I woke up to the sound of metal clanking once again, and it was rather disturbing, because it somehow brought up memories of my neighbours back from Earth who were renovation maniacs and they always seemed to find something new to install inside of their apartment, which usually resulted in a lot of hammering and drilling. I had hated all of that racket back then, but now it just seemed nostalgic.
*Cough*
Right...I was the one at fault for my current situation, so I shouldn't complain. I had moved my entire sick-bed away from the inn and into Carmine's Forge two days ago, because I thought it would be easier for me to talk to her about any potential gear upgrades, as I lay inside of the Smithy building and watched her work.
By monitoring her while she was making many assorted gear pieces over and over again, I had been getting quite a few ideas about what could be improved when it came to the entire forging process. She wasn't anywhere near using her entire potential, nor that of the Forge itself, yet she was still getting quite some wonderful results. Most of the items that she was churning-out nowadays were either [Blue] or [Rare] quality-wise, and I had become completely fascinated by her capability to inscribe those weird dwarven magic runes of hers onto just about anything that got crafted.
When it came to the runes, she had been kind enough to take the time and explain to me the underlying principles behind them, plus the reason why she always had a minimum of three runes carved onto any item that she made. She said that the first two runes were always the “power” runes of the item, with only the third being the “effect” rune, and they were all mandatory for even the most basic enchantment.
The first one would always act as the “collector” rune, which would gather the specific type of Qi that it had been attuned to, for example a Fire-Qi collecting-rune for a Fire-damage kind of enchantment, one that would get the Fire-Qi by either draining it directly from the wielder, by sucking it out of an affixed spirit stone, or even right out of the environment like some sort of a Qi-antenna depending on how complex it had been initially created.
The second rune was the “Qi-storage” battery-rune, in which the first collector rune kept depositing the Qi that it had gathered and was acting like a magic-buffer between the “real” power source, be it a person, spirit stone or something else, and the actual spell-circuit that was in the third slot, guaranteeing an uniform and constant output.
The third rune was the REAL spell-circuit rune, the ACTUAL thing which imbued the item with its magical properties, no matter if that magic was extra sharpness, durability, self repair, elemental damage, defense, or a plethora of other possible magics, with the fourth and the fifth runes or even more becoming carved into the item ONLY if the intended user wanted some more properties, and the power runes held together strongly enough to fuel so many subsequent spells in a row.
Basically, the whole thing reminded me of a solar-panel circuit that you could have encountered anywhere back on Earth, which was also composed out of an irregular power source, aka the solar-panel itself, which would either output too little or too much power based on how many sun-rays were hitting it, and would require some sort of a buffer or regulator between its own output and the actual items that used its “juice”, like for example a mobile phone. The buffer always came in the form of a battery of some sorts, which was also always attached to an overload-protection circuit that could disconnect the power source, aka the solar-panel, in case it started pouring-in too much juice than even the battery could swallow.
The same logic seemed to apply to the power runes Carmine was describing for me, and it didn't take too much time for me to understand their basic purposes.
Rune real-estate on the item was also a problem, as most runes required flat surfaces to function properly, and you needed to think where the runes would go onto the item before you even started crafting it in the first place, so it wasn't that easy of a task to create a magical item. Carmine made it look sooo easy when she was making everything, but it was quite a daunting task in actuality.
Of course, this led to a delicate balancing-act, and the Smith needed to be aware of the following inputs and outputs:
-First, the Smith needed to know how much power the “collector” rune was able/or was allowed to pull from the environment, as you most certainly did not want to wield a weapon that instantly sucked away all of your Qi the moment you placed your hands upon it, just so it could power itself;
-Second, the Smith needed to know how large of a Qi-storage capacity the “battery-rune” possessed, which was largely dependent on the material that the item had been crafted from, including factors like magic-conductibility and metal purity;
-Thirdly, the Smith needed to know how quickly the “battery-rune” drained out or was capable of “holding a charge” during constant usage, which was generally dependent on how well the the containment-section of the battery-rune had been carved into the material, and how well the spell-circuit at the end utilised the Qi available inside of the battery to perform its task.
You could basically wind up having two excellent power runes, but a very crappy spell-circuit at the end of them which would not utilise the entire potential of the “juice” available; or quite the opposite, you could have an excellent spell-circuit, but one that was fuelled by some absolutely crappy power-runes instead, and would never be able to display its full potential because of the missing “juice”.
Therefore, having both the power-runes and the spell-circuit runes being carved as close to perfection onto their designated surfaces was absolutely mandatory for any high-level, high quality item.
She told me that steel was probably the worst material when it came to holding a magic-circuit, and that if I ever wanted to create a true magical item, then the silvery-lightweight mithril metal was the to-go material for such an object, since it was known as the best spellcaster-friendly ore out there. Of course, that diminished the overall physical properties of the item, since mithril was a lot softer compared to even well-forged steel, closer in line to aluminium, which personally I assumed was the “base” true material for the “magical” metal before being alloyed with a pinch of other metals, as far as real-life chemistry went.
Adamantite Carmine had described to me as being the toughest material available out there, one that was ideal for the creation of armor pieces, and I suspected it was some sort of a titanium-alloy, but it was considered a poor conductor of magical properties and it was infernally hard to work with, because you could not process it in plain-exposed air and required a specialised vacuum-forge to manipulate and mold, as it would instantly oxidize into blue scrap once overheated otherwise, which detracted from its overall value.
Then there was orichalcum, which seemed to be somewhere inbetween mithril and adamantite when it came to both toughness and magical conductivity, and I had no actual idea what the base metal could have been for that one, but it most certainly contained some traces of copper, because the damn thing rusted over with a green patina, which was obviously derived from the copper content. And no, it wasn't any sort of bronze-like alloy that I could think of, it was something different because the material was a whole lot tougher than any bronze I knew of.
And then there was Ebony, and no, I am not talking about the WOOD, but rather about the magical ORE, which was overall the best material that you could have found on any item, as it was both more magically conductive than mithril or even tougher than adamantite, but it was a material nigh-impossible to work with and the people that knew how to craft stuff with the weird substance on the entire surface of the world you could have counted on your fingers.
Of course, it was obvious to me why it was considered such a “complex” material to handle, because it was probably just an “excuse-material” that the Mother System had cooked up to explain the creation of the many Legendary items which were supposedly made out of it.
Those items had probably been made in reality through the System's molecular-assembly printing process, and were most likely a combination of carbon nanotubes and other wisely-arranged carbon allotropes plus metallic alloys, which gave the Legendary items in question their incredible physical and conductive properties along with their obsidian-black coloration, since they had been made through the power of Science instead of some silly anvil-hammering.
When I asked Carmine back why she couldn't simply make an item that had the power runes inscribed onto a section that was made purely out of mithril for best magical retainment and conductivity, like for example the handle of a weapon, and then have the rest of the item's body being forged out of adamantite instead, to exploit the material's toughness, she explained to me that those supposedly-magical metals did not go very well together, and they were almost impossible to weld, alloy or forge together properly, because their melting points differed too much from eachother, and it was a daunting task to try and work on one of the metals, when the other one was either turning into a liquid from the overheating, or was becoming too stiff because it had cooled down too much.
I most certainly understood her point of view, but that did not mean that she was actually right. I knew for a fact that aluminum could indeed be mixed together with titanium, as most hip-replacements and even airplane blades were made out of that stuff back on Earth.
Of course, this line of inquiry had forced me to bring up the subject of real-life Chemistry into the discussion, and I then spent the next couple of hours detailing to Carmine how the periodic table of elements actually worked, and what the “true” base metals in nature were instead of her primitive and twisted notions.
When I had told her that making a metal “purer” does not necessarily increase its strength, and that Orichalcum, Mithrill, Adamantium or Ebony weren’t actually REAL metals from a chemical point of view, but rather some specific mish-mash metal-alloys created by the Mother System, she had almost fainted from the mental trauma, as her whole world had suddenly become turned upside-down by my revelations.
Timmy: Trina used [Science] to attack Carmine. It was super effective. 9001 mental damage done!
I continued my lecture as I explained to her how mithril (aluminum) couldn’t have been found in nature as a REAL ore, since its true-state in a real planet’s crust was that of bauxite, which needed some significant processing before being turned into actual aluminum. The same went for Adamantium (Titanium) with its rutile and ilmenite deposits, and complicated extraction processes.
The fact that the already-mixed alloys of aluminum, titanium and other metals were readily-available at certain mining locations on Pangerra was obviously the doing of the Mother System, which was intentionally over-simplifying the crafting procedures by getting rid of a lot of the precursor work needed for certain materials to exist, processes which would have required a lot higher levels of knowledge and Science on the overall to create those materials, which was a No-No as far as the Momma System allowed.
At least Iron was still Iron, even though trying to convince Carmine that CARBON was the thing making any steel pieces stronger if it was administered in correct doses, as opposed to being the “enemy of all smiths”, had also been a daunting task, as she kept giving me continuous gazes of incredulity and her beard looked almost like it was on fire, as it began to glow around the edges while I kept talking. Of course, after experimenting and being proven that I was indeed right, she had simply gone to the inn, had bought a whole barrel of ale, and had tanked herself into a stupor by consuming the whole keg.
This had led to another strange discovery, which was the fact that getting smashed simply opened the creative mind for the Dwarven-kind, as it did not seem to impede her in any way when it came to the actual act of item-crafting. Rather, it was the opposite, as she began forging a new weapon that looked totally different from her previous ones, with a much sleeker design, a more ergonomic handle, a better weight distribution, and more dangerous-looking damage-dealing endings. It was still a “mace”, but it was incomparable to her previous works by any measurable standards.
After she finally completed the whole item, the System seemed to agree about the Quality of the item, as it assigned it as a [Purple] with 4 properties, something that she had been unable to create before this point in time because of her “rusty” skills, and most certainly not out of the “crappy” materials that we had melted-down from the Dungeon's leftovers. Of course, the item itself BARELY qualified as a [Purple], since those usually had 5 properties or more if they were “proper” [Purple] items, but it had still been a huge jump in quality as far as she was concerned.
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She had simply been left speechless while she kept holding her new creation in her hands, and was giving me looks of both incredulity, admiration, and a little bit of anger too, since I had upset her entire world with my otherworldly “heresies”.
Of course, I wasn’t even halfway done, so I began to interrogate her about her current cultivation state, and whether she had built any of those branch-tentacles similar to my own after following my whacky cultivation method.
She did admit to having 3 tentacles available, two of which had been modified to become multi-tools like my own, albeit slightly different in their design, so I immediately persuaded her to try and manipulate the “thermal Qi” inside of the item that she was currently making with her branch-tentacles, to either even-out or prolong the heat within the metal.
I also told her to check if she could get rid of the “impurities” found within the metal by dragging them OUT of the “composition” by sheer brute force with her ghostly appendages, which seemed to be able to go right through the metal itself but were still capable of interacting with “reality” without any problem. I blamed the 4-th dimension shenanigans for that, but she did not need to know about such complex things as of yet.
Intrigued by my proposition, she then immediately began forging her next piece of gear, but now she kept trying to “feel” the metal with her branch-tentacles as well, and I could see her in my Qi-vision as she kept “plucking” away certain undesirable debris from the glowing metal chunk in front of her while pounding and heating the iron piece over and over again.
She was currently forging something never-before-seen in this world, as there was nobody else upon the entire surface of the planet that could have done what she was doing right at the moment, which was TRUE spiritual-root-assisted metal-purification.
By being able to remove all of the impurities by using her branch-tentacles, the entire forging process had now sped up by an incredible amount, because usually the most painstaking and time-consuming thing that needed to be done to a metal while moulding it into a usable item was to get rid of the impurities contained within the lattice, which weakened the overall molecular and crystalline structure of the material if they remained within. On my advice, she had left only about 2%-ish carbon traces within the material, and had evened out its distribution across the entire metal piece.
As a result, she had crafted a simple steel dagger as an experimental item, but the blade had come out incomparably more sharp and more durable than any of her previous attempts, almost beating the legendary Damascus Steel from Earth, as it glistened in the rays of the sun that were coming through the open window like a marvel of Dwarven creation even before becoming enchanted.
Therefore, to place the cherry on top of the cake, I asked her what would happen if she were to “inscribe” the runes that she usually carved onto the surface of the metal by using her branch-tentacles to move the thermal-Qi and materials INSIDE of the item instead, and create the runic-circuit WITHIN the confines of the metal that made up the blade itself instead of carving it onto the outside surface where it could get damaged or polished-off.
She told me with wide eyes that she had “no bloodeh idea”, but she tried it anyway. After re-heating the metal, and fiddling around with its insides by using only her branch-tentacles, she had suddenly burst into a flurry, and had immediately dunked the metal blade inside the nearby tempering vat while concentrating on the whole item like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
With a stunned expression on her face, she then told me that she had unlocked an “Ancient Secret Forging Technique” that had been lost to the world aeons ago, which was a [Skill] right out of Smithing Legends: [Spiritual Metal-Forging], and that her Class had suddenly changed from plain [Blacksmith] to [Spiritual Blacksmith].
The old stories that she had always heard during her childhood usually portrayed a mystical way through which the old Dwemm smiths used to infuse magic directly into a metal’s structure, instead of just layering it on top of the surface like the current normal enchants, and it had been one of the techniques at the base of their very advanced civilisation, because it had allowed for incredible items to be created that defied common sense, like the Automatons and their Flying Fortresses.
And now, Carmine had unlocked that exact same ancient [Skill], and was absolutely flabbergasted by the discovery.
"Well then, if you can place an enchantment INSIDE of the material from now on, then that should increase the real estate available for enchantments by an incredibly large amount, no? I mean, why would you ever need to constrain yourself to just using a flat surface anymore? You could try for example, layering the enchantments inside of the metal shaft that makes up the handle of a mace by sticking them horizontally on top of each other like a deck of cards." I began to add fuel to her creative flames.
"I'm...not sure dat what yeh say would work in the way yeh imagine it... A lot of dese runes need some significant space around demselves, otherwise dey start resonatin’ with eachother in a weird way and mess up th’ entire magic-circuit. Just think ’bout it, yeh can't simply expect to put a Fire rune near a Frost rune, even if yeh somehow managed to embed them roight into th’ material, at least not without attractin’ sum dire consequensiz t’ th’ overall durabiliteh of th’ item. Th’ whole damn thing would basicalleh become a steam-generater and th’ base material would become brittle as hell ‘cause of all dat constant thermal shock, even if th’ power circuit was able t’ somehow survive dat ordeal!"
"Sure, I get what you are saying, but there must be some runes out there which basically function within the same “frequency range”, as you call it, and do not interfere with each other in any negative way, right?"
"Aye, dere be a few oi know of, but it would be rather pointless to carvem together, as deir effects are too close to eachother, and dey don’t stack."
"Yeah, but you should first TEST OUT the stuff, and see what works and what doesn’t, at least when it comes to this newfound enchantment method. Directly-Imbued Magical Metals open up so many crafting avenues, that we haven’t even properly scratched the surface about what’s possible! Actually, hold on a second, something has occurred to me just now, and we might be able to gain some easily-obtainable knowledge if I’m right."
Therefore, I immediately called Fungus and told him to bring me that golden-bikini armor, and to also bring Will-E, Lingfeng and Yi Gore along with him, if he could find them.
A couple of hours later, he burst inside of the Smithy with the people I had asked for, but had also brought everybody else that made up his Party, including stupid little Jin. Everybody in the Party was currently smeared in layers of some sort of a disgusting gunk from top to bottom, and dirt clung to them like a magnet.
Fungus then told me that they had just killed a Hell Slug which had taken up residence in the town’s aquifer supply, as it kept shitting and barfing its gelatin into the water supply, causing it to become rather polluted. That was overall great news, but I was somewhat saddened that I had missed out the completion of one of the old plagiarized “quests” because of my own crippled state.
After he handed me the Bikini-armor, I urged them all to go out-back and take a bath, because they all stank to the heavens and looked like shit. I did not have to repeat myself, as they all rushed immediately to the back yard, where a large tub-like object could be seen, an item which was probably some sort of a tempering-vat for oversized items like metal-shafted spears. Still, it could nicely become heated with firewood and filled with water, which made it an effective bath-tub that everybody could enjoy.
While the Party was splish-splashing around, Carmine and myself had refocused on the magic items that we had just acquired, and we were copying the outer appearance of the runes that we had found everywhere, even if we did not know their correct construction order.
Gibbson, the Bikini-armor, Yi Gore’s mechanical arm, the Spatial Rings, some items that Lingfeng had given us and even Will-E metal shell became references for the runes that had been carved upon them, as Carmine and myself both began copying the runes onto sheets of paper by examining the internal structure of the magical items with our Qi and Thermal visions. Lingfeng had also come to our aid, and had drawn for us a very large amount of runes, their stroke-sequences included. That had been a proper Loremaster behaviour, if I had ever seen one!
When I asked Carmine to do the same with her own runes though, I got a look of consternation out of her like I had just strangled her puppy.
"I swore on meh parents’ heads that oi would neveh reveal to anyone meh Clan’s runes!" She indignantly replied. "Dese be me trade secrets, lass!"
"I’m sorry if this will sound harsh, Carmine, but you can’t possibly mean the heads of your VERY DEAD parents and your VERY DEAD Clan members, right? Doesn’t that invalidate your “oath” right out of the box?"
"Ugh…!!! Dat wuz a lo’ blow, Trina! No fair!" Carmine suddenly became teary-eyed while biting her lower lip.
"Spit it out, Carmine! You know that this is for the best! You're never going to become a Legendary Smith if you don’t figure out the underlying principles behind these damn rune-things! We have an Ancient Evil to kill, dammit!" I persisted as I gesticulated wildly..
Being reminded that we indeed still had an Ancient Evil lurking right beneath our feet immediately tipped the scale, and Carmine finally began to draw on some sheets of paper all of the Runes that she knew, including their stroke-carving order, which was the real secret that needed to be hidden.
In the end, to my layman’s eyes, the runes on the paper all looked like any other spell-circuits, albeit very-precise and very-compact as far as their general forms could be considered. I could literally identify some parts of the spell-circuits by their sheer appearance, since they all looked exactly like other “spell chunks” that I had seen in the Heavenly Library while I had been scouring it for usable spells in the past. Of course, I had no idea what those “chunks” actually did, but they were still recognisable.
We now basically had a makeshift rune-compendium on our hands, but it was nowhere near complete, or even remotely usable for our immediate needs. Still, it was a huge leap towards understanding how the enchantments worked, and it made me happy.
"Ok, ok, enough of that, let's start from the basics." I wiggled the entire stack of papers which had been filled with rune-inscriptions in front of the dwarven girl's face.
"Carmine, why do these runes work in the first place? I mean, basically you're just scratching some symbols onto a plain surface after all. How the hell does scribbling something onto an object suddenly make it magical?"
"Oi dunno exactleh, but dem “collecter” runes basicalleh act like th' sails on a boat, 'xcept dat dei be catchin' mana…*cough*…oi mean “Qi” from th' world instead of th' wind and th' rain, since th' whole world's fullov it. Den th' “caught” Qi gits stuffed in th' “batter-yeeh”, as ye keeps on callin dat second rune, just loike th' caught rain would git stuffed inside of a barrel. Den th' third rune comes and scoops up pots-full o' dat Qi-rain from th' barrel, an' den makes certain flavors of soup outa it, as in dem enchantment effects. And no, oi gots no clue why th' third runes do wot dei do, oi aint no “soup” specialist. Back home, we apprentices just learned dem runes by heart, stroke by stroke. Only th' Runemasters knew how to actualleh fiddle with dem circuits, an oi aint one o' dose."
“Runemasters” she says... Ok, so there ARE actually some people out there which specialise in manipulating these things! That means that there must be books available that have been written about this particular subject out there somewhere! We should all go and scour the entire Heavenly Library for these things again, as we might have been looking on the wrong shelves thus far, since they might not actually be in the Blacksmithing Section of the Library, but rather under the Spellcraft Section.
Still, I wanted to know why the third that runes acted like they did. I mean, I could definitely understand the idea behind a “circuit” which performed a certain function when “powered up”, as it was the basic concept behind all of the technological items that existed back on Earth, but I have never seen a circuit that was made out of ONLY a single material.
It was the difference between the circuit’s materials which altered the flow of the electric currents and created the marvellous effects of the electronic items back on Earth. You couldn't simply craft a circuit out of plain copper wiring, then run some power through it and expect for changes to occur.
Sure, sure, you might say that there's the power transformers and coils which are made out of only copper wiring, and they do indeed perform certain functions in every household item via magnetic induction, but they are still just components in a larger circuit. I don't think that you can create something functional out of ONLY power transformers, you will always need the subsequent parts like the transistors, resistors and the diodes which perform the other functions needed to create a circuit that actually does something.
And for that matter, how would you even create a transformer, if you ONLY had copper as the material available, and was missing the isolator-paint plus the plastic/wood support that the wire usually gets coiled around? Sure, you could coil it and separate the loops at a certain distance, then rely on the material strength of the wire itself to leave it suspended in the air, but it’s function would still exist only because of the difference between the AIR and the COIL, something that you would not be able to obtain if you only had a SOLID block of material to work with, like for example the head of a mace.
When it came to these magic-circuits though, this was exactly what was happening! On a solid block of the SAME uniform material, just because a pattern had been drawn upon the surface, changes occurred. Actually, it was the same with the larger runic-circles and formations, which could stretch on for miles at a time, but were still hand-drawn.
There had to be more to this than met the eye, so I asked Carmine to inscribe an item for me while I watched with both my Qi and thermal visions activated. During the etching, nothing seemed to occur, but once the rune-patterns had been finished, the item had been reheated for the final tempering and then had been dunked into the tempering vat to cool-down. Only then I truly saw what was really happening when the runes “glowed” and “activated”.
The branch-tentacles of the Mother System suddenly embraced the whole item, and then they “printed out” the REAL complex circuit that performed the actual magic beneath the etched “scribbles”, causing the “runes” to “light up” in the process. Small dark filaments now ran through the entire material’s length, so fine that they were almost invisible, but they were most assuredly the “tech” behind the “magic”.
DAMN IT, MOM SYSTEM! STOP CHEATING LIKE THAT!
Great, so Enchanting was a bullshit System-made profession just like Alchemy...good to know.