Felix walked up to the workbench and examined the longsword.
[E - Common] Longsword
A simple longsword. The chosen weapon of many warriors.
Felix walked up to the pedestal and identified that longsword.
[E - Rare] Enchanted Training Longsword
An enchanted longsword. This longsword was not enchanted through manography.
Huh?
Felix walked over to the wall and picked up a random longsword, which he immediately noticed felt odd.
[E - Uncommon] Enchanted Longsword
An enchanted longsword. This longsword has been enchanted to be 9% lighter.
Felix began identifying longswords on the walls at random.
[E - Uncommon] Enchanted Longsword
An enchanted longsword. This longsword has been enchanted to be 7% more durable.
[E - Uncommon] Enchanted Longsword
An enchanted longsword. This longsword has been enchanted to be 8% heavier.
[E - Uncommon] Enchanted Longsword
An enchanted longsword. This longsword has been enchanted to swing with 5% additional force.
[E - Uncommon] Enchanted Longsword
An enchanted longsword. This longsword has been enchanted to heat the blade as it's swung.
Felix swung the last longsword he had examined to test the blade heating up and mid-swing, noticed something he hadn't ever noticed before. A geometric pattern, not unlike a spell form glowed orange when he swung. Swinging the blade harder and faster made it glow brighter and it disappeared as soon as the blade was still for a moment. Looking closer at the blade, Felix realized the pattern wasn't disappearing, it just wasn't glowing. The pattern was very finely engraved into the blade of the sword.
I think I understand what I am supposed to do. I wonder if I can take all these swords with me though?
Felix tried walking out of the room with one of the longswords but it simply would not leave, as if it had hit an invisible wall. He tried to place it In his inventory but it simply reappeared on the wall from where he had taken it and the one in his inventory vanished, though Felix wasn't sure if those two were one in the same.
Guess not.
Walking over to the table he began drawing out the enchantments from the blades. Felix's drawing ability was mediocre at best. His dexterity made it so that his lines were as straight as he wanted and the drawing was as sharp as he could ever hope for. His perception made it so that he could see every fine detail on the sword. Somewhere between the two, despite his intelligence, there was a disconnect. Lines were simply too long proportionally, angles too sharp and curves too tight. Felix scrapped his first attempts at the first sword many times. Luckily the dungeon supplied seemingly unlimited paper.
Eventually, Felix got sick of screwing up his drawing and decided to try something he wasn't sure would work at all. With enough practice his drawing skills would get better and his perception and what he saw would match his dexterity and what he drew, for now though, Felix needed training wheels.
Felix pulled out a thread of mana as thin as he could and traced the enchantment on the longsword. He scrutinized every detail until he was satisfied, then he lifted it over onto the page. With his high dexterity, he simply traced the feeling of where the mana was, which was a sense Felix was very proficient with.
When it was complete, Felix simply pulled the thread back into himself and examined the page. It was as flawless as he could currently manage.
Felix initially thought about just memorizing the enchantment forms and cataloguing them in his Mind Palace but realized he would eventually have to draw them onto the sword anyways. Getting some practice in now didn't seem like a bad idea to him. Given that he was gifted a quill as an enchanting tool, he assumed drawing of some kind was a necessary skill. Due to the similarities between the spell forms Felix was already seeing, he assumed these needed to be just as precise so, his mediocre drawing capabilities were not going to cut it.
With his new tracing technique, Felix was confident his enchantments would be as precise as he could manage with his current stats. He briefly tried overlaying his memory of the enchantment in his vision then tracing that but found it was much harder to precisely trace than the mana was. For some reason, having the enchantment he was tracing in his vision was much harder than coordinating his two senses. Ultimately though, he could first trace out the enchantment in his Memory Palace, then form that enchantment with mana and finally inscribe that into an object. It was a lot more steps that he'd like, but the time it took him to trace it out with mana was negligible and overall it was great practice so, he wasn't too bothered.
Well, I see almost a hundred different longswords with a hundred different enchantments. Time to memorize and catalogue them all. Then trace them out for practice.
Felix memorized and catalogued every enchantment on every longsword in the room, except the one from the pedestal and the plain one. He made sure to record the enchantment's effects from identify on the same page then sorted them in his Memory Palace library. Finally, Felix began tracing out the enchantments from memory, as that was likely how he would be enchanting in the future.
Felix traced out every enchantment at least a dozen times. There were only a half dozen or so enchantments in total, they simply varied in strength. The 5% increased durability when compared to the 9% increased durability enchantments were almost identical, with some small, specific changes.
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Felix walked over to the pedestal and took the longsword from it. He swung it, weighed it, smelled it and examined it in every way he could fathom. He tried looking for the enchantment script on the blade, but couldn't find any whatsoever, not that he expected there to be any he just figured he should give it a shot. He picked up the unenchanted longsword on the table and examined it in the same fashion.
With a general idea of the enchanted longswords abilities Felix compared the differences he could feel between it and the normal longsword. Lastly, Felix began picking and choosing swords with similar properties to what he had detected on the pedestal sword.
He was fairly confident the blade had increased durability as it exhibited an odd property where it was slightly stiffer than the unenchanted blade. This stiffness gave it the illusion of seeming heavier, something Felix had noticed about the simple durability enchanted blades in the room. The blade also seemed to cool itself down slightly when it was swung. It also felt marginally lighter, and increased the force of it's swings.
Felix sat down at the table and began trying to fit all the enchantments he had picked out together. The enchantments were entirely self contained and individual geometric patterns. For the goal of replicating the blade from the pedestal, Felix had to somehow combine them all into a single enchantment.
He started by figuring out which parts of the enchantments were common amongst all of the ones he had chosen. He figured there had to be some part of them that collected mana from ambient, as he didn't feel it drawing mana from his body. Additionally, he identified some commonalities between the weight lessening enchantment, the stronger swing enchantment and his force bolt spell form. He assumed this meant that both of those enchantments likely converted mana to force in some way before directing it somewhere.
If he wanted to keep the enchantment forms as in tact as possible, he would need a four dimensional surface on the blade. Immediately scrapping that idea, Felix decided which parts to modify and which to leave exactly as they were. He settled on constructing the enchantment by putting all of the common components at the base of the blade in the middle. Then he would have a long channel that ran down the center of the blade and split off into individual effects.
He felt like he was completing a puzzle and building a factory at the same time. He completed his initial design on paper before placing the unenchanted sword into the clamps on the table.
I only have one unenchanted blade, hopefully this works out ok. I'm pretty confident in the enchantment I created, but I also know just about nothing about enchanting so, I wouldn't bet on it. Speaking of which, how do I use an enchanting quill?
Felix toyed with the quill provided on the table trying to figure out how it worked. He didn't want to use the one he was rewarded with in case he managed to break it, or it screwed up the enchantment he was trying to replicate exactly. He eventually figured out, he had to channel mana into the quill as he drew with it. The quill would use the mana to score a line into the surface he drew on.
Felix tested the amount of mana he should be channeling first on the table top before trying anything on the sword. It required more mana than he expected, but not enough to surpass his passive mana regeneration. Engraving the enchantment carefully onto the sword, Felix quickly realized he could push more mana to increase the thickness of his lines. Unfortunately, that also increased their depth so, he had to lighten the pressure his hand applied to compensate.
After almost a half hour of careful tracing, Felix was satisfied with the blade. He picked it up and swung it around, then immediately dropped it. The blade shattered as soon as it hit the ground, luckily his pants protected him from any sharp shards of metal.
When Felix had swung the blade, the force applied, among other problems, was unbalanced and made it feel like the other end was dragging through molasses. The fact that it shattered when he dropped it, likely meant the durability enchantment wasn't working the way he intended. He might have suspected the cooling enchantment being too strong, if he had felt a significant amount of ambient mana being pulled into the blade. As it was, the blade used very little.
Well that was a resounding failure.
The shards of metal along with the remaining handle and cross guard from the attempt vanished and a new blade appeared on the enchanting table already set into the clamps.
[E - Common] Longsword
A simple longsword. The chosen weapon of many warriors.
Oh thank god.
Felix went back to the drawing board and began iterating on his combined enchantment. After many dozens of attempts, only one failed more spectacularly than the first one had. He had managed to make a blade pull mana from his body, which promptly caused the blade to freeze solid and then launch itself off of the handle entirely.
Ironically, he was fairly certain he had the right approach initially with a main mana carrying channel that split off into enchantments that drew mana from that. Unfortunately, his execution was abysmal but, it was slowly improving.
Initially the enchantments were completely unbalanced both compared to each-other and at either ends of the blade. He eventually started to create longswords with individual enchantments to compare them to the example blades. He enchanted blades with his combined enchantment except he removed the extraneous effect. If it felt identical without the extra effects he could work from there to reincorporate the enchantments together.
Once he had perfected the enchantments individually, he started to combine them together. He started by combining the enchantments in pairs. Once he could combine all of the enchantments with each-other, he went back to the drawing board to redesign his overall enchantment with everything he had learned so far.
He practiced combining three enchantments on a single blade before finally attempting his combined enchantment again. Having made swords with each of the individual enchantments along with all possible pairs, he was able to identify issues with his final enchantment that he wouldn't have otherwise seen.
Felix had just enchanted his best attempt yet, but it was still off. Swinging the example sword from the pedestal just felt more natural, cleaner. Swinging his sword felt off. Unfortunately he couldn't seem to identify why. He dropped the sword causing it to disappear and a brand new blank longsword to appear on the workbench. He enchanted three more swords with his fully combined enchantment hoping the difference was just in his application.
Unfortunately his enchantments were still slightly off. It was his best attempt though and he didn't think he could make it much better so he placed it on the pedestal next to the example sword. The sword glowed briefly white, then green and finally blue a few seconds later.
Ding You have gained 3 levels in [E - Special] Arcane Engineer
All free points in Intelligence.
Right in front of the pedestal, a chest appeared and was pushed out of the ground. Felix walked up to and opened the chest. Inside he found a book.
[E - Rare] Eramith & Edelis: Enchanting Basics
A book written by a collection of master enchanters detailing the basics of enchanting intended for their personal apprentices. This version was later edited for general consumption by The Edelis Enchanting Department of The Eramith Academy.
Well, that would have made things a lot easier.
Reluctantly Felix decided to head back to the rest room for now as he didn't want to attempt another enchanting room until he had at least read through some of the book he had just acquired. He quickly made his way back to the rest room and ate all of the food on the table.
This used to be about 5 days worth of food, now I finish it in a single sitting. Hopefully I don't get too fat. . . . . .