CH351

After a few more hours where he focused more on his own work than anything the shop needed, occasionally picking his teacher’s brain on how to make different ideas possible, Thera came in while he was staring at some of the bullets for his handgun, lost in just what might be done with them until his girlfriend pulled his eyes away.

He could tell from how she looked she still didn’t want him joining her, the worry on her face all but screaming that fact to him, but he wasn’t going to back down. Instead, he was going to do something else to take her mind off of it.

“Thera, perfect timing!” He called out happily, trying to raise her mood with his own. “Hope you aren’t busy ‘cause I’m going to be borrowing you for a while.”

“I told Aso I wouldn’t be able to hunt today when I read your note, but more importantly, why aren’t you in bed?”

“Cause as annoying as the headache is, laying in bed isn’t actually going to get me better faster when the problem has just as much to do with my soul. But more importantly, don’t worry about that and come here.”

He grabbed her hand and led her to the side of the shop, pulling out a string and wrapping it around her to take measurements, right up until she realized that was what he was doing.

“Ben, I’m going to need an explanation now,” She told him, her eyes judging as he laughed.

“Since you don’t need your cloak anymore you need proper armour, or at least something that will help your defense. Honestly, you should have been using something for that this whole time but we’re not going to stress about that and instead get you outfitted. I have a few ideas already but tell me what you think you’d like and I’ll do my best to make it work for you.”

Despite herself, she was interested when he started to explain. She hadn’t used armour in the past, but she knew that just as she was worried for him, he worried about her so she understood why his head went there and knew that in every way that mattered, using whatever he made would only help her.

“I guess the main thing is something that’s light that I can move in easily,” She told him after a second’s thought. “Other than that it doesn’t matter too much, I think you already know what would or wouldn’t work for me.”

“True enough, and an armour that’s light and easy to move around in is exactly what I was thinking anyway. Give me a second.”

He grabbed a sheet of paper and sketched out his idea before her eyes, explaining what he was thinking as she looked at it. “So here’s the basic idea, given how resistant to being physically altered it is, we’ll have an orichalcum scale over a thin leather vest, with some pants to match, though I might leave those for later to work on the design a bit. As annoying as it is to me personally, I won’t actually add any enchantments to it for the simple reason that if you practice with it I should have no reason to. It’s already strong and by turning the metal into a thin foil, if you get used to strengthening it with your magic then it should be pretty much invulnerable to any sort of piercing damage. Of course, I’ll also flood the thing with sacrificial enchantments to be sure it doesn’t break, but I’ve been watching how you handle your mana and at least for earth and life spells I don’t think there’s too much to worry about anymore.”

She understood what he was saying and genuinely did like the idea, even if a small part of her felt it was a little disappointing. It would give her exactly what she wanted, something incredibly strong, light, and easy to move in, but she’d also seen him make so many things with his enchantments that couldn’t help but be curious about what he would have done if she didn’t need to worry about destroying them by mistake, at least she did for the moment before he kept talking.

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“So over that I’m thinking a new cloak. Since the armour would only cover physical defense and it would honestly be worse off for me adding enchantments and a mana crystal compared to you just strengthening it yourself, that means all of the magical defense will have to be separate, if that’s good with you of course. I get you’re happy not having to use one anymore, but this is for your safety and I promise I’ll make you something incredible.”