Chapter 163 Rebuilding Umbral Root

Chapter 162: 162 - Rebuilding Umbral Root

Adrien followed Amelia out of Orven’s workshop and heard the bolt slide home behind them. Even out on the street, the bond to Umbral Root stayed sharp inside him. The holding formation kept the staff physically manifested, but the mana sustaining it still flowed from his Core, exactly as Orven had warned.

The drain was steady rather than heavy, and the Heartroot Crystal tugged at him through its own smaller bond. Adrien felt both of them long after the workshop vanished behind the soot-stained houses along the river.

"He really meant it when he said he didn’t want anyone watching."

"I understand why. If he is going to take apart the focus I use for almost every serious spell, I would rather he give it his full attention than explain every step to me."

Amelia nodded, and they walked on toward the river. Behind the bolted door, Orven had already forgotten his visitors and turned back to the workbench.

The Artificer Path had never truly been about pounding enchanted metal until something useful came out of it. At lower levels, plenty of Artificers still leaned on ordinary tools because they were easier to control, but at Orven’s level the tools were extensions of mana, and the real work happened where no hammer or chisel could reach.

He activated [Material Suspension] first. Umbral Root rose several inches above the workbench while six points of mana pinned it in place without gripping the wood. Beside it, the Heartroot Crystal hung in a second field, both items still tethered to Adrien through bonds Orven could feel but not touch.

[Runic Sight] followed, and the staff opened up before him. Its surface stayed unmarked, but the formations within peeled apart into layers: casting channels, control structures, reinforcement lines, the core, and the small corrections gathered over years of use.

Whoever built it had known exactly when to stop adding things, which was rarer than most people believed. Orven raised two fingers and activated [Mana Thread], sending hair-thin strands of mana through the existing runic seams.

Each thread carried almost no power, and it needed none. Through them he could test a channel, isolate a section, or alter a rune without flooding the rest of the artifact, and he began sorting the irregularities he had noticed earlier.

Some were genuine damage and deserved to go. Others were old adaptations left by previous owners: a channel worn wider by repeated use, a slight bend around an old fracture, and several places where the staff had learned to spread mana differently from its original design.

A greener Artificer would have scrubbed every one of them away in pursuit of a flawless structure. Orven left most untouched, because a perfect formation map was worthless if the artifact worked worse afterward.

Then he found something newer. Several channels near the core bore repeated traces of sharply different mana: Aqua through one route, Pyro through another, then Zephyr forcing both to give way before the structure steadied into neutral again.

The traces were recent and frequent enough that Umbral Root had already begun reshaping itself around them. Adrien switched between Affinities so often that the staff had started bending to his habits.

That changed the design. Orven scrapped two of the modifications he had prepared and redrew the formation map from the beginning. An excellent neutral S-Rank staff was no longer the goal. He meant to rebuild Umbral Root for the Mage who actually carried it.

The Heartroot Crystal came next. Orven activated [Thermal Field], feeding heat evenly through the material without flame or contact, then layered [Pressure Weave] over it once the inner lattice softened.

Unseen fields pressed and pried the crystal apart by fractions. It never melted. Its structure unravelled into luminous fibres, each one carrying the adaptive quality gathered over centuries inside the Ancient Tree.

Orven guided those fibres toward Umbral Root with Mana Thread but held off on joining them. First he charted which parts of the old core could survive, which had to be cut out, and which would anchor the new network. Only once every route was fixed did the true reconstruction begin.

Across Sylvarin, Adrien and Amelia found a small restaurant overlooking the river. They ate outside, making the most of a few hours in which nobody expected Adrien at a meeting, a royal dinner, an investigation, or anywhere else.

Afterward Amelia led him through one of the larger magical markets. Shops displayed casting focuses, formation plates, monster materials and grimoires behind reinforced glass, and the prices on the higher-rank manuals stopped Adrien more than once.

"One A-Rank grimoire costs that much?"

"Good ones do. Once the seller can prove the spell is complete, stable and properly preserved, the price rises very quickly. Most Mages never buy manuals like these casually."

Adrien stared at the figure again. Greymoor could do a great deal with that much coin, and repairs, supplies and wages suddenly looked cheap beside the cost of advanced magic.

Eventually Amelia steered him away from the market and down a quieter street toward the water. At its end stood a narrow stone landing beneath an old bridge, half hidden from the main road.

"I used to come here when I was younger. My tutors eventually learned where I went, but for a while I thought I had found the one place in Sylvarin where nobody would think to look for me."

Adrien leaned against the worn stone parapet beside her.

"I can understand why you kept coming back. It doesn’t feel much like the capital from down here, especially after spending the last few days inside the palace."

They stayed until late afternoon, talking without steering the conversation anywhere important. For once, Sylvarin was simply a city they were walking through, and nobody needed anything from them.

Shortly before they started back, a messenger found them and passed on a brief note from Orven. The hardest part of the reconstruction was finished, and he wanted Adrien at the workshop before the final binding.

Adrien could still feel mana flowing steadily through his bond with Umbral Root as he and Amelia turned back toward the old district. The staff was still his, still anchored deep in his soul, but after hours in Orven’s hands, he was about to find out what it had become.