The ring I made that was finally big enough to fit after being shrunk was massive, almost like a car tire. I gathered the dirt from just outside the wall, starting a ditch in the process, so that I wouldn't leave a pockmarked area inside it. Once compressed this stone ring was incredibly hard, due to my high leveler with the magic I could make it much denser than a worker could. Course this ring would never be actually wearable in combat because it is stupendously heavy, but as an enchant target it works just fine. It was much harder to burn the enchantment into it then a dirt ring, but not because of weird magic properties but because it was just physically harder.

At the normal level of power it didn't burn at all, it was just too tough for that, so I had to switch to high power and even then I had to go slowly as it took a moment for it to work. The first one was a failure as I burned too long on one spot, dot burning worked fine on "soft" material, but hard stuff needed something else. Thinking about how I am essentially burning a tunnel for the mana to flow along, I needed to make it a better tunneling shape, a worm of mana instead of a spot. Stretching a spot out was difficult, I had to effectively use three magic hands at the same time and weave them together into a single object. It was like four spots placed next to eachother but better because there were no gaps.

Making a new dense stone ring took a minute, it was annoying compared to being able to just make a new one out of dirt near instantly, but that is the price of progress. Once I had the ring I built my burner construct while keeping the power low, I first curled it up on the starting point and slowly increased the power, once it started burning I had it unfurl and flow along the path needed. I had to be careful about it's movement rate but otherwise it worked exactly how it was supposed to. Completing the hard ring gave me an enchanting level and when I put it on I could feel it was a lot more stable than the dirt ring and also a little stronger. I am sure I could push a lot harder on it before it failed like the hat did. Speaking of that hat, I will not be able to make one of those out of dense stone, I would need six magic hands to control two burn worms at the same time to make that.

Maybe if I inverted it... I built a new car tire of dirt and with the size I could just carvee out the pathway from inside it with dirt control. Right before I shrunk it down I had another idea, I laid it down and stepped into it and carefully shimmied it up until it was a stupidly huge belt. I could feel it trying to kick on but it's passive absorption rate couldn't take in enough for it to send the magic on a full circuit with how huge the channels were that needed to be filled. So I just gave it more energy along the same thread it had created to passively absorb from me. I had to push in quite a lot before it finally filled up and made a loop, once activated it became nearly self sustaining, the passive thread was good enough to keep it going.

It seems size matters when it comes to enchantments, this huge hoop pushed my INT up to 13, sadly as I examined it I could feel it was incredibly unstable, if I did anything that used this higher power it will absolutely explode. On the other hand, seeing it huge like this was super interesting, I could see how the reason it was only nearly self sustaining was because dirt is porous so some of the mana was leaking out the sides. But I also got a good look at the mana itself closely and how it seemed to change every time it went through a twist or turn in the loop. I spend some time looking at it, trying to glean anything from it, but as I felt I was nearing an idea it started vibrating dangerously, I must have looked too closely and that used enough of the enhanced INT to destabilize it.

I quickly shimmied it off and then launched it as far into the trees as I could, a minute later there was distant popping noise, like a huge bubble bursting. Just after that there was a weird rush of mana, being so far away made it only mildly painful to look at instead of brain frying. If I knew someone had magic sense active I could use that as an attack, some kind of magic flashbang, once I figure out enchantments I could make a specialized pod instead of blowing up an oversized mana ring. Well, now back to original plan, I made yet another giant ring, carved it out, and then I applied earth compression too it. It worked... sorta, the carved out area was still there and shrunk, but it was warped due to uneven density of the dirt compressing at different rates.

I need to somehow even the dirt out until it is a uniform material, hmmm, what if I churn it? I make and hold a mid sized ball of dirt and use one magic hand to spin part of it, I use another to spin another direction, and a third to spin it a third way. The bits of dirt scraped together as the conflicting spins cross eachother, grinding it down smoothly. I slowly up the power output and it gets to a fairly blenderific rate, but something is missing, I need pressure pushing the whole thing inward so it grinds instead of the grains just bouncing off each other. I tentatively extend a forth magic hand, I can tell that only dirt magic's level held it together, acting as an amplifier for my intent that I wont have with enchanting, yet.

I wrapped this forth hand around the orb and squeeze like a bootleg earth compression, because I can't use both at the same time, for some reason, I can use magic sense with other things but i can't use two actual magics at the same time. Regardless, after increasing everything to full power, the ball was ground down into a uniform dirt slurry. It was odd, it had the consistency of dust but still counted as dirt so I could use full power to control it. I morphed it into a hoop and pressed it together until it stuck, then made a simple empty ring through it before compressing it. Haha, I am on fire today, it worked, the little rock ring was perfectly smooth and the empty space inside was perfectly smooth as well.

Only downside is I would need a ton of material and I could only make a bit at a time so I could only really try it once after about an hour. Hmmm, what if I enchant something already enchanted? Just add a second line next to the first one, I picked up the stone ring and carefully made sure it is completely empty before I started burning a second line completely parralel to the first one. After that I added a third line on the other side to keep a balanced, I had a feeling that being balanced was important for enchantments. Once it was done I powered it on without wearing it, just in case, it very quickly went terrible. Each line had a subtly different frequency and being so close together the energy waves they created bounced off each other chaotically, pure toughness of the ring was all that was holding it together.

Examining the magic waves I saw how they bounced and flowed, the subtle imperfections in the burned tunnel snagged the magic which caused the waves. I had to try and fix it while it was active, I couldn't see the snags while it was powered down, this probably was another thing that let metal be better with enchantments, it was tough and flexible so it was much easier to fix. I intensely looked for which snag was furthest from any others, that one should be the easiest to do. Once found I carefully formed a tiny burn spot inside the flowing energy, it caused extra waves to be generated but as I guessed, being furthest away from the other waves kept the instability low.

Next I maneuvered the spot towards the snag where I slowly and gently rubbed them together, I had to make sure I didn't push too hard or it could just make it worse. Eventually the snag was worn away and the magic flowed smoothly through that spot without making any waves, I also gained a level in my enchantment related skill, still not sure what it was. With that snag gone the others nearby would be easier due to less waves hitting them. As I burned the snags off I gained two more levels, not sure why, maybe the first once counted as novel so would get a boost, but the next two didn't.

Once I burned away the last one and all three lines were running at full power so it didn't look like it was gonna explode anymore, I pulled back my focus to examine it as a whole instead of as sections of lines. It felt like I was seeing something, not sure how else to describe it, I was looking at it but I only felt like I was seeing it instead of actually seeing it. I rotated the ring in case a different angle would be more clear, when I caught a glimpse of a symbol. I quickly turned it back to that exact spot and stared, it felt like it rapidly faded in and out of reality which made me realize what was happening, it was that effect that made me forget the words to earth compression.

Having a few levels in the counter skill was letting me see the pattern for a moment before I was made to forget what I was seeing. While staring I drew the symbol into the dirt next to me, after ten passes to make sure it was perfect I turned off magic sense and instead looked at the enlarged dirt version of it. I could see it without memory shenanigans going on, sadly it still made no sense, so I filled it in with hard dirt and picked up the formation. As I examined it from every angle I suddenly knew what it was, it was a rune that basically meant "amplify", and realizing that gave me a level in something new, as well as a level in magic memory as the memories of looking at it on the ring blurred back into focus.

As I Looked at the sky I saw it was barely after noon, and I had already worn myself out mentally with weird level grinding. I needed a game, just something to do to waste some time after grinding. It had to be simple so that the kids can learn it, make it sorta battle focused so the soldier's would be interested, maybe checkers? If they are good at that I will see about trying chess with them as well. Building the board was easy enough, decided on a combination of stone and wood, grey and brown should work reasonably. Grabbing a log from one of the felled trees nearby I cut it into chunks and roughly carved the chunks into squares. I also made big dirt squares and compressed them down to size.

Once that was done I arranged them into a board and globbed the whole thing together with dirt holding the squares together. Making the pieces was done in the same way, I just carved some wood into the wooden pieces and compressed dirt into the rock pieces. After all that I headed inside to see if a soldier would be able to play me, hopefully it being a simulated battle would let their battle savantism help them.