Tom frowned at the incredibly complicated twirls of wire in front of him. He could only think one thing: how was he supposed to duplicate this in miniature?
April beamed at him. “Yes, it’s a lot more complex than the rituals you’re used to. But there’s a good explanation for that,” she added hurriedly, likely responding to the growing annoyance on Tom’s face. “When a ritualist creates their rituals, most of the work is actually being done behind the scenes by how they infuse the magic. For this bracelet, all the functions have to be captured by physical representation. That includes the link to the wearer, the casting of the specific danger sense spell, and the parameters for it to run under. That’s why it’s so intricate.”
“Then what’s the point of the precognition skills?”
“They power everything. Without them, the artefact would have been only a fifth as powerful. Listen, I know this is hard to follow.” She flicked her fingers, and the spell form of Heal Muscle appeared above the bracelet, glowing in the air. “You recognise this, right?”
“Of course.”
“It’s a simplified three-dimensional representation, but you know that it’s actually a four-dimensional construct, courtesy of the...” She nodded at the folder. “And of the experience you have of actually casting it.” She clicked her fingers again, and then suddenly almost a hundred of the wireframes appeared. “That is basically what the entire spell looks like when you strive to capture all four dimensions. For a ritualist,” she clicked her fingers once more, and the hundred wire frames collapsed first into a single three-dimensional model, and then again into a two-dimensional one. “That’s what they draw. The other two dimensions are captured in how they infuse the magic. You definitely don’t have the skill to do that, so you need to carve everything out. Instead of this,” she nodded at the two-dimensional diagram. “You actually need to create this.” Once more, a hundred wire frames were displayed.
Tom shook his head. “No, it doesn’t make sense. Crafters don’t do this. They enchant closer to how ritualists do it”
“That’s correct. If they had to physically engrave everything, they’d never get anything done. Instead, they have a wide variety of specialised skills and spells to effectively duplicate what ritualists do. Listen, crafting properly is easy to do if you can buy the supporting spells and skills straight from the experience shop. But it’s almost impossible to craft like that if you have to develop your supporting skills yourself. This only works if you carve out the long form design.”
“So, you’re telling me I need to memorise this and imprint it on wood?” Tom scratched his head. “Any advice on how to do that?”
“Practice and repetition make perfect.”
“I meant on a technical level.”
She smiled. “When you’re tense like this, you’re way too easy to tease.”
“If it’s too easy, don’t do it.”
“There’s no fun in that. But to answer your question, I’ve seen it done lots of ways. Best practice is to use a mana-sensitive wood, create the ritual framework out of that, and then grow a harder, magic-resistant wood to cover it up perfectly. But while the skill you got is awesome, that level of control is probably beyond you. Instead, I’ll get you to take an existing bracelet and magically change the lines of wood to create the physical representation. It won’t produce a super high-quality product, but it’ll satisfy the GOD’s shop.”
Tom stared despairingly at what he had to create. He couldn’t imagine carving this, even if he was efficient. If this is what he had to do, each bracelet would take a few hours to process. “There has to be a shortcut, surely.”
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“Not really. The physical representation can be created by voids. I’ve seen people do it and then push a heated resin through all the holes to fill the null spaces. That method is about twice as fast, but you’ll need to learn a new skill to duplicate it, which will, in turn, cost you three months. And the final product is not as good. Once you’re practiced with the technique, you’ll be able to produce bracelets of sufficient quality to sell it to the GOD’s shop, of course, but that’s another month or two lost while you get up to speed. It’s just not worth it.”
With a dismayed look, he stared down at the complex patterns the metal made. “This will be painful.” He muttered. In a way, he almost wished the training for this was as brutal as that for the other two skills. While bits of it had hurt, that was more interesting, to be honest, than sitting on a chair doing this shit.
“I’m sure you didn’t think for a moment that crafting was going to be easy, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” he admitted. A plain bracelet of tier-one wood appeared on the table. He picked it up and then slowly he got to work, duplicating the metal pattern in front of him. He could get lost in the process on occasions, but, just like he had always suspected, crafting wasn’t fun, and was almost always frustrating.
Despite his Living Wood Growth skill gain, he left dispirited.
As each trial day approached, he found himself dreading it. The fighting remained fun, but the training to create danger sense bracelets was just annoying.
Another month passed as he was focusing on the magic and the physical games outside the trial and the skills within it.
His exploration of the bat lair also became a routine. He would sneak out of bed, duck into the supply room, grab a couple of antidotes and a healing potion, as well as his trusty daggers, and then leave. Twice the bell rang while he was in the supply room, and, as Dimitri had cautioned, he hid in one of the alcoves. It went smoothly.
Then, having gathered all the materials he needed, he would go down the gently sloping tunnel until he got to the lair. Then he would get ready to enter. For the same reason that he had stopped collecting the armour, he stripped off his standard top because of its high defensive values. Ultimately, he was here to develop his precognition skills, and donning armour worked against that aim. He had to be at risk to force a faster progression. April had made it clear that, if he wanted into the divine trial, he had to push hard at everything.
Then, shoeless, topless, wearing just his pants and carrying two daggers, he entered the lair proper.
As the pungent odour assaulted his nose, Tom relaxed. The lair was familiar. With Dampen Senses dialled up to seventy percent level, he walked into the lair confidently.
Without his top, it was uncomfortably cold, and it felt nothing like the first few times he had come down here. He tried to make himself walk randomly, to little avail. He suspected that he must have memorised the tunnel layout subconsciously, because he rarely ran into walls, and the occasional natural step was handled easily.
As he walked, he concentrated on how he felt. Every now and again, he would move randomly, because you never knew when a bat was lurking. The movement was usually a quick sidestep or an elaborate slash with one or both daggers.
He was over two minutes in and hadn’t been attacked yet. The bats were usually more responsive, and he was starting to wonder if maybe another group was already in the lair and killing bats ahead of him.
Randomly, he swung an arm, and the knife slammed into something soft. He winced as its teeth sunk into his knuckle.
Despite that, Tom smiled.
He could imagine the bat squawking in pain as it attempted to comprehend what had happened. How did its oblivious prey lash out at exactly the wrong time, when it was committed to an attack run? He wondered if it understood anything other than the fact that it was dying. He flicked his wrist, and it went flying off the blade. If his hearing hadn’t been suppressed, Tom would have heard it thump into a wall, or maybe to the ground if the toss was down a tunnel.
It didn’t matter; the knife had gone through the centre of its mass. It was dead.
It had, unfortunately, also tagged him, and he was bleeding. However, thanks to his useful sideways evolution, it was a trickle, only a couple of droplets spread across the wounds. He wasn’t sure it was helpful, but he spent a point of fate, conjuring up in his mind an image of his natural blood clotting speeding up. Then he focused on manipulating that sideways evolution to make it do more and actively seal up the small puncture wounds.
There was no mana involved in the process, but he had vague hopes of it leading him to develop a trait like Resilient Body, or help him get Regeneration. He knew both of those were possible, but wasn’t sure of how to force their development beyond spell evolutions. Something like that would have to wait until after he had Touch Heal at least.