048

When Erick woke up, he Favored [Ward] for 75% less cost, which turned his 870 mana daily [Personal Ward] into a 1740 point generalized damage shield. Jane was right; he should have done this a while ago. It didn’t feel or look different than normal; he could still feel the air on his skin, his touch was not dulled. The subtle white glint on his fingernails and in the crook of his elbows had not changed, even though the [Ward] had doubled in power.

He almost spent 10 more points on Willpower so he could have put 1170 mana into his daily [Personal Ward], but his Class Ability Quest to double his mana said:

 

 

Something told him that increasing his mana by 1200 points would be harder than increasing his mana by 900 points. He did buy [Metalshape], though, which was right past [Stoneshape], since he would need to enchant his gear himself.

 

 

[Metalshape] was practically a carbon copy of [Stoneshape], but much smaller.

 

 

There was no [Jewelshape]. [Stoneshape] could work on jewels and glass, if the mage was skilled enough. Erick could already do glass to a certain extent; well enough to fix a window without [Mend] anyway. He would need to learn how to work with gems, but he needed the gems, first.

Hmm! Now that Erick was looking at [Metalshape] and [Stoneshape]…

Were there comparable skills for all of the Shaping spells? What was above [Airshape]? Anything? Erick searched the Script for [Plasmashape], then [Skyshape], then [Windshape], but got nothing; no results. Maybe there wasn’t a comparable skill—

[Soundshape]!?

… Nope. No [Soundshape]. That was the problem with searching the Script; unless you knew the exact name of what you were looking for, Search always returned zero results. Whatever! There was too much to do today to be worrying about the secrets of [Airshape], if there were any secrets in the first place.

Erick was ready for the day. Soon, he was outside of the house, Poi following, just as the sun was cresting over the eastern walls of the city. The sky was blue and cloudless, but there was hardly any noise. Sure, there were the distant sounds of a city waking up, but Erick missed the sounds of birds…

He missed the sounds of birds a lot, actually. Welp! No time like the present to pop out an attempt at [Familiar].

[Telepathy].

[Scry].

[Conjure Force Elemental].

A blue box appeared.

 

 

That text was disturbing, but the ‘bird’ that appeared on the ground in front of Erick did not look that dangerous. It was a cousin to a kiwi bird, if anything. Flightless and cute, like a fuzzy white coconut on chopstick legs, it looked at Erick and clicked its chopstick-like beak at him, before trilling out a melody of birdsong.

Erick laughed loud.

Erick’s laugh startled the poor little thing, but only for a second. It went right back to birdsong; chirping and singing some random sing-song trills and squeaks, extending its neck and body-length beak out ahead as it hopped and strutted over to the garden. Erick turned to Poi, to see that Teressa had come out of the house, following the noise. She stood behind Poi, smiling at the bird, then walked back inside, humming some tune.

“No songbirds in Spur, eh?” Erick asked. “No migratory birds, either?”

“None, sir.” Poi said, “Rats tend to flourish well enough, especially now that the shadowolves are dead, but the farm cats hunt everything that isn’t a chicken.”

“I’ve seen cats kill chickens before?”

“Everyone has to eat, sir.”

“True enough.” Erick nodded, then turned back to his kiwi bird. The white coconut was gently stepping through the potatoes. Erick put some mana into his thoughts, and pressed at the bird.

‘Hello, little guy.’

The coconut bird instantly crouched down, then looked around. He turned and saw Erick.

‘Yup. It’s me talking to you.’

The bird went abso-fucking-lutely insane, screaming a shrill cry into the sky as it leapt up and raced at Erick, its beak snapping in rage, its claws tearing across the dirt, its tiny, tiny wings flapping as hard as they could flap. Erick, startled, pulled the plug. The bird vanished in a poof and swirl of white mana, its corporeal form nothing more than a memory.

“Okay. So. That was a failure. I didn’t mean to get waylaid with this, but…” Erick looked up at the lemon tree. “Let’s start off in the air, perhaps.”

[Summon Birds].

A parrot appeared on a branch, then squawked loud enough to raise the dead. That one turned to white mist, too. So did the next seven birds, each of them posing their own problem. A rooster crowed at the sunrise, louder than the parrot. A hummingbird instantly starting attacking Erick the second he touched the bird’s mind. An ostrich the size of an orcol was not given the opportunity to do harm; that was was an instant banish. He tried to summon two birds at once, but only got a single quail that did nothing but run away. He tried to summon two birds, again, but got a single eagle that he quickly banished; its eyes were full of hunger, and it was looking at him. Then came another parrot, then a pigeon, neither of which were good for anything at all.

Then came a starling, summoned atop the stone table by the garden.

Erick touched its mind, and it did not recoil, or attack; it just stayed there, gently looking at Erick with pure white eyes.

‘Hello, little starling. How are you this morning?’

The bird cocked its head, but did nothing.

‘My name is Erick Flatt. Would you like to join me to walk around town today? I’ve got some errands to run. Or, you could just stick around here.’ Erick gestured to his house, then the garden. ‘Any place you want.’

The starling turned toward the house, then silently flitted up to the second story veranda to latch onto the railing and look out across the city.

Erick pushed a different bit of mana at the bird, trying to [Scry].

His viewpoint switched, just like with the normal spell, but the starling’s eyesight was much better than Erick’s. He could count the veins on a leaf, a hundred feet away. The starling moved its eyes as though Erick was controlling a [Scry]; the animal was under his control. Erick released the [Scry]. After his sight returned to his own eyes, Erick tried to cast a spell through the bird. He started with [Cleanse Aura], but the aura popped up around him; not the bird. Thick air flowed around Erick for a second before he canceled the spell and tried again.

His aura did not pop up out of the white starling. Erick had encountered this problem with the normal [Conjure Force Elemental]; he needed a matched pair of birds to cast an aura at range. And since he couldn’t seem to summon a pair of birds at a time with this spell…

Just to be sure. He summoned another bird, aiming for something small. A parakeet appeared on his open palm. Before the bird freaked out, Erick began releasing mana into the air. The parakeet fluffed in anger, but quickly relaxed and stayed on Erick’s palm, soaking up mana, flicking his tiny fluffy body like he was in a bird bath, splashing bits of white mana through the air.

The starling on the second floor veranda just stared.

Erick pushed [Cleanse Aura] into the smaller bird, aiming for the starling on the railing, but the starling did not get a [Cleanse Aura]; the parakeet did. The parakeet also instantly flew into a rage and was summarily banished. Erick frowned. Then he looked up at the starling.

Erick held out his arm like it was a bird stand; level and strong enough to support the starling’s weight, then mentally commanded the bird to land on his arm. The starling winged down to Erick, making no noise as it landed on his arm. The bird was a lot heavier than it appeared; it was under a foot tall, but it stared into Erick’s eyes, understanding what was about to happen.

“If I can’t imbue spells at range, then this is a failure.” Erick said, “Sorry, little guy.”

The starling spread its wings wide as it turned to mist.

Erick frowned at the dissipating cloud, then mentally grabbed the box for [Summon Birds] and crushed it, breaking something inside of himself at the same time. [Telepathy], [Scry], and [Conjure Force Elemental] all felt a tiny bit different; like old friends who had lost touch with one another. They couldn’t reconnect right now, but they could heal, then rejoin in some other way, some other day.

Erick sighed.

 

– – – –

 

The lady at the bank had Erick’s account ready in ten minutes.

She slid Erick a slip of paper, “Here is your current balance, sir.”

Erick’s dispensation from cleaning out Frontier and Kal’Duresh had come in; 5200 gold in 10 mana rads, each worth 5g apiece, as well as 9 grand-rads, each worth 1000g. His account balance before this was only 2400g, but now it had ballooned to…

To something that was not enough, considering his talks of adventuring gear with his daughter. The sort of gear Erick wanted was too expensive. He had to make it himself, of course, and that cut the cost considerably, but then there were mistakes to account for, as well as learning, and probably a whole bunch of smaller costs that Erick had yet to even imagine.

He needed to drop by the Mage Guild. He wanted to talk to Sizzi, anyway. Maybe they had remedial enchanting classes he could take, or at least some books on the subject. Erick had read that one Ancient Script for enchanting book Ulrick Ulrick had let him borrow. Knowing the Ancient Script had given him a starting point, but he needed actual reference material.

Erick thanked the bank lady; he would be back later.

 

– – – –

 

Erick sat with Sizzi in a corner of the lobby of the Mage’s Guildhouse; she had already handed him a small journal detailing her personal journey of failed [Familiar] attempts for the last several years.

“Tier 3 is as high as a responsible summoner will go, so it’s not a big deal to take a decade to get a [Familiar]. Some of us even consider [Familiar] —not the one in the Script, mind you— to be the pinnacle of the art.”

“You don’t want to create a living creature; I understand.”

“Exactly. I can already do practically everything I want with the base spell, so a [Familiar] is technically a luxury, and as a luxury, there’s a list of requirements.” Sizzi said, “It’s all in that journal; I recorded the results of each day.” She explained, “I need the ability to imbue the [Familiar] at range through either a paired summon or as a basic ability. To summon the same [Familiar] with the same false-mind each time. To have it be under five kilos and an acceptable shape; I’ve aimed for everything from rabbits to cats to birds, but almost anything is acceptable. To have it not decay too quickly. And finally, for it to have all the normal abilities of a [Familiar] with [Scry] and [Telepathy]. As a bonus, speaking through it would be good, but not necessary.” She said, “It’s a very basic list, but it’s very, very hard to hit all of those buttons.”

“How would you rank those in terms of importance?”

“The only one that’s unimportant is the shape, but that’s also the easiest to hit.” She said, “If you can’t hit them all, then you’re creating something that will never last; the point is to have a [Familiar], not something that needs a year to figure out what it is, every time you summon it.”

“Have you considered letting the creature choose its own form?”

Sizzi winced. “Yes. That does not turn out well. I do it that way every tenth day, anyway, just to try out something new. Most of the time you just get a collection of horrors, like tentacles or spikes or mouths. I actually hit almost all my goals once, but the creature that came out was a three meter-tall collection of fangs.” She shivered. “I could not keep that one. If it was smaller, I might have, but just— no. Not happening.” She added, “Go ahead and try to combine the spells any way you want, but if you don’t get all those aspects I listed, you’re better off breaking the spell and trying again. And by the way, I’m glad to see you’re doing okay.”

Erick smiled. “I’m feeling a lot better, but I’m taking a step back from SLR Particle spells, for now. Going to try for some large-sized stuff, though.”

Sizzi frowned. “Are you… sure?”

“Yes. I switched out a Class ability.” Erick said, “What happened out there should not happen again.”

“Oh?” Sizzi paused in surprise, then said, “Good? Good! Mother will be glad to hear that.”

“How did it look for you guys?”

Sizzi paled, saying, “Mother says that blood just started pouring out of you, flowing red for only the briefest moments before coming out as clear water. She’d never seen such a thing before; everyone was panicking. Poi jabbed you with that rod of [Treat Wounds] as fast as he could; the red would return only to be washed away again.”

Erick shivered. “Can you tell her that I’m sorry for giving her such a fright?”

“Of course.”

Erick added, “Oh. And I need to know what sort of books I should buy to learn more about enhancement enchantment. Do you have any idea where I should look for that?”

“You can buy those sorts of books in the Library. Just ask Tamarim. I think he’s the librarian today.”

“… I can?”

She said under her breath, “Most people can’t.”

Erick laughed.

 

– – – –

 

Orangescale Tamarim loaded Erick up with three textbooks from the enchanting course taught at the Mage’s Guild, and two advanced books, special ordered and kept in stock for special people passing through Spur, or people like Erick.

“We’re in the middle of a semester right now, but if you want to attend class, you can. It’s mostly remedial stuff and it’s all in these first three books, anyway. You’d be in class with 17 year old kids; freshly matriculated.”

“Maybe some other time. How much are these books?”

“20g for the normal textbooks, 117 for the other two. The advanced ones are put out by the Arcanaeum Consortium, and are updated every five years.” Tamarim grinned, saying, “I cannot wait to see what next year’s edition holds. They’re probably going to have to switch to new editions every year for a while.” Tamarim stilled. He chuckled. He smiled as he said, “Maybe… There’ll be new editions every year for the rest of my life.”

Erick laughed as he collected his books into his shoulderbag. “Thanks, Tamarim. Charge my account?”

“Of course, Archmage.”

 

– – – –

 

Erick stood under a [Weather Ward] just outside of the temple in the farms. Valok, Apogough, Krakina, and Poi stood nearby. Platinum rain fell all around them in a very peculiar pattern, because the sky was a checkerboard of silver clouds and blue, for miles and miles around; well past the edge of the farms. Erick felt his mana strain, gradually dipping down. It was actually difficult to maintain this configuration, even with all of his modifiers and Sculpt Spell. He let his [Exalted Storm Aura] flex back to almost normal; clouds flowed together, slowly. Erick tried to keep the cloud mostly out of Spur. But just to make sure…

Erick cast a [Scry], high into the air, then rushed it up, through the glimmering storm. He broke the upper surface and turned the [Scry] eye around, to look down.

Looking down from on high, the silver storm looked like a moon being eclipsed by Spur; like someone had taken a bite out of a cookie. The edges of the cloud were well past the farmland, and even with his initial guesses to correct for the new edge of the storm, he was raining in the city; Erick made minor adjustments here and there so the spell stayed out of Spur. This was much easier than the checkerboard pattern; that was just showing off. Erick could hold this new configuration without any problems at all.

Erick came back to himself, and said, “It’s sorted, now. We won’t have to move the temple.”

Krakina said, “Show off! Sculpt Spell, yes?”

Erick smiled. “I switched out some things after that accident.”

“This is good.” Krakina nodded, saying, “I have Sculpt Spell, too. It is a good choice! Much better than whatever nonsense you were doing before.” She pointed to the sky with a wing, saying, “That square pattern was impressive, though.”

Apogough said, “I agree.”

Valok said, “We’ll need to talk about increasing the size of the farms.”

“We’re already meeting all of our orders.” Apogough said, “We can increase the cattle pasture, though. Things are getting tight there and my father is looking to expand.”

“Then we’ll have more mimics to deal with.” Valok looked out across the rainy land. “This is a lot of land to defend.”

Erick said, “Do you need me to clear out the mimics every day?”

Valok shook his head. “No. The Adventuring Guild is packed; there’s more and more people coming to Spur every day, and a lot of them start off hunting mimics. Some of them always show up bright and early to kill the mimics that have moved near the farms. The problem, is at night, when the mimics come into the farms and the only defense is the Guard.”

Krakina chanced, “Pasture land should tie the mimics up long enough for them to not get too far?”

“I agree.” Apogough said, “Since we can’t build walls, let’s try pasture land for a while. We’re not going to forgo this opportunity.”

“Agreed,” Valok said.

“How are the monster cows coming along, anyway?” Erick asked.

“Rather well.” Apogough said, “There was that one that got turned into jerky, but it tasted great, so… There wasn’t even any problems with the butchering, because it was automatically [Cleanse]ed. There’s a small debate over whether it was ethical to kill the animal that way, but some people are weird about how they like to butcher animals. It died practically instantly, so those people are in the minority.”

Krakina said, “Those people were just mad they didn’t get to sell the kill rights.”

“Enough chatting.” Valok said, “Good work, Erick; now we gotta do the same.”

“See you later,” Erick said.

Valok started walking away. Krakina and Apogough each gave a farewell nod to Erick before they followed Valok down the path, each to their own jobs.

Erick and Poi went to the temple. Under a stone roof, out of the rain, Erick took out his beginner enchanter book and began reading, while platinum rain fell all around, and the sounds of joyful cows mooing rounded out a peaceful farmland ambiance. He used [Scry] occasionally to check and see if his aura was raining across town. It was. He pulled back his aura a bit here and there; [Exalted Storm Aura] mostly stayed in place.

Sometimes people popped his [Scry] eye if he got too close; sometimes they waved.

He didn’t [Scry] for very long; only long enough to ensure the rain was where it needed to be. The rest of the time, he read.

 

– – – –

 

… how to construct a rhyme in Ancient Script, yes, yes. Erick had used this schema many times, but seeing it laid out before him in an academic setting was quite different than what he had been doing. Apparently, proper enchanting created a resonance between the rhyme and the spell. Ancient Script was used for multiple reasons, but also because all the words sounded so much alike that this helped to reinforce that resonance…

Erick read that chapter a few times.

… spell circles to enchant force-based spells, or healing magic, or mana alterings, all of them slightly different, because this is how magic propagates…

… this is how magic resonates…

How mana propagates and resonates? Eh. Sure. Erick rolled with that reasoning, though he had no idea what it actually meant.

… shaping spells are difficult to put into a wand, and this is why…

… mental imagery, yadda yadda yadda…

That made sense. In Erick’s experience, Shaping spells required a lot of mental imaging. It made sense that Shaping spells did not take well to being enchanted, because enchanted objects were static replicas of an enchanter’s ability.

… Base Stat enhancements are done like this…

Oh!

Oh! Enhancement enchantments. Now this was interesting. Hmm. If Erick was understanding this right, creating a Stat enhancement enchantment was about creating a resonance between the enchanter’s own Stat and trapping that resonance inside a suitable item. Good materials for this trapping included diamonds, at the very bottom of the list, then there were rubies, or other red gems, for the physical stats, or sapphires, or other blue gems, for the mental stats. Perfectly white pearls were the best for all enhancement, though.

Well that seemed completely arbitrary!

Erick switched to the more advanced tomes…

… And almost instantly went back to the textbooks. The tomes were chock full of diagrams and numbers and math. So much math.

Veird might not be as technologically advanced as Earth, but they certainly had a lot of math. That graph looked like calculus, that other graph looked like sine and cosine stuff. Tangents and areas plotted out in three dimensions, spheres and bouncing internal waves based on— Erick was out of his league.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

Enchanting was a lot of math, and Erick appreciated all of that, but he could not do this level of math.

Erick quickly went through the table of contents and found the section on enhancement enchantments.

… He read for a while, switching back and forth between books, trying to understand what he was reading. After a while, he did discover something that he might have to ask a real mage about, because, like he had guessed, using colored stones to ensure a better enchantment might actually be correct, but not because of the color.

Erick had a working theory, but revealing it would be revealing the nature of light.

The resonances of the four different stats were all different, and each of them had a secondary resonance past the first that translated into the actual MP or HP or either Regen stat. To create an enhancement enchantment was to replicate a portion of one’s own matching resonance inside a gem. The various colors of red matched Strength, Vitality, HP, and HP regen, while the various colors of blue matched Willpower Focus, MP, and MP regen.

To sum it up: Base Stats either had a resonance that was predominately Red, or Blue, and thus, those types of gems helped to resonate with those Base Stats.

There was a reason clear diamonds were poor, but acceptable, enchanting items, and that was because they picked up on all resonances equally. Diamonds took a very skilled enchanter to get them properly enchanted. There was a reason pearls were great, and that was because they were, firstly, something that bridged the gap between magic and flesh, and secondly, they were opaque, and blocked out all other resonances. The second factor was actually both a drawback and a bonus, because it took a lot of skill to press the desired resonance into the pearl, but once it was in there, it stuck around for a long time. The first factor, with pearls bridging a gap between magic and flesh, was because they were very, very similar to a rad, and that boosted all resonances up, doubling the effectiveness of the enhancement enchantment.

One factor all gems had in common, though, was that perfect spheres were best.

To make a gem hold an enchantment, you needed to ‘skip’ the enchantment around the interior of the gem. Anything that prevented this perfect containment of the desired resonance, from interior flaws, to outside edges, would weaken the enchantment, and cause it to fail faster than it would otherwise.

Because, what enhancements were doing, was increasing a person’s resonance with a Stat in a specific way. ‘Equipping’ or ‘using’ that enhancement would eventually break down an enchantment past the point of emergence into Reality, as a person’s personal magical resonance was always shifting, while an enchantment was static.

But if a mage enchanted their own gear, then the resonance between a mage and their gear degraded much slower than someone just going to a store and buying an enchantment. Enchanting your own gear also made repairing that gear much easier…

Erick was going back through all of the books for the fourth time, when Poi stepped up to the side.

Erick turned to him. “Uh?”

“We’ve been here for an extra hour, sir.” Poi gestured to the farms. People were still farming. “Though I don’t think they mind.”

Erick turned off the rain, stretching as the mana drain on his body relaxed. He said, “I’ve got some questions for some enchanters.” He began packing away his books. “You know anyone besides Ulrick Ulrick? Though I think I’ll go there first.”

“I would have recommended him, anyway, sir.”

 

– – – –

 

‘Ulrick’s Unusuals’ was located at the end of Market Street, near the wall, which should have been a dark part of town because of all the tall, narrow buildings, but it was not. Lightwards of all kinds lit the area with multicolored glows; some of them streetlights, some of them new businesses that had opened up since the last time Erick had been this way. Erick looked around at all the new shops, then opened the door under Ulrick’s large glowing business sign, and walked in. The store was as full of enchanted knives, wands, and rods as it was all the other times Erick had been to see the man, or to buy one of those rods of [Treat Wounds]—

Oh. That reminded him: he needed to pick up some of those grand-rads at the bank and store his rod of [Treat Wounds] next to the grand-rads, so that it could recharge.

— Ulrick kept under thicker glass, toward the back of the showroom floor. The showroom was empty right now; Erick was the only one in the store besides the pinkscale cashier behind the counter, named Soux. She smiled as Erick walked to her.

“Greetings, Archmage,” said Soux. “How can I help you?”

“Just wanted to ask Ulrick a few questions about enchanting. Is he in? Would he mind talking for a little while? I’ll buy some desserts and teas at that new shop across the way. It looks nice.”

Tealscale Ulrick stepped out from his workshop in the room behind the counter, saying, “I thought I heard your voice. I’m ready for lunch. I’ll pick the place; let’s go.”

Erick smiled. “Following you, then.”

 

– – – –

 

Ulrick picked an upscale place located on the fifth floor of a building on Market Street. The restaurant was built high up enough to see over the city walls, with a large view that went from the northeast, to the west, to the south. It also looked expensive. There were only six tables in view, and all of them were semi-private, with ferns or ornate wooden dividers or architecture separating them.

Before Erick knew it, a goldscale server had guided Erick and Ulrick to a table beside a large window, the farms of Spur stretching out to the west; vivid green and golden wheat under a blue sky, surrounded by the browns of the Crystal Forest. Erick had vivid flashbacks of his first time talking to Anhelia, until—

“I’m paying, so order whatever you want. They can make anything.” Ulrick spoke to the server, “I’d like the lunch platter, as usual.” He said to Erick, “It’s a little bit of everything on their menu; they had fried potatoes the last time I was here two days ago.”

“I’ll have the same.” Erick added, “With some fried chicken?”

Goldscale said, “As you wish, sir. And to drink?

Ulrick said, “A bottle of Crim’s Son’s Red.”

The server bowed and walked away.

Ulrick smiled, sighing, looking out to the west. “It’s so nice to see the farms so green. And huge! I hope its going well out there. I saw that checkerboard stunt at the beginning and I have a bet going; Class Ability change, right?”

Erick chuckled. “Yeah. Sculpt Spell.”

Ulrick smacked one hand into the other. “I knew it!”

“They’re going to expand the pasture land for now, so it should get even greener in a few days.”

“It’s really beautiful to see this change, Erick—”