After finishing off the glass of redberry wine with Archus, Willem left his Master's Private Sanctum and diffused the alcohol in his blood with magic. He said his goodbyes to Archus' attendants and slipped into the shadow of the wine glass he had set on the desk to be cleaned. When the attendants first met Willem, they had never seen magic like this and were naturally curious, but after seeing it so long they were now quite used to it.
While gliding through the darkness and heading toward the school, he sent a shadow to watch the initiates and see how they were doing. The subservient woman was performing her duties amicably for fear of defying the Grand Mages orders. Whenever the initiates told her to do something, she immediately did it without hesitation. The initiates were also careful not to ask anything dangerous or risky of the attendant to ensure there was no future problems from the woman who was still stronger than them in her own right.
In Willem's eyes this was a mutually beneficial punishment, the initiates received guidance from the attendant who was not bad in her studies and she learned some humility. Whether she learns her lesson from this punishment or not was the real question after this was over. Once he confirmed everything was in order, he sent another shadow to seek out the fire mage that he had exposed as a fake. Eventually he found him after passing through a carefully constructed magical barrier that was set in place by four advanced mages. The four mages had been torturing and beating the fire mage once they heard the truth about his identity. They had broken multiple bones and had even gone so far as to tear out his finger nails and toe nails. The scene was quite horrific, considering the students in the Magic Academy were between the ages of twelve and twenty.
It seemed as though one of the advanced mages was the leader of this little band of torturers, as he was the one covered in the fire mages blood. He displayed knowledge of the intricacies of water magic as he used a dagger to slice off pieces of skin from the fire mage and then used water magic to heal the wounds. The fire mage yelped in pain until his voice was hoarse, and when he could take no more punishment all that could be heard was soft crying. Presumably they had been torturing him like this for hours about what had been taken from them. At this point, the other advanced mages no longer had any interest in trying to get information out of him about their missing magical items. Once they realized he had passed out from the pain, they bound his hands and feet and tied him up to a metal pole within the magical barrier to deal with for another time.
When they had left, Willem quickly sent his mind into the fire mage's memories while he was defenseless, and checked to see what he had revealed under the torture. What he saw inside was quite a surprise, not only did the fire mage do his best to endure the pain for hours but he also did not reveal what had happened to the magical items. Though there were many students who saw what happened and watched Willem take the magical items, no one would willingly come forth and tell the advanced mage about it for fear of repercussions from the Grand Mage. The fact that everyone acted so tight-lipped about the situation was a great deterrence to the advanced mages whom had been stolen from, until they happened upon the fire mage who was attempting to go into seclusion. They determined that while he was weak it would be easy to capture him and torture him for information on the events that transpired. Willem had predicted that all of this would happen except for the fact that the fire mage kept his mouth shut.
Willem thought for a while and decided to help the fool out. He had already gone through his punishment that the Grand Mage had given him, and there was no longer any bad blood between them. Willem took his unconscious body into the darkness and sent him deep into the mountains for seclusion. Willem carved out a hole in the mountain with earth magic, large enough for a young adult to enter and leave. He provided a cheap cot, a small bundle of firewood and some cheap anti-infection cream for the weak mage's open wounds. As for surviving, that would be up to the fire mage's luck and willpower. Even this could be considered a gracious gift considering the past events between them. Once Willem had done this for the fire mage, he purged his mind of all things to do with the young man and returned to the Academy.
Willem met up with Kinsey and told her about what had happened in the morning when they parted ways. Though she was genuinely surprised, she said nothing about it when he revealed that he helped out the fire mage. Kinsey knew that Willem was not often one to help someone who once bared their fangs at him. Perhaps the fire mage had done something that caught the attention of her Master. While she thought about what that might have possibly been, Willem teleported both of them back to the Private Sanctum.
Kinsey immediately went and prepared some tea for her Master when they had arrived at their destination.
Willem went to his study room and took out the body parts of the hellboars that he had previously stripped apart. The hides had finished tanning and curing within his spatial spell and were now pliable. He pictured the measurements of Eli and Mark from when he last saw them, and began to fashion leather armor befitting their size. Due to the immense size of the hellboars, he was able to make not just a leather chestpiece, but also legguards and armguards with boots and gloves. On the armor, Willem sketched the complex runic symbols from the red book while sending earth magic into the individual pieces. As he sent the earth magic into the runic symbols the hide began to toughen and constrict as if it was becoming heavier. By the time the runes were inscribed, the leather was as heavy as mithril armor but had much more maneuverability. He etched on each piece of armor a large 'G' for Grandia, and began working on the next hellboar hide. The first set of hellboar armor had taken four hours to make, which was an hour more than it would normally take for each runic symbol. This was due to Willem taking his time to focus on the crafting of the runes, making as little mistakes as possible.
Sixteen hours after he had begun, he was finally finished with the hellboar armors. The first two armors were made for Sir Kris and Mark. Knowing that both favored heavy armor and defense, Willem had it in his mind to make them the strongest earth magic armor he possibly could. This earthen based hellboar armor had pieces of thick stubby rocks sticking out from them like barbed armor. For the other two armors which would be given to Sir Rowan and Eli, Willem fused wind magic into the runes. This made the leather armor lightweight while maintaining its ease of use.
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The way Willem created the armor, it needed certain criteria instead of material to activate. For the earthen armor, as long as one planted both their feet on the ground they would have the strength of a mountain complimenting their defense. For the wind armor, as long as there was even a little wind resistance from movement, it would activate and augment the user with the force of a small hurricane. For the wearers of both armors, it would be as if you were an unstoppable force or an immovable object.
Once he had finished crafting the armor, he took out the bones of the hellboar. The bones had been stripped clean of ligaments, muscle and meat. The bones themselves were thick and just applying normal magical power to augment his strength, he was only able to leave a small crack in one. They were the ideal material for weapon crafting, but only a master weaponcrafter would be able to make full use of them. For now, they would have to stay in his spatial spell until he can find a master weaponcrafter that he knows is trustworthy.
Willem then took from his spatial spell a mithril longsword, two mithril daggers, a mithril battleaxe, a mithril mace and two dark iron shields. Though mithril was rather expensive, the fact that he was a Grand Mage played a large part in his ability to acquisition rarer materials. He set them on the table and began to think about what magic he wanted to imbue in them. For him, these weapons and armor were going to be paramount in his plan for dealing with the war with minimal casualties. He thought about how his Father may not have lost his life if he had better equipment that day when he went to fight the magical beast, and focused everything on the crafting of the weapons.
Roughly four hours later, the weapons sat on his desk, each one with complex runic symbols gently glowing.
When he had begun to think about how he wanted to magically imbue the weaponry, he had an interesting idea. If he could somehow imbue the runic symbols with magical potions, he would not need to constantly expend his magic power into the weapons. This allowed him to focus more on crafting the runes, as well as being able to try different potions with different effects in weapons. For a sample test, he took out a dark iron dagger and began to carve out the runic symbol. During the carving, he poured a magical potion into it that allowed one to temporarily grow in size to a giant.
Once the carving had been complete, he saw that the dark iron dagger runes glowed a faint grey color, the same as the color of the potion. No matter how he tried to suppress the glow, it still shined magically as if someone was activating the effects. He used his magical perception and saw that it had a hazy grey color faintly glowing from it. He picked up the weapon and sent magical force into it. The effect of the potion activated and Willem's body began to grow in size. He now stood ten feet tall, which was rather small for a giant. It could be understood that some of the magical ability was lost in the fusion of the runes and the magical potion. This would generally mean that the effects of the potion were greater when consumed, but the weapon was sustainable and possibly permanent.
Willem thought about it for a moment, then quickly attempted to do the same thing with the runes he had been learning in his class at the Magic Academy. He used his weakest level one health potion and attempted to fuse it with the most basic runic symbol into an iron sword. The liquid of the health potion dropped onto the runes, but did not attempt to fuse with the symbols. Instead it dripped down the sword and onto the floor wastefully.
From this, Willem conjectured that the basic runic symbols did not have the capability to fuse anything but the basic elements. This would also explain why neither the Grand Mages, Knight Captain, or Advanced Guard had any weapons of advanced specialization from potion fusion. What he could not understand, is that this was in a red book accessible to those who could enter the restricted section of the Grand Library. How come no Grand Mages had attempted this before? No matter how much Willem thought about it, he could not come to any solid conclusion. When next he saw Archus he intended to ask, since they would be seeing each other soon.
Once his experimentation with the potion had proven successful, he used level four potions to fuse with the complex runic symbols of the weapons.
Willem actually took out papyrus and squid ink, which he had not done in quite a long time. He carefully wrote down his findings onto the papyrus before retiring to bed. Kinsey had already fallen asleep some time ago, and only when Willem had entered the bed did she begin to slowly open her eyes.
From the corners of her eyes, small drips of tears appeared as strong arms wrapped around her slim figure. The tears did not come from pain, or fear, but from longing. The warmth she was used to had finally returned, and she fell asleep very quickly.
Willem watched as Kinsey's emotion changed from anxious to comfortable, and finally complacent. He scanned his surroundings once more with magical sense, then closed his eyes to meditate.
The contents of the Papyrus:
Magical Longsword (White Glow) - Piercing - Ability to deal debilitating blows with higher accuracy based on the knowledge of the user. (Activation - Held at top grip)
Magical Dagger (Red Glow) - Frenzy - Each consecutive attack deals accumulative damage to the target up to twenty times. (Activation - Spoken Word - Frenzy)
Magical Dagger (Blue Glow) - Vigor - Depletion of stamina and strength from overuse is halved. (Activation - Spoken Word - Vigor)
Magical Battleaxe (Black Glow) - Destruction - Successful hit against perceived enemy causes conflagration and grievous wounds. (Activation - Two hands on weapon)
Magical Mace (Green Glow) - Renewal - Increased healing factor based on previous damage taken. Detached limbs regrown over a long length of time. (Activation - Hand at base)
Magical Shield (Silver Glow) - Armory - Multiple smaller shield brace the large shield from initial impact for dispersion. (Activation - Spoken Word - Armor)
Magical Shield (Brown Glow) - Reflect - If perceived enemy inflicts damage on user, they take damage equivalent to fifty percent. (Activation - Spoken Word - Thorns)