CHAPTER 21: TIME TO PRACTICE ENCHANTING AGAIN
The goblin seemed surprised at how much force Jenna’s next swing carried. Rather than simply deflecting its attack, she almost tore the club out of its hands.
Moving faster than she thought was possible, she swung again. This blow made glancing contact with the boss, opening a line down the center of its chest.
After that blow, though, the goblin started moving faster as well. “You must have done something to make the Training Grounds angry,” it said, “I’m not normally allowed to move with so little restriction for a solo delver, let alone one on the Fourth Floor of their first rift.”
The idea that the goblin was aware of its previous lives hadn’t quite sunk in when it talked about killing her teammate, but its calm declaration that it kept being resurrected just to be killed certainly did. Jenna wondered what kind of a toll it would take on a being’s mind to know that it was being reanimated time and time again just to be killed.
That moment of distraction proved costly. The goblin boss managed to dodge out of the way of her strike and deliver one of its own. It wasn’t as strong as the blow that had knocked her to the ground, but it still spun Jenna as it clipped her in the side.
She leaned into the spin, trying to use the extra force to land a more decisive blow on the monster. To her disappointment, the boss was able to predict her blow and redirected it.
What followed was a more vicious mirror of the first minutes of the fight. Instead of both fighting defensively, avoiding any damage, both seemed more concerned with dealing more damage than they received. When Jenna felt her first bone break under a blow, bile rose in her throat.
She forced it back down, watching everything fade away except for the mace in her hand and the goblin she was fighting. The world had never felt so sharp. As the fight progressed, Jenna found that the broken bones she had even stopped hurting.
That couldn’t be safe or healthy, but she was glad for it. Any new distractions as she fought the boss could prove lethal.
When she had finally killed the boss, she nearly collapsed from the pain. “What level of Healing Product do I need for these injuries.”
Information forbidden.
Well, it wasn’t like Jenna had a paucity of Healing Products. She mentally summoned a Standard Healing Product. A small vial appeared, and she drank it.
Jenna felt her bones resetting and the bruises on her organs beginning to mend. She regretted waiting for the battle sharpness to fade, because her body burned with pain as it healed. Each popping joint brought a fresh wave as her body started to heal itself. The internal bleeding that she’d apparently had started flowing out of the pores of her body.
Bleeding from every pore in her skin was not an experience Jenna had ever dealt with before, and it certainly wasn’t one she was anxious to try again. When the pain faded, she realized that she had been curled up in a ball on the ground from the pain. She picked up her mace, noted how much more dented it was, and moved to the safe area.
Congratulations! You have completed the third floor of the rift! Rewards: Available if you would like to leave now. Would you like to leave?
Once inside the safe room, Jenna made a beeline for the cleaning room. She scrubbed again, and once more watched the water run red for far longer than was comfortable. The knowledge that more of this blood was from her than last time only added to the discomforting feeling.
When she was fully clean, Jenna had two burning questions, which she asked to the Pyramid. “If all of my injuries were healable from a Standard Healing Product, what would I ever need a Greater Healing Product for?”
Query imprecise: Best guess query: Are all of my injuries healed? If so, what is the damage ceiling that Standard Healing Products can heal? Accept guess?
“Guess accepted.”
All physical injuries have been mended. Standard Healing Products are unable to regrow missing body parts. A Greater Healing Product is needed if anything needs to be replaced.
Jenna hadn’t even considered the fact that she could have a part of her body cut off. “Why am I so much more physically durable than Rita was?” She assumed that the goblin boss wasn’t lying to her, though as she asked the question, she realized that it could have been.
Shattering Core disperses Magic Density throughout body. While your body is filled to peak of its Magic Density, it becomes more resistant to damage.
“I didn’t think that my Magic Density had increased that much since entering the Pyramid?” It wasn’t technically a question, but Jenna hoped that the Pyramid would be able to understand what she was asking.
While Magic levels remain undepleted in a rift, Magic Density levels grow much more rapidly than outside of rifts.
“Is that benefit also true in the safe room?”
Yes. This is one reason why extraneous delays in the safe room are forbidden. Would you like to leave the rift?
“No.” Jenna didn’t really want to keep delving at that exact moment, though. She tried to think of an excuse that would let her stay in the safe room for longer. “Is there a way that I can learn to identify Enchantments on items?”
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Yes.
“I have these two rings,” she said, “and I think that there’s an Enchantment on each of them.” She waited for the Pyramid to respond.
When there was no table for a minute, Jenna realized that she hadn’t inflected her voice as a question or directly signaled that she had one. “How do I identify the Enchantments on the rings?”
Query imprecise: Best guess: Practical methods for identifying Enchantments on rings given current constraints. Accept guess?
“Guess accepted.”
Guess accepted. In descending order of effectiveness, the following methods would be able to identify the Enchantment on the rings. Selling the rings Paying for the rings to be identified Learning to identify Enchantments on your own.
“How much would it cost me to identify the rings?” While Jenna wanted to learn the skill, it seemed like it was a fairly niche one. Being able to pay to have them identified instead could be more useful.
Identification Costs 1 Gold Coin: Presence of Enchantment 5 Gold Coins: Tier of Enchantment 10 Gold Coins: Beneficial or Detrimental? 30 Gold Coins: Specific Enchantment Description 50 Gold Coins: Enchantment is Added to Grimoire. Would you like to have your rings Identified?
That was almost certainly not worth it. Twenty coins just to find out if the rings would be helpful or not was more than Jenna felt like she should spend. The fact that it would be sixty to find out what the Enchantment did was completely unacceptable. She didn’t even have sixty coins.
“How much are the rings worth?”
Ring value is based on value of Enchantment. To prevent meta-knowledge hindering growth of skill development, prices will be hidden until the rings have been sold or the Enchantment is fully known. Would you like to sell your rings?
“No.” Jenna considered her options. “How would I learn to identify Enchantments myself?”
Practice.
Jenna waited, knowing that the Pyramid would expand on what it had said. To her relief, it did.
New information has been added at the back of your Grimoire.
She pulled out her Grimoire for the first time since beginning the rift. Inside were directions on how to identify an Enchantment. The book divided identification into the same levels as the Pyramid had when charging her.
The first level was what she had already learned to do on her own. By pushing a small strand of Magic into an item, it would resonate with any existing Enchantment. Her Grimoire informed her that the first step was more difficult if a Mage’s Magic was Attuned to something other than Enchanting. Since that wasn’t an issue for her, she kept reading.
Technically she was unable to do the second level, at least to an extent. By learning to feel the way that an Enchantment resonated, a Mage could learn to identify what Tier an Enchantment was at, so long as it was below the highest level that they had Enchanted themselves. In practice, that meant that she would be unable to identify the level of anything, since she had only ever Enchanted First Tier Hardened Glass, and she didn’t have a piece of it with her to practice with.
Interestingly, the third level of identification worked completely differently. Instead of pushing her Magic into the rings, she would need to encase them in a bubble of Magic. If her Magic was reinforced, it would mean that the ring had a beneficial Enchantment, while the Magic being consumed would tell her that it was a detrimental Enchantment.
Of course, the Grimoire was quick to point out that beneficial and detrimental Enchantments didn’t map well onto specific Enchantments, especially since the same Enchantment on different materials might have more or less desirable effects. An Enchantment to make a necklace sharper would read as beneficial, despite the fact that it would be more or less useless. Similarly, an Enchantment which would make a mace heavier would always read as detrimental, despite the fact that being able to change the weight of a blunt weapon had uses.
That was where the fourth level of identifying Enchantments came in. Her Grimoire warned her not to attempt to identify the specific Enchantment before she was able to quickly and accurately identify whether the Enchantment was beneficial or detrimental, though. Jenna deliberated, before realizing that even if it was not directly useful, more time to recover before delving deeper would be nice.
She carefully pushed a small strand of Magic into the first ring she had found and noticed that it did, in fact, resonate with the Magic she had given it. It was good to know that her instincts still worked. Jenna couldn’t tell anything for certain about the Tier of the Enchantment, but she had a strong hunch that it was a First Tier Enchantment.
After all, it seemed like it would be incredibly out of character for the Pyramid to give her a ring Enchanted a Tier higher than the rift was on the first floor. When she repeated the process with the second ring, she had similar feelings. It felt like it might have a deeper resonance, but Jenna didn’t know if that meant anything. It certainly reverberated more strongly in her senses than the first one had, though.
Jenna released her hold on her Magic and took a moment to focus. A simple push was much easier than holding a ball of Magic.
Jenna’s Status:
Jenna Fredrickson First Year Spells Known: First Tier: Hardened Glass Expected Years Completed: 7 Prediction Confidence: 47% Points: 5 Qualified to Ascend to Next Year? Yes