"What the... Okay, who's the genius doctor who gave me seven atoms when two quints need eight? Think! Anyone who can COUNT would tell you that's the wrong ratio! What, is this eighth atom supposed to be dropped off by some train from outer space or something??? Whatever, I can work with this. I can just grab four of 'em just fine. Still, it's hardly a work of genius."

And then there's a line break to separate the lore from the solve notes.

One of two things has happened. Min Rate for quintessence from one salt input is 8. Min latency for one salt input to quintessence is naievely 14: Grab, duplicate, then 8 for sorting the atoms onto quintessence, then 4 cycles to wait for quint to appear, grab, pivot, output. Min latency for Hydrated Hexstabilized Salt into quintessence is naively 14 + grab, debond core, debond core and create gap, debond first salt and calcify core. (4) That means that min cycles is around 18 + (8*11), which is exactly 106. This means that, naively, I have two cycles to shave before I hit min. If berlo geometries are scuffed, as they seem to be based on my solve, then I've hit min cycles. This means one of two things. 

Either A: I've performed astonishingly well and will rank top 10, maybe even top 5
Or B: Min cycles is frightfully easy and I'm missing something crucial and this is a secondary race, meaning I've missed top 30 by a mile.

Given my usual performance in these tournaments, I'm putting my money on the latter. A likely contender for why the latter would be the case would be if the actual min involves disassembling two of the input at once, thereby doubling the rate, but I'm not sure how to geometrically get two disassembly constructs close enough to the Berlo to sync up, so I'm making a likely incorrect assumption that this is impossible. It seems like there's every opportunity for me to just be wrong about case A, and also I didn't even put that much thought into my solve, so hopefully my solve shows up earlier in the stream rather than later. Good luck to those placing above me.

Signed, Trixie Kagami: The Cheshire Alchemist, Seemingly Performing Concerningly Well Since Right Now Please Send Help