“Can we go up there?” Delair asked, pointing at the volcano in the heart of Nare’s lands with her eyes alight, completely oblivious to how Ben’s stomach sank with the question.
“Ahem, sorry kiddo but we’re here for work so not this time, maybe in the future,” He told her, praying that she’d forget if the opportunity ever came up. “For now just take in the sights, we should be there soon.”
Nare had given him directions already and they were easy to follow, with the new warehouse he was being given not far from the gate network and already coming into sight as they made their way over, letting themselves in and finding only Nati and Xilly waiting.
Workers would be arriving eventually, he’d been assured of that but that would only be once it was confirmed that he could in fact make an enchanting factory, with materials left there for him to manage the construction needed himself and he began spending his mana to move and shape the metals and other substances around him at the same time he greeted the other two.
“Nati, Xilly, hey. Hope you two are both ready for a fun fun fun day,” He laughed, getting to watch as both did their best to hide what horror they were feeling as he went on. “Oh, and just as importantly, this is my first official student, Delair. Delair, these are my second and third students, Nati and Xilly. Same with Jake, you have seniority so even though they’re going to be busy today, if you ever see them again you have full rights to boss them around and if they don’t listen tell me and I’ll make sure they regret it, okay?”
The girl was glowing with excitement while the other two stopped trying to hide their discomfort but he didn’t bother giving them a chance to say anything about it. Before either could react they were in his mind, facing far more complicated configurations of his thoughts than he’d ever made them deal with in the past while at the same time bringing part of Delair in for her own lessons while getting her to focus on enchanting out in the real world, all as he directed his focus on what he had to do.
Which started with pulling one end of a mini-gate from one of his rings, having the spare from the experiments he’d done out in the untamed lands that let him conveniently drop it in his new work area before activating it and reaching through, pulling out his coat from the other end to slip on as he began overfilling his soul. Now that he had this factory, it was by all accounts an extension of the shop for him, free to train in as mana was directed under his power, finishing the basic configuration of the large structure and leaving him with the main goal from there as he went to enchant it.
Similar to enchanting a gate, it was a task that by all accounts should have taken days to weeks to finish but with the mana he could use and the speed he could think at, he was already reducing it, taking half an hour the first time since he’d never constructed an enchantment like that before while large parts of his thoughts were already considering how he could change and improve it.
The factory enchantment was a unique enchanting spell that in essence looked at an example enchantment and reproduced it, able to copy what already existed within it onto other things so long as there was power running through it and while it was different from anything else he’d done, once shaped the only way to see if it worked was to test it and holding a breath he did exactly that.
Since it was a test, the enchantment he was getting it to work with was simple, placing a fire enchantment on a small rod that could be inserted into part of the factory itself to create a lighter and as he ran his mana through the factory he watched as power flowed through the magical structures he’d placed, his mana sense alight with its activation and his excitement only growing as he pulled out the end product, getting to see a perfectly placed enchantment for his efforts.
He was grinning from ear to ear with the results, his sheer joy not to be contained. His teacher was right, he had the skill to do it but now that he knew it, that wasn’t enough. He wanted to see if he could improve upon that ancient spell’s design.
The original factory design used the weave system but he already had ideas to test to change it, wanting to have it operating on his personal system before the day was up as the next few hours were lost to experimentation, seeing what would work and what wouldn’t as aspects were changed again and again until he had something he was happy with.
As things currently stand, it looks like by applying my system I can get it down to an eighth of the size it had been, which means I can fit eight times more factories in here than expected which is a huge plus, but… Can I push this further?
As things stood, what he had was one of the more complex arrangements of mana that could be made before him but there were areas he still wanted to grow and applications of skill that could cross more into his other goals if he just practiced them more and with that frame of mind he took a serious look at what he’d created before asking himself how to incorporate mana modifiers into it.
He already had a few, their touches were showing in most of his work by that point but he couldn’t just keep doing touches. Understanding them was pivotal to his goal of both comprehending and improving the summoning spell, they had to become things he was comfortable using and with that he began experimenting anew, breaking down what he had and building them back up again and again, feeling what worked and what didn’t as more time passed while he did his best to apply everything he knew, halving the size once more after a few more hours of work.
“Better, but… I need to get a lot more practice with these things,” He muttered to himself. “Still, it’s a start. Now, Nare, you around? What sort of enchantments do you want being made for this?”
Nare clarified, seeing how excited Ben had gotten at the suggestion in a way that rushed him to squash some of it.
“Ugh, boring but fine. In that case, I’ll get started. It shouldn’t take long.”