Once dinner was done and they’d cleaned up, Ben went back to bed to work on the cloth while Sonya sat nearby applying more life magic to his wounds. Ben was interested in watching at first since the last two times he had needed treatment he had been unconscious, but it wasn’t anywhere near as visual as Thera’s earth magic, with only a small amount of light being produced by the spell, so instead he devoted his attention back to his enchantment, pushing the limits of his focus as well in the hopes he would get it done by tomorrow.
Eventually as he was working Sonya left, though that fact was only barely acknowledged in the back of his mind, and the hours passed as he concentrated on his enchanting before stopping to get some sleep for the night.
When morning came and he woke up he got back to it immediately and was able to finish it in a little over an hour before he decided to get up and grab something for breakfast. After having more healing applied to him he was feeling a lot better, though still not in top shape, and was feeling ready to face the day. He knew Falk should be by at some point to check on his progress and hopefully have a cloak ready for him to work on, and in the meantime he leafed through one of the books his teacher had brought while he ate.
It was a book on enchanting, one he had already read, but at the time he had thought a lot of the techniques would still be outside of his reach, now though he wasn’t so sure. He was fairly confident that he would be able to twist and weave his enchantments if he tried, unfortunately there just wasn’t much reason to. A skilled enough enchanter could do some interesting things, from lowering the mana cost of an applied spell to combining different skills to get certain desired effects different than what an individual skill could be capable of. But given that he had no magic and only a few skills, none of which he could see any reason to use together, such a technique was currently meaningless to him.
His greatest drawback was not having grown up in the world. While an average person may have developed around twelve or fifteen different skills by his age, even if most were a low level, just by living their life and having gone through a couple jobs by this point, he still only had a handful due to his recent appearance here.
For his classmates it wouldn’t have mattered, they all had powerful skills that weren’t affected by their lack of others, but for his enchanting it was brutal. With the few he had he couldn’t do anything complex with them, and the worst part was that he couldn’t even get the most out of enchanting being a blessed skill.
Normally for every level of enchantment you could apply an equal level of a skill, but he should be able to get 50 percent more than that. At his current level of two, he should be able to apply level three skills, but enchanting was already one of his most powerful ones, meaning he couldn’t even use it to its full potential.
If he wanted to get more out of it that really only left two options. Either he could try and get more skills, or he could try and power-level up one he already had.
Both options had their pros and cons. While getting more skills would be useful, they would all be stuck at level 0 for a while at least, and while power-leveling a skill would have its benefits there was no telling how long it could take. Not to mention the only skill he currently had that could be worth focusing on would be stealth, and as useful as he thought it would be to get it to a higher level, especially after their run-in with the alseer, he didn’t want to neglect his enchanting or crafting to get it up.
He sighed and slouched back into his seat. He would at least try and find a copy of the book of skills and acquisition conditions from a merchant. He assumed it would be on the expensive side, but it would be immensely helpful to have the reference around, and now that he had been using his blessed skills for a while he had a much better idea of what would be useful to him and what wouldn’t.
It was while he was dwelling on this he heard a knock at the door, and with Sonya already up and at the clinic and Thera in no position to answer it without a cloak he went to check it himself.
Opening it up he was greeted by his teacher and they quickly went back inside.
“Everyone else busy lad? Not sure a patient should be the one getting the door.”
“Sonya’s at the clinic already and Thera’s still in her room, anyway I completed the piece you gave me if you want to give it a look.”
“Perfect, then I’ll give it a look over and show you the final step.”
“Final step?”
“We’ll get to that when I see it, come on now.”
At his teacher’s prompting he hurried to grab it before going back to meet him in the living room and have his work reviewed.
“Looks like you’ve got the technique down well enough, all that's left to do is seal it with an enchanting spell.”
Finally something a little more exciting. He currently knew four spells linked to enchantment: harden, soften, strengthen, and weaken, and had practiced them all a bit from time to time, occasionally using them in his work too. Still more of the more interesting spells had the same issue that he had been just thinking on, they worked best when used on enchanted skills than on their own.
“Sounds good to me, what's the spell?”
“Conjoin. Have you read up on it yet?”
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“Of course I have.” He’d read all of the books his teacher had made available to him by this point. He was actually hoping he could be provided with some new ones before he left.
“Alright good, so you’ll just use your mana through enchanting to attach the fragments together, almost like gently laying a sealant over your work, understand?”
“Yeah I got this.”
Ben did as he was told and started to form the spell, altering the mana inside of himself to give it the necessary properties. He was feeling impatient, which was why he hadn’t bothered attempting it on something else first, but he was also careful enough to take his time with it and felt he had a solid understanding of the theory. It took a few minutes, but when all was done he had a completed fanet’ail cloak. Well fanet’ail scrap, perhaps he could sell the current piece to a rat as a cloak if need be, but as it was Thera wouldn’t make any use out of it.
He handed it to his teacher who gave it a look over on his behalf. “Hmm… Yep, looks like you managed fine. This should work perfectly.”
“Oh thank god.” The thought of having messed up at the end would have been pretty unbearable, so having the success under his belt was exactly what he needed. Though Falk was quick to throw some cold water on his relief.
“Don’t be too happy yet boy, you’re still far from free.” His teacher reached into a bag and pulled out a long and heavy green cloak. When one compared it to what he’d already made he felt his enthusiasm plummet.
“Oh man this really is going to take a while, huh?”
“Damn straight. And this one’s only going to be a temporary one for her too, I’m probably going to be the sucker to make her main one after this so don’t worry and just do your best.”
“Sounds good.” His teacher seemed done with their business but Ben wanted to ask for his opinion on a couple things before heading out. “Hey Falk, are there any skills you think I should be learning?”
“Hmm? Well since you’re adventuring you could start using a hammer as a weapon to try and get the hammer wielder skill, it will also help you out at the forge after all. But why?”
It wasn’t what he was looking for, but still an interesting piece of information that Ben filed away to consider later. He would at least need to grow his strength a bit more before considering that.
“I’m more thinking about things I can use for my enchanting. The number of skills I have is pretty limited and none are great for it. Plus I’m a little worried that I’m not using my enchanting to its full potential.”
“Hmm, I see what you're saying, but on the spot not much comes to mind. Magics are the biggest ones, but that’s not really in the cards for you unless you learn a non-affinity magic, and those can be tough. Still I’ll think on it and try to have an answer by the time I’m back.”
“Wait, that sounds great and all but what do you mean by non-affinity magics, aren't those just powerful evolved skills?” He had read about them a bit in some of the books on magic at the church, but it had sounded to him like it was when a skill turned until a significantly more powerful version of itself with an increased mana cost to go along with it, such as stealth turning into invisibility.
“Ah no, there’s a few others too, heck you’re enchanting technically counts as one of them, though probably the least mana costly one I can think of. The issue with that though is most people don’t bother with them at all, and those that do have already gotten a decent skill level in one of their stronger affinities to build up their mana and have a better idea on how to use it. Not to say you couldn’t learn one someday, but you're gonna want your mana level a lot higher than it currently is if you do.”
Ben sighed and felt dumb for getting his hopes up. There still wouldn’t be any magic for him in his immediate future it looked like, though it would be worth looking into more non-affinity skills in the meantime. Just because it wasn’t realistic at the moment didn’t mean it wasn’t worth aiming for after all.
“Don’t let it get you down boy, you just have to work to your strengths. You got resistance levels most people would only dream of in every affinity, if you were to specialise in enchanting armour and shields you’d probably make a decent living.”
“That… is a fantastic point. Definitely something I could fall back on if I can’t manage anything else, but the heart wants what it wants, and I want to make something exciting. Maybe I’ll manage something eventually.”