Not wanting to forget about the enchanted rings again, Regis decided to deal with those first. He pulled out a couple of silver coins from the pouch he carried in his satchel before creating a few arcana stones. The spell weaver pulled his ‘endless’ tome out from his knapsack and willed its pages to turn to the one depicting the runic diagram of the jewellery enchantment that would grant arcana regeneration.

Thinking about the design of the ring, the dark elf found it better to go for a slim and unassuming form that wouldn't hinder them from gripping their weapons. Having a ring with a socketed stone would not only be too eye catching, but it would also be detrimental during combat. Instead, he opted for a design he had often seen back on Earth.

The spell weaver stepped beside the transmutation circle meant to be used in the creation of things and placed a single silver coin and a pair of pea sized arcanite stones in the middle. As he activated the magic circle, he imagined ring that had a crystal circle in the middle with silver encasing it on both sides. As the light of the transmutation circle died down, he reached out to catch the pair of rings falling out from the bubble that popped above his palm. They looked pretty much as he expected the outcome to be and charlatan’s wisdom also revealed the foreseen information.

{Arcanite inlaid silver ring}

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Durability: 100}

After repeating the process several times, he found himself staring at a fistful of rings ready to get enchanted. He looked at the page of his tome to study the diagram before picking up one of the rings and entering into his familiar meditative state. Regis began to draw rune after rune, connecting them together according to the drawing until they became a whole, glowing with a grey hue. When he opened his eyes once again, he could see the ring now sporting a set of tiny grey runes in its inner side. Charlatan’s wisdom confirmed the expected results after a few moments.

{Silver ring of lesser arcana regeneration}

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Arcana regeneration boost: 1}

{Durability: 100}

‘I guess I’ll have to upgrade it a bit more before it would get better. Still, the item quality is a bit worse than Valerie’s. This going to be a drag.’ He mused before fusing five of the non-enchanted rings together using the transmutation circle. Regis felt his heart bleed for the waste of resources and money, but the result was exactly what he needed.

{Arcanite inlaid silver ring}

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: well-made}

{Durability: 100}

Not wanting to spend the entire day on creating a ring like this for everyone just for some superficial quality upgrade, he continued on crafting a couple of ‘ordinary’ silver rings along with a shitload of arcanite stones to raise the enchantments up to ‘well-made’ grade as well. A bit over an hour an almost all of his silver coins later he had a slightly better ring for himself and an ‘ordinary’ one for everyone except Valerie, since she already had her own. Charlatan’s wisdom exposed a description on par with the infernal woman’s ring, making the dark elf sigh in a pained contentment.

{Silver ring of arcana regeneration}

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: well-made}

{Arcana regeneration boost: 5}

{Durability: 100}

{Silver ring of arcana regeneration}

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Arcana regeneration boost: 5}

{Durability: 100}

“No wonder enchanters ask a fortune for their work. This is way too much of a hassle.” He said as he put the rings aside. Still, it was a bit of a let down that the 'well-made' ranked enchantment only raised the regeneration value to five instead of rounding it up to six. The next one on his agenda was the shielding vambrace, its runic symbols glowing with a faint green light. ‘I must admit it’s quite lucky for us the craftsman didn’t use that ‘copyright’ rune on this one. Still; twenty-eight points for a ‘well-made’ enchantment feels a bit underwhelming.’ The dark elf thought as he studied the symbols which were the end result of a lengthy crafting process.

Most of them would be made up from somewhere between three and five runic fragments and he had to figure out all of that before he could copy the enchantment properly. Regis opened his ‘endless’ tome and searched through its pages one by one, taking notes from the different runes and their components that resulted in the ones seen on the vambrace. When he had all of the necessary pieces, the spell weaver prepared both an arcanite and an earth elemental stone, since he didn’t know which one would be used up.

He picked up one of the spare vambraces from the toot pile and repaired it using lesser mending on it before he began the process of infusion enchanting. Once he entered his meditative state, Regis began to draw up the runic fragments piece by piece, connecting and pulling them together to form the necessary runes. When the entire runic diagram was finished and glowing grey, the dark elf opened his eyes and cast charlatan’s wisdom on the arm guard to see the results.

{Shielding Vambrace}

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Armour type: medium}

{Shield value: 10}

{Armour Value: 16}

{Durability: 100}

“It’s about as bad as I imagined it to be.” He admitted as he looked down to see the arcanite stone missing from his palm.

After steeling himself for the work ahead, he created more of the magic stones between a few rounds of meditation and he continued on with the enchanting process. The end result of his work was a vambrace near identical to Osmond’s. At least according to charlatan’s wisdom.

{Shielding Vambrace }

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Armour type: medium}

{Shield value: 28}

{Armour Value: 16}

{Durability: 100}

‘Something feels off.’ He thought. The ‘trash’ grade runes resulted in a shield that was pretty much the same as the arcana shield spell after learning it. The ‘ordinary’ ranked enchantment pushed its strength up to twenty, but the ‘well-made’ one only raised it by another eight points instead of adding another ten or even doubling it in potency. ‘What went wrong? Or rather; is that really the max I can get out of this thing?’ His questions didn’t yield any answers out of their own volition, so the young spell weaver began to rummage through the diagram to look for any signs of error, but found none.

The diagram seemed to be complete and without a fault, which made the matter all the more irksome. It had the necessary shield rune, the runes responsible for summoning and maintaining it, along with the rest of the lesser runic components. Yet something still felt off. ‘I can’t just shove extra defensive runes in there, or the sequence would likely destabilize and break. But then how am I going to... add them. I’m a bloody idiot.’ Regis let out a groan as the answer smacked him in the head along with his own hand as he face-palmed himself.

He already learned the ‘link’ rune and the enchanters’ book did have the couple of side notes mentioning that it was sometimes used to weave in extra abilities to already existing enchantments. All he had to do do was to use the damn thing to his advantage. He grabbed a piece of arcanite while holding the vambrace and began to meditate once again.

The runic diagram appeared in front of him in the darkness, glowing with the familiar pale green light. Regis began to draw the universal armour rune over and over again while connecting it with the main enchantment using the ‘link’ rune. It felt strange to force a connection between the two but after several tries he managed to do it.

Now he had a circular green diagram with a string of grey runes hanging from it. When he opened his eyes, he saw the same set of different coloured runes on the vambrace, albeit much smaller in size. The dark elf cast charlatan’s wisdom on the arm guard, a slightly altered description appearing in front of his eyes.

{Shielding Vambrace }

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Armour type: medium}

{Shield value: 30}

{Armour Value: 16}

{Durability: 100}

‘It looks like this really is the way to go forward.’ He thought himself as he looked at is successful proof of concept. Now he just had to strengthen the linked enchantment to the point where it merged the original. Knowing what had to be done, he fell into a cycle off crafting arcanite stones and using them in bulk to upgrade the runes. When he was finally done, charlatan’s wisdom revealed a description that was much more appealing than the one on Osmond’s vambraces.

{Shielding Vambrace }

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Armour type: medium}

{Shield value: 36}

{Armour Value: 16}

{Durability: 100}

Seeing the upgraded stats, Regis began to wreck his brain. ‘If it’s possible to link the universal armour rune to the shield enchantment, then can I link all the different elemental resistance runes as well?’ Not willing to risk what he had already accomplished, the young spell weaver picked up another set of decent looking iron plated leather vambraces.

After repairing it with lesser mending, he enchanted it with a ‘trash’ grade shielding rune diagram before infusing it with a universal armour value rune of the same rank. He rummaged through his knapsack and pulled out a small pouch that held the leftover elemental stones from his previous enchanting frenzy.

Regis then proceeded with creating a ‘trash’ grade fire resistance rune which he linked with the main shield diagram the same way he did with the armour increasing one. Once done, A new set of grey runes appeared that had a faint red outline. ‘So far so good.’ He thought as he cast charlatan’s wisdom on it.

{Shielding Vambrace }

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Armour type: medium}

{Shield value: 12}

{Elemental resistance: 5 Fire}

{Armour Value: 16}

{Durability: 100}

‘It looks like charlatan’s wisdom mentions the added elemental resistance separately. Still; having five points of added protection could greatly reduce the incoming damage of any incoming spell or element infused skill. Now I just have to link up all the elements I have access to and upgrade them to being on par with the rest.’ Having successfully proved is idea was one thing. Being able to to create such a piece of defensive equipment was another.

Judging by the effort it would take him to enchant the vambrace with just the ‘trash’ grade runes, having to do so up to the ‘well-made’ rank was going to be a colossal undertaking both in effort, resources and time. He would also have to talk it over with his companions, so he would know which of them wanted to have such a shield to begin with. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’ Regis shook off the mixture of dread and excitement.

He pocketed the already enchanted rings, bringing along the three different set of vambraces before leaving the enchanters’ room. His first stop was the opposing room from which he heard Letty’s humming. As he opened the door to the alchemy room, he found the young wood elf singing a tune while she was in the middle all of brewing yet another batch of lesser potions. The dark elf knocked on the door loudly the catch her attention.

“Oh,” she looked up from her work a bit flustered. “Do you need something Regis?”

“Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to drop this off.” He answered as he handed one of the rings to her with a smile.

“Woah,” the wood elf’s eyes widened as she accepted the enchanted the jewellery. “This is... amazing. I figured you would make a carbon copy of Valerie’s ring, but this one looks even prettier. How strong is it?”

“It adds a flat five to your arcana regeneration,” Regis answered as he watched her slip the ring on her left middle finger. “It’s definitely not the best out there, but it should be good enough for now, right?”

“An increase of five points per minute is already amazing,” Letty beamed with a smile. “Thank you. It will really help a lot.”

“I’m glad you like it,” he muttered awkwardly. “I should leave you to your work. I still have to hand out a ring for the rest of the group as well.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks again.”

The dark elf left the room with hurried steps that brought him over to the library where he found Cruz and Osmond sitting by the long table each of them having a sizeable pile of books in front of them.

“Look who’s finally decided to leave his man cave,” Cruz said as soon as she noticed the incoming spell weaver. “What’s up?”

“Equipment delivery ma’am,” he joked as he handed over a ring to each of them, as well as giving back Osmond his vambrace. “That would be two silver and twenty bronze.”

“Do you accept cheque?”

“As if,” Regis roll his eyes. “You lot have been pocketing money from every corpse you came across.”

“You know,” Osmond sighed. “If you were to actually charge us for all the stuff you’ve been making for us, we would all end up as beggars faster than I dare to imagine.”

“On that we can agree. Jokes aside; those rings really did cost me some money though.”

“Why?” Cruz looked at him surprised. “Did you buy them at the store or something?”

“No, no but they are made of silver, which means I had to use up a few coins as raw materials. So I’m literally spending money to craft you stuff.”

“Yeah yeah,” the wood elf grumbled as she pulled out a silver coin from her pouch, sliding it toward the dark elf. “Take it you miser.”

“What about the arcanite stone?”

“Son of a...”

“Okay,” the pale youth stopped his companion before she could take the joke too far. “We’ll find a way to pay you back later. What about the vambrace. Did you manage to recreate it?”

Instead of answering, Regis simply held up his left hand that had a faint blue energy shield appearing on it with a red tinted edge.