“Menders are perhaps the best known of all of Valia’s attuned. Their primary mana type is life, but it is their secondary mana type — earth — that helps distinguish them from other healing attuned. While there are several attunements that can heal flesh and muscle, only Menders have the combination of mana types necessary to heal broken bones. The ability to treat broken bones makes Menders popular all over Kaldwyn. In the Six Years War, Menders wore unique uniforms that allowed them to traverse battlefields unharmed, offering succor to both sides.”
I’d be shocked if no one ever used a Mender uniform to infiltrate enemy lines. Interesting.
Professor Conway drew the next symbol.
It might have been my imagination, but it looked like his hand was trembling. “Summoners. Among the most unusual of attunements. They utilize air and transference mana as means for transportation-focused magic. While this can be used to summon creatures, their name is somewhat misleading, as there are other attunements that are capable of moving creatures from place to place.”
“Their ability is to form lasting bonds with monsters, which provide the Summoner with unique capabilities — including the ability to conjure copies of that monster that follow their commands. These bonds extract a toll on the Summoner, however. Every bond the Summoner maintains takes up a portion of the Summoner’s mana supply, leaving that mana unavailable while the bond is retained.”
I followed the explanation with little trouble. I knew most of it already, but it was interesting to hear Conway’s perspective.
He drew the most interesting rune — my own — last.
“Enchanters are the foundation of our technological progress. Their primary mana type is transference, followed by mental mana. They are able to use this combination to transfer mana into and out of objects, something no other attunement is capable of doing directly. There are other attunements with similar functions, but none with the flexibility to manipulate any form of mana into an item. Thus, they are perhaps the single greatest reason that Valia continues to rival much larger kingdoms, such as Edria and Dalenos, as a military power. Every citizen in our kingdom benefits from enchantments, from the environmental barrier over our city to rain-producing rods on our farmlands.”
That... actually sounded pretty amazing.
I left that day’s class feeling better about my attunement than I ever had, and more motivated than ever to get some real enchanting work done.
It was time to finally put some time and effort into learning how to be an Enchanter.
***
By the end of the ninth week of classes, each of my walls, my roof, and my ceiling had a protection enchantment. The metal chain on the door had another protection enchantment.
I couldn’t have possibly afforded the materials for that many enchantments, but I didn’t have to. I had the requisite types of mana to charge the runes myself. I still wasn’t comfortable using my mental mana, but I’d gotten more used to converting the mana in my hand into a usable form. That was slow and inefficient, so I used a couple mana crystals to speed up the process. All in all, it cost me about eight coins to finish warding the room. Not a bad deal.
The types of enchantments I could do on my own were pretty limited. I was only capable of converting my mana into the types my body already naturally used. If I wanted to convert mana from my hand into mental mana, I’d focus on the mana in my hand and “command” it to change into the type of mana I already had in my head. It was pretty awkward at first, but I acclimated to it over time.
Even for the types of mana I was able to provide on my own, I couldn’t manage very powerful enchantments. I needed to infuse all the necessary mana into a rune in a single session or the enchantment would fail. That meant I was limited to enchantments with relatively low mana requirements.
The next thing I worked on was an anti-teleportation enchantment that covered my entire room. Initially, I’d assumed defending against teleportation would be difficult, but it turned out that teleportation itself was so complex that a ward just needed to throw it off slightly to make it fail. My particular defensive rune would just nudge the teleport slightly off course, specifically to outside of my room rather than inside it.
None of those defenses would be sufficient against a foe on Professor Orden’s level, but the next time she examined the place, I’d be a lot better prepared.
I finished four of Jin’s item requests in the same time frame.
They were all pretty simple.
The first was a bracelet that could make him invisible for about a minute before it needed to be recharged.
Next, another bracelet that could make an illusory duplicate of him that moved about ten feet to his right and mirrored his movements. It had great synergy with the invisibility bracelet.
Third, a necklace that could be activated to dampen any sounds he made. It’d work for suppressing the noise from firing his guns, too.
The last was a ring he could use to generate a small illusion based on what he was thinking about. I was particularly proud of this one; it was the closest thing to actually mimicking the function of an attunement of any of the ones I’d built. It had a great deal more flexibility than the others.
I made him a stronger shield sigil, too, which he hadn’t requested. He accepted the gift with a surprising degree of gratitude, bowing deeply at the waist.
“You’ve gone beyond what I requested. Thank you.” When he straightened, his eyes shone with an infectious good cheer.