As the altered spell shield appeared, it drew in the gaze of everyone in the room.

“Damn,” Cruz whistled. “You sure work fast. I thought I’ll have to keep staring at Osmond’s smug face for a lot longer before he wouldn’t be the only one to have a spell shield.”

“What’s with the red edge?” The shadow touched spell caster stood up to get a closer look at the copy of his equipment.

“After I found a way to increase the shield’s defensive capability, I kind of got thinking and as it turns out, it’s possible to add elemental resistance to it. This one is sort of a proof of concept with an added five points of fire elemental resistance.”

“Stuff just gets better and better,” the wood elf stood up, picking up the vambrace with the all green runes. “This one doesn’t have fire protection, right?”

“No. Just the linked universal armour rune. I didn’t want to risk a rune collapse, so I started from scratch and made a trash ranked trial piece. I want to try linking all of the elements I have access to into a single whole. If it works, then we’ll have a shield with added protection against eight different elements.”

“That sounds kind of overpowered,” Osmond admitted. “I’m most definitely willing to fork out the money for that.”

“I don’t think you have enough to afford even half of that.” Cruz joked as she took off the vambrace.

“Anyway; I still have a couple of rings to hand out before even being able to think about spending time on this project.”

“You can definitely add our names to the list of people that need one of these,” Osmond stated. “Quentin is definitely out since he has his own shield, and so should be Letty, unless you can make this thing run on air. She would need all of her arcana to keep up her crowd control spells.”

“I think Amanda, Fabien and Valerie might want one after you show this to them.” Cruz added.

“You might also want to borrow Valerie’s dragon breath ring while you’re at it,” the pale youth shared his opinion. “Having a ring like that, or one similar but with a different element could also come in handy.”

“Let’s keep it to one project at the time,” Regis sighed as he headed towards the door. “Even I need to sleep sometime.”

He found the infernal siblings downstairs in the mess hall, along with Mary. She and Fabien where in the middle of cooking that days dinner while Valerie was reading a book with several others piled up on the table beside her.

“Hey there,” she greeted him. “Did you get hungry?”

“No,” the dark elf answered. “I just came down to hand out a few rings to the others. Where’s Quentin by the way?”

“He agreed to escort elder Derris to the inner town with Amanda and Sophie.”

“The old man wanted to see the younger spell caster apprentices.” Fabien said from the kitchen.

“Can you come out for a minute or is this a bad time?”

“No problem, what do you need?”

Regis pulled out the remaining five rings and handed them over.

“I made one for everyone except Valerie. They might look different, but these have the same arcana regeneration boosting enchantment on them.”

“Nice,” the infernal youth nodded in appreciation as he examined the jewellery. “This should help everyone out.”

“Aw,” Valerie sighed dejected. “This isn’t fair. Yours look a lot prettier than mine.”

“You can always sell that to someone and commission a new one from Regis.”

“No,” the young woman shook her head. “This is more than just a piece of equipment. It’s a trophy. It just bothers me that you guys caught up to me so fast. Having a ring like this kind of made me a little bit special.”

“You are every bit as special as you want to be,” the dark elf comforted her in an extremely cheesy way. “And besides; you still have that dragon’s breath ring. I haven’t figured out how to craft that one yet, although Osmond did suggest that I’d borrow it from you to study it.”

“No,” Valerie pulled her hand to her chest playfully. “I’m not willing to give this one up yet. Ask me again once we settle down.”

“Can I really have one as well?” Mary asked, snapping the trio out of their moment of foolishness.

“Of course you can,” Fabien handed her the ring like it was the most ordinary thing to do. “Arcana is the lifeblood of every spell caster. You’re definitely going to need a boost to your regeneration capabilities.”

“I leave the other three with you, so you could hand them over to Amanda, Sophie and Quentin when they get back from the inner town.”

“What about those arm guards?” Valerie looked at the vambrace Regis wore and the other one on the table.

“I managed to recreate Osmond’s shielding vambrace,” he answered as he activated the enchantment, summoning the pale bluish energy shield. “I even figured out how to strengthen and upgrade it, although it’s still a work in progress.”

“And you brought these over just to show them off?”

“That, and to find out who would want to get one.”

“I want one,” the infernal woman pretty much squealed as she tried on and activated the other vambrace. “Can you make mine have a pink edge instead of red?”

“That’s not something I can control,” the spell weaver sighed. “From what I can tell, it’s a side effect of linking a fire resistance rune to the shield. I haven’t tried to link more elements together, so I don’t know if you can have more than one or not.”

“And following that logic,” Mary hummed deep in thoughts. “The colour of the shield’s edge would change depending on the element you linked it with?”

“Most likely, although I don’t know if having more than one elemental resistance rune would mix the colours or just split the edge into different coloured sections.”

“Only one way to find out,” Fabien patted him on the shoulder. “Just be careful and try not to get hurt. I read before that a collapsing enchantment can be quite dangerous.”

“Let’s hope it won’t come to that,” his sister sighed as she handed back the vambrace. “If it’s successful; can you add it to our current equipment? I like the looks of the arm guards I currently have.”

“Sure”, the dark elf agreed. “Although I first have to figure out if it’s compatible with other enchantments. I don’t want to just slap it on a vambrace that already has a bunch of ‘ordinary’ runes, I need to find out that they’re screwing with each other.”

“You do that,” Fabien nodded. “Dinner will be ready in about two hours. Try to finish your tinkering pet project before that, or I will send someone up to drag you out of there.”

“I can’t make any promises. This kind of stuff to take for shitload of time. Just try to be careful when you approach me during the infusion process. I’d hate to have something blow up in my face because of the sudden intrusion.”

“We can’t make any promises.” Valerie turned his words back against him with a chuckle.

Regis left the trio to their vices and headed back upstairs, swearing it to himself that he was only going to do a few low ranked enchantment test and spend the rest of the night after dinner in the library. Once he was back in the enchanters room, he began to craft a piece of elemental stone for each element he had access to, except blood. That one would have to wait until he was either bored or desperate enough to dabble with the stuff personally or ask Valerie to start bleeding random rats or chicken dry instead of having to watch her cut herself like some kind of masochist. Once he had a handful of different coloured crystals, he began his experiment with the trash grade shielding enchantment. It took little effort to infuse it with an earth elemental resistance that got linked up with the main runic diagram with roughly the same effort the fire one was. When he opened his eyes after exiting from his meditative state, he noticed that the edge of the shield slightly changed. Instead of being split into two sides with different colours, or melding into a single new one, it looked as if the edge of the shield now head a bi-colour thread around it. Charlatan’s wisdom revealed the slightly changed description that proved his effort successful.

{Shielding Vambrace }

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Armour type: medium}

{Shield value: 10}

{Elemental resistance: 5 Fi, Ea}

{Armour Value: 16}

{Durability: 100}

It now had a shortened name marking the two elements, but it was otherwise the same. Still, this proved that he was on the right track, so he decided to continue on and infused it with the rest of the elemental stones. By the time he was done, a multicoloured glowing rope framed the summoned arcana shield, making it quite eye-catching. He cast charlatan’s wisdom on it, letting out a low whistle.

{Shielding Vambrace }

{Item rarity: uncommon}

{Item quality: ordinary}

{Armour type: medium}

{Shield value: 10}

{Elemental resistance: 5 Ai, Da, Ea, Fi, Li, Na, St, Wa}

{Armour Value: 16}

{Durability: 100}

‘That’s a lot of elements. It’s kind of strange how it shows storm resistance instead of lightning, but I guess even charlatan’s wisdom has its limits and having two ‘Li’ listed up is one of those limits.’ He mused as he looked at the runic diagram on the vambrace that now looked like a child’s drawing of the sun with the circle shaped main rune string having lines of different coloured linked runes spreading out of it like the illustration of sun beams. With the ‘trash’ ranked enchantments successfully linked, he was now sure that the customised shielding vambrace was feasible. He spent the next near two hours in a cycle of arcanite and elemental crystal creation, infusion enchanting his companions’ arm guards and meditating to regain his spent arcana.

His last set of arm guards however caused a slight accident. During the infusion of the ‘trash’ ranked air elemental resistance enchantment, he channelled too much elemental energy into the rune. A moment after it turned grey, the rune began to change into a white colour, but the main rune which was still grey began to crack apart. Regis barely had the time to throw the arm guard into the other end of the room before it flared up and burst apart like a small grenade. A few moments later the sound of the door creaking made him snap out of his stupor, his gaze falling on the tall blacksmith woman.

“I hope I didn’t disturb you with anything important, but I heard a loud boom.”

“I’m okay,” he reassured Amanda. “It was just a minor rune collapse caused by my carelessness. Anyway, I’m already done with today’s project, that is after I fix up one last pair of arm guards in place of the destroyed one.”

“I see,” the giant of a woman let out a relieved the breath. “Valerie would have strangled me if I caused our resident craftsman to blow his fingers off. Although you seem to be capable of doing it on your own.”

“Is the dinner ready?” Regis asked, trying to hold back a chuckle as he imagined the petite infernal trying her hardest to strangle the overgrown blacksmith.

“Fabien and Mary just finished and are already putting plates on the table.”

“There is no point in keeping them waiting,” the dark elf stood up. “By the way; did you get your ring?”

“I did,” Amanda nodded as she raised her left hand where he could see his creation twinkling on her pinky finger. “It’s quite a neat design. Kind of reminds me of those fancy man rings back home. My father had one similar, but it was made of platinum with a jade inlay.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“It was a gift from the factory he worked at for his twenty year service. Anyway; we should get going.”

The two of them left the enchanters room that had it downstairs, the sound of faint laughter catching their ears. It was unexpected to say the least, but it was also welcome change after the events of the morning. When the door was opened, they found the rest of the group already sitting at the table with elder Derris. Mary was in the middle of explaining something related to the cooking process, the others smiling as they looked at Fabian who was simply nodding in agreement.

“It was about time you joined us,” Osmond noted as the two got close to the table, taking a seat. “Mary was just telling us about Fabien’s little accident that cost him to lose the left sleeve off his shirt.”

“The stove?” Regis asked as he looked at the slightly burnt sleeve.

“I’m still not used to how the thing works and got too close when the oven turned on.”

“You’re lucky that your people have a literal fire resistance to some extent,” the old scholar stated. “I’ve seen something similar a couple of years ago and it resulted in a nasty burn.”

“You know,” Cruz turned toward the infernal youth. “When you said you will give your all to make a proper farewell dinner, I didn’t think you meant it this way.”

“Everything for the team.” Fabien shrugged while the rest of the group began to hoard roasted meat and vegetables on their plates.

“How was your little and enchanting session?” Valerie enquired while holding her plate closer so that her brother could spam it with roughly mashed potatoes.

“It went well,” the young loremaster admitted. “I managed to link almost all of the elements to the shielding enchantment. After that, it was pushed all the way have to ‘well-made’ grade as a whole. Then I screwed up the last arm guard and nearly blew my fingers off.”

“Yikes.” Almost everyone hissed at his last comment.

“Will you be able to enchant ours?” Sophie asked between two bites. “When Valerie told us about it, both Amanda and I became really excited.”

“More like slightly interested.” The tall woman try to downplay it, but the expression of the others made it obvious how things actually happened.