a stern expression.

“H-hi Rosario, we were just playing.”

She leaned in until her face was very close to Stefan’s ear. “We’ll talk about this later.”

*****

The three hunters accompanied the crystalsmiths to a corner in the atrium, where parking payment machines lined up against a wall. They descended one level using a permanently immobile escalator and arrived at a recreation area. While the arcade seemed to be out of order, the bowling lanes and pool tables seemed to be in use.

“Does that…?” asked Rosario.

“It’s in operation, if you’re wondering,” explained Noah. “We play on Thursdays. Anyone who can survive in here is invited, which means it’s normally only us.”

“You’ll have three more this Thursday.”

They took a staircase down to the first of three levels of the underground parking area. It looked like a regular parking garage, with the rusty carcasses of some vehicles piled up in a corner, scavenged for parts a long time ago. The concrete walls had cracks in them, but nothing out of the ordinary for an old, half abandoned building. They descended to another level.

In the minus-two parking garage, the walls were even more cracked. Wooden and metallic crates lay piled orderly on one side, while on the other stood large grinding machines, the type used in the early stages of crystal processing. Rosario thought it rather unpractical to have to haul the crystals down there and do the messy process in a closed area, but maybe this setup was meant to prevent crystal dust from escaping the building and making it to the town below. They went down to yet another floor.

This time, Rosario almost lost her footing on the last step of the staircase. The children beside her gasped in surprise.

The parking area had been modified to contain at least a dozen of open vats made of bricks and concrete. In the vats grew small versions of behemoth trees, twisted into crooked shapes as the pools they had been confined to were too small for them. The roots were so tightly packed together in some cases they even grew out of the vats, but regardless of that, they were all covered in a dense and bright layer of crystals.

“In case you’re wondering, this wasn’t our doing,” explained Emilia. “The first coterie who arrived in this town some years after the collapse made it just in time to find the locals felling the last behemoths who grew too close to the town. Everyone at the time realized this was necessary for people to live safely, but they were also aware that getting rid of the trees meant it would be more difficult to get crystals. This happened around the time the first monsters started to appear, and someone had the idea of taking cuttings of behemoths and trying to grow them in a controlled environment to the point they gave crystals.” She made a gesture, inviting the hunters to take a closer look at the underground garden.

The idea of expanding behemoths wasn’t unheard of, but it was also known the results were mostly disappointing. The care required to keep a behemoth alive in confinement exceeded the yield. These trees, however, looked as robust and productive as the ones in the wild, only smaller.

“And I wondered how you managed to get so many crystals to keep this town running. A guard told me you buy them, but I see you guys have an impressive green thumb.”

“That’s correct, we do that too,” said Emilia. “The supply from the behemoths isn’t nearly enough to cover what we need to maintain the buffer zone.” She signaled at the surrounding trees, which looked colorful in the light of the crystals. “But it’s not us who made this happen; the one with the green thumb is my father. Before he started taking care of the garden, this experiment was as unsuccessful as any other I’ve heard of. Anyway, this wasn’t the reason we brought you here.”

*****