Chapter 44 - A Budding Scientist in a fantasy World

“Let’s see… if I recall correctly, you wanted to focus on consumable enchanting, but learn both types of enchanting, right?” Asked Cecilia, looking at Alice. Her twitchy and nervous expression slowly faded as the topic of enchanting came up, and Alice could see that the girl was truly passionate about the subject.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought made the most sense – you said you mostly specialize in consumable enchanting, and so I figured you could probably teach me more in that subject.”

“That’s true, but based on what you’ve been describing, you might actually want to focus on traditional enchanting first. Traditional enchanting is what you would want in order to make, for example, the walls of a room that keeps out mana,” said Cecilia. “And your Perks will help you out a lot in choosing a specialty anyway – after all, Perks won’t lead you ast- Ermm.” Cecilia looked at the pile of rubble sitting on her enchanting table. “Perks are… usually reliable, at least. I have never been led astray by one before today, at least.”

“If that’s the easiest way to make a room with no mana in it, I guess I can focus my attention on traditional enchanting for now. But would you at least give me a basic overview of how both work? Right now, I know what distinguishes consumable enchanting, traditional enchanting, and System enchanting from each other, but I don’t know how everything actually works when making an enchantment.”

Cecilia seemed to think it over, before she nodded.

“All right, we’ll start with the very basics then. To create an enchantment, you need 3 things – first, you need a concept. This is akin to the heart of an enchantment – in essence, it is what tells the enchantment what to do. For example, the novice ring I showed you the first time you came to my shop – it has the concept of ‘lock onto an object moving faster than the speed I described using my mana, then stop its movement.’ This can, theoretically, be anything, as long as you have the right seeds to go with it,” began Cecilia, as she pulled out an iron ring. Alice recognized it as the first enchanted object Cecilia had shown her – it had stopped a piece of iron she had moved using her mana.

“That being said, remember, Enchantments are dumb – they can’t remember instructions that are too complicated. It’s one of the reasons why Organic magic isn’t very popular for [Enchanters] – you just can’t get an enchantment to remember the dozens of different ways you need to be able to interact with even a small and seemingly simple bone because there are way too many variations on how a bone can break. Heck, even humans often struggle with learning all of the weird complications that can occur if their [Intelligence] is lower – usually, [Organic Mages] rely on their Perks to help them figure out the best and safest way to heal a patient, because memorizing everything without assistance would be time consuming and difficult. Perks offer a massive shortcut here – they make it much easier to feel out and remember how you need to deal with most situations.”

Cecilia paused, absently fiddling with the ring she was holding. “In fact, some people argue that, at least as far as information retention goes, [Organic Mages] get even better options than [Scholars], although it’s also far more specific. But that’s besides the point I’m trying to make here. The first aspect of Enchanting is the instructions you want to encode into an object. These instructions are processed via your magic seeds – which is why Traditional and Consumable Enchanting can only be done by mages. If you don’t have any magic seeds, no matter how well you fulfill the other two requirements for making and using an enchantment, you can’t made anything. And, of course, you also need to actually be able to do whatever you’re trying to get your enchantment to do – you can’t make an enchantment somehow warm up a room if you have never figured out how to do so without an enchantment. In short, enchantments can never exceed their maker in terms of control over mana. That being said, there is ONE area where an enchantment can do more than the wielder. That is mana quantity. An Enchantment burns through Monster cores to work, and that also means the Enchantment might be able to have access to dozens or hundreds of Mariums beyond what the actual enchanter has available. Even if Enchantments tend to be inflexible compared to humans, and can’t seeds with the knowledge and intelligence of humans, when it comes to sheer quantity of mana enchantments have much better fuel sources available than most humans do. Monsters have more mana than humans, after all – they just waste much more when using magic and waste most of their advantage.”

Concept and mana? Alice frowned, absently thinking through the idea. While she didn’t have a good idea of what it meant to process a set of instructions via her magic seeds, the fact that it seemed possibly to directly translate her ideas into an enchantment once she knew what she was doing was important information. If she was understanding Cecilia correctly, as long as she was able to manually do something with her magic and had whatever materials enchanting needed, it would be possible to turn it into an enchantment. It would definitely make her first major goal, a room with no mana inside of it, much easier to achieve. Alice shook herself out of her thoughts, refocusing on Cecilia’s words as the other girl continued speaking.

“However, you’ve probably also noticed, a variety of materials are needed to create enchantments as well – it isn’t as simple as just dumping mana into any old material and then calling it a day. At least, not without other factors,” said Cecilia. She held up the ring that she had been toying with, revealing the inside of the ring – Alice could faintly make out that the ring was actually composed of two layers of material. The outer band of material, exactly as she had previously assumed, was just regular iron. There was nothing particularly special about it, and it seemed to mostly be there for the purposes of helping the ring maintain its shape and keep the inner materials safe. However, the inner band of the ring was made up of totally different materials – there was a band of some sort of green rock inside of it, and Alice could easily make out glimmers of grey and silver mana flickering around inside of the ring. It was actually somewhat similar to the way the strange rock’s chunks of mana had looked, except that it was dozens, if not hundreds, of times less complex.

“This is where adventurers and enchanting materials come in. There are a variety of materials that can ‘lock in’ mana from external sources and then hold onto a set of instructions. I said earlier that enchantments are dumb, right? This is because the amount of ‘trigger conditions’ an enchantment can remember is restricted by whatever material you use to lock in mana. For example, the material for this ring is greenstone – a basic and common material that is relatively popular with Enchanters because of its low price. It is mostly compatible with kinetic magic, as well as other types of concepts based on moving things around. However, it can only remember one ‘activation condition’ and one ‘then’ statement – in short, it creates an if/then statement. IF an object is moving at or faster than the speed described, THEN stop its movement. This enchantment will lock onto the object in question after it chooses a target and won’t reset the object it’s ‘looking at’ until it runs out of energy – which is why I’ve kept it around. I… forgot to add that in when I was making the enchantment.” Cecilia blushed slightly. “It was my first enchantment for a reason. My father laughed for a solid minute after I finished making it – I was so proud of making my first enchantment, and then my father found a way around the protection of the ring in fifteen seconds. I… I should have changed the ‘lock on’ condition to just assess ‘whatever is moving faster than the described speed.’ Anyway, More complex enchanting materials can hold much more complex sets of instructions as well. However, those tend to be much rarer – which is where [Adventurers] come in.”

“What about [Adventurers]?” Asked Alice. At this point, she had heard people mention adventurers several times on this planet – however, it seemed very different from Alice’s initial conception of what an ‘adventurer’ should be like. Instead of going into dungeons (which didn’t seem to exist on this world) and slaying monsters, most people seemed to think of them as opportunistic treasure hunters with short life expectancy.

“[Adventurers] are, in essence, people who try to gather enchanting materials from the wilds and then sell them in cities. Well, they also try to sell a variety of other things besides JUST enchanting materials – monster parts, interesting odds and ends, whatever will sell, really. They usually go into the wilds for long periods of time in order to search for these materials, and usually grab Perks based around locating and hiding from monsters, locating materials that might be valuable, and miscellaneous things like pathfinding. Of course, some have other specialties, or work in teams – however, at the end of the day, they’re people who try to strike it rich by risking their lives to snatch materials out of monster-infested regions.” Cecilia shrugged. “Usually, it’s the route people who are economically desperate take if they don’t want to risk a mana baptism – of course, in the end, I have serious doubts that their survival odds are actually higher than just going for a baptism. Though, I suppose that unlike a mana baptism, where survival is pretty much random, as an adventurer you at least have some influence over when and if you die. I can… kind of see the appeal on that front, I guess? Honestly, the profession as a whole makes me seriously question the sanity of humans, but at the end of the day I’m glad they exist. I buy materials from them, after all.” Cecilia had a somewhat strange expression as she talked about [Adventurers], and Alice couldn’t help but wonder if the sort of mixed feelings Cecilia seemed to have towards the profession was common in this world. Other people certainly seemed to view them as potential troublemakers – at the same time, Alice couldn’t help but feel that [Adventures] were actually quite similar to gold miners from home, in a way. They went into dangerous areas hoping to get lucky and end up rich – it’s just that one braved monsters and mana poisoning, while the other braved cave-ins and getting poisoned by gasses trapped under the earth.

“That is… very different from how [Adventurers] were portrayed back at my home,” said Alice.

“How were they portrayed back on your home world?” Asked Cecilia, curious.

“Well… they had this image of amazing monster slayers who would go into the depths of dangerous places, kill everything there, and then get lots of treasure and leave.”

“I thought your home world didn’t have monsters though? If so, why were there stories of people hunting monsters? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“That…. Huh.” Alice frowned. That actually was quite strange, wasn’t it? Granted, she hadn’t seen any monsters in this world that actually resembled a monster from legends and stories on Earth – no Nemean Lions or Chimeras, just animals that were dumb as bricks and wanted to eat mana, and often had a magic seed or two to power up their activities. “I have absolutely no clue. That sounds pretty strange to me as well, now that you mention it. I notice that I am confused. Something I believe to be true is incorrect… Hmm. Perhaps Monsters were present on Earth at some point in the past? Wait, but if they had no mana, how would they survive? Monsters suffocate without mana… Hmmm.” Alice frowned. “At least, everything I have heard so far indicates that this subject has been tested multiple times, and Monsters appear to die without mana present in the air according to all studies I have heard of.”

“That definitely sounds like something we should be looking into, later on. If we’re going to be investigating this together, we’ll need to know more. Anyway, your description sounds like either an Immortal, or a fool with a death wish.” Cecilia frowned. “Actually, that sounds like both. Even Immortals wouldn’t survive strolling into dangerous areas left and right – that’s how you end up as a monster’s lunch. Well, that being said, some people did manage to reach Immortality by more or less doing what you described – but those people usually cut it out after they reach Immortality, or they disappear into the history books within a few centuries of reaching Immortality. It’s a very risky lifestyle. Adventurers have also started growing less common over the years – people are always finding new ways to artificially create enchanting materials, after all. Greenstone is actually artificially-created, and it’s fairly cheap – which is part of why Kinetic Magic is growing in popularity among [Enchanters]. Enchanting materials aren’t really easy to mass-produce yet, but it’s getting closer as time passes, and the price for simple materials like Greenstone is starting to become more affordable than equivalent materials found by [Adventurers]. If you want something that can remember some mixture of two or three ifs and thens, you can probably find it made by a starving magic university student trying to earn some tuition money, though you would need to be a bit lucky and have some money. Beyond three, it’s still impossible to make right now, but I expect that will change within a few decades, probably. People have even been speculating that a new class will be created soon just based around making enchanting materials.” Cecilia sighed. “People can’t predict the intentions of the System with accuracy, though – after all, it’s… well, even if it can be fooled, it’s very close to a god, at least.”

Alice took a moment to remind herself that, even though the people in this world seriously struggled to manage situations where their Perks outright fed them wrong information, they were far from stupid. If they wanted a material to maximize the output of their mages, it made total sense that they would invest in finding ways to artificially mass-produce that material. “So what’s the third thing needed?”

“This one is a bit simpler – it’s just a power source. Magic cores, usually from monsters, to power up the enchantment and keep it running. Everything costs mana, and once an enchantment runs out of mana, it’s just a lump of weird materials.”

“Usually from monsters?” Cecilia actually flinched.

“It is… technically possible to use human mage organs as a power source as well. However, don’t do that. Ever. It is illegal, and it is wrong.” Cecilia shivered. Alice, realizing she had touched on a bad subject, quickly switched the subject.

“Are these three things also needed for consumable enchantments?” Cecilia looked at Alice, and seemed to ease her way back into the flow of the conversation, putting her revulsion and the mention of human enchanting materials aside.

“Yes, although for a consumable enchantment you don’t need much of an ‘information’ managing material – the amount can be much lower. Usually just a little fleck of it. You also don’t need to worry about keeping the base material safe – after all, everything is going to get destroyed after one use anyway. Who cares about keeping materials safe for long-term use?” Ceclia shrugged. “Basically, you can just ignore adding things like iron coatings and just slap a bit of greenstone together with a mana core and use a perk to glue them together. Should be available at level 10. If you’re not interested in spending a Perk slot, there are some material options like glue available, but they’re kind of expensive since they need high level craftsmen to make them. That kind of defeats the point of a consumable enchantment, which is to make otherwise low-value materials into something useful and sell it for a cheap and quick profit. But if you’re planning on just buying them or creating them for research purposes, it might do well enough.” Alice decided she would think about it whenever she got to level 10 in [Enchanter]. Right now, she didn’t even have the class, so while making plans in advance wasn’t a bad idea, it was still a bit far away from her.

“That makes sense. So, for making a room with no mana in it, I’m assuming I would need a material to remember instructions, some walls I can throw those materials into, and a pure mana seed to actually make the enchantment?”

“That’s the easiest way that I can think of to do it, at least. If you’re willing to pay a blacksmith, you could put the enchanting materials inside of some sort of metal wall, or something. That being said, that’s probably both expensive and overkill – you could also make some sort of ‘paint’ that blocks mana out, and then just manually drain a room afterwards. There are a few enchanting materials that are liquids, even though most are solids – the liquid ones are a bit sketchier because you NEED to make sure they’re mixed properly if you combine them with other stuff. Otherwise, the whole enchantment might break down. Of course, even before then, I recommend getting a few levels in [Enchanter] to help you actually make enchantments without screwing up.”

“That sounds like a good idea to me – what do I actually need to do to get the [Enchanter] class? Or the [Apprentic Enchanter] class?”

“Make three enchantments. They don’t have to actually work - you just need to try to do so three times while using the correct materials and going through a process that should give you an enchantment. Basically, you can screw up and it won’t be a big deal. Apart from that, study enchanting for 10 hours under a teacher or twenty hours on your own. The teacher doesn’t need to have a [Teacher] class – they just need an [Enchanter] class. Pretty easy.” Cecilia walked towards a bin of various rocks – Alice could see that several of them had similar colors and textures, and most of them resembled the band of green stone inside of Cecilia’s first ring.

“These are also greenstone. You can try to make a few basic enchantments with these,” said Cecilia. “I’ll stick around and help you for a while – we can… we can put off telling Illa about the rock destroying itself until tomorrow, hopefully, right?”

“… Probably?” Alice felt like Cecilia was trying to avoid the problem a little bit too much, but given the awkward circumstances of Cecilia accidentally destroying a strange material she was asked to investigate with no results, Alice didn’t blame her for wanting to push the problem away for a little bit longer. Besides, at this point, Alice was excited to try to make her first enchantment.