Frostbitten Wayfarer

Zoe enchanted a pile of rocks she summoned with her Earth skill with various resistances, but something seemed off about the process. If she enchanted a rock with Fire resistance, then would it give whoever was holding the rock increased resistance to fire? Or would it give the rock itself increased resistance to fire?

It was difficult to test, since she didn’t want to have somebody hold the rock then pepper them with damage. The rocks seemed to be more resistant to the element she enchanted them with, though. Which in theory meant that the rocks would not impart a resistance to the wielder.

Yet Doris made a bracelet that would do just that? In the first place, what skill did he enchant it with to turn it into a bracelet? Was there some skill that made bracelets? Did that skill also make the enchantment impart resistances, or perhaps even other skills onto the wearer?

Was it a general skill that Zoe could get, or was it a class specific thing that Zoe would struggle to replicate, if she ever even could. None of Zoe’s enchantments, barring perhaps her Earth and Wood skills would be able to warp a chunk of something into the shape of a bracelet. But for Doris it seemed almost natural, just a normal part of enchanting a hunk of metal. Did he have a metal skill to accomplish the same thing, or was it something else?

She supposed she’d find out when she went back through her earlier classes and got more powerful options. Once she combined her Seasoned classes, if that was even a thing at all, it might be nice to get some powerful enchanting classes for a while at least.

Feats were much more straightforward. Most did nothing at all, or rather weren’t even enchantable to begin with. When she turned her focus inwards to find the essence of them in her soul, they just weren’t there at all. The only ones that she could find were Patient Decider, Healer and Okiu’s Blessing.

Patient Decider did nothing, but given the nature of the feat Zoe had a few theories. It might enhance other enchantment’s effects over time, like perhaps a resistance effect becoming more pronounced as the years passed. Or maybe her subtle Wind enchantments would grow into powerful gusts in a few decades.

Maybe it would do something more direct if she let it sit for a while. In a year or two, maybe the hunk of rock she enchanted would be denser or larger. Or hell, maybe in a few centuries it would grow sentience and she’d have her very own pet rock. But whatever the feat did, Zoe had no doubts that it would require a considerable amount of patience to find out.

Healer was much more simple to understand. It turned any restorative effects enchanted along with the feat into external effects, rather than internal effects. Her Restoration would act on whatever she placed the rock against and pushed the mana through to.

The only caveat was that once the mana stored in the feat’s portion of the enchantment was worn through, the entire enchantment would crumble like a brittle dried flower. And perhaps it was just because of her poor enchanting medium, but the rock itself cracked and split as the enchantment fell apart as well. But even with the caveat, it was still an enchantment well worth keeping a stockpile of for her friends.

And Okiu’s Blessing was perhaps the most interesting feat she had for enchantments. Maybe in time when Patient Decider was less of an enigma it would be more interesting. But at the moment, Okiu’s Blessing seemed to be a direct improvement to all of her enchantments’ mana efficiency. It wasn’t a life changer, and it didn’t make any of her enchantments free to use. But it was a noticeable improvement, and opened up some new possibilities for her. Enchantments that were previously just a little too mana hungry to be viable were now within reach.

Enchanted Mirror was impacted the most by the feat’s effect, whatever calculation the system used for its mana drain clearly had some kind of double dipping from Okiu’s Blessing. The exact impact the feat had on the enchantment’s mana drain was dependent on how many skills were being enchanted through her Enchanted Mirror.

With just a single skill, it was almost a ten percent reduction in mana drain — similar to its effect on other skills. But with two skills it was closer to fifteen percent, and with three it was nearing a twenty percent reduction.

With how many skills Zoe could enchant onto things now, she often found herself at a loss for which ones to use. Okiu’s Blessing would be an excellent addition to almost all of her enchantments, and especially ones that were going to be used by other people.

Next, Zoe summoned a large slab of Earth that she set on her table and flooded one of her icy splinters with mana. She enchanted the splinter with Okiu’s Blessing, Meditation, Enchanting and Earth with a vision of the slab shrinking off to the side like one of her doors.

When she placed the icy splinter up against the slab and pushed her mana into it, the stone squished off to the side but instead of pressing into her table as she expected, it formed a tall thin strip that reached up to her ceiling.

Pressing the splinter into the strip of stone and pushing mana through it again just caused the same problem to repeat. Each time, the stone warped and stretched in a different direction, depending on where she pressed the splinter into it from, and after a minute the stone seemed to stretch and churn as it returned to its original state.

With a bit of trial and error, she was able to make a splinter that forced the earth to push away in a spiral shape with the epicenter being the spot where she pressed the splinter into. She found it fun to press the splinter into different parts of the stone slab as it was opening and watch the spirals crash into each other like a race between two world eaters.

The next problem was how she would define the earth that was going to be affected by the splinter. If she just had a large stone wall, then where did the enchantment decide the spiral should reach to? How much mana would it eat as it churned through the rock if there was no limit to it?

Her first attempt was to summon a large piece of rock and see what the splinter did, and it did as she expected. The splinter drew more mana from her and caused the entire piece of rock to spiral away as it squished off to the sides.

Zoe tried pull a piece of the larger slab and enchanting it with Meditation and Enchanting just so it would have a mana structure separate to the rest of the slab, then pushed it back into place with her Earth skill so it formed a seamless wall. With that, the spiral stopped at the boundaries of the enchanted rock and didn’t stretch into the rest of the rock.

And for a final test for good measure, she tried adding a thin layer of ash between where her ‘door’ would be in the slab, and the rest of the rock. And just as expected, the spiral stopped at the boundary of the ash on her first attempt. But on the second, some of the ash had slipped out from between the layers of stone and the spiral crept up through the tiny cracks into the rest of the stone, spewing the rest of the ash out as the entire slab squished aside.

If she could create an element that held its own better than ash — Wood for instance, then it would work well as a door but with anything thicker than the dark ash, it would leave a visible seam between the two pieces of stone. Sticking with the enchanted door seemed like a wiser decision, it would be visible to anybody who knew what they were looking for and had an understanding of mana. But that was a much smaller group of people than anybody with eyes.

Zoe enchanted three brown gems with the spiral enchantment and then ran down to her front door and broke down the existing enchantment. In its place she put Enchanting, Meditation, Shield-fighting, Stealth and Okiu’s Blessing. When she pressed the brown earth attuned gem to the door and pushed her mana through it, the stone spiralled away to reveal the forest outside her home.

“Looks cool,” Emma said from behind her.

“Oh! Hey. Here, this is your key.” Zoe handed Emma one of the brown gems she made.

“Lemme try,” Emma walked up and pressed the gem into the door. Mana flooded from her hand into the gem for a minute, and then the door opened once more. “A little mana hungry but it works. Better than having your door open for everybody at least, huh?”

“It shouldn’t be that mana hungry. How much did it use?"

Emma’s eyes bounced around for a moment as she looked at her stat window. “Just under a thousand? It’s manageable.”

“Hmm. It doesn’t use nearly that much for me.” Zoe pressed her gem into the wall and watched her mana drain. It only took a trickle, just enough to trigger the enchantment to activate. “Yeah that was only maybe twenty? Thirty? Hard to tell these days. Not much, though. Wonder why it was so much more for you.”

“Maybe cause you made the door?” Emma shrugged. “I don’t know much about enchanting.”

“Maybe, yeah. Alright well it’s good enough for now, but I’m gonna go try some more stuff out.” Zoe said.

“Okay. I’ll just be here with the cats. They’re settling in a bit more now but Fennel’s kind of a dick.” Emma chuckled as she walked back to the kitchen.

“Yeah, but they’re good little friends still.” Zoe said.

“Of course!” Emma called out. “Just little babies.”

Zoe returned to her workshop and looked through her skills. Her Immaculate Enchantments skill caught her attention, being over level one hundred now and with still so little benefit to be seen from levels. If any at all.

She thought on it for a moment, then replaced the skill with Mana Storage. The skill itself didn’t interest her at all, storing a mere five thousand mana at level one. Less than she had total now, and far too little to make a difference considering her mana regeneration.

But as an enchantment, the skill screamed possibility. She pushed the enchantment onto a rock along with Meditation and Enchanting and watched as Meditation drew mana into the rock. Even past restoring the enchantment, it continued filling the pathways and what seemed like a small reservoir of mana within the rock. When the surge of mana filling the rock slowed to the normal trickle she was used to for maintaining enchantments, the rock was full of far more mana than she’d ever managed to cram into a simple rock.

It seemed more like an icy splinter than a simple rock, though the enchantments didn’t seem to have the same amplifying effect that the splinters had. Zoe replaced the enchantments on the two brown gems that she had with Meditation, Enchanting, Earth, Okiu’s Blessing and Mana Storage then tried it on the slab she left on the table.

For herself, the gem behaved exactly the same. But she had a suspicion Emma would find it much more usable and went back down to the kitchen.

“Hey,” Zoe tossed one of the new brown gems to Emma who was sitting at the table with Oliver at her feet. “Come try that one on the door. I think it’ll work better.”

“What’d you do differently?” Emma stood up.

“I replaced my cleaning skill in my third class with Mana Storage, so the gem should have enough mana for you to use it even with the poor efficiency from affecting my enchantments. If that’s the problem, which I think it might be.” Zoe said.

“So you’re just gonna be dirty now?" Emma giggled.

“Hah. No, I’ll probably just swap the skill out more often. I thought of it a while ago but thought I’d like to see what the cleaning skill does as it levels. And it doesn’t do much, so whatever.” Zoe said.

“Fair enough,” Emma pressed the gem into the stone door and a pulse of mana rushed out of her into the gem, then coursed through the door. The stone spiralled away and revealed a confused looking Joe on the other side.

“Hello?” Joe said. “Your door’s broken?”

Zoe handed him the other updated brown gem. “No, I just added a key for the door since there’s people living here now. Didn’t feel right just having it open for everybody.”

The stone spiralled back into place between them, cutting Joe off outside. “Dammit. Give me the old gem please.” Zoe asked Emma.

Emma obliged, summoning a mundane looking brown gem and handing it to Zoe as the door spiralled back open and Joe stepped inside.

“You ever gonna add a manual closing mechanism so that doesn’t happen?” Joe asked.

Zoe shrugged. “Probably not. Seems annoying to figure out how to make it stay open longer and then also close properly. Like if you try to close it when it’s already closed, the door’s just going to do some weird unexpected crap instead of nothing. Much easier this way.”

Joe laughed.

“What are you here for anyway?” Zoe asked.

“Am I not allowed to come say hello to a dear friend of mine?” Joe held his hand to his chest, offended.

Zoe rolled her eyes. “Of course you are.”

Joe laughed some more. “Kiara says she’d be able to check out your sword and ring that you got from Moaning Point if you have the time.”

“Oh really? That’s awesome. I honestly forgot about them with everything that was going on.” Zoe followed Joe outside.

“Yeah, she’s just at my inn right now so I thought I’d come let you know. You’re never busy, anyway.” Joe chided.

“I’m always busy, I just have lots of extra time is all.” Zoe said. A smile grew on her face as she approached Joe’s new inn, knowing she’d finally be able to learn what her rewards were capable of.