Chapter 5: Chapter 3 – Magi-Artificing

"Brat pass me that wrench" Cynthia yelled at Newt whilst pointing at a wrench a couple of meters away"

"First, my name's Newt, not 'brat'. Second, get off your lazy ass and get it!" Newt yelled, fed up with his 'drunkard mother' who couldn't be bothered taking two steps and grabbing it.

"Okay, in response, i'm making an artifact that could be incredibly important to our escape from this hell hole. So contribute 'brat'." Cynthia retorted.

"You witch! I have been! You've been making me pick up tools and then get me to place them JUST outside your reach so you keep calling me to pick it up! I get nothing out of this and i'm just wasting time at this point!" Newt fed up after nearly a week of repetitive orders from Cynthia.

"Brat, your 'benefit' is living through this shit show! Also call me witch again and I will turn you into a witch before treating you like those 'Holy' bastards treats 'witches'."

"That actually doesn't sound to bad?" Newt ignorantly questions.

"Oh i forgot to mention because your obliviousness is heaven defying! What the pricks do to witches and mages is what they call 'purification' that is to say, they hang you up and light you on fire out in the open for all to see." Cynthia's face twisting into a dark grin the longer she talks.

"Nevermind madam, i apologise for my uncouth behaviour." Newt hurriedly apologies, unintentionally mixing in English words as he was unaware the exact translation.

Eliciting a eyebrow raise from Cynthia.

"I'm not sure what 'madam' and 'uncouth' means but context wise its easy to guess."

Cynthia spoke with suspicion but cast it away as there was more important things to do.

"Changing the subject, where did you even get all of this?" Newt questions gesturing at the table, desk, chairs and more.

Cynthia responds with a gesture towards a pouch hanging on her tool belt.

"Oh right that makes total sense." Newt sarcastically replied before realising she had a mostly empty tool belt and facepalming at the realisation.

"Watch the attitude brat, could get you killed some day."

Newt snorts but doesn't deny her advice.

"Its enchanted with space expansion. Or in other words, for a uneducated twat, 'Thing big on inside!'" She says mockingly in the most enthusiastic and hyper excitement she could.

Breathe Newt, breathe, murder isn't technically legal here.

"Y'know instead of making fun of me, or i don't know, dropping me in the wilderness with no knowledge how to survive after this all blows over. You could actually teach me..." Newt says frustrated but having anticipated the negative response.

However instead, he is met with an agonizing silence followed by a slap sound.

Cynthia having facepalmed at realising she had started to fall back into her old ways before thinking over the benefits of teaching him.

Well he's right, if we escape this i can't just drop him somewhere. But i can't just teach him everything, time is of the essence. It would be more efficient if he knew what i was doing and helped out on the rudimentary steps. Could also help if he knew some magic for the escape. But it would take a while to teach him the necessary parts of magic and my craft. But once everything is done the speed could be rapidly improved and more scenarios would be covered saving me time to make something for it.

"Alright kid... Newt, i'll teach you some rudimentary magic and the basics on my craft, which i call Magi-Artificing. Engineering and craftmanship mixed with enchanting. Something which I, your amazing teacher, have pioneered!" She flaunts with a grin, Newt was actually incredibly surprised and happy about being able to help and do something... Until she continued.

"But this also means you will be the second ever user of my craft, which means, you have to be up to my standard! Prepare for hell brat, cause you are going to experience worse!" She laughs maniacally as Newt starts regretting having asked.

It can't be that bad right?

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After a week of teaching Newt, which he half assumed was an excuse for torturing him with impossible tasks such as memorizing entire books in less than 10 minutes Newt was trying to unwind whilst trying to utilize his newfound information, Newt sat on the ground tinkering with some pieces of work Cynthia discarded and didn't need, it was better to constantly be trying to make progress, lest Cynthia catch him doing anything else would mean relentless drilling of image into his head.

I apologise to all witches that have ever and will ever exist, comparing you all to her was an insult to you all. Newt thought as he tried to understand and process everything explained by Cynthia over the past week.

Apparently mixing engineering with magic is actually far far more difficult than you would think. There are many different ways this can be done, however you can simplify all of it to 3 different areas, this isn't entirely true, but this is the fundamentals of the very basic. They don't all fit into these categories.

1.Creating a tool which amplifies and optimizes the usage of mana to make a desired effect without the necessary skill required to achieve the same manually. Incredibly simple yet just as difficult. Usually there is only a select few uses as creating a artifact that can in general amplify and optimize mana is something on the level of the divine. For example a artifact similar to a laser gun, it was made with one purpose in mind, and achieves it. It shoots compressed fire and light creating devastating effects, however this artifact won't also be able to accelerate the growth of a plant. It has one purpose, one use. In another case of this with a near identical artifact, it instead has 3 possible alternate ways of using it that are derived from the basic use. Hold down trigger, it fires the laser for as long as mana is being supplied and the trigger is held, press trigger rapidly for burst shots, and press once for a single beam to come out. It has multiple uses, but usually in these cases, it is limited to this.

2.Creating machines that are fuelled by mana, everything is the same, the strength of mana however far superior to other known energy creating alternatives. Simple, essentially using mana instead of say electricity. However there is a alternate way of using artifacts without any mana from the user, imbed a Mana crystal into the Artifact, either have a rechargeable Mana crystal or a normal Mana crystal which you will need to swap out occasionally.

3.Creating a artifact that is used to allow more advanced, spells, machines, e.t.c. to work allowing a group of people to fuel a single machine with mana causing the desired effect. In this case the machine is doing all the heavy lifting, with the people only supplying fuel. An example of this case is someone making a massive advanced artifact with one purpose, say changing the weather, however nobody knows how to replicate the artifact in spell form, however they can use the artifact by sending mana into it and allowing the artifact to guide the mana through and cause the desired effect of changing the weather. Though in this example changing the weather would require a massive total of mana so multiple would usually be needed.

The keys to Magi-Artificing are, what materials you use and how they mesh with what purpose you use them for, matrixes, which are a necessary part for spell formulas to have a desired effect, efficiency on how well the mana conductivity and usage of all parts to maximize the effect within the limits of the material, and finally creativity, to branch out, try new things, and innovate. No craftmanship can be done without creativity to make unique and new things.

There was cases of artifacts from the past similar to Cynthia's 'Magi-Artificing', apparently its far more rudimentary and requires a lot more brute forcing with mana, its not, as Cynthia would put it, "doing anything efficient, its like making a fire ball spell and then dumping in thousands of times more mana then the needed requirement. And people are in awe of these 'artifacts' when it sends a meteor-like fire ball! When instead they could have brought hell into reality using the same amount of mana used in any advanced spell or half-baked Magi-Artifact!".

While Cynthia was a fairly unknown mage, she claims to have pioneered and brought Magi-Artificing to a whole new dimension, of course there were others who use artificing, Cynthia made a clear distinction between Magi-Artificing and Artificing, calling hers the superior version, and while they do succeed in their purpose, usually optimizing the usage of mana and amplifying the effect. Its to the effect of it being noticeably better, but also wasting so much mana that its ridiculous.

Cynthia had actually showed Newt the sheer difference between her work and the craft of others.

To put it lightly, the difference was the difference between heaven and earth. She put 10lUz into both hers and the other artifact.

Both had the same effect, creating a fireball. The artifact she had gotten was suppose to send out a small but dangerous fireball at 100lUz, or in other words, 100 lesser units of mana.

So Cynthia putting in 10lUz into the artifact made it create a small miniature candle like flame before puffing out of existence.

Cynthia's on the other hand, created a small fireball about the size of a fist, about 1/5th the size and heat as the artifact's fireball when using 10x the amount.

It was a lot of information for Newt to learn and compartmentalize. however each time he learns and knows what Cynthia is trying to teach the more closer he is to learning Magic!

However learning Magi-Artificing becomes increasingly more difficult to do if you don't have any understanding on mana or Magic, as it takes a huge part of Magi-Artificing, mana conductivity of materials and other sort become harder to explain if you can't use mana and understand the difference. Cynthia did explain them in a understandable unit of measurement, its far easier to know the difference between knowing the difference your told through a unit.

Worst part about all of this, is that Cynthia is a HORRIBLE teacher, making it damn near impossible to follow along with what she is explaining as she goes off and talks about things Newt has never heard of, and uses words Newt doesn't know because apparently they are used when going more in depth and talking about more advanced parts of Magi-Artificing, which Newt is currently in the process of learning the BASICS on, when this is pointed out she explains whats they mean, by using other words, theories and more that are also far more advanced.

Eventually after pleading with Cynthia and protesting at how confusing everything was, she just decided to fall into the easier option for both of them. Self study, sadly Cynthia didn't have any written knowledge on her about Magi-Artificing, taking her weeks of writing in a mostly blank book with a ink and quill.

This brought many questions to Newt's mind, Why did she have a mostly blank book, ink and quill with her? Secondly how damn large was that pouch?!

Luckily Cynthia continued attempting to teach Newt Magi-Artificing, which surprisingly was actually getting easier to understand as Cynthia seemed to adjust to teaching and getting the important points across.

However she didn't stop writing the book, which significantly takes more and more time away from her working on the artifact. As to why the methodical Cynthia was wasting her time on a book he won't need?

Unknown.

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Slowly time ticked on, Newt learning more and more, while Cynthia continued working on the artifact. Each week falling into monotonous routine, it was... Peaceful, something both Newt and Cynthia appreciated. However there was one thing that occurred twice per week, Cynthia would go out late at night. After questioning her, Newt was told that she was checking the progress on the search for her, the defences, looking for escape routes and finally how long they had left until they inevitably returned to interrogate her and Newt.

ETA: 3 weeks

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