CH492

It was still dark when he left the archive but he didn’t care. He let himself take a minute to watch Thera sleep after the perceived weeks he’d been away before rushing to the living room where he wouldn’t disturb her. A small part of him wanted to wake her up and drag her to join him but he crushed that selfish impulse. He was the one who decided to spend so much time in the archive like that, there was no reason to make her suffer for it. Especially when he knew how much she enjoyed her rest.

Sitting on a chair, he turned on a light, dimming it just a bit given the time before materializing a simple knife with his power, just to give himself something to enchant on as he immediately began with his attempts, the first of which would only be done on the unaltered ring system.

Since there was no telling if it would be compatible with his system of enchanting, it was important to practice it on one he knew could work first, even if he wanted to skip that and rush to the deep end, but he suppressed the desire. Better to take a bit of extra time and do it right and with goal firmly in mind, he began with an enchantment that would compliment the knife.

He ended up going for a simple death one that would sap the vitality of the target. It was one that ended up on plenty of his weapons, including the thousands he’d sent off for the war efforts, meaning it was the perfect choice for his current attempt as he placed down rings, trying to copy the subtle manipulation of mana and felt himself fail.

It wasn’t shocking, there was a reason the enchanter who found it discovered it by accident. There was literally no reason to move one’s mana like that when enchanting. If anything, it would just yield a worse result unless perfectly pulled off, meaning it was a technique that needed to be mastered in order to be properly used.

But if that guy could get it in less than an hour of attempts then so can I.

He broke the ring enchantment that had gone down and tried to replace it again, feeling another failure as his various minds examined both himself as well as the flow of his mana while he used it. Mana control was one of his strongest points when it came to magic, it was an advantage he was going to exploit for all it was worth as he watched enchantments form and break in quick succession until his first success.

It was thrilling. An advancement to the way he’d enchant if all went well, but he didn’t stop to study the effects of the minor modification. That could come later. This was a method that needed to be practiced, so with the one success under his belt he immediately began shooting for another, changing the initial enchantment to a different affinity as he tried again, shifting affinities with each success and going through all ten options before using it with non-affinitied spells.

It was only after thirty tests that he was confident in saying he had it. He could perfectly recreate that small change to the ring system and as much as he now wanted to dive in to see if the application would extend to his own means of enchanting and beyond, it was now time for him to actually confirm its effects.

To do that he reshaped the knife in his hand, turning the entire thing into a thin metal sheet, leaving a foil so delicate it wanted to crumble under his touch the moment he stopped holding it together it and applied the earth enchantment sturdy to strengthen it using the modified ring system to see what effects would come.

It wasn’t that he didn’t know. He’d formed his theories in the trial and had seen the tests of the enchanter who’d first figured it out, it was more a matter of needing to see it for himself before he was willing to move on to the next phase of things and with his motivation firmly in place he began his study.

By that point, he was well aware of the effect he would have gotten if he’d used the normal version of the ring system. Given the lightness of the foil he’d made, while the enchantment let it hold itself together under its own weight he’d have been able to destroy it with his hands rather easily. Not so with the modified version on it.

While it hadn’t become some impenetrable barrier, it took work to tear into it, needing a bit of strength behind the act that wouldn’t normally have been there, leading to the same answer as the one who’d discovered the technique. When putting the same amount of mana into an enchantment, its power exploded multiple times over.

Or alternatively, it means that an enchantment can be made significantly less mana intense while resulting in a comparable effect. God damn, this is huge. This is beyond huge.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Even though he’d pulled it off after a few attempts, it was by no means easy. It required the technical skill of an awakened enchanter, but this was the sort of thing every one of them needed to be aware of, at least as soon as he was done a bit more testing.

If it can’t be done with the weave system then every enchanter in the world is going to have to convert to the ring system after this, just gotta see… And it works with the weave! Thank god, that would have been crazy.

He ran the same tests he’d done before, seeing small changes in the results due to the characteristics of the two systems but still a growth in power that made it a must-learn for anyone who could.