Sera blinked rapidly. “I didn’t think you even had that much.”
I lifted my necklace, showing off the “46/46” displayed on it. I’d gotten much stronger over the last three weeks of rapidly making items, but still nowhere near the mana held in that device. “I don’t. I cheated — there are four separate storage runes in there, each with 30 mana in them.”
“That’s still more than I thought you could do in one session.”
I tapped the necklace to my right hand, changing the display to “58/58”. “I couldn’t charge that much if it was mental mana, but the mana stored in those is gray. I charged them from my hand.”
Jin gave me a quizzical look. “Why do you have more mana in your hand than your attunement?”
Oh, right, I hadn’t told everyone about that.
“Paralyzing fear. Nothing for you to worry about.” I tapped the necklace to my forehead again, setting it back to monitor my mind. I got nervous any time it wasn’t actively doing that.
Jin raised a hand to his lips, looking like he wanted to say something more, but he remained silent.
Then Sera hugged me. “Thanks, Corin.”
Humancontacttoomuch.
I patted her awkwardly on the back, suppressing a shudder. It’s just Sera, I told myself. Hugging Sera is fine. She’s safe. You’re safe.
Comforting her when she was injured had been easier because I had initiated it myself. I still wasn’t good at handling other people touching me. It was easier with Sera than anyone else, but she’d surprised me. I probably would have panicked less if I had a chance to brace myself.
“Uh, you’re welcome. Thanks. Hope you like it.”
She released me a moment later, to my great relief.
Patrick looked at me expectantly.
I strongly considered pretending I didn’t get him anything, but it was too much effort. “And, of course, I saved the best for last.”
I tossed Patrick the ring, a House Cadence symbol on it.
Signet rings weren’t common in Valia. Gloves usually served the purpose of marking a noble house here. Rings were more common up in Dalenos, where they tended to be more traditional.
If we’d been down in Edria, I’m pretty sure my gesture would have been considered a proposal for marriage.
Heh.
Anyway, the ring itself wasn’t a big deal like giving him a glove would be, but it was still a symbol of the house, which made it a good gift.
And, it was metal set with a gem, which made it great for enchanting.
“Nice!” He slipped it on his pointer finger immediately. Fortunately, it looked like a good fit. I’d assumed correctly that he’d wear a ring about the same size as I did. “What’s it do?”
“It’s similar to what I made Sera and Marissa. It enhances your spells, but more like Marissa’s. It puts a bit of extra mana into every spell, rather than using it all at once like Sera’s. Also, it only works for lightning. Apparently, gray mana works for enhancing lightning, but it wouldn’t help other elemental spells.”
Patrick grinned wide. “Lightning’s the best, anyway.”
“Excellent. So, now that I’m bankrupt, let’s get to the actual planning session.”
***
We spent the next couple hours talking strategy and going over everyone’s new capabilities. We’d all been talking pretty frequently over the last ten weeks, so nothing was particularly surprising.
Sera still had access to the creatures she’d bound during the Survival Match, but she didn’t have enough mana to summon the wyvern. That was fine, as far as I was concerned. The ogre and karvensi were more than good enough. The karvensi had been considerably weaker than the wyvern in terms of raw power, but its intelligence and flexibility had made it just as effective, if not more so.
Patrick had been training with Meltlake constantly, but he’d shown a stronger affinity for lightning than her traditional fire spells. Fortunately, Meltlake was still capable of teaching those, and he’d picked up a couple noteworthy spells — a lightning storm that would periodically rain bolts on enemies, a weapon electrification spell, and a chain lightning spell that would jump between enemy targets.
Marissa had spent the vast majority of her time developing her shroud. When I briefly turned my attunement on, I was shocked by the intensity of it. Her shroud was already vastly stronger than the phoenix sigils I’d made us, and she seemed to be maintaining it without any effort. I wondered just how much damage it could deflect and what else she could do with it.
Jin assured us he’d gotten better at “everything” and left it at that.
It was the end of the night when I showed them what I’d made for myself — a saber with gray and transference enchantments layered across the surface to increase the striking power. It was a poor substitute for the Selys-Lyann, but at least I had a weapon I was allowed to use. I’d considered a dueling cane, but I didn’t need one. A saber was a better close-range weapon and I had the gauntlet to handle ranged attacks.
I wished I’d had more time to make some items focused on utility — detecting traps, increased mobility, teleportation, unlocking boxes and doors — but I’d pushed myself to the brink of exhaustion just trying to get these last few items ready in time.
That had also prevented me from making any items that were specifically intended for the test rooms we’d already seen. My priority was making sure the items that I made would be flexible enough to work in multiple tests, as well as the actual Serpent Spire.
Fortunately, now that I was capable of churning out roughly two or three magical items per week, I was confident I’d be much better prepared for our third test.
Assuming we didn’t fail out of the school during this one, of course.
And, with that rather sobering thought in mind, I made my way back to my room to sleep.
***
We didn’t have a second-year student to prep us for the test this time.
We had Professor Orden.
She was wearing a tailored black suit as usual, but she had her hair up in a bun today. Some sort of special occasion, maybe? She usually kept it down.