Chapter 275: Lines in the Stone
Reivyn expected the road to end abruptly. The way the personal accounts described their journeys only mentioned the road ending a short distance within the Wilderness. He didn’t know exactly what to expect, but he thought it would just end at some point.
That’s not exactly what happened. He noticed the first signs with his Divine Sense, but as they continued deeper into the Wilderness it even became observable with the naked eyes. Reivyn knew to keep an eye out for it already, so he was the first to notice and point it out.
“Doesn’t it seem like the erosion of the road’s stones is too much?” He turned to Kefira and asked.
“It has to do with the fluctuations of the Mana density,” she easily replied. “It’s a known phenomenon, which is the real reason the road doesn’t go all the way through. While it might be difficult to form a large team to build a road, a small team would have no problems, and in fact, it’s been tried before in the past.
“The roads don’t last, though, and the Wilderness quickly takes over once again. We repair the road a bit deeper every decade, but there’s still a few years left until the next scheduled maintenance.”
“So the Mana density erodes the stones? How does that work?” Reivyn continued to ask.
“Mana is energy, and the stones used have their own energy resistance and upkeep thresholds,” Kefira answered. “We use materials from our Tier 4 Region. They last the longest. The building materials get hit with double duty from lack of Mana density to upkeep the stones as well as increased burden from too much Mana.
“We’ve experimented with other materials, but just using our own Tier 4 materials was found to be the best solution. Anything lower will have less strain when the Mana density falls, but it will take more damage from higher density levels, and higher Tier materials just aren’t cost effective. They eventually erode just the same as Tier 4 materials, but they’re much harder to source.
“In fact we don’t even have access to a ready supply of Tier 6 materials at all. We have some of the older, more powerful members of our empire in the Tier 6 Regions, but there are very few of them, and it doesn’t make sense to have them ferry stones for a road, much less spend the time necessary to quarry them.”