CH422

After a long day of working Sachel to the bone, they finally returned to Stonewall, dropping off the oracle of his faith before he split from Thera to do his next major task, going to speak to the would-be manager of the facility he had set up.

The man was waiting outside of the building, in the new, empty area of town as Ben ran over, inspecting his skills as he got close enough.

Oh cool, eighth-level enchanting and fire magic, along with a sixth-level for water.

He couldn’t immediately place his race, assuming he was a hybrid of some sort, having both four arms and eyes, along with green scales across what was an otherwise human-looking face.

“Hello there,” He said, putting on his best smile. “I’m Ben, I believe Nare sent you.”

“He did,” The man nodded. “I’m Kufno, I look forward to working for you.”

“I’m glad to hear it, so how much did your god tell you about what you’d be doing here?”

“Less than I’d like,” He admitted. “It was mentioned you wanted someone for a largely managerial role, but I was told to ask you for the finer details.”

“Alright, that works. For now, why don’t you come on in, I’ll explain a bit about the specifics of what you’ll be doing and get you acquainted with the area.”

With introductions done he opened the building’s doors, showing the vast area within as he led him through.

“So obviously there’s a lot of space,” Ben went on. “I’m expecting about two dozen people to be working under you as they start arriving in the next few weeks so for the start you’ll be here to greet them and explain the finer details of what I expect done. To make things simple, you’re basically going to be testing spells to the greatest extent you can. Come on and I’ll give you a bit more detail from here.”

He led Kufno over to the storage area, where a hundred crystal cubes were already set up after nights of enchanting them.

And I still have so many freaking more to do too.

But that was a later problem. He went over to the first, showing it off.

“So as you can see, I’ve marked the areas where different spells need to be connected, as well as the others where mana needs to be run through. I’ve got a variety of rainbow mana crystals already set up to do just that so you’ll all just need to attach them after set-up each time and remember to remove them between tests too. The main thing to remember when you’re working is for you to record everything to the greatest detail you can. What spell is being attached and its affinity, the level it’s being attached at, the effect of the spell on it relative to the expected effect of such an enchantment. There’s literally no such thing as too much detail because the changes you can get are pretty extreme, for example…”

He attached rainbow mana crystals to where he needed to for his already set up cube, showing the effects as it lit up with the simple light spell applied to it. In most cases, there were only glowing spots in each marked location, with a few that didn’t seem to activate at all, but in others there were different effects. Light being absorbed instead of released, colours of it other than the plain white it should have been, and one where it was letting off some level of heat too.

“All of these different effects are coming from the same spell,” He explained. “It’s all just being changed by what the mana goes through first, which is exactly what we’re trying to understand here. I have a booklet of my notes I’ve taken on this single spell on this one cube alone, and that’s the standard I’m looking for.”

He handed it over, letting Kufno flip through it, seeing diagrams and measurements, along with any less certain observations, all of the work Ben had done for such a tiny part in his effort to learn what he could.

Once he got to the end, Kufno looked around, seeing so many more giant crystals already set up for testing.

“It’s certainly a lot.”

“And there’s going to be more,” Ben told him with a nod. “Once the rest of the enchanters come in, my hope would be to get multiple crystals completely tested each day. Don’t let how many are currently around fool you, by the time the rest are set up, there’s going to be thousands to test, with even more to run after this first round is over with.”

“Well then, it sounds like I’ll be employed for a while so I have no complaints, but if I could ask, what’s all this for? So much work, what’s the point of it?”

“What, Nare didn’t tell you?”

“Would you question a god?”

“Of course I would,” He told the man with a grin. “But alright, the point of this is simple really. The gods have a spell they’ve been using without properly understanding, I want to figure out what makes it tick, and the sooner the better. Ideally, we’ll have this first part done in less than a year, but from there who knows how long it will take? Since we have a bit of time, I’ll give you some hands-on practice before showing you to your home. You have fire and water magic, right? Let’s see what you can do with it.”

That went super well, tell Nare he made a good choice.

<He already knows, that’s why he sent him.>

Ben had zero complaints about the man the god had selected to manage his facility. Kufno seemed serious yet friendly and appeared to be both detail oriented and a hard worker, exactly what Ben wanted from someone he was putting in charge of his project.

And given that in a week or two the entire team will be here, I should be getting results before I know it. Which also means I’m going to need to finish up more crystals so there’s no chance of them having nothing to do. I guess that means a few more sleepless nights ahead. Let’s see, as long as I have someone to run their mana through me I should be able to get them done at breakneck speeds at least.

Of all of the abilities he’d gained with awakening, that was the one he loved the most, even if it was one he was already seeing he needed to be careful with. It was obviously killing his mana and regen growth rates when overused, something he didn’t want to lose out on. Taking mana from others was only handy when there was someone to do it with, any time he was alone he needed to depend on his own reserves, so he needed them to keep growing too.

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But even if I’m only doing this when I absolutely have to, it’s already great. I guess my growth rates are going to be a little screwed until Sachel gets her level since I need to keep taking from Thera, but hopefully that’s not too much longer so it should be worth it.

<Just don’t go scaring her. With that circlet on, you basically had her working the mental equivalent of eighteen hours you know.>

She’s a trooper, she’ll be fine. I’m more worried about how long this will take. If it’s been a few years then assuming she’s been training regularly we might get her the level in a couple days of constant work, but I don’t want to find out that this is going to be a multi-month-long task. I really have other things to do.