not enough magic crystals!?

[fruithead]

hi, playing for the first time as mage on normal diff (loved the original ^_^) and i cleared Debir, Scarlet Wind, and about 50% of Bolo, and i perpetually seem to be out of magic crystals!

and it's not like i spend them frivolously; i have spells in my book i never scribed because of my crystal crisis! i'm not sure what i am supposed to do to get more, it's not like i can afford to buy every junk artifact i come across to break it for the one or two crystals i can get from them, and yes i use treasure hunt ability to get the occasional bonus one or two but still.

i have order magic two, and i probabaly haven't upgraded even half of my order spells. !_!

so where/how can i get more?

thanks all for any help!

EDIT: i know there is a skill alchemy, but A) it seems like a steep price to pay for a 15% reduction, and besides, most spells to get to lvl 2 are like 5-7 crystals, is the reduction really going to help that much?
and B) there are seemingly crucial skills that i need, and it's not like i have a lot of mind runes either >_<