No one raised their hand at the lecturer’s question. Jeb wasn’t sure whether that was because nobody had a question, or if they were all just too afraid to ask it. Candidate Therese clearly felt the same way, because she shrugged and sat down in front of the board. “Well then, I suppose that I can expect each of you to finish this laboratory early. Work with whoever is at your table. If you don’t want to work with them, find another student to work with next time.”
Declan turned to Jeb. “What do you think we should start with?”
Jeb looked at the notes he had taken from the laboratory manual. “It seems like most of this project can be done in parallel. I’m happy to either enchant the detector or the source. Do you have a preference?”
Declan didn’t respond at first, stopping to stare at his own notebook. “I didn’t notice that. I’d rather make the source, if that’s alright with you.”
Jeb nodded. Truthfully, he had been more excited to make the detector, so that worked out fine for him. Both of them grabbed a sheet of the thin metal and began working.
The source design, Jeb knew, was simple enough. The first part was nothing more than a small Enchantment which wasted nine tenths of the Mana poured into it and sent the final tenth forward in a directed beam. Declan presumably knew how many thaums were in a point of his Mana, so he would know how many passes through that Enchantment he would need.
As soon as Jeb had that thought, he stopped working on the detector for a moment, checking the Schematic he had been given. Truthfully, Schematic was a generous term for what the Academy had supplied him with. The manual contained twenty or so Sub Enchantments, all of which seemed design to fit together almost, but not quite, perfectly. Jeb decided that he really only needed two of them.
At the core of the experiment, he had an Enchantment that would light up when it was exposed to any amount of Magic. The size of the Enchantment and the amount of Magic exposed to it determined both the color and the intensity of the glow. The lab manual was not explicit about what color he was supposed to detect, but the background reading that the Librarian had given him said that the early experiments all shone out green light. With no other reason to pick what he was doing, Jeb had copied down the equations for how the Enchantment would light up given a certain amount of Magic, then solved for what size he would need to make the Enchantment for a single thaum to cause it to glow green.
From there, he needed a secondary Enchantment to multiply that light signal. Those could be fed either by him, or by the ambient Mana through a much more complex Enchantment. Jeb had eagerly noted down the Enchantment to draw in ambient Mana, still hopeful that he would someday be able to make something to automatically Attune Elemental Mana for his bees. Since there was a limited time in the laboratory period, though, Jeb did not think that he would have the time to make that Enchantment on top of everything else that he would need. With that in mind, he quickly sketched out the Enchantment he would be using to multiply the light on a sheet of the gold leaf, idly noticing that no one else seemed to be scribing anything yet.
He finished the light multiplier quickly. Gold was reflective enough that it took hardly any effort at all to convince it that it actually shone light back brighter. After he had forced the runes onto the sheet of foil came the far harder part of the Enchantment: physically manipulating the leaf into the shape he wanted without deforming any of the runes on the Enchantment. Jeb idly wished that he had learned Least Shape Gold, knowing that would have made it far easier.
To his relief, the folds he needed to make on the sheet were far away from any of the runes. Jeb knew that had to have been an intentional choice on the part of the Schematic’s designer, and made a note to do something similar in the future. After finishing the light multiplier, he decided to test it.
Tearing off a small section of paper, Jeb used a quick flash of Least Create Fire and Least Move Fire to etch the light Enchantment onto a sheet of paper. Only after he finished did he consider how difficult that should have been for him. He had needed to move the fire at the perfect speed and into a perfect shape. It’s nice that all the work I was doing on my Ephemeral Song translated so well into my control over Glyphs. The fact that his Magic Affinity had gone up so much since he had last worked with Least Move Fire had to have helped as well.
Just before he fed a small amount of Mana into the Enchantment, Jeb paused. He had the uncomfortable feeling that there were members of his class staring at him. Setting the no longer smoking scrap of paper down, he looked up and around at his classmates.
Declan was pointedly not looking at Jeb as he shaped his Enchantment. Jeb frowned when he saw that Declan had been making a number of the reducing Enchantments, rather than using one of the mirror Enchantments they had been given to reflect the light. He shrugged, assuming that Declan had decided that calibrating the mirrors to pass light just right was more finicky than he wanted on the first day of the laboratory. Shaking himself out of distraction, he looked out further into the classroom.
At least half of the class was staring at him, with more than a few of the ones who weren’t intentionally looking away. Even the Candidate was looking at him with some amount of confusion. She walked over towards him as they made eye contact.
“Did I do something wrong?” Jeb asked when Therese drew near.
She didn’t respond at first, looking over the shape that Jeb had made. As she did, Jeb noticed that none of the other tables had a finished detector Enchantment yet. They all seemed to be working on making a number of the reducing Enchantments instead.
“Not with this detector,” she said after a long moment, “though I would ask you why you started with the detector.”
“The laboratory assignment for the day is making two distinct Enchantments,” Jeb replied. “Since there are two of us,” he nodded to Declan, “it made sense to me that we would both work on one of the Enchantments.”
She nodded. “If you are asking why everyone is paying more attention to you than their own projects,” she rolled her eyes, and Jeb noticed a few heads ducking back down to their stations, “I assume that has something to do with you using two Glyphs just now.”
“Oh,” Jeb replied.
“Why did you char an Enchantment into a piece of paper?” she continued, pushing the conversation forward.
“I wanted to test to see whether my multiplier worked,” Jeb explained. She gestured for him to continue, so he thought for a moment. “I didn’t want to waste any of the laboratory materials, and the light Enchantment shouldn’t be too dependent on material. Even if it is, I’ll be feeding in far more Magic than it’s calibrated for, so it should still glow.”
“Understood. Please wait one moment before activating your Enchantment.” Therese reached into the table and pulled out a spectral pane of glass around the Enchanted foil and Jeb. “Go ahead.”
Jeb frowned. “What is the glass for?”
“You’ll see in a moment.”
Jeb carefully oriented the output of the box away from him. One of the very few dangers listed in the manual was accidentally staring into the beam of outputted light, especially if everything was not calibrated perfectly. He tried to feed Mana into the light Enchantment, before realizing he had only scribed it.
“I formed you out of fire, which is bright.” His will bore on the paper, which acquiesced, accepting the Enchantment. Pouring the smallest amount of Mana he could in, Jeb made it glow.
“In retrospect,” Jeb said as the ghostly glass slid back down the table, “a multiplier designed to take a single thaum of light and make it bright enough for us to see-”
Therese cut him off, “would be far too bright to look at when fed with far more light than that. Truthfully, I’m just impressed that your Enchantment is still active. Normally people who test their Enchantments like that burn them out from the overload.”
“What did the glass do, though?” Jeb asked.
“With the intensity of light that you had coming out of the Enchantment, it could very easily light something on fire or blind one of your classmates if it reflected off of anything. Given that there are hundreds of sheets of gold foil throughout the room, it was not worth the risk, especially since the light would have dispersed if the Enchantment had failed.” With that, she walked away.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Jeb opened the laboratory handbook again, finding the Enchantment which limited the output brightness of the multiplier. “Ah,” he said, and Declan turned. “Sorry,” Jeb said, “I just realized what the point of this Sub Enchantment was. How is making the source going for you?”
Declan shrugged. “It’s going, I suppose. It’s nice that I get to repeat the same Enchantment over and over, especially since I’m going to end up at one of the industrial Enchanting firms after the Academy.”
Jeb nodded, hiding his confusion.
As the two kept staring into each others’ eyes, Jeb’s mind started thinking about whether he could fit the limiter onto his existing multiplier, or if he would need to remake it. Declan suddenly blurted out, “well, I’ll get back to making these,” and broke the eye contact. Jeb kept nodding, deciding that the new Enchantment could just fit over the output.
He had noticed that none of the other students seemed to be etching their Enchantments into the gold foil before forming them. Shrugging, he tried to do the same to the piece of gold foil in front of him. You are a limiter. He carefully considered the exact shape of the Enchantment and each of the runes within it, impressing his will onto them. It failed, and Jeb was left with a slight headache.
He quickly jotted down a note to ask someone how they Enchanted without etching into their materials after the laboratory session. After inscribing the runes onto the sheet of gold foil, the Enchantment took much more easily. From there, all that was left was making the actual detector.
Jeb looked back at the calculations for how large of an Enchantment he would need to make. It was far smaller than he felt comfortable etching. Even with as stable as his hands were, moving the fractions of a hair’s width that he would need to was beyond the level of control he had.
Sighing, Jeb picked up the manual again, flipping to the Enchantment which would mirror his movements at a tenth the size. He quickly made and coupled three of them together, so that he could draw the light producing Enchantment a thousand times larger. Running through the calculations, at the new scale, he would still be drawing a fairly small Enchantment. Thankfully, it was a simple one, comprising just a few runes. He drew it and looked at the four Enchantments he’d made.
Each of the smaller ones was glowing slightly, which made sense once he’d noticed it. There was a fair amount of ambient Mana in the air. Jeb sighed and started working on the Enchantment for blocking out ambient Mana. It was vaguely similar to the one he had made to hide how much Mana his lute emitted, which brought back the memories of learning Enchanting so that he could make his mother a birthday gift.
Jeb’s eyes misted up slightly, and he closed them. He could do all the Enchanting he needed with his eyes closed, at least for a few minutes.
Jeb’s Status Sheet at End of Chapter:
Jeb Humdrum Human Age: 16 Class: Wizard Level: 3 Experience: 775/204
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Total Statistic Load: 623 Physical Load: 228 Strength: 52 Dexterity: 53 Endurance: 54 Vitality: 55 Presence: 14
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Mental Load: 395 Intelligence: 78 Willpower: 85 Magic Affinity: 84 Mana Depth: 74 Charisma: 74
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Mana: 1755
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Glyph Attunement: 31 Least Shape Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Earth (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Earth - Efficient (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Lesser Shape Earth (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Least Shape Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Shape Water - Efficient (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Lesser Shape Water (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Least Hold Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Conjure Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Conjure Water - Efficient (Modified) Tier 3 Spell Least Destroy Water (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Air (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Move Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Hold Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Destroy Fire (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Least Create Mud (Modified) Tier 2 Spell Attune Earth Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Water Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Water Mana - Efficient (Modified) Tier 2 Spell Attune Air Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Fire Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Attune Sand Mana (Modified) Tier 0 Spell Least Create Sand (Modified) Tier 1 Spell Attune Sand Mana - Efficient (Modified) Tier 2 Spell
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Bard Songs Known: 1 Lute Enforcement
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Skills: Meditation Spell Glyphing Gift of Gab Identify Soil Savvy Animal Handling Fertilizing Lute Playing Singing Musician Pollination Brewing Distilling Smithing Wood Identification Woodworking Soil Improvement Glassblowing Magic
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Achievements: Focused Meditator Student of Magic Glyph Specializer
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Quests: Major: Slay the Dragon of the West (Progressive)