Magic-Nullifying Crystal

Magic-nullifying crystals count among the toughest minerals anywhere, a hardness that joins with their inborn power to cancel magic and leaves them stubborn against ordinary tools and magical extraction alike. They carry a blue tone and turn up in a spread of sizes. Beneath the Saum Marshes lies an enormous bed of the ore, its hollows opening into a sprawling network of caves.

How far a crystal's nullifying reach extends depends on its purity, and the specimen Frieren came across cast its influence over a radius of roughly three meters. Within that zone, spellcasting simply fails and mana detection is shut out. Feed mana into the stone, though, and it responds with a brilliant, enduring glow that can be spotted from a great distance, fierce enough to dazzle creatures such as the Venomous Apex Dragon. Their rarity and these singular traits push the crystals to enormous worth, the price climbing in step with their size: by Frieren's reckoning a pebble-sized chip might be worth only a handful of gold coins, whereas the far larger piece she found could buy a whole mansion.

Frieren is the one shown putting a magic-nullifying crystal to work, having turned up a sizable specimen in the Saum Marshes. By pouring mana into it she set the stone alight, then aimed its blinding glow at the Venomous Apex Dragon. The same buried deposit, prized for both its scarcity and its toughness, draws attention for the fortune a single crystal can stand for.