37. Enchantments

The day continued as normal. Castus slowly forging swords, shields, chest plates and the like. Finishing up for the day, Castus was alone in the forge once again. For the first time he wasn't too tired for the day and actively looked around the forge. He had been running through the possibilities to escape and go help Shi and Rys but hadn't been able to find a plan that would work without the rest of his comrades. As he looked around the forge, he saw stockpiles of materials he hadn't seen before. Reflexively he grabbed it and analyzed the material.

Amodum stalagtite: a rather rare earth metal that has the ability to store some mana. It will discharge the mana when struck hard.

Castus looked at the description before he realized that Dimas would certainly find out about him stealing. He began to panic some. What hell would Dimas create just to punish him? He quickly left the forge and headed back to his room, more worried than ever about the days to come.

Castus' concern over Dimas' punishment never came through. In fact, it was like no one noticed. Castus quickly realized that while Dimas keep tabs on the stockpiles of materials in the forge, if they were over a decent capacity, it was only a rough estimate on how much was left. That day when he finished up forging, last as always, he made sure that no one else was in the forge. While the slave collar prevented him from actively harmed his superiors, it had flaws. It didn't stop him from stealing. Or could it even be considered stealing? He did work in the forge and used the materials. Castus pondered the logic for a second before disregarding it. How ever it worked, it didn't matter now. He walked around to the various stacks of low to mid quality materials and analyzed them all. Overall it was around sixty different materials. Of the sixty, four stood out the most to Castus.

Aqueous titanium: A metal that is always wet. It is extremely durable, but it is rarely used due to the difficulty heating. The water nature of the metal resists heat extremely well.

Shouk powder: A powder that when mixed with sufficient mana or heat will combust at an extremely high temperatures violently.

Kisdrake scales: A common forging material used to reinforce metals when melted down into them. Causes the toughness and mana conductivity to increase of the material mixed with it. Very brittle on their own.

Obsidian Steel: One of the hardest and most rigid metals known. Capable of holding an edge like no other. Commonly used as a whetstone due to the difficulty in forging.

Castus was ecstatic about the new materials. They opened the door to a number of possibilities, but he would need time to use these materials. Castus thought, and he honestly didn't have a ton of spare time or mana. For now, he settled on experimenting with small amounts of the materials, then move on to trying to make something with the small amounts of time he had in the evenings.

Castus fell into a routine following this. He would go to the forge and work as hard as he could. He slowly started to get better and better at forging, and subsequently, faster. He was now only thirty minutes behind the other forge masters. He quickly realized though that they were only forging half-heartedly, and he would need far more time to ever reach their level skill. Once he had a bit of spare time he began experimenting with the materials. The most important discovery during this was the Shouk powder. It behaved similarly to gunpowder, with heat or mana being able to activate it. The heat requirement was much higher than what Castus was able to get with a candle, but the mana requirement was simple enough. This led Castus down a rabbit hole as he remembered something from his old world. Guns. He didn't have massive raw strength or speed, nor did he have fancy skills to attack with so a gun was a simple yet effective solution. He continued to work on this idea and experiment with the materials he had for the next few weeks.

Castus had been working on a design for a gun for a few weeks now. He originally wanted to go with a rifle, but realized the mana cost of all the materials was far beyond something useful. He also realized he didn't need anything super complicated. He originally wanted to make a more modern gun but failed to anticipate the precision and subsequent time and mana to make all of the small components. He eventually settled on a simple breech loading single shot pistol like weapon. This conserved material and also simplified the mechanism to the point where he could reasonably make it and not have to make it before hand and carry it around. Castus was worried that if he made something beforehand, it would be confiscated.

Today Castus woke up on his own to the sound of the door to their room being slammed open. In walked Darius. Today Castus was on his own. Everyone else was gone, even Alyssa who was supposedly taken somewhere to be used as a microphone. Everyone had a bit of a giggle about that. Darius marched over to Castus. "Get up, you're being reassigned to Freth today. The original plan has changed." Castus groggily got up. 'What plan, why am I going to Freth?' He thought as he as slurped down some soup that Darius gave him. Darius gave no answers though and only had him follow to his new workplace.

Castus was honestly a little bit ticked off. While forging day after day wasn't the best thing, he had started to get good at it and even enjoyed his progress a bit.

Darius led Castus to a rather ominous door. There was nothing special about it, but the mana fluctuated around it so much that Castus could feel it distinctly. It reminded him of Saldur's deal. Darius opened the door after a moment of what looked like hesitation. Opening the door Castus was assaulted with a grotesque sight. On the wall was a hog like beast, strung up and bleeding into a bucket. Next to it stood Ferth who was finishing up a slash along the underside of the creature. A familiar eyed tentacle whipped around seeing Darius. Ferth's disturbing voice echoed out immediately. "Wonderful! Darius, you brought my new apprentice!" Ferth stood up and put the knife into the mouth that was speaking, licking all of the remnants of blood off of it.

Castus shivered and now understood why Darius hesitated to open that door. The sight of Ferth gutting that hog was disturbing to say the least. It was downright unnerving. Darius nodded quickly, pushing Castus forward with his hand and turning to leave immediately. He slammed the door shut and Castus was left with Ferth setting the knife down. He looked around the room and noticed a number of medicinal smelling plants and beakers of liquids. He also noticed a number of vials of a purplish fluid. Ferth's hovering eye followed his gaze and a creeping smile formed on its other eye. "You've been assigned to me to learn enchantments for a little bit, but I may slip a little bit on alchemy in as well." Castus stood still and nodded. Ferth appeared to be friendly, but the grotesque form still unnerved him.

Ferth walked away from the hog and approached a table that had a simple knife laying on it. "Unlike the forging department I am the lone individual in charge of enchantments, alchemy and advanced restoration here. There are others in different locations, but due to the high quality nature of enchantments and alchemy I am all that is needed here." Ferth motioned for Castus to approach the table and he did. Ferth gestured to the knife on the table. "I'm going to show you how I enchant and I want you to experiment with trying to replicate it. Most enchanters have their own style. I do not want to impose my style on you as it's not conducive to..." Ferth gestured to Castus' much smaller stature and obvious species difference. "So watch closely." Ferth then took a vial of purplish fluid and uncorked it. One of Ferth's fingers elongated and a hole formed in the base of the knuckle. Ferth poured the liquid into this hole and moved to the knife. Slowly the finger dug into the steel like paper and Ferth drew sigils that reminded Castus of magic symbols. Slowly Ferth drew on the knife and the fluid would fill in the groove behind the finger.

After five minutes of drawing the sigil was complete. Upon finishing Ferth pushed it over to Castus and he noticed the originally liquid fluid was hard now. Ferth fell into another explanation. "Enchantment has three major steps. First is inscription. This is the process of drawing out the intended step. It is the easiest to fail at. The second is rendering. The third is reinforcement. I will show you the following two steps once you can perform the inscription." Ferth then took a knife out of a crate and placed it on the table. "Now Castus you try."