Emmerick set the dagger down and smiled at Thomas, "Alright. Now that you're officially an enchanter let's put you to work. Because of the influx of you otherworlders, I'm a bit backed up with orders for basic enchantments." Emmerick gestures to a large crate that had a lot of different weapon handles sticking out of it and another couple of crates with various armors in them, "I'd like you to pick any piece you want to work with and enchant it for me. There is a tag on each item describing how it should be enchanted." Emmerick lifted a finger in caution, "Just keep in mind that if you fail the enchantment not only will you have to pay for the wasted mana crystal, but you will have to buy a replacement item as well. Once someone fails to enchant an item another attempt cannot be made. So be sure to only attempt to perform enchantments that you can clearly envision in your mind, otherwise leave the item and I will enchant it myself later."
Emerick tapped his chin and came to some sort of conclusion, "I will pay you fifteen gold per item you manage to enchant."
System Notice: New Quest, Repeatable Quest! Emmerick Lorens has requested that you enchant various weapons, armors, and items for him. Once your enchantment is done, turn the item in to Emmerick. This quest can be repeated until all items have been enchanted.
Rewards: 25 experience and 15 gold per successfully Enchanted item.
Failure: 10 gold plus the cost of the item you failed to enchant.
After looking over the quest, Thomas smiled and walked over to the crate containing a large number of different weapons. Since it took him about half an hour for the first enchantment he figured it would take about that long for each subsequent enchantment. He should be able to finish another eighteen or so in a day. Thomas knew he could do an enchantment to increase sharpness now so he wanted to try to do a different one. He selected a war hammer from the crate of weapons and checked the paper tag on it. The tag simply read 'durability'.
Thomas smiled and carried the hammer over to the workbench. Durability was an extremely simple concept and should be easily completed. Thomas finished his prep in a moment and spent a little time focusing his mind on the image of a diamond. Diamonds were obviously known to be exceedingly hard objects so it made an excellent image for adding durability to the hammer, at least in Thomas's opinion. With the concept of the hardness of a diamond in his mind, Thomas began the tap the engraver's tool with the small hammer to carve simple lines.
It didn't take very long for the lines to come together and reveal the image of a diamond. Thomas lifted the hammer and channeled his mana into it. He felt his mana slowly draining into the hammer and after examining the hammer he felt the job was done.
Weapon Type: War Hammer Rarity: Normal (Enchanted) Quality: Average Description: A basic war hammer made of iron that has been enchanted by an amateur enchanter. Enchantment: Durability - While mana is channeled into this weapon it's hardness increase dramatically preventing the hammer from deforming or chipping easily.
System Notice: You have completed an enchantment on a Normal grade item. Quality: Excellent. You have gained 71 Enchanting experience.
Thomas set the completed item off to the side and went to select his next item from the pile. For obvious reasons, the weapons were either bladed or blunt, with the majority being bladed. Thomas selected a longsword to work on this time, the requested enchantment for it being sharpness. Thomas smiled and recalled the image he'd used on his first item. This time though, he wanted to try to bring his game up a bit. When carving the enchantments he obviously had to use his eyes so he intended to try using his 'All Seeing Eyes' to increase the accuracy of his carvings.
After his prep work, Thomas focused his vision and activated his 'All Seeing Eyes' before he began to carefully carve out a circuit board-like pattern onto the flat of the sword. With his vision zoomed in on the work he was doing, Thomas could see the mana crystal shards being deposited into the parts he was chiseling out as he worked. It made it a lot easier for Thomas to tell when he needed to recoat the engraving tool to make sure there was not even the smallest break in the trail of mana crystal powder left behind by his engraving.
It took Thomas a couple of extra minutes to complete his work, but he felt like the work was a lot better. Even the circuit board-like pattern looked better this time. Thomas lifted the sword and channeled his mana into it to test it out. He felt his mana enter the sword, but there was still no outward sign of anything happening.
System Notice: You have completed an enchantment on a Normal grade item. Quality: Perfect. You have gained 76 Enchanting experience.
After finishing the work and only getting five bonus experience, Thomas wasn't sure if it was worth the extra effort or not. He decided he should ask the expert so he made his way over to Emmerick and asked, "Emmerick, is there much of a difference between excellent quality and perfect quality enchantments? Other than the obvious."
Emmerick didn't look up from his work as he answered, "There is a slight difference. Perfect quality enchantments last longer and conduct mana better giving the item a slightly better effect. People tend to pay more for better things too so there's always that as well."
Thomas nodded and went back to his work station while bringing a new weapon with him. He'd just grabbed a random handle from the crate and happened to select a shortsword. Thomas checked the requested enchantment and was surprised to see it listed at 'piercing'. Thomas crossed his arms over his chest and browsed his memories to think of a nice image. The first thing he thought of was a drill, but drills relied on rotation to pierce objects. It took Thomas a moment before he thought of something and smiled to himself. He focused on the image of a needle piercing through thread by pushing the threads to the side to make room for its passage.
With that thought in mind, Thomas began carving the image of a needle onto the weapon. He used his 'All Seeing Eyes' once again to make sure the enchantment would come out perfect. Within half an hour Thomas finished carving the image of a needle onto the shortsword and smiled as he got the notice for a perfect quality enchantment. Thomas spent the next eight hours working on enchantments non-stop, the majority of which came out as perfect quality with a few falling to excellent quality. All of the weapons requested either durability, sharpness or piercing enchantments so once Thomas had an image in mind it was rather easy to reproduce it repeatedly.
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By the time the day had come to its conclusion Thomas had produced a total of nineteen enchantments over the course of the day and earned himself a total of 1,414 enchanting experience. That was enough to rank his enchanting to sixteen in a single day. He'd also increased his 'All Seeing Eyes' by one rank up to thirteen. All in all, Thomas felt it had been a rather productive day, and with it coming to an end he approached Emmerick for his days pay.
Emmerick took a little time to examine all of Thomas's work and was rather impressed with the quality of his enchantments. None of them were below excellent quality and the majority of them had reached perfect quality. Once Emmerick examined every weapon that Thomas had spent the day enchanting he made his way over to his lockbox and gathered some gold from it. Emmerick held a small bag of gold out to Thomas, "Nineteen enchantments of acceptable quality comes to a total of 285 gold."
System Notice: Quest Complete x19! Emmerick Lorens has requested that you enchant various weapons, armors, and items for him. Once your enchantment is done, turn the item in to Emmerick. This quest can be repeated until all items have been enchanted.
Rewards: 25 experience and 15 gold per successfully Enchanted item.
Failure: 10 gold plus the cost of the item you failed to enchant.
System Notice: You have gained 475 experience.
After Thomas stashed the gold into his storage ring, Emmerick smiled and gestured to the remaining weapons and armor still waiting to be enchanted, "Be sure to return tomorrow, there's still plenty of items waiting to be enchanted."
Thomas nodded, "Sure thing Emmerick, I need to get Enchanting to rank 25 anyways so I'm glad us otherworlders are giving you plenty of work to do!"
Thomas waved goodbye to Emmerick and on his way out of the store he gave a playful wink to Sara, just to mess with her. After leaving Emmerick's Enchantments, Thomas made his way to The Swans Nest to enjoy a nice dinner before heading to his room. Once he was inside of his room he opened his character sheet and looked at the large amount of experience he had saved up over the last few days. He was sitting on a nice sum of 5,378 experience that could be spent. Thomas contemplated what he should spend the experience on and decided to put a good portion of it into his Agility. Increasing his Agility would also increase his dexterity and give him better control over his hands which would allow him to carve out enchantments a bit better.
After dumping 2,550 experience into Agility he had increased it to 30 to match his Magic attribute. Thomas smiled as he looked at his remaining 2,828 experience. More than enough for him to increase another attribute to 30. The question was, should he increase his Power or his Endurance? Both would be helpful in the long run, but at the moment Thomas was leaning towards increasing his Endurance. The idea of being able to run even farther with his newly increased speed from his Agility just felt like it would be amazing. Without much more thought Thomas dumped another 2,550 experience into his Endurance to bring it up to 30 as well.
Once he confirmed how he wanted to spend his experience a massive wave of warm soothing energy coursed through his body. The sensation was so comfortable that it sent Thomas off to sleep with a smile on his face.
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When Thomas woke up the following morning he stretched and let out a soft groan as his muscles began to wake up. After climbing out of his bed, Thomas examined himself and noticed a change. His body had thinned down a bit more, his muscles had shrunk to become less pronounced though they maintained a decent level of definition. He was still as powerful as before, but now he had what he supposed people would refer to as a 'runners body'.
Thomas enjoyed his breakfast before heading to Emmerick's place to put in another day of work. After arriving at the shop Sara eyed Thomas suspiciously until he'd stepped into the back room and greeted Emmerick. Thomas looked over the items still waiting to be enchanted, this time he selected an iron breastplate to work on. He hadn't enchanted any armor yesterday so he wanted to give it a try today.
Thomas performed his prep with ease and since the requested enchantment for the armor was durability it didn't take much effort for Thomas to pull up the concept of how hard a diamond was once again. With that thought in mind, Thomas activated his 'All Seeing Eyes' and began to carefully carve out the image of a diamond onto the inside of the breastplate. He figured carving it there would protect the enchantment from being damaged by blows the armor received. Thomas's proficiency in enchanting had increased with his rank in it had combined with his increased Agility attribute to allow him to finish his work a few minutes faster than previously. Thomas examined the armor once he was done enchanting it.
System Notice: You have completed an enchantment on a Normal grade item. Quality: Perfect. You have gained 76 Enchanting experience.
Armor Type: Iron Breastplate Rarity: Normal (Enchanted) Quality: Average Description: A basic breastplate made of iron and designed to only protect vital organs and enchanted by an amateur enchanter. Enchantment: Durability - While worn this armor reduces the wearers Magic attribute by 5 and increases the wearers Endurance attribute by 10 in addition to the normal protection provided by the armor.
Thomas arched an eyebrow as he read the description of the enchantment. Despite having used the same mental image and carving the same symbol as before, the enchantment was distinctly different. Thomas turned to Emmerick and asked, "Why is a similar enchantment different between a weapon and armor?"
Emmerick answered nonchalantly, "Since armor has to be worn to be effective it will constantly drain mana from the person wearing it to keep the enchantment functioning at all times. This essentially reduces the Magic attribute of the person wearing the armor by a fixed amount while the enchantment is active. Taking the armor off will restore their attributes to where they should be."
After thinking about it, Thomas decided that it made sense and dismissed it from his mind. The tradeoff would be worthwhile for someone wanting to increase their defense. Though the more he learned about enchanting the more he realized that everyone would need to have at least some experience invested into their Magic attribute. Anyone without it would be unable to use enchanted items. Thomas also figured that more powerful enchantments would require more mana and a higher Magic attribute to even use.
Thomas set the breastplate off to the side and selected a leather breastplate to work on. So far he'd only worked on metal items so he wanted to take the opportunity to work on the 'softer' leather and see what that was like.