Vellum grinned. “Ah, now that’s interesting. An item that feeds mana to the user?” She leaned forward. “Possible, possible. Suitably ambitious and interesting.”
“Aaand,” she poked me in the forehead, “you’re only asking so you can run away from one of your problems. So the answer is still no. Try again.” She leaned back in her chair, folding her arms.
“Last try, or today’s session is over.”
I sank down in my chair. I’d liked that idea. So, in a moment of spite, I said, “Fine. I’ll research that one without you.”
“Oh?” Her eyes glimmered with an inner light. “Will you now?”
I sat up straighter. “Yes. And not just to ‘run away’, as you put it. Regardless of whether or not I start training my attunement in the way you want me to, something that passively feeds the user more mana would be incredibly useful.”
“Oh, yes. We’re in agreement. In fact, it was one of the first items I invented. I was already a Citrine Mage at that point, of course, but I’m sure you’ll manage something. Eventually.”
My desire to loot Vellum’s office for all available items sharply increased.
I stretched my arms. “Of course. I’ll have to take my time to ensure my design is the best available. In the meantime, you can help me with another project. It’s a mana filtration system.”
Vellum raised an eyebrow at that. “What do you mean by that?”
“I took an alchemy class. They talked a lot about how difficult it is to make enhancement elixirs, since you go through a lot of work to purify them,” I explained.
“So, they’ve got this complicated distillation apparatus to get the mana into a pure state so people can drink it. I read up, and people have made all sorts of items for detecting the composition of the starting mana and the result — but they always use physical means to evaporate the liquid and purify it.” I didn’t have a drawing to show her for this; I was coming up with this idea on the spot. I just took out a piece of paper and slid an ink pen and inkwell over.
“I’m familiar with the concept, of course. Using mana on the base liquid just taints the result.”
“Right. But what if the mana you were putting into a vial was already in a pure state?” I started scribbling down some mind runes on the page. “We build a device that has all the types of mana stored in it in small amounts. They all self-refill. Let’s call it a glove, like the one I wear. I put it on, it senses my mana. I push mana through it via whatever process I’d normally use to liquefy my mana.”
I hadn’t figured out exactly how to do that yet. I’d read up a bit, though, and it didn’t sound that hard. Getting excited, I continued. “So, then the gauntlet detects the composition of my mana, and it adds whatever types it needs to compensate for the impurities. The result?”
I left the answer open so she could share in my enthusiasm.
Professor Vellum sighed. “Your hand explodes.”
My face went through several contortions before finally settling on unhappiness. I didn’t like my hand exploding. “What? Why?”
“I’m sure you’re thinking about that ‘opposites nullify’ tripe that Teft likes to throw around, yes? But that’s not true within an object. You let fire and ice meet inside your glove? Lose a hand.”
I grimaced, but that sounded solvable. “Okay, maybe the filtration could happen while it’s flowing out.”
“It doesn’t matter. Adding energy to the liquid isn’t going to just target the opposite component within that liquid. You’d be saturating the entire mana formula with that energy. You’ve got fire mana somewhere in the solution, so you bombard it with ice mana. The fire mana is nullified, but now you’ve got a solution that’s tainted by ice. It’s no better.”
I sighed in grudging understanding. “Okay, so I’d need to be able to inject exactly the right amount of mana into exactly the right parts of the solution without tainting anything else. That sounds hard, but possible.”
“Oh, it is. It’s just also harder than the normal distillation process.” She took a sip of her tea. “But don’t despair. It’s actually a good idea. You’re trying to improve an existing process, and that’s the core of what true enchanting looks like. You’re questioning established methods. I doubt this particular one will bear fruit in the way you proposed it, but you should keep thinking about it.
“Not here, in this meeting,” she clarified. “Study. Think about the problems in your current approach and how to solve them.”
I nodded gratefully. That was probably the most encouragement she’d ever given me. “Okay. What about for now?”
“What about for now? I’ve turned you down on three ideas. You’re done for the week. Come back next Wyddsay and have something better for me.”
“Okay.” I paused for a moment, thinking. “But before I go, I’d like to work on some items for the test, and I need funding. You’d mentioned giving me some items to work on that you could sell?”
“I haven’t forgotten our arrangement, but it seems to me like you haven’t been practicing your mind magic enough to be useful yet.”
I tensed my hands. “I’m pretty sure I can manage some basic item commissions.”
“Basic isn’t what sells, boy. But,” she relented, “I do have a few things you can work on.”
Vellum opened a drawer in her desk, withdrawing a small stack of papers. She passed them over to me. They were all intricately-written enchantment designs, many of which used runes that didn’t even resemble ones I’d seen before.
“You may start with these.”
I scratched my chin as I skimmed over the first few designs. They each had at least a half-dozen runes, many of which I didn’t recognize at all. “These look pretty... involved.”
“What were you expecting? Anything of significant value is going to take effort, Corin.”
Fair.
“How much of the sale are you taking?”
The professor grinned. “Ah, I was wondering when you’d ask. Fifty percent.”
I narrowed my eyes as I considered that. “Fifty percent of net or gross?”