CH32

It was maybe fifteen minutes later that Falk came running back into the room with a crate full of supplies and books, only to see that Ben was still blushing and Thera still had her face buried in the bed.

“Am I maybe interrupting something?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Nothing uncle,” Thera said as she jerked upwards, her face flushed gold.

“We were just chatting while we waited, now come on, let’s get started,” He would have been willing to go up against the alseer again to dispel the current atmosphere, and thankfully Falk was merciful and let the matter drop.

“Alright boy get ready for one of the most grueling tasks I’ve gotten for you yet, here’s some cloth and just do what I say to make a fanet’ail cloak.”

Ben was handed a square piece of cloth, about a foot by a foot in size, and immediately had questions. “Isn’t this a bit small? And what does that name even mean?”

“The fella who invented it just named it after himself as creatives tend to do and that’s just for your practice while I’m still here. Make no mistake brat, that small piece will take you almost a day to enchant if you’re efficient. Prove to me you can manage it and I’ll prep a full cloak for you to work on while I’m gone.”

He looked at the small piece of fabric in front of him. If this would be a full day then how long would it be to make the full thing? It was a daunting question but it would be a good challenge, not to mention good experience for his enchanting. At the stage he was at he wasn’t using too many techniques more advanced than just layering them up. “So what do I do?”

“As I said before, you’re just using fragments of skills. Not a single enchantment you add should actually be able to display its effects, it should feel more like making a sculpture from one grain of sand at a time, and much like sculpting with sand if you’re not careful the entire enchantment will collapse. This won’t break your material thankfully but it could still signify a significant loss of time, especially if you mess up toward the end. Now what you’re going to do is only use your skills for this, don’t enchant attributes or affinities. If I remember right you only have seven which is going to make it harder than what most people who have to make one of these will deal with but it should be manageable. You’re just going to pile up a fragment of skill at a time until the entire thing is saturated, but you have to make sure none of the fragments are touching fragments of the same skill or it will collapse. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” He was a little overwhelmed by the sudden stream of information but also sure he would manage.

“Good. I’ll be in town for a couple more days so I’ll stop by to see how you’re doing and if you need any advice. Last thing, unlike the way you currently do your enchanting, where you have to finish the enchantment all at once, this way you can at least take breaks from it thankfully since it’s building it up from many parts, so you won’t need to stay awake for a week. Now good luck and check some of the books if you need to.”

With that done Falk went back to his shop to finish up some of the work he was going to show his client and bid both Ben and Thera a good day. After he left Ben immediately started to focus on how he was going to approach the task while Thera went to prepare lunch.

He thought she would be gone for a while but only a few minutes later she came back with a small plate of diced vegetables for the both of them.

He happily took the plate and began eating but had to ask. “Are you a vegetarian by any chance?”

She looked down sadly at the plate of food in front of her as she picked through it herself, letting out a regretful sigh. “No, it’s just that this is all I can manage.”

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“What do you mean?”

“I can’t cook alright.”

He hadn’t been expecting that and immediately burst out laughing.

“It’s not funny,” She said in a huff. “You try learning to cook something when your mana will strip the enchantments from the stove.”

He tried to contain his residual giggles. Admittedly breaking any enchanted tool you try to use was a pretty good excuse for not knowing how to cook. “Sorry, sorry, my bad. Do you mind if I use your kitchen? I should be able to whip us something up.”