“Master? Master? Are you in there? Please open the door! I have your books!” Alexander shouted through the door of Wendy’s shop.

“Quite down, who let you call me master, you will ruin my reputation if you think I already accepted you. You will need to do much more than just read a little!” Wendy shouted from inside the shop

“Please open the door Miss Wendy, I finished your books and its been a week already!” Alexander shouted back

“Hold your horses, I am coming, I am coming.” Wendy walks over to the door and start to open it. “Hey don’t push on the door, my security wards see you are an intruder, and we don’t want anything bad to happen to you, do we?”

“Ah, sorry yes, you are right, that would be a bad idea. I am just so excited about learning to enchant!”

“Keep quiet, people are still sleeping for light’s sake. Now come in and put the books on the counter then come into the back.” Wendy called behind her as she made her way into her work room.

“Miss Wendy, Miss Wendy, the books you gave me were very interesting! Who knew that the air all around us is made up from a multitude of gases that each weight different amounts and that we have to take that into consideration. Or that the earth is actually made up of many, many, many little granules and a mixture of different materials! They were amazing! But the best was the last b…” Alexander gushed at Wendy.

“Calm down, calm down, we will get to that later. First of all, let me get some tea. Its too early for this.” She walks into her kitchen and Alex hears water start to boil.

While Wendy is preparing her team, Alex is looking at all the equipment that Wendy has in her work room, there is some kind of luminescent ink, what looks like paint brushes, chisels and carving knives, protractors and compasses. So many mundane things that turn into all those amazing enchants!

“Okayy, that’s gooood, still too early for this but what can you do with such excited apprentices…” Wendy sighed to herself. “Okay so tell me what you know about the Elements and how they can be made to enchant a piece of equipment or mineral.”

Alexander stops gawking and centres himself. “To begin with, the elements are not actually that. They are forces of nature that have gained power through the suffusion of mana. So, each element can be further subdivided into more constituent parts, or can be combined with another to create a different effect. For example, Fire gives an offensive enchant that will burn the target on contact, and Earth is a solid enchant to increase resilience of the durability of the item. These two can be combined to provide an effect where it will return some of the damage when getting hit.” Alexander steps closer to a blackboard attached to one of the walls.

“Master, may I have some chalk and use this wall to illustrate please?” Alexander walks to one of the walls not covered by clutter.

“Don’t call me Master yet, you haven’t passed, yes you can use it, just don’t run anything out, I need that diagram for a client.”

“Thank you, Miss Wendy, as I was saying: Air can be refined and concentrated into lightning, this is not mixing the element with something else but extracting an aspect of the element. In this case it’s the negative charge.” Alexander continues drawing on the board.

Wendy nods her head and asks: “Okay, what happens when you combine all 4 basic elements together?”

“The books said that there is a marked increase in instability of the enchant when one combines elements and when one refines elements too. So, for me, combining all 4 basic elements will result in a big explosion probably.”

“Good at least you managed to work that out without having the need to try it, the last apprentice to try that stunt almost lost his hand in the process, if I didn’t come in at the end to shield him, he would have lost his head instead… Please say any advertising is good adverting but some things you just really don’t want to be known for.” Wendy finishes.

She walks over to an almost clean workbench and picks up a small bracelet. “Here look at this, and don’t break it, it’s a commission. What can you tell me about this bracelet?” Wendy passes the bracelet to Alexander. He brings it closer to his eyes and starts to concentrate.

Bracelet of Minor Elemental Wisdom

Bracelet made by Master Artificer Wendy

+2 Wisdom

+2 Intellect

Triangle Rank

Uncommon

Wood

“Miss Wendy, this is a bracelet of Minor Elemental Wisdom. It gives + 2 to wisdom and intellect, is of Triangle rank and of Uncommon quality.” Alex walks over to a work bench, looks around, the drags a box closer so he can comfortably see over the top. He pulls out a magnifying glass to see the inscriptions. “It looks like the main inscriptions are of water and one other I cannot identify. They are in a chain that loops so that must have some kind of significance but I do not know what it maybe.”

“Good, using the ADMINS and the tools around you, you are not as dumb as you appear.” She takes the bracelet away and hands Alexander the blueprint of the enchantment and the broken-down symbols.

“As you can see on the diagram, you were correct about the Water Element being used, and the symbol you could not identify was a refinement of water. When they are in a repeating chain, instead of providing an elemental effect, they provide statistics instead.” She explains and continues before Alexander can jump in, “No you can’t keep adding Element symbols to the bracelet to increase stats because of the instability. Adding more of the same symbol only increases the efficiency of the binding to the user instead of the efficiency of the effect.”

“Miss Wendy, what is this binding you speak of and why would having a higher efficiency of the binding be beneficial, why would anyone do that?” Alexander asks perplexed.

“Well think about it this way. This bracelet on its own is worth 1 gold marks as it provides stats instead of just elemental effect. That is a lot of money for beginners and let’s be honest, only beginners will be using this kind of equipment. The army provides much better stuff and the enchants are of a higher quality too.” Wendy takes a sip of her tea to wet her throat before continuing, “If you have something like this you don’t want it to be stolen right as it cost you a lot of money. Or you have a very powerful item that you don’t want someone to steal. Well the more efficient the binding the more time you have to appeal to the ADMIN to return said item to you in the event of theft or loss.”

“Wait, wait, wait, by return, do you mean like a teleport, or do they send animals to find you? Do the ADMINS have magic mail or something?” Alexander asks excitedly, I didn’t think they had something like this! This world is amazing!

“Te-le-port, that’s not a word I have heard before, but I get the gist of it. The ADMINS can translocate items or people at will. We don’t know how they do it, but so long as you have the correct terminal you can go almost to any other terminal that its connected to. I hear the Royal Family has one connected to their estates and the university, just in case they need to escape or beat back a Beast assault.” She takes another sip “Enough of that lets continue. You see the number of loops that are on the inscription? Each small loop is 10 minutes, so 6 small loops make up an hour and 12 small loops make up a medium loop. 24 medium loops make up a large one. How much time does a single large loop bind the item for then?” She finally asks

“If a medium loop is 2 hours and there are 24 of them in a large loop then… the large loop will bind the item for 48 hours or 2 days total.” Alexander replies after a slight hesitation.

“Good your mental arithmetic could use some work but that comes with practice, don’t worry you will get a lot of practice here.” Wendy praises Alexander

“So, 1 large loop is 2 days, some items are large enough to have multiple large loops but generally if you haven’t noticed that something is missing after 2 days then you didn’t really need it that much now did you?” She takes a sip of her tea, “Now how many loops are on the bracelet, you should be able to see it with you own eyes, don’t need a magnifying glass for this.”

“Um, there looks to be… 3 ... 4 … 5 … 6 … 12 medium loops on this blueprint.” Alexander answers.

“Good, now take the bracelet and put some of your mana into it. Each small loop takes 50 mana, at your level you should have 100 mana at least so you should be able to fill this up to 20 minutes and then trickle charge the rest quite easily, and this will train your mana pool too.” Wendy hands the bracelet to Alexander.

“Um Miss Wendy, remember I told you about my mana pool issues, it’s unfortunate that I won’t be able to charge up at all them minim requirement is greater than what is available to me.”

“Ah yes you did mention something like that, but I didn’t think is was so severe. Okay let me see, where did I put it.” Wendy starts rummaging on another workbench “Ah! Here it is, just the one I was looking for too.” She walks back over to Alexander and hands him a small blue stone.

“Take this in your hand and put it between your hand and the bracelet. Then when you are ready, channel your mana through the water core.” He was instructed.

Alexander studied the tiny pebble the size of his pinkie fingernail.

Basic Water Elemental Core

This is a basic water elemental core. It converts provided mana into the water element.

It will release a total of 250 mana at a rate of 1:2 before it needs to be recharged.

Recharge time 2 hours

Current total = 250

Alexander studied the tiny pebble the size of his pinkie fingernail.

This should be just enough to charge 1 small loop. Alexander places the stone between the bracelet and his hand and channels his mana through the stone. A single small loop worth 10 minutes lights up and Alexander is already spent.

“Wow hold on there, I didn’t think it would be that bad, are you out of mana already? You need to work on that intellect or complete the Mind journal and soon or you won’t be able to bind anything good. This bind cost was only 50 because of the material. Higher grade Materials cost more mana per loop!” Wendy grabs a hold of Alexander’s should to keep him standing and gives him some of her tea, “This should help clear your mind a little and increase your regeneration slightly”

“Sorry Miss Wendy, I haven’t been completely out of mana yet, this is a very new feeling for me” Alexander apologises.

“I cant believe that, I thought you would practice after reading the books and get your hand blown off and I would be done with you, what stopped you?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, it was my mom. She walked in on me when I was about to combine 2 elements to see what would happen and forbade me from doing any more experiments …”

“Hahaha,” she laughed out loud, “I should have expected it, damn kids, no respect. SO what elements did you try to combine?”

“Well I was thinking of getting lightning by combining two mirror images of air… “

“Oh light, thank the light Talina stopped you, combining reversed symbols can lead to very random results. I have seen someone combine 2 negative earth elements to make earth enchants fail and instead they revered gravity around themselves and came down 30 seconds later in a big splat. That was not a good day.” No, until you are much older, under supervision by me or another master and are in a specially prepared room, do not attempted to combine reversed symbols. By the way, that is not how you refine a symbol anyway. We will get to that later anyway.” She took her cup of tea back and drained it.

“Ok come over here, your head should be much better now and so must your balance, grip your sword if you need the assistance of your passive skills,” Alexander’s eye went round like dinner plates from that realisation, “Yes, that’s right, not many of your young-uns know about this but it can work like that too.”

“Okay, you see this shield here, this is my shield for when I need to find a reagent or a core to help enchant. Can you tell what is special about it?” She asks

“Well it’s a very nice shield and the glow is very interesting too. Wait are those the small loops? I don’t see any large loops, are you okay with only 6 hours of binding on such a shield?” Alex asks

“You got it almost right, the small loops are actually the medium loops, they are made up of the small loops and are too small to see with the light they emit. As you can see, the thing most people mistake for a glow of the elemental imbuement’s power is actually the duration of the binding. The more densely packed the loops are, the harder it is for a thief to see the duration left and you can also tell the fakes and the genuine articles apart.”

“Miss Wendy, is it safe to assume that the colour of the enchantments still has something to do with the elements used in the enchanting? For example, this bracelet is glowing a pale blue, while your shield is a very bright crimson.” Alexander asks.

“Yes, you are correct in that, the colour of the binding enchantment does tell the nature of the enchantment on the item, the brightness and the colour variant does help a lot. But remember the enchant does not glow because it is active but the binding is the thing that glows. Some people will give their items one enchant and will then layer a binding enchant using completely different elemental symbols to confuse and obfuscate their items and give themselves an advantage.”

Wendy walks over to another bookshelf in your workroom and pulls down 3 books.

“Enough for today, you will read these 3 books and use what you learn from them to create a blueprint for a ring that increases stamina by 1. Now off with you!”

Alexander takes the books from Wendy and puts 2 of them in his backpack, the last he carries in his arms.

“Yes Miss Wendy, but before I go, can you tell me if I passed your test?” Alexander asks.

Wendy sighs and says something about stupid children and for the light to give her patience under her breath and replies, “You have another assignment, I wouldn’t have given you this one if you did not pass the last. You can’t call me master until you can create an enchantment and gain the Rune Crafter path. For now, just do what it assigned, it will come eventually.” Wendy replies with resignation.

“And remember to fill in your Journal of the Mind, everyone gets it when they register so you must have it already. The after effects can be strange so do it at home with someone supervising.”

“Ah one last thing before I get going Miss Wendy. Where did you get that water core? Is it from a Beast?”

“Oh no these basic cores come from Line tier elementals, Beasts cores are of a much higher grade! Now run along” Wendy waves goodbye at Alexander as he walks out of the door, “That boy will be the death of me, from over exertion if anything.”

“Mom, Dad? I am home!” Alexander calls into the hallway as he takes off his shoes.

“Well don’t just stand there, get in here and tell us how you did on your 1st day!” his dad calls back.

As Alexander walks into the living room he sees his parents sitting together. His mom head was lying on his dad’s lap and they were each reading something complicated, He couldn’t quite see the titles.

“It went well, I learnt a lot and was given another assignment! She also told me that I really need to do the mind Journal or I just won’t have enough mana to do anything, even bind items.” Alexander explained.

“Ah the mind, do you remember what that was like? Okay sit there on the floor in a meditative position, we will watch.”

Alexander looked at his status and saw the following:

STATUS Name Alexander Derroit Race Human Age 6 Level 0 Experience to next level 1000 Class Citizen Available Classes None Statistics Constitution 14.33 Manipulation 13 Mind 17 Strength 14 Agility 15 Intelligence 18 Vitality 12 Dexterity 12 Wisdom 19 Stamina 17 Endurance 12 Concentration 14 Secondary Statistics Health Regen 1 per minute Free stat points 0 Mana Pool 36 Stamina Regen 0.8 per minute Mana Regen 5.28 per minute

After the last week and a bit since registration, every single stat has gone up by one. I will need to work to balance my mana pool and my mana regeneration but that will take some effort. I need to raise my Wisdom while not raising my intelligence. That will be a hard balance to keep.

My skills have also improved a little, so that should keep a nice overhead of journal points in case of emergency

Skills Athletics Tier 5 Dot (+2) Sword Mastery Tier 3 Dot (+1) Shield Mastery Tier 3 Dot (+1)

Close Quarters

Combat

Tier 1 Dot (+1) Combat Instincts Tier 1 Dot (+1) Studying Tier 6 Line (+2) Reading Tier 5 Line (+1) Language Comprehension Tier 0 Line Mathematics Tier 5 Line Talents High Comprehension

Tier 1 Dot (+1) Due to your intellect being so naturally high, you are able to understand and assimilate new concepts 10.1% faster Strong Mind

Tier 0 Dot Due to your past experiences, sudden changes in the environment will no longer freeze your sense Journals Journal of the Mind 0/30 Journal of Manipulation 0/30 Journal of Constitution 0/30 Journal of the Tinkerer 0/25 Unused Points 53 (+10)

My skills have also improved a little, so that should keep a nice overhead of journal points in case of emergency

Hmmm seems all that training paid off with a few skill levels. There are no new active of passive skills though which is a shame, I should someone get more weapon skills in there just in case I don’t have a choice, stamina is very important.

“I am going to put them in now. Be ready” Alexander tells his parents and puts in the 1st points

+1 Intelligence

+1 Wisdom

+1 Concentration

+0.05 to passive mana regeneration

Oh, that’s a nice surprise

+10 to mana pool

#ERROR mana pool calculation applies – 0.2 *10 = 2 extra mana

+1 Intelligence

+1 Wisdom

+1 Concentration

+0.05 to passive mana regeneration

+0.1 to passive mana regeneration

+1 Intelligence

+1 Wisdom

+1 Concentration

+0.05 to passive mana regeneration

+10 to mana pool

#ERROR mana pool calculation applies – 0.2 *10 = 2 extra mana

+1 Intelligence

+1 Wisdom

+1 Concentration

+0.05 to passive mana regeneration

+0.1 to passive mana regeneration

+1 Intelligence

+1 Wisdom

+1 Concentration

+0.05 to passive mana regeneration

+10 to mana pool

#ERROR mana pool calculation applies – 0.2 *10 = 2 extra mana

+1 Intelligence

+1 Wisdom

+1 Concentration

+0.05 to passive mana regeneration

+5 free stats

You have started on the path of the mind, your horizons have been expanded, your senses have become more acute, your mind works faster and your memory has become better. Your mana pool has broken its barrier and strengthened your mana channels, calculate regeneration as if you had 5 more wisdom. Mana pool will need time to recover: Countdown 23:59:59

#ERROR: Due to soul mismatch, mana pool limit has not been broken, any benefits have been removed. Mana pool recovery timer has been shut down as not applicable.

Alexander tried to open his eyes, but the light that was fine before now momentarily blinded him, he can smell the food that is in the oven and the sweat on him cloths from carrying those books home. He can hear the birds chirping outside as if the windows were open, his cloths are suddenly too rough!

“Calm down Alex, this is normal, you are in sensory overload. Close your eyes and try to meditate on each sense to tone them down. Start with your sense of touch as it is the most irritating I am sure.”

Alexander gets back into the lotus position and concentrates on removing distractions from his overloaded senses.

“Each time you complete a compound statistic Journal, you will experience something similar. For the Constitution, all your muscles spasm as they suddenly become much more effective, some people break bones if their stamina and vitality is not high enough. And the Manipulation journal makes it impossible to pick anything up as your hands, joints and motor control do not respond to your brain in the same way as they used to.”

“Your problem with the mana pool is actually a benefit in times like this as people that break the 200 mana limit also experience great pain at the same time as their perception is overloaded. That is not a fun day”

Updated Statistics:

STATUS Name Alexander Derroit Race Human Age 6 Level 0 Experience to next level 1000 Class Citizen Available Classes None Statistics Constitution 14.33 Manipulation 13 Mind 23 Strength 14 Agility 15 Intelligence 24 Vitality 12 Dexterity 12 Wisdom 25 Stamina 17 Endurance 12 Concentration 20 Secondary Statistics Health Regen 1 per minute Free stat points 5 Mana Pool 48 (+6) Stamina Regen 0.8 per minute Mana Regen 8.93 (+0.5) per minute