Maroftis sat as three Dwarves attached the armor to verify that it fit correctly. Two of them were standing on the table next to him, while the third worked from the ground. Prior to drinking from the font, he had been the largest member of the group, but afterwards he had grown significantly larger. He had grown taller, but the main increase had been in overall girth. He was pretty massive, and the armor that was required to fit him was not easy for the Dwarves to handle. He wondered how he was going to be able to get the armor on and off by himself, but if he was unable to, then the others would help. The armor would benefit the entire party since he was the primary tank. It would mitigate the damage that he received, thus keeping him up and on whatever big bad they faced. He had taken chances in the past, and sometimes he had been knocked out of the battle until his regeneration or Vanya’s heals or potions had brought him back. He was looking forward to a time when he would be more difficult to damage.
He had eaten before coming to the foundry, but he was already hungry again, so he munched on some dried meat while he waited. Vultressant was over talking to Rena. He was likely pumping her for information, as he wanted to be able to enchant items himself. He had just made that globe thing, so he might be able to enchant items soon. Maroftis also wanted to know how to enchant things, but as a fighter-type, he would have a harder time accomplishing that than a casting class. The game had said that a player’s class didn’t prohibit learning things, but some would be more difficult to learn. He preferred easy to hard, so he would focus on his strengths.
Blassie was notably absent, but his job was already complete. Maroftis would have preferred to have the Dwarf around to check the final product before the enchantment process began, but everyone here seemed to be competent, so he put it out of his mind. He had finished eating his jerky and had almost nodded off a few times before Rena and Vultressant approached him. “How do I look?” he asked when they arrived.
“Even more massive,” Vultressant replied.
“Damn right,” he said, grinning. Rena’s eyes grew large, and she took a step back. Maroftis had gotten used to people being frightened of him, and he had been told on a number of occasions that when he smiled, he looked like he was preparing to eat someone. He held up a hand, which really could only be described as a claw, to try to assuage her fears. “Sorry. I don’t bite.” The woman did not look reassured, but she came closer anyway.
Rena spoke with one of the Dwarves before turning to Vultressant and Maroftis. “I have everything prepared. Follow me.” She led them to a large room containing a table with several bottles as well as a tray with all of the essences that would be used in the enchanting process. There was also a large bench that she directed him to sit on.
“Are you going to leave the armor on me?” he asked, concerned at the thought. When she nodded, he asked, “What if there’s a problem? I don’t want to blow up with the armor.”
Rena frowned. “It will not blow up. There is only a small risk of the enchantment harming you, and wearing it increases the likelihood of the item bonding to you. The benefit of that far outweighs any risks.”
“Says the lady who isn’t at risk of having armor melted to her body.” Maroftis understood the advantage of bonded items. The most significant perk was that anything bonded to a player would respawn with them—or at least, that was the rumor. Despite this, he couldn’t shake his unease at the thought of wearing the armor during the enchanting process.
“I have never heard of that happening, but I suppose that there is a first time for everything,” Rena said and began to open some of the bottles. Maroftis was not reassured by her statement, but he decided to let the matter drop.
The armor lacked a helmet, but it covered pretty much everywhere else. Rena started on his right shoulder. She emptied a small amount of liquid out of a bottle onto his armor there and touched one of the emerald essences to it while she focused her mana on the piece. The area glowed as she cast, and after about five minutes, the light died away and the essence was gone. Rena then took a drink from a flask that she had attached to her belt, and she waited for at least a quarter of an hour before applying the same procedure to another area of his armor.
Maroftis felt no changes in the places that she had enchanted, and his fears of explosion had been allayed by the time that food had been brought to the room. They all ate in relative silence, which was a pleasant change from the many questions that Vultressant had been asking Rena during her breaks between enchanting the pieces—she really wasn’t getting much rest. The breaks between castings had grown larger each time. She had said that part of the time was spent regaining her mana, but she also needed additional time to rest as the day went on simply due to the physical toll the enchanting was taking on her body. The liquid in her flask was part of her recuperation process.
Vultressant finished his lunch, which had been some sort of meat stew. “Is there anything that I can do to help?” he asked Rena, who had also finished eating.
“No,” she said simply.
“I think that I could prime a section now, and you could rest for the final enchantment.”
“I need to do this all myself, or when I start enchanting, I might not be able to connect sections that you have prepared.”
“Why is that?”
“When I interlace the pieces together, I will need to remember exactly what I have done to each piece. If you work on one or more of them, then I will have to spend some time and mana inspecting your work. That is an unneeded complication that would be thrust into an already difficult final process.”
Vultressant thought for a moment. “Couldn’t you just inspect the part that I did after I finish it?”
“No. Once the piece is primed, it is set. I would have to redo the entire process again if I checked it before the final step.”
“Oh,” he said, and then his eyes focused in a way that made it clear that he was interacting with his HUD.
Maroftis thought that Vultressant was probably making notes or checking previous notes. “I know that you want to learn how to do this,” he said, “but let’s let the professional do her job.” It would be great if Vultressant could enchant for the party, as it would save them a bunch of coin, but this was his armor, and there was no need to risk his friend screwing it up. Let him practice on his own items.
“Yeah, sorry,” Vultressant said, shrugging, “I just want some practice.”
“If you think that you might want to be an apprentice, I could take you on,” Rena said.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Really? How long does it take, and what is the pay?” he said excitedly.
“We could make a one-year contract, at ten silver a day.”
“Ten silver? Well, that isn’t much of a wage, but I guess that I would be learning.”
Rena shook her head. “No, it is not a wage. You would pay me ten silver each day that you trained.”
“Oh, well, that’s even less cool.”
“I don’t think that we can lose our blaster anyway,” Maroftis interjected. He wanted to put a stop to that line of questioning; he knew that Vultressant would be tempted even if he had to be the one to do the paying. Vultressant nodded, and Rena prepared to work on the next piece of his armor.
It was late afternoon by the time the Enchantress began preparations for the final enchantment. She had been at it all night and most of the day, and she looked exhausted. Only the sapphire essence remained, and she held it to his chest while she focused her mana there. The armor pieces began to connect to each other, and the entire thing started to form around his body. When the essence had finally vanished, the armor fit him like a bodysuit. He looked at his claws, and where there used to be gauntleted gloves now looked like his claws dipped into paraffin, only instead of wax it was a green metal. He tried not to move since Rena was still casting. He dared not look down to see the transformation of the boots, but the armor felt snug around his feet as it had formed around those as well.
A few minutes later, there was a bright flash, and Rena started to stumble. Vultressant saw her falter and was able to catch her before she fell. “Thank you,” she said to Vultressant. She steadied herself and walked around Maroftis, examining her handiwork. “It is done,” she said and sat down. It looked to Maroftis like Rena had aged several years, but he guessed that fatigue could do that.
Maroftis walked around, noting the noise his armor made against the stone ground. While the pieces had clanked together when he entered the room, now the suit was silent except for the soles of his feet. He had always walked barefoot, as his feet were well protected and their shape made normal shoes or boots impractical. This would take a little getting used to, especially as the noise made him even less stealthy—although that had hardly been his strong suit before. He thought that some leather wrappings around his feet would probably muffle or even eliminate the sound made from metal hitting the ground as he walked. Some role-playing games made it difficult to walk around quietly in armor, and while most online games did not make an issue of it, there were a few in which sounds helped you determine if an enemy player was around. He lacked the stealth skill, so he would be no match for Taloc or Ewtain when it came to moving quietly, but he wanted to be no worse now than he had been without the armor.
He checked his interface to determine the properties of the armor.
Emraldium Armor:
Bonded to: Maroftis
Physical Damage Mitigation: 35%
Spell Damage Mitigation: 5%
Energy Damage Mitigation: 85%
He focused first on the bonded trait, which confirmed that he was the only one who could use the armor and that it would remain with him after respawn, dispelling any doubts about the rumor. He went back to look at each of the other attributes, and he found that the spell damage mitigation stacked with the other two types. This meant that if he were attacked by an energy spell, then the mitigation would be 90%, and if the spell just did physical damage, then it would prevent 40% of that damage.
The next thing that he looked for was a way to remove the armor. He felt around, and there were no seams or obvious way to remove it normally, so he went back to his interface and thought the words ‘remove armor’. The armor glowed and split open from his neck to his groin. It then began separating from his body. After about a minute, the opening was wide enough for him to step out of the armor, and after he did so, the glow subsided. The armor remained standing open. “That was about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!” he exclaimed in excitement.
“What does it do?” Vultressant asked.
Maroftis projected the properties of the armor to show Vultressant. He explained how the spell damage worked with the other mitigation types.
Vultressant whistled. “That’s amazing. And it looked like the armor was moving as you moved.”
Maroftis nodded. “Yeah, it fits like a glove and is as flexible as one too. I need some leather wraps or other noise-cancelling ideas for the feet, but otherwise it’s perfect.” He turned to Rena, who was visibly exhausted, and said, “Thank you so much.”
She gave a weak smile. “I have heard about the possibility of armor fitting to its host during an enchanting, but I had never seen it for myself until today. I will research what might have caused that effect so that I can duplicate it in the future.”
“It made the armor lighter, too.”
She shook her head. “No. It may feel lighter, but the weight is all there—it is just distributed evenly over your body. A normal suit of armor has most of the weight supported by the hips and shoulders, but this one acts like a layer of skin,” she paused, “or, in your case, scales.”
He thanked her again and tried to put the armor in his inventory. He knew that wearing it around town would draw even more stares. Nothing happened. He looked at the notification that he had just received: You may not store this item.
“Uh, I can’t put it into my inventory.”
“Why not?” Vultressant asked He turned to Rena and looked at her questioningly.
“Many magical items cannot be stored in an interdimensional container,” she said. “It is to protect it from easily being stolen.”
“How can someone steal things from an interdimensional space?” Vultressant asked.
“No, that is not what I mean at all.” Rena looked exasperated. Well, she was wiped out from the enchanting, so she might be quick to snap. She took in a deep breath. “What I mean is that many items are protected against thieves walking into someone’s estate and making off with valuable items. No one will be able to steal your armor without physically taking it away from you. The downside is that you have the same prohibition against storing your own item, but that minor inconvenience hardly nullifies the benefit.”
That made sense. He wondered if he should give this information to Ewtain or just wait until he found out the hard way—like the next time the Night Stalker tried to steal something and found out that he couldn’t inventory it. He grinned broadly at the thought.
Rena held up her hands defensively. “Apologies, but it really is to your benefit. It might be inconvenient, but it will be harder to steal. If you need to store it somewhere, take it to the bank; they have a workaround for the bonded item storage.”
He realized that his smile still looked threatening, so he tried to reassure her. “Sorry, but this is my happy face,” he said, pointing to his mouth. “Although wouldn’t it be protected better if it were in my inventory? Then no one would be able to get it but me.”
She relaxed, and after a moment she answered his question. “If you were compelled to remove it from your container, then it could be stored in another and easily moved.”
“Why would someone even want it when it’s bonded to me?”
“The metal is valuable enough to make it worth the effort, but it is also possible to remove a bond—although the cost would almost certainly outweigh the value of the item in this case.” She yawned and took a sip from her flask before continuing. “This particular item is set to conform to your body, and I doubt that aspect of the armor could be transferred to another, bonded or not, so it would likely be useless to anyone else anyway, except for the metal value.”
“What’s the metal worth?” Vultressant asked.
Rena considered the question. “Blassie could give you a number, but it is worth thousands of silver. It is a tier three metal, and that particular metal would have provided 20% mitigation to physical damage and 5% to spell damage even if it was not enchanted. The focus essence that was used, or possibly some of the lesser essences, added the defense to energy attacks. The Crystal Devourer essences had traits for both lightning damage and protection, so these were the likely contributors to the energy defense. The extra physical damage protection was due to the tier two enchantment being successfully completed, although I only expected it to go up to 30% and not 35%.” She yawned again. “I require rest, so if there are no further questions…”
Vultressant seemed on the verge of asking another question, but before he could bother the woman again, Maroftis hastily interjected, “No, we’re done.” He glanced at Vultressant, who sighed but held his questions for another time. Seriously, the little guy was relentless sometimes.
Maroftis realized he had to don the armor to take it with him. Luckily, the procedure for putting it on was almost identical to removing it. People would just have to stare.