Evan stared at the sword in his hands, thinking about how he would go about fixing it. It was best practice to always have a detailed, well thought out plan before starting – going in without one could, and usually did, lead to flaws and mistakes. Similarly, it wasn’t a good idea to change the plan in the middle of imbuing.

So, staring at the sword, Evan mentally prepared the plan for how he was going to fix the sword.

Repairing an imbuement could be more difficult than creating new ones, as a person would need to first add new Substance, taking care not to disrupt the already present imbuement before smoothly adding ones own intent to the new Substance, interfacing with the old intent and taking up the function of the decayed portions.

This interaction between old and new was an instruction of the new intent, taking up some of the already limited bandwidth.

Now knowing all of this, Evan once again studied the decayed portions, this time with purpose. After some time – around half an hour – he had a plan in mind, ready to begin.

Picking up a Substance container in the shape of a small cube, he used another aspect of his talent – the ability to manipulate Substance. Pressing the container to the blade, he once more brought forth his will and forged a connection between himself and the cube. Then, with some difficulty, he formed another connection with the sword, and the final one between the sword and cube.

Maintaining all three connections was a strain on his concentration, so he quickly tried to tug on the Substance in the cube, the correct mixture already present thanks to Master Isaac.

Doing so was intuitive, just as his first time crafting had been with the lantern.

Slowly the Substance meandered its way between the cube and the sword using the connection between them. During this he continued to pull at the Substance inside the cube while guiding it into place inside the sword with the other connection – if he wasn’t careful, he would only damage the intent inside further.

This took several minutes, and once it was finished and he let the connections snap. Already exhaustion had settled over him. Physically, he was fine. His heart wasn’t thundering in his chest, sweat didn’t crease his brow, and he had plenty of energy.

Mentally, he felt exhausted. Juggling so many different tasks wasn’t easy, and the whole time there was the constant threat of failure – he could have fumbled the Substance while it was moving or settling into the sword, either of which would be an expensive mistake.

Spiritually, he felt surprisingly fine. Not completely fresh, but not approaching exhaustion either. Unfortunately, the job was only half done. He would need to get used to this – this was something he would be doing often, and not just while repairing imbuements.

Looking over the sword once more he saw that everything was in place. The Substance had been replenished, now only missing the intent to go with it.

Despite how technical the imbuement was, it wasn’t as harsh on the mind – most of the strain was on the soul, his will. Otherwise, every imbuement would take ages to craft as the human mind was not equipped to deal with the way imbuements were done, such as each instruction being broken into pieces over the whole of the imbuement.

While this was the case, a person’s will was still a part of their soul, and it took practice and active direction in order to lay down a well-crafted imbuement. As such, Even first rested for a few minutes in order to clear his mind and double-check his plan.

After he felt he could continue, he dived right into the imbuement, quickly forging the link between himself and the sword once more. Then, following his plan, he began to write out the instructions and parameters that he noticed were missing in the sword at a slow but steady pace before forging the communication between his intent and the original. Near the end he was juggling things in order to fit everything into his intent, a mistake on his part. By the time this was done, an hour had passed.

It all took a lot longer than he had expected – Master Isaac was far quicker, and while the man had told them this would be the case, it was still strange to experience it. Even though he had spent an hour and a half working on the imbuement from planning to now, it felt like no time at all had passed.

Only the clock on the wall allowed him to see how much time had actually passed – a privilege, as this single-minded focus of crafters was well known to cause disruptions as they forgot themselves in their work.

Inspecting the finished imbuement, he realized that eventually, the sword would need to be scrapped. Considering what Master Isaac had said, the communication between the two different intents would lead to quicker decay than before, and as it was fixed over and over again by different crafters, all of this would become unsustainable – it would take too much intent just to tie together the eclectic mix, and the strain of this would cause very rapid decay.

Only if the same person repaired the weapon, ideally the original creator, would this issue be mitigated. Even then, there was little to be done about the physical damage the inscription suffered, slowly breaking down itself.

Could an imbuement be made without any inscriptions? He didn’t see any logical reason it couldn’t, other than how weak the imbuement would be without inscriptions to take off a portion of the work and freeing up the otherwise needed intent.

Evan looked up, away from the sword he had just fixed, and realized that he had lost track of everything else while he was working, just as he had the time. Thinking back to their bet, he looked at the others, only to find them still working.

“Are you finished, Evan?” There was no surprise in his voice as he trained his eyes on the sword in his hands. He motioned towards it, requesting to hold it.

Evan crossed the brief distance between them and handed him the blade by the hilt, careful to keep the sword facing downwards – now that it was somewhat fixed, it was significantly heavier than before, and the weight no longer fluctuated.

Master Isaac, an experienced and powerful crafter, only needed a minute to analyze the imbuement before speaking again.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“Good work, Evan. There are plenty of mistakes, but I imagine it’s a far sight better than your showing when your talent was tested, no?” His tone, along with his eyes, showed a deep-seated pride in one of his newest students.

“Yes, Master Isaac. I’m certain I’ll do even better next time!” Faced with the praise, Evan felt a rare brand of happiness – receiving genuine praise from someone whom he valued the opinion of was a rare event for him. Despite the somewhat aggravating way he had introduced himself back at Starspire, Master Isaac had shown himself to be a good, caring teacher who took pride in his students.

“I’m surprised you did so well on your first try, but I suppose you would have had more space in your intent than the original crafter. Inspect the sword again,” Master Isaac had him connect to the sword with his will.

“Normally, when multiple crafters are connected to the same object, they can vaguely sense each other. If this ever happens unexpectedly, immediately break the connection – it is possible to harm someone through the shared connection of the object. I’m preventing you from sensing me, as the gap in our strength would be felt and distract you.

“Now, pay attention…” Master Isaac went on to explain several of his mistakes in excruciating detail, until it seemed nothing he had done was done correctly. From small imprecisions in the imbuement, to his methods of communicating with the original, his work was full of holes his master easily picked apart.

Lamely, he tried to make the excuse that he had to make sacrifices in order to fit everything with his intent, only to be reprimanded that his masters advice already took that into account. Then, he began asking questions about his sacrifices, about what he had slimmed down to fit in everything or bulk up other parts.

Master Isaac had plenty to say about that as well.

Half an hour had passed by the time they were finished, and Evan felt embarrassment when he saw Iliana and Arnav staring at them both, listening. They looked more enlightened than anything else, but it was still uncomfortable to have his fellow apprentices watch on as Master Isaac trounced his work.

At least I get to watch the same happen to them.

Sure enough, Master Isaac gave them the same treatment as himself, and he wondered how they would decide the winner of their bet. He had noticed while first inspecting the swords that they were all roughly equal in how decayed they were, but that each had decayed differently regardless.

Additionally, he was surprised to realize that among the three of them, he had the highest talent for crafting.

Iliana was definitely still ahead of them in reading and understanding the material, and while he had closed some of the gap as he got more practiced with reading and taking notes, it was harder and harder to do so. Despite that, she had made more mistakes than Arnav or him, but had more talent than Arnav, just behind Evan.

Arnav was a little more difficult to gauge, but for the most part simply lacked the same drive that himself and Iliana shared. In practice, he did better than either of them, but had the worst talent of the three.

Evan put it all out of his mind as he listened to Master Isaac speak on their mistakes and how they could do better. While he was no longer the one being given advice, he felt it could be helpful regardless and did his best to pay attention to what he said.

It was only an hour and a half later that he finished, and the second set of swords was passed out. They went through the same motions, only this time trying to implement the advice they were given. It took Evan a little a little longer this time, perhaps another half hour all told, to complete his imbuement.

One of the critical pieces of advice he was given was that haste makes waste, and that he needed to spend more time on the actual imbuement – just because he could move that quickly, doesn’t mean he should.

Evan knew better than to rush, but between his excitement and the desire to make sure he didn’t forget anything, he had barreled through before.

After he finished, he inspected his work, happy with the result. He hadn’t needed to do as much juggling this time around, making an effort to plan around how much space he had for everything. The result looked much smoother, though he still had a long way to go – although making the repairs was simple enough that even someone with as little experience as him could do it, the result was far from great, and it took a lot of skill to do the repairs well.

Once they were finished and Master Isaac had given them all another round of advice, they were told the swords were theirs to keep – to sell. It could be thought of as an investment, he had said.

The Substance needed to fix the swords would be paid for by their master as well, though in the future they would be required to foot all of their own expenses.

Evan was incredibly touched by this show of generosity – the swords had to be worth more than he had ever owned at once, even so damaged, and he swore to himself that he would repay his master twice over for such a gift. It hadn’t even occurred to him how he would go about doing this without enough capital to get started, but the problem was already solved.

Master Isaac made sure they knew the worth of the weapons before sending them off, telling them that from now on, instead of them watching him, he would be watching them. Practice made perfect, or so he said.

Evan was surprised at the value of the swords; containing Substance, he had expected them to be near treasures, even in their decayed state. The truth was that while they still held value, many times that of a normal sword, the small amount of Substance and simple imbuement made them affordable to a diligent soldier or successful hunter, as the imbuement made them safer and caused the swords to last longer, helping to mitigate the cost.

Further, the cost was lower as they were rather easily fixed – even he himself could do it after all, and from the blueprints he had read, he knew that such a sword was somewhat mass produced, the inscriptions doing much of the work, able to be completed by even a mortal with mediocre talent and no cultivation to speak of.

These were his thoughts as he made his way down the busy road where he had previously seen the sign giving directions to where imbued objects could be sold. He had come alone, thinking that he could get a better deal by himself at one of the privately owned stores instead of selling directly to the military.

It wouldn’t be possible at every outpost, Fool’s Hope being much larger and having far more traffic than most of them, and it went against the whole point of the civilian division, but coin was coin, and he was still an apprentice – he was sure that so long as he didn’t make a habit of it, the military would never find trouble with him over it.

Along the way he saw several adventurers carrying satchels or bags filled to the brim or with a cart of various designs, a felled beast carried atop.

He was unable to see any magical plants, but not all of the beasts were covered. There was a stench, but he was fascinated by the sight of the creatures, knowing that before their death they had been powerful foes, beyond him in every way.

None of them were monsters, all matching descriptions of typical wildlife found in the forests, although their size varied significantly from creature to creature. He saw several boars, deer, elk, and even a bear, just to name a few. The hunters all looked worn but in good spirits for the most part and were rarely alone. Teams of up to four were common, and most of them wore damaged equipment, some still painted by the evidence of their foes.

One such team of three was made up by two women and a man, all around his age. Their cart was filled with a multitude of smaller wildlife – squirrels, hares, and foxes. Even a raccoon. Evan found this particularly clever – hunting such smaller animals would have taken a lot longer, and been an act full of frustration, but it had clearly worked – none of them seemed severely injured, unlike many of the others around them with bigger beasts.

He gave them a thumbs up as he passed them, though they were too tired to notice. As he made his way down the road he kept an eye out for any stores that looked like they might buy his swords, and soon found one.

The sign out front was titled Steel Arms, and it looked reputable, and from the windows he could see that weapons on display were a nice middle ground – not too high class, but not barrel bin either. He made his way inside, his two swords bundled together in his arms.