Chapter 43: Void Necklace

The jewel that was hanging from Emily's neck was very beautiful. It was a translucent rock, finely cut and was accentuated by a well crafted golden pendant. The necklace was clearly created by a highly skilled craftsman.

After regaining his calm, Deacon cleared his throat and drew everyone's attention back to himself.

"I am sorry. It was just unexpected to see someone wearing a void necklace in class"

The majority of students became curious of this "void necklace" that their instructor spoke of. Most of them had no idea what a void necklace was so all their gazes returned towards Emily's necklace.

Teo on the other hand was surprised. He had heard of stories of many void jewelry, formed into necklaces, rings, bracelets, pins, badges, and several other forms, but this was the very first time he had seen one.

Teo continued to look at the void necklace.

Emily on the other hand saw other people's gazes on her necklace. She wanted to hide it but before she could, Deacon stopped her.

"You. Do you mind if I can see your necklace a bit?", He asked

It was inappropriate to ask such things from a student but he couldn't resist. He also knew that people who wore void jewelry out in the open must have some status within the empire.

Seeing Emily hesitating, Deacon assured her with his next sentence

"Don't worry, I don't need to touch it. You can just hold up for a while for me."

Emily knew that her necklace was valuable, but did not fully understand its value. So she grabbed the edge of the pendant and clearly showed the gem in class.

Deacon quickly brought out several pieces of paper and drew some inscriptions as if he was trying to copy it.

The majority of students saw Deacon writing down several things on many pieces of paper. They were confused to what their instructor was writing down, but Teo knew what they were. They were the inscriptions engraved on the gem.

He also recognized that Deacon only wrote down some parts of the inscriptions.

'Perhaps that's all the inscriptions he could see?' Teo thought

With his eyes, he could see through the void necklace's inscriptions clearly.

He also realized how important these inscriptions were. An instructor wouldn't do something stop the whole class if it did not have some value.

So Teo returned his gaze towards the gem and attempted to memorize it. With his memory, it only took him a bit of time to memorize the arrangement of symbols and lines. He was already well experienced at this with his study of arrays, so it was quite a simple matter to him.

After a while, Deacon could no longer write down anything else. He also knew that there were still many parts of the gem he could not see, but was satisfied of what he could record. Although he had a void element that could see some of the inscriptions, he knew it was not an easy thing to recreate.

It was not everyday that an inscriber such as himself could study a void necklace up close, so he took advantage of this fortunate opportunity.

After writing them all down, he nodded to Emily in satisfaction. He kept all the notes into a folder and placed them away.

Emily quickly placed the pendant within her shirt, hiding it from other people's sight.

-AHEM-

Deacon drew everyone's attention back and finally started the class.

"Inscriptions. They are another way of using elemental energy. It is an art that draws elemental energy to perform a certain function.

Like what I mentioned before, a void necklace is a necklace that uses inscriptions to use the power of the void. It is quite a high level inscriptions that not many know how to create."

Although he did not reveal what the void necklace did, he still used it as an example for his lecture.

Deacon then walked towards a closet and removed a few items within it.

There was a sword, an armor, a stack of small papers and a pair of boots.

"These items are objects that uses inscriptions"

Deacon took the sword and held it in front of everyone

"This sword uses an inscription that absorbs fire energy. The effect increases the penetrating power of the sword. Although this sword's inscription is simple, it will should help dent any regular armor. A sword enchanted with an advance inscription would easily slice through normal armor like a hot knife through butter"

He then placed the sword on the side and took the armor.

"This armor has two separate inscriptions on each side. One side uses an earth energy to increase the durability of the armor, while the other side uses the wind energy to help carry the heavy armor and lighten it's weight.

An object can have more than one inscription, but you have to be careful. Controlling the energy within an item must be done precisely or the item could explode. This armor is fairly thick and was precisely designed so that no collision of energies would occur."

He placed the armor back to the side and took the pair of boots.

"This pair of boots are inscriptions are used to lighten the weight of the user. If you wear it, your speed should increase depending on the level of the inscription"

Then he took the small stack of papers.

"This are charms. There are two ways of using inscriptions. One is enchanting an object and the other one is to create a talisman. This charms are a type of talisman.

These two methods are similar, yet different. Through enchanting, an object can gain a special function or property, similar to the sword, armor, boots and even the necklace; they are all using enchantment method.

Using the inscriptions through talismans creates a medium to store a certain effect. These effects are divided into two different categories.

The first category are 'wards'. They talismans with defensive effects. They can temporarily increase the defense of an object, or perhaps even block a single attack.

The other category are 'charms', these are talismans with offensive effects. They can temporarily increase the attack power of an object.

The key word here is 'temporarily'. All talismans can only be used once before their effects wear off. Most talismans are considered useless because of their one-time use, but because of the flexibility of their usage, they are not completely useless."

As Deacon spoke, he returned the objects back into the closet.

"Talismans are similar to elementalists techniques but they are much weaker. The unpopularity of talismans prevented many people from researching this field.

This is one of the reason why our knowledge of talismans have not improved compared to our knowledge in enchantments, but it is a very interesting subject.

If you are interested in the subject of talismans I can tell you more in private, but our class will mostly cover enchantments as well as the two methods of inscribing.

There is also a class I teach that focuses on talismans if you want to take it next year."

Deacon opened another cabinet next to the previous one.

All 13 students looked into cabinet and saw a few stacks of books.

'Books!', Teo's eyes wided

"Everyone grab a book, this will be your text book for the whole year", Deacon announced

The books were identical to each other. They were fairly thick and seemed like they were newly printed.

"The first chapter is a thorough introduction to inscriptions as well as its history, since I have talked about it briefly, you can all read it on your own time.

I am here to teach you inscriptions, not history. We'll start our class with chapter 2.

Its mainly memorizing and understanding each symbols."

All the other students, including Teo, flipped the pages of their books to chapter 2.

Teo recognized the many symbols listed within the chapter. He noticed the 47 known symbols that were known within the empire, but the number of understood symbols was not the same as what he had read from the library. The number of understood symbols went up by 2, totaling 25.

The book noted that the two "new" symbols were apparently deciphered and analyzed by Deacon himself. Such an achievement resounded throughout the whole empire and thus gave him an important place within the empire.

But of course Teo had already knew the meaning of these symbols from the array book, as well as over a thousand of other symbols.

Several symbols could act similar to one another with a faint difference. Teo who had already memorized these symbols thought that the class would be easy because there were no symbols among these 25 that acted similarly, but the line formation of the inscriptions were somewhat different from the patterns of the array.

The arrays did not rely on the material's quality and shape, but inscriptions did. It heavily relied on even the density, the weight, and many other factors included into creating such inscriptions.

It was definitely an art, but an art with a manual. Although creating a new inscription was difficult, there were several recorded inscriptions available to inscribers. This is the main reason why even non-elementalists could become an inscriber, while elementalists, specifically generalists and pures, would be the ones expected to craft new inscriptions or high level inscriptions.

Even the inscriptions for the void necklace was several times harder than most inscriptions. There were many ways to create a void necklace with different effects. Specifically the void necklace that Emily owned could only hold a meter cubed of space.

Despite the space being considered small, it's value was still very high. The more advance inscriptions for void jewelry was, the better. There were even rumors of some void jewelry that were able to hold mountains, and living creatures.

As such, the inscriptions for void jewelries are often obscured by another inscription overlaying it to prevent others from easily copying it.

The class continued on, focusing on one symbol at a time. After discussing the symbol, Deacon asked all of the students to practice drawing the symbols.

This exercise was for the students to gain a steady hand. Many several other students proved to have skills in drawing the symbols, but more than half had difficulty in drawing them.

Windle was focused on writing on a piece of paper but his hands shook uncontrollably.

'Another failure!', He sighed

He looked over at Lia who had surprisingly steady hands, but she would often make mistakes drawing the symbol's correct proportion. Some curves would become too wide, while other too thin. But each time she slowly improved.

Windle was filled with envy. People who had trained their bodies regularly had much better control of their arms and fingers. Since he had only trained using his control of his element, he could not compare.

He looked towards Teo and nearly dropped his jaw in shock!

Teo accurately drew one symbol after another. Although the students were only required to draw one symbol at a time until they have mastered it. Teo drew the symbols as if they were nothing.

Windle was depressed. He thought that Teo's drawings would be as worst as his but he did not expect Teo to have such hidden talent.

Deacon who was looking at each of his students also noticed Teo's skills in drawing. He nodded in praise.

'Either he is a natural talent, or worked really hard. This is one above the rest.', He thought

Then he looked at Grifford

'Although he is no where near that other kid, this one is pretty good as well'

Deacon evaluated each and every student in class.

"Teo, you are pretty good at this", Lia said

She noticed how easily Teo could draw the several symbols within the book.

"Thanks", Teo replied

He did not explain how he became so good at drawing these symbols because it was directly related to arrays.

....

As time passed, the class finally ended.

After Deacon dismissed the class, he went into one of the rooms adjacent to the classroom. Inside he took the pile of paper containing the fragments of inscriptions that he copied from Emily's void necklace and started trying to reconstruct what was visible to him.

As many students cleaned up the several pieces of paper they had used. They chatted among each other. They also saw Deacon through the doorway working busily even though the class had just ended.

Deacon knew that he was being watched by his students, but didn't care too much about it. The inscription he was working on was too advanced for these students to understand. Perhaps if they took the advance course of inscription they would be able to tell what he was doing.

"Let's go", Lia said