Despite Verin and Cal’s resounding combat successes, none of us thought that rushing into a new biome was a good idea yet. With low levels and an almost completely blank slate for their class quests, both of the two could easily level a few more times without needing to take that risk.
Practically, that meant two things for me. Firstly, I was forced to go hunting much more frequently. Rather than continue with our old schedule of traveling into the desert once every five days, Cal and Verin realized they could split up and level much faster. While Verin took the desert, her ice skills perfectly suited for the warm-blooded scorpions, Cal ventured into the mountains. Very quickly, she proved that her Empowered Strike was just as capable of handling the gryphons as it was the scorpions, and if a touch slower than I tended to, she swept through the area with ease.
Neither, however, were confident enough in their skills to travel alone yet. Logically, I had to agree. They were new to their classes, and even if they could win 99 fights out of 100 without me, the penalty for losing that singular fight was possibly death. From an energy perspective, I hated it. What had once been a single day a week of intense fighting had transformed into two days a week of playing guard duty, mostly sitting idle as I watched my friends win their fights without me.
As a second consequence of our decision to stay put, I was forced to find something new to do with my downtime.
By now, our cabin was fairly well-furnished. As a centerpiece, the main room held a table with three chairs, and for other seating options, I’d made a few benches and lumpy, feather-filled cushions. Some hanging shelves housed a few figurines I’d created, some from wood and some from stone, and a simple cabinet held our box of cards and our container of moonshine.
Undoubtedly, there was more I could do, and if I was here for long enough, I would. A few weeks of foraging and alchemy would hopefully yield some dyes I could use for an interesting rug or tapestry. Enough trial and error, and I was confident I could eventually learn how to turn the panthers or gryphons into some workable leather. There were more games I could create other than simple cards, too.
The same repetitive monotony that I’d at first found soothing, however, was finally starting to get to me. No longer was crafting another chair enough to keep me focused and awake, and I feared if I didn’t find something new to occupy me, I was due for another big crash soon.
It was rather fortunate, then, that I had just what I needed.
Nestled in the confines of the tiny cave in the mountains I’d commandeered, I removed the various enchanting references Sett had graciously made for me.
By now, my cave had undergone much the same transformation as the cabin, and as I hunched forward on a cushioned rocking chair, I examined what I had to work with.
Three spheres, two disks, all of which were made from polished steel, and all of which fit comfortably in my hand. Each one had a line of text etched onto them.
The spheres seemed to be more basic, with the first’s text reading “for levels 1-5” while the others were marked with “5-8” and “8-10” on them. In a similar fashion, the first disk read “10-20.” The second was the odd man out, the only text on it being the word “bonus.” Not seeing any reason to distrust Sett’s instructions, I moved everything but the starter sphere back into my storage.
Unfortunately, simply knowing to start with the sphere didn’t tell me what to actually do with it. Even God’s Eye didn’t have much to say on the matter, returning Enchantment Matrix whenever I identified it. Having used a fair number of enchanted items by now, I tried to mentally activate it, but the matrix steadfastly rebuffed my attempts.
Maybe he’s pranking me. It felt unlikely, but I was still having trouble reading people. When ten minutes of fiddling with the ball yielded no results, I was tempted to call it a day and take a nap. For all that I felt leagues better than I had right after being healed, focusing for extended periods without any progress was nearly impossible for me.
It was rather lucky, then, that I finally felt it. While idly turning the sphere about in my hands, one of my fingers brushed up against an area that felt slightly different. Pulling my finger away revealed nothing out of the ordinary, and it ultimately wasn’t until I used Arcane Vision that I managed to find what I was looking for.
So small, I could scarcely believe it was there at all, was an itty bitty little hole in the metal. My mind immediately jumped to the small SIM-card ejection holes in phones, making me wonder if the sphere would open up if I poked something inside. Without anything that would fit, though, I was out of luck if that was the answer.
Or perhaps I did have one thing that might be thin enough. It was supposed to be some sort of enchantment tool, right? That meant mana had to be involved. Right now, I wasn’t sensing even the smallest hint of mana from the ball, so maybe this was how I supplied my own?
I grabbed a thread of mana from my core, pulling it through my body until it reached my hand and then pushing it through.
The very instant the thread broke free of my body, it dissolved.
What just happened? Thinking it over, I was shocked to realize I’d never tried to play with my mana outside of my body before. That struck me as strange, given how basic such a thing sounded. I’d even seen other mages do it on multiple occasions, with the archmage in particular often using external mana as a teaching aid.
In fairness, though, it was only after I met the archmage that I had started to play with my mana at all, never having previously used it for anything but system-assisted spell casting. It wasn’t until my first lesson with him that I’d actually gained the Mana Manipulation skill.
Or no, actually. It wasn’t called Mana Manipulation, was it? It was specifically called Internal Mana Manipulation. The skill had immediately upgraded into Advanced Internal Mana Manipulation, but the “internal” part hadn’t gone away. I had no skill to handle my mana once it left my body.
Was the process truly so different that it warranted the separate skills? If my recent failure was any indication, the answer was a resounding yes.
At this point, I was getting the sense that enchanting normally required some skills and background knowledge that I didn’t possess, but I wasn’t going to give up. I felt like I was on the right track, and if nothing else, I didn’t want to figure out something else to do if I gave up on enchanting already. Moving the enchanting matrix back into storage, I started pushing more mana out from my hand.
For a while, I tried to be clever. Maybe the tip of the thread needed to stay within me? I moved one of my threads into a U-shape, pushing the curved section out. It dissipated just as fast as the first had, leaving a disconnected piece of mana floating within my hand. Said piece slowly dissolved inside of me, though not without leaving me with a tingling feeling.
A knot of mana came next, though with my limited knowledge of proper knots, it came out looking more like a tangled headphone cord. With higher hopes, I shoved the entire knot out from my hand, momentarily happy to see it hold until it started to deteriorate, ultimately succumbing to the same fate as the others.
I groaned.
If different shapes wouldn’t work, I had a pretty good guess of what I’d need to use, and the answer was a single word. Effort.
The archmage had left me with a set of exercises to work on my internal mana manipulation, most of which focused on making my mana more pliable. I would poke and prod at my core, grabbing pieces and stretching them out, pinching off as many different threads as I could and pulling them as far as I could.
For all that I spoke in mechanical terms, though, my mana was not a physical object, and I was not literally poking it. Every conscious change from its resting state required an act of willpower, the amount of effort required seemingly tempered by my control and my raw Wisdom. With my willpower in low supply these days, I was passably peeved to be forced to use it, but I wasn’t about to turn back now.
Before I pushed the next thread from my hand, I turned my entire attention to its tip, letting everything else fade away.
Harden. Compress. Stabilize. Solidify. I mentally assaulted the thread, pushing at it from every angle while imbuing it with as much tenacity as I could muster. This time when I shoved it out of my hand, I was surprised to feel some resistance, as if I was physically pushing a piece of hair through my palm. Despite the unpleasant visual, the sensation was only mildly disconcerting, and with a strange piercing feeling, the thread escaped my body.
Instantly, I could feel my control wavering. It was as though I’d dipped the thread into a turbulent vat of acid, the air seeming to eat away at my mana even as it tugged on it, first this way, then that. For all the interference, however, I managed to hold on.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
One second.
Two.
Thre-
All at once, my will shattered, and I swore I could audibly hear a snap as it failed. I slumped into my chair as the mana thread vanished, leaving me right back where I started.
Or at least it would have, had I not received a brand new notification.
You have learned a new skill: Intrinsic External Mana Manipulation.
Unsatisfied with constraining your mana to your physical shell, you have begun to push your mana outside of yourself.
Decreases casting time and slightly decreases mana costs of all spells which require external mana weaving.
Prerequisites:
35 Wisdom
Level 10 in Internal Mana Manipulation
Evidently, even at my best, gaining the skill would have been a challenge, my Wisdom only having recently passed the minimum requirement. Unfortunately, it didn’t look like the skill would upgrade to an advanced variant like my internal manipulation had, but I was almost glad for that. The skill already had an unexpected extra word tacked onto the front of it, and even the thought of having an Advanced Intrinsic External Mana Manipulation skill was giving me a headache.
Emboldened by my rousing success, I managed to push on after only a brief thirty minutes of lazing about.
With a means to extend my mana out into the world now, I repeated my earlier attempt of inserting mana into the spherical enchanting matrix. Even a singular level of the skill made a world’s difference in how difficult using my mana was. Better yet, once I actually managed to slip a thread into the matrix, the bulk of the interference disappeared, letting me create longer and longer strings of mana outside myself.
Even so, it wasn’t immediately enough. Quickly, I discovered that the interior of the sphere was more convoluted than I’d imagined, with the hole serving as the entrance point to a winding and circuitous pathway. No matter how far I pushed my mana, there always seemed to be more space to fill.
Intrinsic External Mana Manipulation has reached level 2!
Still, each time, I got a bit farther, the constant, steady progress proving to be exactly what I needed to keep myself on track. It took almost a full day and the second manipulation level to succeed, but eventually, my mana filled the entire sphere.
Feeling endlessly triumphant, I let my mana dissolve within the matrix, eager to see just what would happen. An air of tense anticipation filled the homey cave, and I felt more awake than I had in weeks as I scanned the entire area for any visible signs of change.
That same eager expectation gradually withered away as nothing happened. The same energy that had allowed for my excitement was quickly repurposed, breaking through my usual muted emotions to flood me with disappointment.
Was that really not it?
Sure I must have missed something, I repeated the exercise, this time much more slowly. I probed the matrix for any branches or crevices I might have missed.
There weren’t any. At the same time, though, I could feel a mental itch start to form as I navigated more and more of the bends and convolutions of the enchantment matrix. There was something there. I could feel it.
Again, my mana reached the end of the pathway and fizzled out, and again I plunged a new strand in. I took this iteration painfully, ploddingly, slow. Rather than focusing on getting to the end, I used my mana as a makeshift sensory appendage, straining my heightened Intelligence to build a three-dimensional mental model of the sphere’s interior.
A third of the way through, my mana turned one more corner, and it all suddenly clicked. Hastily, I loosened my grip on the mana thread, letting it die off before sending another in its place.
This time, however, I didn’t use plain mana. Instead, a radiant, yellow beam of solid light took its place, bending and refracting under the pressure of my will. The very moment the light mana filled the matrix, the effect was obvious.
You have cast Illumination!
Hanging directly above the sphere, a tiny mote of light brightened the cave. In hindsight, everything felt obvious now. The pattern inside of the sphere was a near-exact copy of how I wove my mana to cast the Illumination spell. A few small discrepancies existed, seeming to alter the spell’s origin point and brightness, but the basic components were all there. That realization alone was enough to net me another skill level.
Spell Insight has reached level 13!
That answered one question: If the enchantment matrix could actually be considered a true “enchantment,” then it seemed that the simplest enchanted items just forced mana into the shape of a spell. It was an unwieldy solution, and not one that anyone without external mana manipulation could use, but if you hung the sphere from a large enough string, you could generously call it an Illumination Pendant. Clearly, this was how the grand magus expected me to create my first enchantments.
On the flip side, that raised an even tougher question.
How the hell am I supposed to make something like that?
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I would have liked to say that, in a spark of inspiration, I figured the trick out later that day. In truth, the answer didn’t come to me for another two weeks. In fact, I’d nearly given up entirely, deciding that creating the internal matrix was impossible without some sort of precision-disintegration skill I just didn’t have. That, or a 3D printer, which I was even less likely to come by.
From time to time, it struck me that all of this was needlessly complicated, and I wondered why Sett hadn’t just explained it to me. He could have waited a few more minutes before going to sleep, couldn’t he? Failing that, the fact that he’d engraved text onto his training aids meant that he was capable of conjuring the written word. Did he just not feel like leaving me a manual? I could have sworn he was so happy to help me learn enchanting when I talked to him about it! I hadn’t… misjudged that conversation, had I?
No, ultimately, I decided he was just one of those teachers who believed I would learn more if I figured it out on my own. I could respect that. That actually worked well to keep myself busy, too. I’d have to ask him to help me learn even more skills next time around.
The grand magus’s teaching methods aside, my epiphany came as I was once again pushing my mana through the enchantment matrix, hoping to eke out a few more levels of external mana manipulation. Each time, my mana was forced into the proper shape, the metal interior of the sphere preventing me from misshaping it.
Which was kind of strange, if I thought about it. Mana was mana. I had no trouble moving it around my own body, even though I was filled with blood and organs and whatever other bodily gunk I had going on in there. I’d also come across all sorts of solid materials that held mana, with Emer’Thalis’s darkwood being the first thing that came to mind. Why wouldn’t my mana just sink right through the metal?
I wasn’t sure about the theory of it, but I didn’t need to be. That fact alone was all I needed.
Because if my mana couldn’t occupy the same space as the metal, that meant that the metal also couldn’t occupy the same space as my mana.
If that was true, all that was left to do was to test my theory out.
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For all my enthusiasm, I wasn’t able to try my hand at making enchantments for another few hours. The biggest roadblock was in determining what to make said enchantments out of.
Metal obviously worked, and I even had some from raiding the desert crypt. Unfortunately, my current plan would require me to melt the metal, and something told me Flameploof wouldn’t be up to the task.
Ice actually had felt like a solid option, but I’d want the ice to form as I was using my external mana manipulation, which meant I wouldn’t be able to cast Chill Liquid or the more broad Chill. Of course, I could solve that problem by sitting in the freezer for a few hours to let the water freeze naturally, or I could recruit Verin to help me. The prior option sounded like a pain, and I wasn’t sure if the outside help of the latter would prevent me from getting the credit for the enchantment.
In the end, I decided on a slightly messier solution.
First, I carved out a small, cube-shaped stone pot.
Then, I filled it up with mud.
Finally, I lit a gentle fire under the pot.
The hard part came next, and as quickly as I could, I began to cast Illumination. Instead of completing the spell, however, the very moment the spellform was finished, I imposed the entirety of my will upon it, forcing it to harden -- to crystalize.
Advanced Internal Mana Manipulation has reached level 12!
Applying my will to all that mana at once was far more exhausting than I’d imagined, but given that it still fell under my internal manipulation skill, I was just barely able to manage it. It helped that the spell seemed to act as a cohesive whole, allowing me to target the entire thing rather than mentally grapple with each small length of the thread.
Emptying my mind of anything but the solid spellform, I painstakingly maneuvered it outside of my body, the spell practically begging me to release it as it touched the air outside. My only saving grace was I didn’t need to bend or thread my mana in any complicated ways. I kept the spell in one piece, and bit by bit, I dunked it into the mud-filled pot.
Both the mud and the mana resisted me, but not enough to stop me entirely. Eventually, the entire spellform sank into the mud at which point the strain of holding the spellform blissfully lessened. After that, the only thing left was to wait. In a matter of minutes, the mud hardened, and the moment of truth was upon me.
Not daring to yank the mud out of the pot, I instead used an overloaded fire dagger to surgically slice through the stone. When at last I was done, I was left with a perfect cube of mud.
And amidst its cracked surface, if one had particularly amazing vision, they could spot a very, super tiny hole. Just as hoped, the mud had been forced to part by the threads of solid mana.
Not wasting another second, I shoved a thread of light mana into the cube. Instantly, I could feel faint imperfections, some from my mana control, others from the improper material.
It didn’t matter. At last, the light mana reached the end and dissolved.
Heralding the end of its journey, a pitiful, flickering light formed above the cube, winking out almost as fast as it formed.
Even so, it was enough.
You have constructed an enchanting matrix!
Rarity: Common
Quality: Trash
For constructing a trash quality matrix, no experience is awarded.
It wasn’t anything fancy, but judging from my final notification, even trash had its purposes.
You have learned a new skill: Enchanting