The ore
Datenseki amplifies spirit energy the way the blades do, without the stabilizing cut. About 250 kilograms are known. Unprocessed, it pops the user. Enchanted Blades are the rare version that overflow as weather instead of craters. The war is, at the mineral level, a fight over a vein on Irishima. Everything else, clans, contracts, flowers, is what people did with a quarter-ton of rock.
The Mikaboshi survived under the sea with bodies that could live with the stone. Japan harvested the vein after Irishima’s earthquake showed it. The Sorcery Bureau’s research went nowhere for two years. Then they asked a smith.
Unstable versus Kunishige’s eyes
Kunishige’s sight let him see what the ore was doing. Shiba believed those eyes were the only way to make the mineral usable. He was right. The Enchanted Blades turned the war. They also made possible the Malediction. No one else has ever stabilized Datenseki into a katana that does not become a crater.
That is the whole industrial project of the present: fake the eyes. The Kamunabi want the finished swords under seal. The Hishaku want Shinuchi. Sojo wanted a factory.
Sojo’s suicide stone
Sojo spent Char’s clan trying to fake that sight. He thought Kyonagi cells were the stabilizer. Char and her mother were inventory. He produced stones that hold for a few minutes, long enough to feel like a breakthrough, not long enough to be one.
After Enten bisects Cloud Gouger, Sojo fuses with unstable Datenseki rather than admit the experiment failed. The compound goes with him. Chapter 18 is the mineral as a last word. See Vs. Sojo and Sojo, Kunishige’s worst fan.
Tenri
Tenri Sazanami is the household military trying to be useful. At the Rakuzaichi he takes a half-stable stone, Sojo’s leftover method, Hishaku infantry kit, and dies on it trying to impress Kyora. The auction house spends a son the way Sojo spent a clan: as a stabilizer that does not stabilize.
The same stones arm Hishaku infantry on Uruha’s train. A few minutes of amplification is enough to make a raid look like an army. It is not enough to make a smith.
250 kilograms, one pair of eyes
Sojo fakes the eyes with Kyonagi flesh and pops. Tenri fakes them with a half-stable stone and pops. The Hishaku hire Datenseki troops at Kokugoku; the Steam Squad beats them, then dies to Hiruhiko. Part 2 is the correct shop: Kunishige’s eyes, a real swordsmith’s homework, fire that almost takes the man until Chiaki arrives. Subaru helps start the blades. The term yōtō is credited to him in craft notes. About 250 kilograms known in the present. The war is a fight over a vein. Essay: Irishima’s vein. Magazine: Ironworks.