Novel Full Chapter 939: Polish
Chapter 939: Polish
While the group was finally resting for the day, Eisen sat down with everyone's weapons and armour. Despite the protective oil that was applied to it regularly, there was still some damage here that he really, really didn't like to see. It was probably going to just get worse as they kept going, but that was fine. Eisen just had to repair it every time.
Though, it would be great if he could figure out a way to make repairing this easier. There was something that Eisen would like to give a shot, and he did have the time to do it. He could take a nap later while he logged out to go to the restroom, wash up, and then eat something small as he had promised everyone he would do more regularly, and by the time he came back, he should be all rested up. That means that Eisen had the time to play around with some things.
There were some new enchanting techniques that he wanted to give a shot. Namely, enchanting something with the effect of a spell. It was one thing to carve a magic circle into an item, and a whole other thing to actually just connect said spell to an item without carving anything.
But if Eisen managed to do so, he should be able to make a fair amount of great items. And so, he looked at a small spell storage container. These were small crystal orbs that were made to store a spell for later. You had to cast it fully to place it into each orb, and then could activate it instantly without a mana cost later on. And depending on how powerful the spell actually was, the size of the storage container needed to be larger accordingly.
That being the case, Eisen had always wanted to try something out. Taking the spell imbued within those containers and moving it over into the final item. It was like treating these spell containers as the small marbles that were used to store 'abilities' in the process of enchanting something.
"Alright, let's give this a shot," Eisen cracked his knuckles. For emergency purposes, in case he didn't have a lot of time, he had Xenia prepare a bunch of 'mending' spell containers for him. Mending was a spell that could repair objects to some degree. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it was a good emergency measure to buy some time before Eisen had the chance to fix something properly. It also seemed to work on practically every material. It was an extremely powerful spell, though it required the user to have some understanding of craftsmanship to be able to properly fix something. It was why a mending spell guided by Eisen was actually much, much more powerful than a spell guided by a mage that never stepped foot in a workshop in their life.
What Eisen was doing now was first try to hold onto the spell and manipulate it without casting it. And this was actually surprisingly easy. The way that the abilities he enchanted things with could be seen was like potential. It was pure magic which, when allowed to do what it was made to do, would cause the wanted effect. Either through the individual's skill or the specifics of the enchantments, this potential could be guided to some degree, all within the rules of the initial ability. The spell inside of this container seemed to be very similar to that. It was the potential to cause an effect, just like with any other ability. And though this made Eisen pretty curious about the nature of abilities and magic, he might just be able to ask Xenia about that later and get a deeper explanation on it.
That being the case, Eisen was able to manipulate the spell as he did any other ability. It was a little more finnicky, as the spell was simply a lot more volatile, but Eisen managed to move the spell from one container to another without accidentally setting it off.
Now that he knew he could do this in the first place, Eisen wanted to try and actually put this spell onto an item. The best thing for this might be some kind of cloth that he could use to polish something. The mending spell was perfect for buffing out small bumps or scratches. So, as a test, Eisen used a small handkerchief made with crystal threads. He had made a bunch of these some time ago as test pieces for different fabrics and combinations of crystal fibres.
This one here was particularly good for enchantments. Carefully, Eisen moved the mending spell into the handkerchief. It seemed to settle in quite well, so Eisen quickly brought it over to one of the pieces he was supposed to repair. It was a chestplate that had quite a lot of scratches on it now. Grabbing some armour polish, Eisen quickly got started. And just as he thought, the small scratches and bumps disappeared. It was working amazingly well, really. Until... it didn't.
Looking at the handkerchief with his truth-seeing eye, the mana from the spell was diminishing extremely fast. And with that, Eisen quickly understood the difference between enchanting things with abilities versus with spells. Abilities would settle in an object and would activate when supplied with mana. Meanwhile, spells were the mana that made them up. Once that mana was used up, it wasn't possible to continue using the spell. No wonder this hadn't really developed as a technique, it wasn't useful. The spell was just harder to use than by simply using the spell container in the first place.
However, if that was the case, then there could be a more useful container for the spell. Looking at the polish, an idea popped into his mind. If he used the spell as an alchemical ingredient, infusing it into the wax or oils that were part of the polish, then it might be possible to strengthen the spell further and make it easier to use and fine-tune. Eisen wasn't able to change the output of the handkerchief at all, which seemed to be another difference between using these two techniques. But if he used the spell as an alchemical ingredient, he could simply change the ratios between the different ingredients to change the output.
But this meant one more thing. He didn't want to need to ask Xenia to give him new spell containers every time. Plus, if this worked, Eisen would like to give this to the entire army, or maybe even sell this so that adventurers or players could take care of their items better. And for that, there was immense need to be able to create the 'mending' spell at scale; he needed a way to increase the mana that made up the spell. That way, he could take out a bit of the mending spell, use it to make new polish, and then let it grow back to full. Like... sourdough starter.
So, just to give this a shot, Eisen grabbed a large spell container that could hold ten times the mana that a normal mending spell required, and quickly transferred the spell inside. Then, he fed some pure mana into the container together with the spell, carefully trying to mix the two together. For now, it just seemed like he was thinning down the spell, but he just had to wait and see what was going to happen from now on. It was a slightly crude solution, but he figured it was worth a shot. Though, it would take a couple of days until he managed to see the results from this, so Eisen carefully placed it into his item storage and moved on for now.
It was time to actually try to make the polish. It really was a simple recipe. For a polish, you just needed some abrasives and a bit of wax that were mixed together. Eisen liked to add in a few more things, like oils that he knew were good to prevent rust or simply helped the shine of the metal.
In this case, he was using beeswax from one of Melissa's hives, and quickly heated it up into a more malleable form. A thick, viscous liquid, basically. Just liquid enough to mix the abrasives and oils into it properly. This wax in particular was a great conduit for magic, so Eisen used it a lot when an alchemical recipe called for some kind of wax. That was why it was the perfect material to infuse with the mending spell. After that was done, he mixed in the oils and made sure all of it was mixed together well.
The abrasive that he then added into it was an finely ground-down quartz. Eisen wanted to make different grit strengths if possible, but for now he just made some polish with fairly average grit to test how well this worked in the first place.
Once it was done, Eisen quickly grabbed another piece of cloth and quickly scooped up some of the wax, which no longer fully solidified, and started applying it to some scuffed-up piece of armour. By the time Eisen was done polishing it, the scratches were gone and only some of the rougher bumps were left. Eisen would have usually removed the worse ones first and just used mending to fix up the last bits of it, but he wanted to test the limits of this polish, and he figured it out pretty well already.
"Perfect," Eisen smiled. There was no waste of the mending spell either, so this was much more effective than the handkerchief before. It was also much easier to handle than the normal spell, so there was actually way, way less waste than just using the spell normally. And so, with this, Eisen quickly got to work, fixing up everyone's weapons and armour.