With that settled, Ben ran down to his work area to collect a spare brace as well as a few blank rings before running back to the rest of them to start.

As agreed, Mercy pulled out her card, letting him see two skills that were new to him, enthrallment and blood thinning.

“What’s this one then?”

“It pairs with enthrallment when we drink from someone, altering the consistency of a target's blood to thin it out so we can feed easier.”

Oh, that is going to pair so well with any weapon I make, and she has it at the fifth level! This alone is worth it.

“Alright, cool,” He said after copying both onto rings. “ In that case let’s get started. I’ll need to connect with you to do it but just put on this brace and we’ll see how it goes.”

She did as she was asked, but while Ben could feel her ambient mana the same way he could any other person he’d connect to, he didn’t think simply making a brace was the solution. To be sure, he got her to suck more of his blood while he connected to her and felt it fill her mouth in a way the ambient mana never did as it made its way into his body, only to be defeated by his resistances.

“Hmm, okay so I can’t just do things the exact same way, but then that much is obvious, isn’t it? I guess I can’t just make a bunch of high-level resistance amulets either since the issue is you’re injecting your mana into someone, but then how do I deal with it? I feel like the basic principle of the enchantment still works, it’s just a matter of altering it in the right way. Or maybe not altering the enchantment itself, but the item it’s put on? It really is kind of wasteful to make an enchantment that would cover you in your entirety when I just need to focus on your mouth. Hmm, let me look at something, try not to struggle.”

Before she could ask just what he was going to do, he had her mouth open, thumbs pulling at her cheeks to get a good look at her teeth. They were mostly similar to a humans, though maybe a couple extras, as well as four thin ones near the front.

Something seemed odd about them though, they seemed too short compared to what he’d felt sliding into his neck, although that was potentially just in his head. He took a finger and carefully touched one, only for all four to immediately extend, stabbing him as they did.

He pulled away and got Pelenia to heal him while Mercy licked the blood from her lips, savouring the few drops.

“Hey Abrus, don’t suppose you could help me out by making a model of her teeth? Both before and after they extend?”

The earth spirit came and looked into the mouth of the vampire before materializing two different models for Ben to use. Taking them and looking each over in detail, he pushed aside the small part of him that felt a twinge of jealousy over the display of raw mana to focus on the task at hand.

“The right answer has to be something like a retainer,” He muttered. “Nothing else would make sense. But then how would I get an enchantment like that on a thin wire just wrapping around the teeth? And I’d need to alter the sort of weave I’d use on the enchantments as well… It might take some experimenting but it should be doable, I’d just need to find the method with the best results.”

Mercy couldn’t help but let herself feel a bit of hope. He wasn’t saying it was impossible, even better, he seemed to be optimistic. If her race's long-standing curse could be brought under control then maybe, just maybe, their stomachs wouldn’t always be so empty and more people would be willing to help.

As she allowed herself to feel the smallest bit of optimism, Pelenia pulled her from her thoughts. “Alright, while Ben works on that I suppose we’ll have to treat you as a guest for the time being, can’t risk you going hungry. In the meantime, I’ll send a messenger to explain the situation to Alfheimr to have your companion returned. It may take a day or two since they didn’t bother having their gate constructed in their capital, but Ben can keep you fed for the time being as long as he has no problem with it.”

“Yeah, I figured that’s what would be happening anyway so fine with me,” He told them, having assumed that was how things would play out. “As long as someone heals me after, I’d rather not feel anemic for a few days.” Hearing all of this, Mercy’s first instinct was to thank them all with as much gratitude as she could, but before she could Ben was off, making his way to his workshop to experiment on just how he wanted to make this new project a success.

“Why is this so much harder than it should be!”

“But it should just be a simple modification of the brace enchantment! If I could just get to that part then we’d be golden!”

He hadn’t even gotten to testing it on Mercy yet by properly crafting the enchantments around her mana, instead he’d been focusing on making something that would be small and comfortable enough to fit around her teeth while building a generic enchantment with the properties he was looking for to see if he could make it fit, but it just wasn’t happening. No matter how large the enchantment on the braces were, the braces themselves were large enough to be able to handle it, but an enchantment he believed needed to be just as big while comfortably sitting in a person's teeth? Unless the material used was of an outrageous quality then it would be severely weakened by the enchantment, and that was just for him. He had no intention of personally doing them for her entire race since that would mean they'd be dependent on him and be back to the same problem if he ever died. The other enchanters of Myriad would need to be able to create it too.

Deciding he needed a break he moved on to a different project, adding dark enchantments to the coats that had been left in the room. It seemed Pelenia had managed to get the bear man to agree, meaning that he needed to get those out of the way soon anyway to try and get the man to raise his dark resistance enhancement quicker.

Starting with the first one, he did his best to determine just what sort of enchantments to make. The important thing he needed to remember here was that even though they had to have an effect on the body, they couldn’t be too unpleasant. They needed to be powerful enough to make the skill level rise, but not so powerful as to make the wearer quit before any results were achieved.

With that in mind, there were three that immediately seemed viable, but he wasn’t sure if that was enough. He knew he could add debuffs that would limit the user’s mana pool and mana recovery rate, and since he would be getting paid as he wore it there wouldn’t be too much concern about it affecting their life, and on top of those he could add an incredibly weakened sleep spell, not strong enough to knock him out as he wore it, but just to leave him feeling tired.

He worried even that might be too much, given how unpleasant a constant state of exhaustion could be, he only hoped that he’d made it weak enough that it would still have an impact without being too hard to deal with.

That left what else he would need to add to ensure he leveled up as fast as he could. The more enchantments the better, but he needed to walk a fine ethical line. Adding something like fear was out, as was confusion. Both could have too much of a risk of making him quit or putting him in danger. More tempting was to add a mental compulsion, the only issue being the legality of such a thing. While he was pretty sure that after his experience doing it in the dryad village, as well as some theorizing on his part since then, he would be able to apply the compulsion of not wanting to take the jacket off, but that could create a few other issues that would end with him in prison.

Wait, but if I get his consent, wouldn’t that be fine? He wondered. Then I could just add a bunch of harmless mental compulsions, or at least ones with minimal harm. I suppose if he didn’t need to resist them at least a little then it might not be as effective, but that still gives me plenty of options. Let’s see, keeping the jacket on, laziness, eating less, doing something embarrassing like having the urge to sing in public. They should all be harmless enough as long as they were weak and he had the willpower to resist but might be a little complicated to make. Oh well, I’ll talk to Pelenia and work it out after.

It was late by that point but the queen was still up, carrying out discussions with Mercy it seemed when he burst into the room.

They were both caught by surprise, but Mercy’s reaction was hopeful. “Have you had any success?”

“Not yet sorry, I ran into a small snag I needed to find a workaround for so I decided to take a break to focus on a different project. Pelenia, I’m working on the coats but for the best effect, I want to add as many dark enchantments as I can. The only issue is that it gets a little… morally grey after a certain point so I was hoping you’d be able to get the consent of the guy who’s going to be wearing it.”

“I have no issue with asking him for you, but what exactly would you be making?”

“Mental compulsions.”

Mercy looked shocked as he said it, but Pelenia gave him a nod. “I see, as long as he consents to it there shouldn’t be any issue, I just might need to gather a few representatives of neutral races to verify that he isn’t being forced, coerced, or controlled into doing it. The bigger issue is if you actually know how to do it. Books on the topic are heavily restricted.”

“I have an idea, but I’m far from an expert. Still, I’ll be able to manage with a little trial and error I think.”

Pelenia tapped her fingers on her seat, giving a thoughtful look. “If you’re going to make something like a mental compulsion then you should have a better groundwork than just trial and error. Let’s see, Thera mentioned that you wanted to see some of our better quality items anyway so I’ll borrow you tomorrow after you finish making braces for the day. Usually, we restrict information like that, but I’ll let you look at a book on the topic.”