While I recovered from the strenuous act of conjuring my first weapon, I considered my options. The Shuttle would make for an excellent ranged weapon but the brittleness was worrying. My Ice Magic allowed me to hold the weapon together but if I wanted to use a similar weapon in melee, as something to resort to if my Astral Power was low, that wouldn’t be an option. Maybe keeping my mundane, if judged crappy by the system, blades would be to my advantage, as I was somewhat confident that they wouldn’t just break. Hopefully, I wasn’t quite sure if the change had affected mundane materials, or in what ways it might have. The various fires were an indication that at least some metals had changed and the exploding cars were proof that gasoline had. But while I knew how to clean and oil a blade and could even sharpen one in a pinch, I wouldn’t even know where to begin assessing the material’s condition after magical exposure.

Out of curiosity, I tried looking at them through the magical sight I had inherited from Lenore only to realise that I lacked a comparison to interpret what I was seeing. There was magic within the blade, some of which possibly a residue of the temporary enchantment I had used on it, but also in the material. Raw Astral Power infusing the material structure in a way I simply lacked the reference points to know how it should look, or what the structural infusion would result in on a physical level. Tests were needed to find such reference points, tests and careful experimentation, with multiple samples to minimise the margin of error and the influence of material imperfections within the sample. Tests that would undoubtedly be incredibly interesting, even if metal wasn’t my preferred material to work with, but also tests I completely lacked the necessary resources to conduct. Maybe one day…

With my shuttle soaring around me, a combination of familiarisation exercises for my new weapon and training for my Ice Magic, I tried to consider how to improve my strength further. For now, the shuttle and my magic would likely be the best weapon I could get my hands on. When it came to protection, some sort of light armour would be wonderful but so far, I hadn’t seen any stores that might sell something like body armour or anything along those lines, I didn’t even know if we had such stores in our city. And even if we did, my incredibly petite size meant that, most likely, I wouldn’t be able to find anything there.

That left utility, which could be both protective and offensive, depending on the way it was used. Something like the Eisblumen artefact I had found in the Barrow Den would be wonderful, the vines it had allowed me to construct and control had been an incredible boon throughout my journey on Mundus, made even better by the fact that they had scaled with my Ice Magic ability. However, even after studying it for quite a bit of time, I wasn’t quite sure how it had worked, to create Ice that was both supple and hard, it seemed to be a contradiction. Sadly, that made it unfeasible to create a similar artefact here, at least in the short term. Another idea for the ‘maybe one day’-list, while I moved on to more practical considerations.

As I was considering enchanted Items, I realised that I had access to two relatively rare resources. One I had even already used, my Blood, enriched with my Astral Power, to create the temporary enchantments on my blades, while the other was similar in nature, just less gory. My hair, just like my Blood, carried my Astral Power and I had a bit of control over the power within. If I managed to form strands that solely carried one type of power, before plucking that hair out, I should get a strand of hair about as perfectly attuned to my magic of that type as possible. There might be still imperfections but unless I somehow managed to work in the condensed form of the Element, such as Eternal Ice, condensed from my Astral Power, there would always be imperfections. And for now, even the idea to conjure up Eternal Ice was ludicrous.

But plucking out a few of my hairs? That was a little painful and I would temporarily lose a bit of Astral Power but as long as I was careful, I should be able to harvest some without any real drawback.

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And with such a wonderful resource, I should be able to embroider runes onto some cloth, turning it into a simple magic item, allowing me to use the efficiency of a runic spell, without a need to cast that runic spell. There would be a small loss and a bit of degradation, simply because I doubted I would be able to perfectly embroider the runes into fabric, let alone the connecting patterns that were necessary to prevent magic from seeping into the fabric but it would do, at least for a while. I didn’t need the perfect artefact that would last for hundreds of years, I didn’t even need an artefact that lasted one year. If it lasted for a month, I would be happy and even a week would be a step in the right direction.

Sadly, while I had the idea and the raw material was growing on my head, I didn’t have any sewing needles or anything similar. I would need to look for those while hunting, and maybe search for a suitable piece of fabric as well. I habitually imagined the concealment spell I used, which was one of the two spells I planned to embroider immediately, as a Cloak of Shadows, or Darkness with my current runic abilities, so using something akin to a cloak would be suitable. The long coat I was currently wearing, though already a little roughed up by the fighting, was faux-leather and quite water-resistant so I wasn’t about to stitch into it, especially as the tough fabric would be relatively hard to embroider. Thus, some sort of cloak, especially one that was black or dark and maybe even water-resistant went onto my list. I doubted I would find anything like that but maybe I would stumble across some sort of costume store and could get something that would work. And if not, I could simply use a towel and a bit of string to create a quick release, if I managed to ignore how silly I would look.

In addition, embroidering a simple healing spell onto my clothes would be useful, and one onto a small scarf for Silva. Both would save valuable time and if we were seriously wounded, that time might be the difference between life and death. If I somehow managed to keep Astral Power stored within the hair, even while it wasn’t directly connected with me would be even better, so that I could essentially pre-cast the spells and only had to trigger them if the need arose, without even having to provide the Astral Power at that moment. Maybe my Blood Magic could open some avenue in that regard.

I would have to experiment with these ideas, once I had some needles.

Shaking my head, I glanced out of the window, noticing that there was still a lot of light outside, far too much for my taste. I didn’t even want to consider what would happen in the summer, at least the days were quite short now, even if they got longer each day.

Taking a deep breath, I noticed something else, namely that I was getting rank. Two nights of strenuous exercise without the benefit of a shower or any way to wash more than my hands had left me with a serious stench, exacerbated by the blood and gore I had occasionally been splashed with.

In Road to Purgatory, that hadn’t been so much of a problem, initially, Sigmir and I had cleaned ourselves with snow and once I received the spellbook from the Grandmother, I had found a few incredibly simple spells inside that allowed the Mending of clothes and simple maintenance for weapons and another that cleansed the body, essentially functioning as a quick and easy magic shower. But those spells had been black boxes for me, something I could only cast thanks to the book, the only input from my end the Astral Power. I had tried to reverse engineer them, similar to the way I had used the scrying pool spell from the book to eventually construct my flying magical constructs but had only ended up in failure.

Now, I didn’t have the book and stank, an unpleasant situation I wanted to change.

Considering my runes for a few moments, I tried to come up with a way to clean myself magically, as I had no desire to carry around enough water for regular showers. Even when thinking of the runes I hoped to unlock in the near future, I could only see one plausible combination, trying to use Darkness Magic to Devour everything around me that wasn’t me. It would require careful control and application, but it might just work.

Under Silva’s confused eyes, I quickly stripped off my clothes, before beginning the experiment, Magical Shower.