I saw where his logic was going. “Yeah. Which implies there’s another function on there, it’s just not active until your mana reaches a certain level.”
“Right. And how does the attunement know how much mana you have?”
“You’re implying all attunements have a mana detection function, which means they all have some amount of mental mana.” I thought about that. “And any number of other enchantments we don’t think about, because they’re not actively giving us mana to work with.”
That was kind of a terrifying idea, actually. It meant that I had any number of unidentified enchantment functions built into a mark on my head.
What if one of them was some kind of enchantment that allowed a visage remotely cause the attunement to detonate?
I didn’t like the sound of that at all.
I consoled myself with the fact that humans had apparently figured out how to make artificial attunements, which meant that someone out there had a strong enough understanding of how they worked that they probably would have caught onto a hidden “kill” enchantment.
Probably.
I was already planning to study artificial attunements extensively, but this conversation pushed it higher on my list. I couldn’t study much here, though — no experts were available. I’d need to either track Tristan or Katashi down, or go all the way to Caelford.
“Right. Your attunements are complex, and each one looks to be designed a little differently. The bindings Sera and Derek use create a bond between the spirit of a human and the spirit of a monster, which enables them to transfer mana back and forth.”
“Okay, I get that. But what about a sword? That shouldn’t have a spirit to work with.”
“Right. Most of them don’t, which is the problem. That means I have to give the sword a piece of my spirit in order to make the connection. As I’m sure you understand, that’s not something I can do routinely.”
“…Does the piece of spirit you’re using on the contract grow back?”
“Eventually, but it takes a while. And I don’t exactly like leaving pieces of my spirit lying around. That’s a dangerous prospect. Making a copy of Dawnbringer was a special case. I might be willing to work on other special cases now and again, but I need time to recover first. Weeks, at least, if not months.”
I shivered at the image. I wasn’t sure I’d be willing to cut off a piece of my spirit and put it in an item at all, under any circumstances. I certainly wasn’t going to blame Keras for not wanting to do it regularly. “Okay, let me think for a minute.”
Was there a way of salvaging my idea?
“You mentioned before that powerful enough items, like the Jaden Box, might be able to survive contact with you for a long period of time. If we enchanted an item with defenses, like a powerful shield sigil, could you enchant it safely?”
“Doubtful. Transferring mana into those shells you use would require touching the item, and that’d put me inside the barrier. I’d probably break it as soon as I touched it.”
“Worth testing.”
It took me a few minutes to make a basic shield sigil, then create a container rune like one of the ones we’d put on Patrick’s sword.
It only took him a few seconds to break it.
Over the next couple days, I tried a couple more designs — enchantments designed to protect the object itself, rather than the wearer. I even had Marissa help me with one that used enhancement mana to harden the item, rather than a conventional shield.
Keras broke those, too.
“I don’t think this is going to work, Corin.”
He was probably right, but I was stubborn, and I liked the idea of a theoretically infinite amount of money.
The one with enhancement mana had lasted a little longer.
Maybe Keras could have safely enchanted one that had a Citrine or higher level hardness enchantment…but an item like that would have been as valuable, or more valuable, than the product we were trying to make.
I had another idea, though. “You said that most items don’t have a spirit. Does that imply that some do, and those would be easier to work with?”
“Yeah, but you’re not going to find those just lying around. They’re rare, and bonding myself to one would be the equivalent of a contract with a monster — they’d have to agree to it.”
“What about that black dagger that disappeared earlier?”
He winced. “Wish we hadn’t lost that. I wouldn’t know enough about it to know if it’s something I could make a contract with. But yes, that was probably an example of a weapon with a spirit.”
“How do we make an item grow a spirit? Could we do that artificially, so you don’t have to use some of your own?”
“Most of the time, an item with a spirit implies someone did put a piece in there at some point, and it grew and developed into something unique. There are probably spells that make new spirits, but I’m not an expert in the subject.”
I’d have to find one at some point, then, but it was a low priority. Spirit magic was an entire field of study, and I wasn’t going to look into it for something this dubious. I did want to study it at some point for other reasons, but it was going very low on my list. I had more pressing concerns.
“Crystals.” I realized. It was obvious.
“Hm?” Keras quirked a brow.
“You could make crystals, then I could transfer the mana from them into the item.”
Keras shrugged a shoulder. “Good idea in concept, but I’ve never been able to get that to work. Don’t know if it’s my lack of patience or how my mana works, but I’ve never been able to make mana solid.”
“Want me to teach you how I learned?”
“I suppose you can try.”
A few hours of lessons and practice hadn’t produced any results, but he did say that using a crystal casing made more sense to him than the other methods he’d tried in the past.
It had taken me weeks to make my first crystal, so maybe he’d make one eventually. This seemed like my best bet, so I decided to wish him well, provided him with a set of practice cases, and decided to focus on other things for a while in the meantime.
The first order of business was trying to get Derek to help me with the same money making scheme that I’d been planning to use Keras for.
“No.” He told me. “Don’t have time.”
“Fair enough.”
At least in his case, I got a simple answer.
Passing dueling class had left me with a higher degree of confidence that I could pass my classes for the year, but I’d also seen how much it had helped to prepare in advance.
I already knew what one of them was going to be — the third attempt at the fake spire. It would be considered our final exam for Magic Theory class.
This time, I was determined to be ready.
Unlike with Teft’s class, it was clear that researching the rooms in advance was going to be considered cheating. I wasn’t against the idea of cheating a little bit in emergencies — passing was more important than following arbitrary rules — but I didn’t want to take the risk of getting caught.
And, more importantly, beating the test without cheating would be far more satisfying.
I wrote a list of all the rooms we’d seen so far, and drew simple maps of each.
We had a few specific challenges we’d have to overcome for each room. The shadow monster, the fire statues, the false Tyrant in Gold, a sleeping dragon…
Those would all be tough to deal with in direct confrontations, if not impossible.
I spent some time researching magical items to help with those challenges, as well as some general ones.