Chapter 41: Chapter 40: a morning lecture

When I wake up and exit the tent, the first thing I see is James sitting with a head sized rock in his hands, with an intense focus on his face. Jo is sitting next to him while eating a bowl of something.

As Jo sees me, she greets me and breaks James out of his focus.

“What’s going on?” I ask them.

“I’m trying to enchant this rock, but I’m not sure how to do it. Jo gave me some info on what she was taught in the academy, but it didn’t solve the issue. Do you have any pointers?” Answers James, sounding a bit frustrated and a bit hopeful that I can give him the answers.

I do remember how to enchant stuff in the game, and likewise remember it from Zena’s perspective, but I still haven’t done it since I awakened at the lake. Still, I organize my thoughts so that I can help him to the best of my abilities.

“It’s been a while since I enchanted something, and I’m not sure how stamina enchantments differ from mana enchantment, but I’ll give you the rundown of how it’s done.” I say while picking up a nearby branch to demonstrate on.

As I stand there, I get the attention of both of them, with Jo even picking up a twig of her own.

“So, I’m going to explain with mana in mind, since that’s what I know, but you might be able to substitute in stamina instead.” and James nods along.

“The basic premise is to use your mana to create structures inside the item that alters the flow of mana to achieve an effect. It can either affect the mana the user supplies or mana from an internal storage. I assume that Jo already told you that?” I finish the overview, with James nodding along.

“The first step is to soak the item with mana so that you can exert your influence on it. How much mana is needed depends on the size and material.” and I do it to the small branch in my hand, giving it a soft green glow.

Jo’s twig also glows a little, but without any color. Jame’s rock doesn’t glow and a thought occurs to me.

“Can you even move stamina outside the body like we do with mana?” I ask, not really knowing the answer.

“Yes, though it’s probably not as easy.” James confirms as his rock start to glow a dull yellow.

“Ok. The next step is to start making said structures. The easy way is to cast a spell through the item, hoping the structures get created, but the better way is to manually recreate the structure, though you need to know the structure for that. The simplest one to do is a small reinforcement enchantment. I just require the mana to be circulating in some manner inside of it, with the specifics being unimportant.” I explain while demonstrating on my branch with an excess of mana. I finish off by stating that such a simple structural enchantment could be the result of failing a more complex enchantment, though luckily the materials usually aren’t destroyed by a failed enchantment.

After a moment of silence, James picks up a different, but similarly sized rock, and smashes them together. The unenchanted breaks into multiple pieces and the enchanted one, which is still glowing slightly, cracks into two pieces and stops glowing.

“That worked?” he states, almost confused.

While he contemplates the implications, I give my branch to Jo, and look at her twig. She did a decent job at reinforcing it, though she should have learned that at the academy.

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Then we hear James say “That was so easy.” which has me asking out loud, “What did Jo tell you?”

“She skipped over the soaking step, and to just cast a spell through it. And turns out none of the ‘spells’ I can use fits the bill.” He explains, while doing air quotes when saying spells.

I leave them to it while silencing nature's call and while doing it, I hear various rock smashing noises. When I return after a while, he sits there holding a cube made from rock and smiling.

“Hey Zena, did you know that you can change its shape when you soak it?” he exclaims and I just tilt my head, not wanting to acknowledge that, no, I did not know that. Instead I just bend down and pick up the first thing I grab, which is a small and sharp rock, likely a piece of the golem that broke off, and fill it with my mana. I then will it into a sphere. A second later, a spherical rock follows a parabolic trajectory towards James while I hold a deadpan expression, masking my delight as he catches the rock. 

I think James understood that I didn’t know it, but hopefully Jo didn’t.

After that I sat down on my mana chair, still not a throne, and proceed to eat my breakfast. Jo resumes her bowl and James asks me for something meaty, and I provide him with a meaty sandwich of some kind. I also distribute water, though feeling fancy, I levitate the glasses over to them. It took significantly more mana than just handing them over, but I might have some to spare.

While we eat, Jo starts to complain that her spells didn’t have a significant impact yesterday. That led to me realizing that she has more mana now, than she did yesterday, despite using some on enchanting the twig. I also asked her to see her wand saying that I might be able to help her spells have more impact.

Sure enough, her wand was an enchanted wooden rod. The enchantment was actually pretty decent, but it only matched up to the starting rod that new players had. I take out my old starting wand and sure enough, it was pretty similar. Jo’s expression lit up as I told her about my old wand.

I think I will give her a better wand to use. There never really were any restriction on equipment in the game, you only needed to acquire it, which to be fair is a pretty big requirement. Combine that with the fact that after multiplayer was introduce, you could trade your Guild ID to other players and we had a lot of fun gathering a group of players doing S rank quests with newly created characters. Super hard to do, but so fun.

There were also some problems in the beginning since you could trade away your ID, but not re-register in the guild, but it was fixed soon enough.

Smiling at the memories, I ask Jo if there are any elements she prefers, or if she is going to stay neutral. She says she will stay neutral for now, and I look through my inventory for a decent staff or wand.

Eventually I find a good staff which amplifies spells a fair bit. It’s a gnarly wooden staff with a polished black sphere for a head. Probably the same materials as my ear rings, though a slightly worse enchantment.

Her expression turns to confusion for a moment before settling somewhere between fear and awe as I tell her that she can use it for now. She quickly stows away her wand and reverently takes the staff in her hands.

I summon a mana barrier and tell her to test it out, and after only a moment of hesitation, the staff head glows with the grayish white of unattuned mana and a mana bullet splashes into my barrier. I nod with satisfaction since the bullet packed a greater punch than last time I tested her prowess against my barrier.

Jo just stood there, staring at the staff while we packed up camp and prepared to head out. Only after we were done and notified her, did she snap out of it and hurriedly packed away her stuff.