Could I determine that through magic?
Almost definitely, I decided.
I imagined magical paternity tests were probably routine for cases where people were accused of infidelity, and someone had probably come up with a way to test people further removed for bloodline connections. Like to determine if someone was from a royal line, for instance.
I’d have to look into that at some point.
“Okay, so it’d be a risk. How hard would it be to try it with just a small amount of mana?
I scratched my chin. “I don’t actually think you could use a storage device even if I made one, unless you have a spell to pull mana out of things. Shapers can do that, and I think more advanced Enchanters might be able to, but I don’t think it’s a standard thing for all attunements.”
“Oh. I guess I was just picturing something where I push on a rune and it starts sending mana into me until I push the rune again?”
I shook my head. “Your skin would block it. We’re all naturally resistant to mana getting into our bodies from outside sources. It’s not a simple process to force mana into someone. That’s part of why you see so many offensive spells that focus on throwing projectiles — or making an attack explode right in front of someone — rather than, say, making a fireball inside someone’s body. Even if you made physical contact, which would make it somewhat easier, you’d have to force your mana through the body’s natural insulation.”
She stared at the page, looking contemplative. “Huh.”
I don’t think I’d ever managed to stymy her so thoroughly before. Nice.
“Wait, what about how Derek’s monster helped recharge my mana during the Survival Match?”
I thought about that. “I don’t know a lot about how monsters work, honestly. I assume it had some way of purifying the mana to make it safe, then it probably had to force a lot of mana into you to get through your skin. I can’t make an item that does that at my level of skill.”
She seemed to accept that answer, but I decided I’d have to look into it more at some point. Mana recharging charging items could be useful. In the meantime, I had an alternate suggestion. “If I had mana in an item and put in a rune to eject it into the air, would you be able to reshape it into a spell?”
Sera frowned. “Don’t think so. If it was ice mana, maybe I could make an attack out of it? But doesn’t mana dissipate quickly in the air?”
“Yeah, it’d be inefficient. You’d probably lose a lot of mana that way. Don’t know another way to make a storage device you could use, though.”
We sat for a minute in silence.
“What about something that just added more mana into a spell I’m casting?”
“Maybe?” I considered the idea. How would that work? “I don’t know enough about how your spells work to answer that, honestly. I pretty much just shove mana at things.”
“So, my incantations determine the spell that I’m casting. Different incantation? Different spell. Except there are these things called ‘shaping lines’. They’re extra lines I can add to an incantation to change the way it works, with an extra cost. When I finish the spell, my attunement draws the necessary mana out of me, and the spell happens.”
I nodded. “Do you guide your attunement toward which parts of the body it draws from?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“How?”
“Just by thinking about where I want it to take from.”
I scratched my chin. “There’s some potential there, then… if you could get your attunement to think an item was a part of your body, maybe it could reach into the item to pay the mana cost. But that might mean passing the mana through the object into your body before the spell goes off — which could, as we discussed earlier, make you sick. If you could even use the item at all.”
“Okay, what about setting up the item to detect when I’m casting a spell, detect the result of the spell, and channel mana into the result?”
That…seemed possible, but it also didn’t seem to help. “Yeah? You could do that, but I don’t think it’d make your spell any cheaper.”
She pointed at the second item on the list. “I was thinking something more like that. Or, in between the first item and the second.”
“Oh, to make the spell stronger? Yeah, that actually seems pretty doable. But would just throwing extra mana into a summoning spell actually do anything useful?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Summoned monsters are really good at shaping mana for their own uses. Remember that karvensi I summoned?”
“Sure.” I frowned. “Now that you mention it, he was casting a lot of spells.”
“And spells I couldn’t provide the mana for. I don’t have lightning or fire mana. Summoning spells use transference, air, and gray mana. He got the mana that was left over from the spell after I finished summoning him - and he reshaped it himself. If I’d given him more mana to work with, he could have done more with it.”
Huh. “That reminds me — wasn’t he using some of the same spells you were, but without incantations?”
“Yeah. Using incantations for broad-area spells seem to primarily be a human limitation — monsters shape their magic naturally, so they generally don’t need them.”
That was interesting. Could I figure out a way to set things up for a human to distribute mana across a broad area without incantations like a monster could?
One more research project for the long list.
“Okay, yeah. I think we can make a spell-enhancement item work. In fact, I could probably make something similar for Patrick if I can afford it.”
She frowned when I said Patrick’s name. That was not a good sign.
I continued, “Anyway, do you want me to spend everything you gave me on the one item, or try to save some for additional items?”
“Gimme the strongest thing you can make. We can always make more items later. I’d rather have one really good item that isn’t going to be replaced when you get stronger in a few months.”
I agreed with her logic. “Okay. Do you want something that’s self-recharging or something we have to manually refill?”
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s the advantage of the latter?”
“Half as many runes for me to make, so I don’t have to buy as many crystals. That means I can buy a bigger crystal to give it a larger mana capacity.”
“Got it. Go with that, then.”
“You sure? That means you’ll probably only be able to use it once per test. If even that — recharging something we make with a big crystal is going to be hard.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. I’d rather have a strong emergency measure.”
“Okay. What mana type do you want?”
That one took her a minute of consideration. “Gray. As much as I want to say ice, it’d be too hard to recharge, and less generally useful.”
I didn’t quite understand her hesitation. “Wouldn’t gray work for anything?”
She shook her head. “For any summoning spell, yes. But not for my normal offensive ice spells, and I might want to hit something with a really powerful ice storm, rather than call on a summoned monster. I can convert gray mana, of course, but that’s inefficient.”
“Oh, that makes sense. Maybe if this ends up working we can make you an ice one eventually.”
“I’d like that, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. I’m not that rich.”