Once the wood shavings are swept up, Alex takes his planks of wood and tools back to his little shop. Before anything else, he decides to see if he can make anything useful of his Classes and Class-Subclass Synergy, since doesn’t really have anything truly useful for making any good robots in the shop. He doesn’t keep much in the way of actual electronic parts here, since Ms. Morrison usually lets him take whatever extra stock they have leftover from the week.
It takes a couple minutes of fiddling, and some hints from Lucy, but eventually he finds something actually quite useful, at least from what he can tell from the description. He gets it by placing Craftsman (Hobbyist) in the Class slot, with Engineer (General) and Engineer (Robotics) in the Subclass slots.
Applied Engineering:
While active, creations borne from other fields become easier to formulate and understand in reference to engineering, so long as the field in question is relatively unfamiliar to the user.
So basically he’ll have a bit of a boost when it comes to figuring out what he wants to make, so long as it’s from a field of expertise he doesn’t know much about. Which is perfect for experimenting with all this new stuff, really.
Well, he’s already got some runes carved out, he might as well make use of them. A quick application of the tablesaw in the shop and he has a whole bunch of little wood tiles, each with a single Elder Futhark rune on it. He chose Elder Futhark specifically because each rune has assigned meanings to them, which are somewhat well documented, as well as the fact that it is an easy set of symbols to carve.
Looking over his admittedly...bare research into Elder Futhark, Alex decides to experiment with a tile carved with Dagaz, which is apparently related to good luck, daylight and lucky charms. Worst case, it becomes a reverse rune somehow, but even if it does it would be a bad luck charm, so as long as he doesn’t touch it he should be fine. Best case scenario it works as intended, or at least doesn’t work at all.
As he looks down at the little bow-tie looking rune tile in his palm, Alex puzzles over how exactly to go about actually making an enchantment or whatever this would be called. He recalls that not only does his own magic have a kind of fused sensory effect, the aluminum bar had as well. Maybe if he imbues the tile with his mana like he did the rod, he could will it to change its own natural mana to something else? Might as well give it a try at least.
The dragonoid takes a deep breath, pulling up a mass of mana and surrounding the wooden tile in his power. It feels a bit more natural now to both feel his mana and manipulate it outside of his body, now that he has the Skills for it. He slowly imbues his mana into the wood, quickly gaining a similar understanding of it as he does his own mana, he can even feel-see-taste a fault in the wood grain a bit off from the center of the tile. Hopefully that won’t affect his experiment.
Once he feels he has a good enough sense of the wood, as well as the shape of the tile and the rune engraved on it, he starts to try and will the mana of the wood to change. Bringing up mental imagery of coins landing on their edge, the sound of dice rolling and the groans and cheers that always follow, the-
“Ah! Fuck, that...didn’t hurt. Huh.” For some reason, the tile exploded into a little ball of flame, burning supernaturally fast like that flame cotton that magicians use. All that was left was a small pile of ash. It’s made all the more frustrating because Alex cold feel something, like an instinct or something similar, trying to whisper about all the applications and potentialities that could be found by following that line of thought, of trying to manipulate the mana of an object.
But, no. He wanted to get at least one thing down before the end of the day, not just randomly do one thing or another with no clear direction. He’d never get anything done like that. So instead he shook his head, grabbed another Dagaz rune tile, and tried again, this time using a different method. This went on for a few hours, trying different ways of manipulating mana to try and get the result he was looking for.
In one experiment he tried circulating mana through the wood tile, and while that seemed to do something, he didn’t know what. He also had a very strong feeling that trying anything else on that particular tile would just land him with another piece of burned wood. Then he tried only affecting the wood mana directly around the rune, and that just left him with a rune that looked like it had taken a hit from lightning. No matter what he did it always ended up going wrong, but there was still that instinct trying to tell him of all the different ways he could use the information from those experiments in different ways.
He was close to simply throwing in the towel when one of his ideas finally bore fruit. Rather than trying to change the wood itself, he made a thread of mana and pushed it inside the channel of the engraving, connecting the thread together into something like an angular infinity symbol, mimicking the Dagaz rune itself. Once the thread was moving and pulsing pretty much on its own, he attached the thread of power to the wood’s mana, allowing the rune to drain from the wood to keep itself going rather than himself.
After a few tense moments of waiting for disaster, Alex breathes a sigh of relief when his experiment stays stable. Now he just needed to change the feel of the thread of power. He visualized coins landing on their edges and the sounds of dice rolling once more. He imagined the feel of a weapon just missing, leaving the feel of wind in its wake. Oddly enough, since he couldn’t find anything better for taste and smell, he just used the sensations from a cake he was once lucky enough to get for free because he was the 10,000th customer at a bakery.
As the thread of mana slowly becomes something more focused on memory and specific experiences, Alex can feel the nature of it shift, in a way he can’t quite describe. The flow of the thread which he already thought was quite smooth runs smoother, the wood starts to grow warm, but not hot like it’s about to catch fire, and the thread of mana sinks into the rune, the Dagaz engraving glowing a light golden color. Lucy finally speaks up after keeping relatively quiet to let Alex focus, letting him know what had happened.
Congratulations! You have made one of the first man-made magical items by hand. Achievement unlocked: [Magic Crafter]. Would you like to pick a reward?
Alex blinks in incomprehension for a moment, before shaking his head and looking at the screen in surprise. “Woah woah woah, you can’t just drop a bomb on me like that and treat it like it’s nothing. Achievements are a thing?”
Indeed. There are several varieties, with [Magic Crafter] being a general achievement which anyone can gain by creating a new magical creation in the System. Since it is such a large category, rather than having one reward for unlocking the Achievement, the System decided to let people have their choice of something specific. It allows me to unlock a magic crafting Class for you, based on what you did to create the magical item, as well as your other magical and crafting Skills.
“Doesn’t that seem kind of...I don’t know, cheaty? I mean, just getting a new Class from nothing seems like a lot.” Alex, understandably, isn’t sure how to feel about just being given a Class, when the whole point of them seems to be to earn them through hard work and acquiring the right Skills.
Not as much as you may think. Although it is a lot easier to accomplish now, in the early days of the System, think about how much you had to do just to make a little charm. That’s not even mentioning the fact that a lot of people haven’t even started making spells yet. Don’t worry, there are plenty of other people with this Achievement and others like them, like [Magic Caster] and [Martial Artist], it’s the Systems way of kickstarting the first few classes to help people out.
“Eh, yeah, I guess I can see that. Not like I can really complain I guess, if it’s just going to help keep pace with everyone else.” Alex shrugs, deciding to just let the matter lie for now. It’s not like he’s some anime protagonist that somehow gains OP abilities from out of nowhere. “Alright, what kind of magic crafting Classes could I take, then?”
Compiling the list now...and here you go!
Runeworker:
As Class: Moderate quality boost to rune-worked creations, Small increase to rune-working Skills.
As Subclass: Small quality boost to rune-worked creations.
Golemancer:
As Class: Moderate quality boost to golems and golemantic creations, Small increase to Golemancy Skills.
As Subclass: Small quality boost to golems and golemantic creations.
Imbuer:
As Class: Moderate quality boost to imbued items, Small increase to Imbuer Skills.
As Subclass: Small quality boost to imbued items.
“Oh, those all look like really good choices. Damn, indecision time...” Alex starts pacing, thinking over the potential pros and cons of each Class. “Hmm...I’m guessing the Golemancer class comes from a mix of my magic Skills and my Engineering (Robotics) Skill?” After a little bob and chime of agreement from Lucy, he goes back to pacing, eventually stopping in front of the screen once more.
“Alright, I’ve decided. I don’t know much about what Imbuer could do, and I’d rather not gamble on it. Runeworker sounds like it will be immediately useful, but it also seems like a relatively easy Class to earn on its own, since I can just get more variants of the Runecarving Skill and maybe try out a few different types of runes. I think Golemancer will be the best for long term, and the CSS’s could have a lot of potential.”
Nodding his head after talking through his thought process, Alex selects the Golemancer Class. Lucy gives off a little victory trumpet sound as the menu fades away, with his Class menu popping up to show his new Class being added. Satisfied, Alex claps his hands together, looking back over at his enchanted tile. “So, any chance that you could tell me anything specific about this little guy? I know that they could do something like that with those Dungeon-made items.”
That I can! Technically I can do so with any item, but Dungeon items and materials and hand-made items are easier to give information on.
Small Wooden Lucky Charm (Runed): Average
A small charm made from Average quality balsa wood. Thanks to being carved with a magical rune for luck, when this lucky charm is held there is a minor increase in the chance of small things going your way.
“Huh, I wonder just how much it increases your luck...” Feeling curious, Alex spends about an hour doing a little test. He gets a quarter and starts flipping it until he’s flipped it 100 times, writing down whether it lands on heads or tails. Once that was done he does the same thing, but with the lucky charm in his other hand and with the mental image of wanting the coin to land on heads. After he’s done, he tallies up what the heads and tails were after each test. As it turns out, the second test did indeed end up with about 7 more heads then tails. Maybe not the most scientific test, but still a good way to show that the charm does actually work.
Alex takes the time to make several more Dagaz rune tiles work, just to solidify the feeling he needs to use to change the thread involved, as well as just for practice. Following that, he practiced making the Algiz runes work, and since they are related to protection among other things, he focuses on imagery of shields, the sound of weapons being reflected, and other experiences when changing the mana thread.
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Rather than the luck charms which only glowed softly, when the Algiz rune activated he can feel-hear-taste a film of mana spread across his arm up to the elbow, making him nearly drop the thing in surprise. When he pokes his forearm with his other hand, he can just barely feel a bit of resistance before he touches the scales, and a quick item description from Lucy explains it.
Small Wooden Protective Charm (Runed): Average
A small charm made from Average quality balsa wood. Thanks to being carved with a magical rune for protection, when this protective charm is held it creates a thin barrier that protects anything in it small area of effect.
“That could be very useful, if I can get the effect to stretch out more. Do you have any idea why the effects are so low despite being ‘Average’ quality items? Besides me being a complete newbie at this, that is.”
Well, you made them from balsa wood, right? Balsa wood isn’t that good of a material to use in crafting things unless its for prototypes or something, and it certainly isn’t the best at conducting mana. No matter how high quality a material is, some materials are just better at doing certain things. For example, you wouldn’t use high-grade paper in place of even inferior quality iron bars in a construction project.
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense. The quality of a material doesn’t make it a good material for what you’re doing. Welp, back to practicing.” Alex continues on, making more Algiz tiles before moving on to the Jera rune, which makes Small Wooden Harvest Charms that increase the growth rate of plants directly around the charm. After that is the Eihwaz rune, which makes Small Wooden Success Charms that slightly increase the chance of doing something particularly well, and the Fehu rune, which makes a Small Wooden Drop Quality Charm that slightly increases the chance of a higher quality item dropping from a Dungeon Monster.
After making a few of the Fehu runes, he finally gets the Rune Activation (Thread): Beginner skill, which confuses the hell out of him since he figured the thread method he used was the only way to do it-at least, to do it easily. More confusing for him is why Runecarving (Wood) was so much easier to get than Rune Activation, and mentions such to Lucy.
Well, it’s because of how broad or narrow the use of the skill is. Rune Activation (Thread) can be used in most if not all runes, but Runecarving (Wood) is specifically about carving runes into wood. Since Runecarving (Wood) is easier to learn the basics of, you get the Skill faster, but it is much harder to master it to a high degree. Rune Activation is basically the opposite, it has such wide applications that you need to know more about the basics to use it properly, but is easier to master overall. The exception is Skills like Mana Manipulation and Mana Sensing which are easy to learn and master, but only to a certain extent, after which it becomes much more difficult to master any further.
“Ah, so it has to do with the learning curve of each Skill? Good to know, I’ll have to keep that in mind.” Looking at his little collection of glowing tiles, Alex decides to follow up on an idea he had as soon as he knew that runes could actually work. Getting a fresh piece of wood from the shop, he cuts it down into a circle of wood, drill a hole near one edge, and threads a little thread through it to make a makeshift amulet. Then he goes about writing an Elder Futhark runeword, rather than just a single rune. It may be a bit of a cheap work-around, but he used a rune translator online to get it, since he really just did not have the time to actually learn how to do it himself.
Once he had them all written down in marker on the little disc of wood he cut out, he etched them in; Pertho, Radio, Othila, Teiwaz, Ehwaz, Kenaz, Teiwaz, Isa, Othila, Nauthiz. Success, Safe Journey, Family Bonds, Willpower, Friendship, Personality, Willpower, Authority, Family Bonds, Impossible Accomplishments. 10 runes at once may be a bit too big of a jump from just one, but this is for the word Protection, which means that he’ll be able to compare a one-rune effect to a multi-rune effect.
After thinking over how exactly he’s going to pull this off, he decides to get all of the threads stable first before trying anything else. After a good bit of spent mana and cleaning up the wood shavings once again, he is left with a much warmer-almost hot to the touch-piece of carved wood, much warmer than the one-rune tiles. That is definitely a bit worrying, but also expected with so much more mana running through the wood.
Next, he realizes that if he wants the runes to work together, he’s going to have to connect them together. With that in mind, he decides to do the same thing that he does to connect the rune thread to the wood, but to each of the other runes in the formation. That takes a bit more effort, and he accidentally causes two of the runes to dissipate before he learns to take it slow, singing the wood inside of those runes in the process. Eventually though he has them all connected to each other like a spider's web, and that seems to cause the wood to cool down some, thankfully.
Finally, he starts to change the threads natures, which requires some imagination on his part for some of them, like Pertho. It can be quite hard to think of something that tastes like success, after all. Once he gets it down though, he can feel the rune start to make an effect before some of its nature starts to branch down the connections and into the other runes slightly, causing the rune itself to visibly fade as it loses power. An unexpected reaction, but also reasonable when he thinks about it.
It gets even more interesting when he gets Radio attuned, though. As the rune’s nature branches out through the connections, it mingles with the nature of Pertho, both runes flashing slightly before fading again. The mixed natures are very odd to sense though, it feels like a half-formed idea or thought in you head that you didn’t make. And since it’s static, it stands out even more.
As he continues on, each rune adds to the...song? Painting? Feast? Whatever it is that is happening in the runeword, each one complementing the others and fusing together. As the final rune, Nauthiz settles in place, the natures of all ten runes finally mix together into one equal blend of color-sound-taste. Despite not having a single Protection rune in the runeword itself, it has a similar yet different feel to the singular rune. If anything, it has more depth than Algiz, and certainly more power overall, heck he’s almost concerned that the little circle of wood is going to burst into flames with how hot it is. Thankfully it starts to cool down again as the flare of mana from the runewords completion fades, but it was a close thing.
Wow, that’s pretty nice for a first try!
Wooden Amulet of Protection (Runed): Average
This small piece of wood has been carved with a runeword of protection and activated by a beginner rune user. It has about as much power as it can handle, but it was also burned a little in its creation, so while it has a good area of effect, it affects anyone in range-including enemies!
“Huh, that’s...actually about what I was expecting, I had a feeling those singed runes would hurt the final product.” Picking up the runed amulet, he places it around his neck and immediately can feel a multilayered film of magic flow from the amulet to cover his whole body. If he had to guess, he’d say that it was about as thick as a thick jacket, but it also felt like it would repel more force than just a jacket.
Nodding in satisfaction, Alex takes the amulet off for now, deciding to go for the last project he had in mind for today. Grabbing a length of particularly thick wood out of a bin in his shop, this wood being from a black walnut tree, he carefully cuts it down to size with his table saw and some sandpaper until he ends up with a wand shape.
With a handle that will be easy to grip and a length of around 10 inches, it looks like it could be a decent Harry Potter or halloween prop as it is. After that he takes some paper, glues it to all the surfaces of the wood, and starts drawing out designs for the runewords he wants to have along with some stylistic choices.
On the handle, he makes two circles near the ends that go around the circumference of the handle, both for the stylistic look and to denote that the inside of it is somewhat sectioned off. In that handle space, he creates several more lines that will give the handle a slightly more ergonomic grip once it’s done.
He draws enough lines to make nine of these small sections, and in each of them draws the runes for a different runeword; Me, Dragon, Essence, Fire, Metal, Spirit, Soul, Passion, Magic. All of them have to do with things that he wants this wand to draw from in some way or another, whether literally or physically. Some of it is just to make sure that no one will be able to use it to its full potential unless it is him.
After that, he draws several curved lines going down the length of the wand itself, curving around the circumference so that each line goes around the wand one full rotation before meeting at the tip. He creates seven sections with these curved lines-and really, what better number than seven for this?-and draws in seven more runewords, one in each section; Best, Flow, Focus, Guide, Success, Skill, Power.
With everything planned out, Alex gets to carving, deciding to go with some handheld power tools to help make sure these runes are as neat and tidy as he can get them, rather than relying on his somewhat shoddy knife-work. Although it creates a lot of sawdust, it gets the job done fast, and soon enough he’s making the mana threads and stabilizing them. Thankfully the black walnut and the larger size of the piece of wood in question has done wonders for the mana...capacity, is probably what you’d call it? Yeah, the mana capacity of the wood, which gives it a comfortably warm feeling when held in hand.
After spending a good portion of his mana getting all of the runes imbued, and then giving each individual runeword their own webs of connection, Alex gets a little stumped at how to connect all of the runewords together without it just becoming a jumbled mess. He thinks over the problem for a while, and eventually decides to wing it a little. After all, he’s already winging it with pretty much this whole project.
Using his drill press and some careful application of clamp-fu to keep the wand stable, Alex manages to drill into the base of the handle, up through it and stopping just where the handle and the wand proper meet. This leaves him with an empty space that he can fill with a ‘core’ to help focus the gathering connections...hopefully.
Taking a large, long iron nail that he made sure was just a little thicker than the hole he made, he cleans off all of its surfaces until it’s practically sparkling. He very gently taps the nail into the hole in the handle until it is snugly fitted inside, the only thing showing that there is a nail in the wood being the nail head at the base. With a marker and some harder power tool heads to cut into the iron, Alex carves the Jera rune into the nailhead.
Although it may be a bit of a stretch, the meaning assigned to Jera is Harvest, which could mean other things than harvesting crops. First he activates each of the runewords on the handle sections, and once each of them has solidified into singular runewords he adds connections between each of them and to the as yet activated Jera rune.
He can feel the runewords all mingling with each other through these connections, forming a more complex idea of what they are supposed to do. He’d almost call it a rune sentence. It feels like a bit of a confused mess, since there isn’t much really connecting all of the individual ideas together, though he’ll hopefully be fixing that in just a second. Finally, he activates the Jera rune, but instead of the imagery of plants and crops growing and being harvested with the seasons, he replaces that with the imagery of his magic flowing through the runes, channelling into the iron core, and moving through the wand, becoming one large rune connection in and of itself.
This is the first time that he’s used self-referential imagery for changing the nature of a rune’s thread, but it seems to take well, giving a defined purpose to the entire rune sentence. Even though the connections between the runes aren’t quite physical, he can feel a new one forming inside of the nail while growing past it and into the wood of the wand itself, ending at the tip of the wand.
Satisfied with the result so far, Alex moves on to the last of the runewords on the wand itself, humming and hawing at how exactly to make the connections. Eventually he decides to make something like a mesh funnel of connections-at least that’s how he envisions it in his head-like a filter and focusing lens at the same time, which will hopefully help direct the mana that will be flowing through the wood before it leaves the shaft.
As each runeword becomes activated, he makes a connection from the new one to the one before it, eventually making something like a seven point ring. Even as the runewords try to consolidate into a rune sentence, he pulls the ring of connections down the length of the wand, stretching it out from the base to the tip. After that, he makes a connection between every other runeword on the wand, before stretching that ring down the length of the wand as well, twisting it just a little so that the connections don’t overlap and accidentally fuse together.
Eventually, each of the seven runewords on the wand shaft are practically humming with purpose, as is the rest of the wand as the connections all settle into one big rune paragraph. The idea inside of the runes is complex and deep, and yet also feels so simple to understand; Take energy, channel it through the wand, and focus it as it goes. As he looks over his work with satisfaction and a little bit of awe, Lucy decides to pop up and inform him of something.
Nice wand, where’d you get it? Tongue [https://www.royalroadcdn.com/public/smilies/tongue.png]
Wooden Runic Wand: Above Average
This wand is made of black walnut and features a small iron core. It has a number of runes combined together to increase the magical flow and focusing abilities of this wand, giving it a generally increased ability as a magical focus. This is especially strong for Dragonoids and/or those with an affinity for fire and metal, and works best for its creator.
Congratulations! You are the first person to make a magical focus that is itself magical in some capacity, rather than using a mundane item to focus mana through. For that, you’ve earned yourself an Origin Achievement: [The First Artificer].
“...Excuse me what.”