Chapter 4.2: Thief, Part 2
Fourth period was relatively tame compared to the day prior. It was fairly similar, and mainly consisted of Professor Kendra pulling out a relic of some sort, placing it on her desk, sometimes interacting with it, and explaining its use to the class. When class ended, Julian asked if I wanted to hang out, but I denied. I needed to do some preparation, and I needed to upgrade the doohickey. But more important than that, I needed some form of security.
I made my way to Professor Andsware’s classroom, lucky to find him still there, grading papers. “Hello, Professor Andsware.”
“Ah, Balmung! Welcome. Congratulations, by the way – you got dangerously close to the record for ‘fastest crystal shatterer’, just a few minutes off. I’ll be sure to relay the news to Irwyn,” he jubilantly replied. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Well, recently, I’ve had this odd feeling, like I’m being watched,” I said, careful with my wording so I was sure to just sound paranoid and not certain. “I’m sure I’m just being paranoid, but I was wondering if you had access to any security enchantments?”
“That depends. How much Knowledge mana crystal do you have?”
“I have enough. Admittedly, I was never certain why they were necessary, but my parents instructed me to always have a stash of Knowledge mana crystals.”
The professor lit up with excitement. “Well, my student, allow me to educate you,” he exclaimed with a wide grin plastered across his face. “Knowledge mana is said to magically ‘know’ things. In reality, that couldn’t be farther from the truth – it’s just incredibly reactive to external stimuli. For a mage, this just means heightened manasense, and, well, that’s it. There admittedly aren’t many useful Knowledge spells. But for an enchanter – for an enchanter, Knowledge mana is a vital tool. I’m sure by now you know of connection lines and intermediaries?” I nodded – I’d hardly be the son of a prestigious enchanter if I didn’t know of them. A connection line was sort of like a funnel between two enchantments, that transferred the Change from one enchantment to another. An intermediary was sort of like a conditional connection line – the Change would only pass through if certain conditions were met. There were lots of ways to set intermediaries up – for example, one could make the middle of a connection line sturdier than the rest, so that a minimum amount of Change is needed in order to pass through the connection line. “Great. Well, many intermediaries are made based on the principles of Knowledge mana – for example, a filter that will only let Knowledge mana through once it’s reacted to something in a certain way. That’s why it’s called Knowledge mana – because it lets enchantments ‘know’ when certain things are nearby. This is getting a little off-track from your needs, though. For what you ask, all we need is a simple mana crystal dissipation enchantment – something that will let loose a steam of mana into the air. Most forms of mana can pass right through solid objects, but Knowledge mana can’t due to its excessive reactivity. Fill a room with Knowledge mana, and your manasense will tell you the exact shape of everything in the room – assuming you have tactile or empathetic manasense.” He went into his desk, pulled a paper out, and handed it to me. “This is a design for a simple mana crystal dissipation enchantment. It’ll convert a mana crystal from a solid state to a gaseous state, but it’ll cost you the mana crystal.”
“I have empathetic manasense. This works perfectly – thank you so much!” I exclaimed, bowing. I raced out of the classroom and started copying the design the moment I made it to my room. It was finished within an hour and I activated the enchantment.
Knowledge mana flooded into the room, and the crystal began to shrink slightly until it was completely gone, and the room was filled with Knowledge mana. I silently mourned the loss of my Knowledge mana crystal, but I had others. But I definitely needed a way to do this without consuming an entire Knowledge mana crystal every time I wanted to make sure I was alone. Using my manasense, I could see that Professor Andsware was right – the mana filled the room like a gas, and I could tell where every nook and cranny was with surprising detail. I tried using my soul to manipulate the mana – I knew that mages didn’t need to pull mana from their cores, and could freely manipulate any gaseous mana – mana not in a solid or liquid state – but I had never tried before. The Knowledge mana in the air twitched with every motion of my soul. I slid some under the door, and used it to scan the hall. There was definitely no one in the room, nor the hall. I opened the window, and the Knowledge mana flooded out, not touching anything human-shaped.
I sighed in relief. I was alone – there was no one watching me… for now. I pulled the grimoire out of my dresser, muttering a small “Sorry, Grandpa,” before defiling it. I pried each of the prongs out, and did my best to smooth out the marks left behind on the cover with my thumb. Now, it looked like just a normal book. I took books out of my bag – the three I had gotten from Professor Andsware, as well as some that I had brought with me from home – and placed them all on the shelf. Then, I put the grimoire right in the middle of one of the piles.
“Perfect,” I murmured. The best hiding place was plain sight. Now, I could read it whenever I wanted, and as long as there wasn’t someone reading over my shoulder, they’d be none the wiser of the book’s content. I pulled it back out of the pile, and flipped to the last page – the one that detailed how my grandfather created the thin strings. Apparently, the process was easy – it was coming up with the process that was the hard part. I was lucky he had already done the hard work for me. I took out one of the Crystal mana crystals from the doohickey, chipped off a small piece, and placed the crystal back in. That shard was all I’d be able to use. The grimoire detailed three sets of runes, one for each of the first three Circles, that could be used to turn a mana crystal of a particular size into a thread. Apparently, he’d had to brute force the process – most rune sets were made like that – and it’d taken him years before he created a set long enough to where it was usable. The First Circle spell could only turn a tiny shard into a string, but it was still a fair amount of string. I began casting the spell, and over time, the tiny shard elongated and thinned out, until it was just the right amount of thick to still be usable for enchanting, but thin enough that it would be extremely difficult to notice with manasense. I picked the doohickey up, used Force mana to take a small chunk of wood out from under it, and placed the prongs in a circle on the bottom of the doohickey. I placed it back down to test that the hole was the right size, and it fit above the hole while making room for the prongs under it. The hole stuck out a bit in the behind, but after some finagling with the position and angling of the doohickey the hole was fully concealed. I picked it back up, flipped to the Crystal chapter of the grimoire, and copied one of the patterns onto the prongs. I placed it back down, spent a few minutes finagling with it so that the hole was concealed again, and took out four Crystal mana crystals from my pouches. While the doohickey was useful, it didn’t have enough slots for all my mana crystals. “Goodbye, my sweets,” I said, dreading that I was already using the mana crystals I had spent so much money on. I began reshaping them into a circular pattern, and after a couple of hours of reshaping and testing, the resulting shape was a flat, hollow circle with roots extending outward. I was more comfortable with Grindstone enchantments than Flowform, but a Flowform enchantment would work better, as it’d need less maintenance, and I wanted this to be as discreet as possible. If this worked out, it’d be the most blatant use of my grandfather’s secrets anyone had ever done, other than my grandfather himself, of course. I worried that people might notice the Flowform, but hopefully they wouldn’t think it was odd – they’d likely recognize it as some method to assist the overall design – but whenever I picked up the doohickey, the pricks and string would be visible for anyone to see, so I had to make sure I had to do that as little as possible.
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I again picked up the doohickey, placed the Flowform enchantment into the hole, and set the doohickey down so that the prongs fit neatly into the middle of the Flowform. I sent a small prayer to the Eldest, and then another, and then I sent a rather large prayer to the Eldest, before funneling unattuned mana into the Flowform enchantment. The string began to slide against itself, emitting a lovely sound, almost like a violin, but deeper. It was getting to be pretty loud at this point – I’d definitely have to turn it off overnight or else Julian and I wouldn’t be able to sleep. But overall, it’d be much more efficient. Much more efficient. I cackled. “Thanks, Grandpa.”
[break]
I did some more work on it, mainly just connecting the Flowform to a mana battery (I had to say goodbye to yet another couple of my mana crystals, this time unattuned) so it would work on its own, without me needing to funnel unattuned mana into it myself. When I was finally done, I was panting, sweating, and my soul was exhausted. I’d never put it through so much work at once before.
“Oh hey, books!” Julian bellowed, startling me. I screamed, and he laughed. “You give that thing an upgrade?”
“Yeah,” I replied. “Sounds nice, right? Like a violin, but deeper.”
“Like a viola,” he said.
“What?”
“A viola. Y’know, a violin but deeper.”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. The only instruments I care about are these babies,” I said, pointing a thumb at my mana crystals. “Are Othili and Garberend not coming?”
“No,” Julian replied. “Othili is doing some combat training with Professor Kendra, apparently our history professor’s a real badass. Gary went with her, he seemed pretty fired up. He said he wanted to be partnered with someone other than you for combat class because fighting you is depressing.”
My mouth stood agape. “I’m kidding!” Julian said, laughing heartily. “But he really does want to improve. I think he has some sort of servant complex with House Whisper. He wants to serve them however he can. I suppose it makes sense – before being adopted, he apparently wasn’t very well off. But since being adopted, he’s been sending money to his family, and they haven’t been living paycheck to paycheck. It’s sweet, I think.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is. Do you have any plans for the night? If it isn’t too late for dinner, I’m starving.”
Julian chuckled. “Yeah, I could go for some food. I feel like something sweet tonight. You’re paying, though.”
“Fat chance.” I pointed at the mana crystals. “I already spent all my money. If I’m paying, we’re going to the Dining Hall.”
“Damn.”
[break]
“Julian, you’re a culinary genius,” I said, still savoring the memory of the meal we just had. As it turned out, he was a cook. Instead of spending money on a meal, we went shopping for food and cooked in our kitchen. “I’m so glad we have a kitchen.”
“You’re welcome,” he chuckled. “I asked to have the school install a kitchen for our room. I like to cook.”
“I like you cooking too,” I sighed. “That was the most amazing meal I’ve ever had in my life. And I’m a Noble. Why even bother going to the Dining Hall? We should just eat here all the time.”
Julian laughed. “The Dining Hall’s free.”
“You’re a Royal, I’m sure you could afford it.”
“Oh, make no mistake, I will probably be eating here all the time. But for you – well, the Dining Hall’s free.”
“Ugh, I shouldn’t have gotten all those mana crystals,” I groaned. In truth, I knew I still needed them. But after this meal… I was heavily convinced to sell just a few so I could buy groceries and have Julian cook. Funny, considering I was so uneasy to part with them only a couple hours prior when I used them for my enchantments. “If this whole mage thing doesn’t work out, you should be a cook. Actually scratch that, forget being a mage. You should be a cook.”
“No can do. The Royals would be enraged if I decided to just up and quit being a mage. I’d basically just be spitting in their face.”
“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind once they tasted your cooking.”
Julian shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll see how this whole mage thing works out first, though.”
I laughed. “Well, no hope for you being a cook then.”
“Guess not. You gonna head to sleep any time soon?”
I shrugged. “Probably not for a bit. I want to spend some time working on some enchantments for a couple hours. I’ll let you get some shut-eye, though. I can do some work in the Workshop.”
[break]
The Workshop was an area for students to do work that would be, well, loud, without disturbing other students. It was a massive hall filled with cubicles, each of which had a Sound enchantment that muffled outgoing sounds.
“Hi, I’d like to check in, please,” I said as I walked up to the front desk.
“Are you a freshman?” the attendant asked. I nodded my head. “You’ll need to fill out this form,” he said, tapping a pile of papers sitting atop the desk. “Freshmen need to turn it in before being allowed to use the Workshop, but it shouldn’t take long.” I took one of the papers and began filling it out. Once I was done, I gave it back. The attendant looked it over for a moment before saying, “Perfect. If you’ll follow me.”
He guided me to a door not far from the desk. It seemed the Workshop wasn’t very busy. “We don’t get a lot of business at the start of the year, you’re lucky you came so early. It’ll start picking up pretty soon though, so make sure you get here earlier than now next time – spots fill up quickly as the year progresses,” he explained. He handed me a key, and I opened the door and entered the room.
It was time to make myself some weapons.