Chapter 47:

It took a surprisingly long time for Alice to run out of breath, even at a full sprint. She managed to maintain it for nearly a dozen blocks, and even though her legs were burning, she could keep pumping them. However, Titus was significantly farther ahead of her as they chased the squirrel leaping from treetop to treetop.

She was no longer amazed the twelfth time it leaped the entire width of a street across the intersection to the next set of trees. As it continued to dash, Titus, for the fourth time, flung his pilum. Still, the scattershot approach wasn't working well enough for their purposes. The squirrel could dodge and weave between the various instances of the weapon his skill produced.

Alice's [Life Drain] was having a significantly reduced effect with the distance it was putting between them. She did her best to keep up, thinking she was slowing down a little bit. Her ability was meant for maintaining long fights and replenishing her resources, not taking down a small, fast creature.

Realizing that their strategy wasn't getting anywhere, she skidded to a stop and pulled out the wand from her waistband. With careful aim, she pointed and pushed mana into it. It activated the stored spell, and her hand buzzed like it was getting slightly shocked. She could see the mental ripple outwards. It wasn't a single pinpoint but rather a cone, and it just barely caught the squirrel, which slowed down. Not significantly, maybe 15% or so, but it didn't come to a screeching halt or become trapped in some sort of stasis field like she had hoped. No, it simply slowed. But now it was slower than Titus.

As Titus got closer, it stopped trying to run and spent more time dodging as he attempted to grab it or kill it. But even though it was slow, it was still nimble, quick, small, and hard to hit. Alice approached as the combat continued, Titus receiving several bites along his forearms as he grew more and more frustrated. But anytime the squirrel attempted to get out of range, it was forced to dodge, and Titus made sure it couldn't go anywhere else.

Alice took careful aim before trying something new. She reached out with her mind and attempted to guide her [Mana Bolt] to the target. She closed her eyes and fired, feeling the bolt curve in the air and hit. She opened her eyes, expecting to see a toasted squirrel, but instead saw a small crater on the pavement. The squirrel was peppered with fragments of asphalt that knocked it to the side of the building. Titus pounced on it, grabbed it, and snapped its neck with a swift and brutal motion.

Alice felt her stomach roil slightly at the ruthless violence to a small, furry creature but quickly suppressed it. It was a killer squirrel, after all, and the bites on Titus's forearms were starting to turn green. Alice frantically pointed that out to him, and he nodded calmly, taking out one of the health potions he had made earlier and drinking it. It took four of the six potions before the wounds completely healed, but he triumphantly returned, the squirrel dangling by its tail in his grasp.

"That's gross!" Alice said.

Titus shrugged as it disappeared into his inventory.

"So what did we need that for? I didn't imagine Killer Squirrel was kind of a specific ingredient."

Titus shook his head. "It wasn't just this squirrel, but it has a certain property to its fur that I need. I don't know how to describe it."

"Some sort of chemical or something?" Alice asked, not quite understanding what Titus was getting at.

"No, I'm not sure how it is in enchanting, but it seems like the System is kind of making up a bunch of bullshit and just going with it. I don't actually believe there are magical components in these items, at least not how I understand it. From what I can see, there's no link between chemical and metaphysical. Still, rather the System is using it as some sort of verification that you put in the work. I'm not really sure."

Alice shook her head. "I don't know if I buy that. That doesn't seem like how the System would work. It seems like there's probably something we're missing here with the mana connection."

"I don't know," Titus said with a shrug. "It seems a little bit like bullshit to me."

"Yeah, I can imagine why it would. But maybe there's something to be said for witches' brews after all."

Titus laughed and shook his head. "Believe me, I've met many, many witches over my years, and not once have I ever seen any shred of evidence that they might actually have something to it."

Alice looked at him. "You weren't predisposed to believe that stuff?"

"I was for a very long time," he said. "Remember, I was a shaman for, well, actually, a good chunk of my life. But it was never more than theater and reading the weather and just plain old experience."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Alice shook her head in disbelief. "Really? All this? All the proof you had that something more than what we understood was going on, and you never saw any evidence for it?"

"No," he said. "I didn't. And believe me, our belief was that we were seeing magic. We just never saw any other instance of magic besides us. And when we eventually thought that it wasn't even magic for us, of course, we didn't see anything to contradict that."

Alice grimaced. "I guess it's kind of hard not to believe you when you say it like that."

"Yeah, it was weird. It was a very weird existence. But, well, we should head back."

"Yeah, we should."

They headed back to the guildhall, and Alice watched Titus set up his cauldron. He had a small burner going underneath it in the common room, where the NPC didn't complain. She was worried about fumes and just general safety, but the slight cackling he had going on over the cauldron as he sprinkled in bits of the squirrel fur with other ingredients they'd picked up along the way or he had purchased from the shop on the way back made Alice decide not to say anything. There was a certain amount of ridiculousness watching him play around. He must have felt her attention on him because he stopped laughing and looked up.

"Sorry, that's probably a little creepy," he said, and Alice nodded.

"Yeah, a little bit."

"It just reminds me of alchemy back in my day. But it actually works. Remember the tricks of turning lead into gold and all those sorts of things? It's quite satisfying."

"I'm glad you are enjoying it," Alice said with a roll of her eyes. "Can I have your axe?"

"Yes, but I don't want to get it back with just and improvement for cutting down trees."

"Fine," Alice said. "If I can't get a return enchantment working, I'll just make some other basic improvements to it. Right now, it's just a hunk of steel. And a… what is it? Plastic handle?"

Titus shrugged. "Some sort of composite, I think."

"Anyways," Alice said, "I'll probably just strengthen it."

"I don't actually want a return enchantment on it. I don't think throwing a double-bladed axe is particularly very effective. I have better options," Titus said, pulling out one of his knives.

"So, just strengthening and durability?"

"Could you set it on fire?"

"How is that more effective than having a return enchantment?"

"A flaming axe is cool," Titus said thoughtfully as he peered down into the cauldron.

Alice rolled her eyes. "Maybe a wind blade?"

"Sure," Titus said. "I still think a flaming axe would be cooler, but that's just the inner child in me. I've lit my axes on fire enough to know that it's only useful in certain circumstances."

"It actually is useful?" Alice asked, slightly surprised.

"It's a good intimidation tactic. And also, if you're doing a night raid or fighting at night and you need light, you might have trouble carrying a torch when you're holding two axes."

"That's actually not a bad point, but you can see in the dark now."

"Yeah. And I don't know if the intimidation factor of a flaming axe is going to make much of a difference to ants, but a wind blade could be nice. Something that could come out horizontally. A good medium-range area-of-effect attack would be nice. The pilum works for a longer range and massive area, but it would be nice to have something for large amounts of enemies that are slightly up close."

"I'll see what I can do," Alice said as she took the axe, and Titus went back to making his monster repellent. She sat on the other side of the common room, her back to Titus so that he wouldn't distract her, and got to enchanting.

She started with the handle. Something simple, just basic reinforcement enchantments. The script was better at distributing the force and minimizing it however she could, making sure that any weaknesses in the material were avoided. Not that she actually knew what the weaknesses were, but the enchantments could read impacts slightly and then distribute them to places that were least likely to break.

It was probably overkill, but it was definitely giving her an idea of how to add redundancies and fail-safes. She had no idea how far along this would have been in the classes. Still, she was confident that while she might have been able to squeeze some other enchantment in, this would last far longer than any other durability enchantment she had figured out yet.

As she worked her way up the handle, she got more and more complex, not only distributing the force but also dampening shock and reverb to make it easier to grip and prevent it from getting cold or piercing damage. It was excessive, but the work got really complicated when she started inscribing the blade.

All along the blade, she produced tiny, tiny little symbols and lines that kept it perpetually sharp and increased the mass of the head the moment before impact. It was a complicated set of runes that had some detection runes right behind the sharpness. As soon as it pierced more than a couple of millimeters in, the weight and momentum behind the head could almost triple. She was rather proud of that effect.

Then, with the large flat spaces of the blade, she went on engraving a wind blade enchantment, something just like Titus had described. But she messed it up the first time. Scratching it out, she replaced it with, in the small little corner left, a torch enchantment for it to glow. Maybe that would at least be useful. Flipping it over, she attempted again to make a wind blade on the other side. It wouldn't be nearly as effective as if she had succeeded on both sides of the ax, but it would still get one charge off after a certain amount of mana was fed into it.

Hopefully, she wouldn't have to charge the enchantment for Titus all the time. He should be able to figure out how to put mana into it, right?