The Crafting (3)

Jien, having rested a bit and meditated once again for a short ten minutes turned his focus back to the Magic Mandrake plant that was potted in a medium sized flower pot. Only what looked like a small tree sapling stuck out of the dirt. Jien wouldn't be removing the plant from the dirt since the plant being potted was the equivalent of it being in hibernation. He would rather it not wake up during this part of the project because it would fight against him actively at that point. While the Mandrake was a more docile plant than the other two that did not mean that it didn't have it's own way to attack.

Mandrakes were known to produce 'sounds' at such a high frequency that they could potentially knock creatures (including humans) unconscious. This was their only form of both attack and defense, but also an extremely potent one. Jien hoped not only to isolate the portion of essence relating to the plants docile nature, but to also try and fuse the sound attack into his final product. If one could prepare they would be able to lessen or even avoid the impact of such an attack. He was not sure how the Serpent Vine would evolve with that portion though. The evolution process was unpredictable, even if fusing the same plants in the same way with the same environment. It was noted in the alchemy guide that one should carefully test the end result to ensure that it had not evolved into something that would damage the reason for the splicing, often to be used as an ingredient for a potion,

Luckily for Jien the essence extraction went exceedingly well. The Mandrake had stirred slightly during the process, something Jien had expected. Other than some potting soil being spilled on the ground there was no cause for concern. Not five minutes after the start Jien had captured another slightly denser cloud of white fog in the same jar. It seemed that the mandrake was a fairly young sapling, as indicated by the thickness of the white mist. As essence was in some ways the plants' very life force only the youngest would have such dense essence, but if you drew it from a plant that was too young the quantity would be too small to do anything with.

Jien took yet another short break as each stage and step required utmost concentration. Once done he spent some time witling away the dense essence until it was just the few strands that he was going to connect to the vine and the portions regarding its more docile nature and sound attack. He then focused on drawing out a few specific strands from the vine relating to the wide ranging attacks of the moss and the serpent like aspect of the vine.

The reason he chose the moss as his first target for the fusion was to be an intermediary for the mandrake since it was the outlier of the three. There wasn't much that Jien could think of that would tie the mandrake to the other two plants. It had a different nature, thrived in a different environment, had different types of defensive mechanisms. In fact he wasn't even sure that this fusion would work but he hoped that it would.

As he intertwined the threads of essence representing the wide ranging attack of the moss and the sound attack of the mandrake he felt the resistance that he had predicted. The two attacks were similar only in the aspect that they could affect a broader area. Everything else was different and as such there was a strong dissonance between the two threads. Rather than intertwining properly they seemed to repel each other like two positively charged magnets.

Despite the repulsion Jien pushed them together using his mana as a binder. The guide had stated that this was a possibility when the connecting criteria was very loose. In that case the one performing the splicing would be required to use their own mana as a binding agent by infusing a meaning that could bridge the gap. As such Jien focused the meaning imprinted in his mana on the idea of spreading in a large area. Meanwhile he created a sheathe of mana to hold the binding mana in place like holding glue in place until it would dry. Soon enough the threads seemed to adhere to each other, even if reluctantly, allowing Jien to move to the other thread.

He had to use the same method to represent the idea of acting more animalistic than a plant. This was a good portion harder because the concept itself was broad and complex. However he found success over twenty minutes of efforts directed on those threads. Once the connections were made he used his mana once again to slowly redirect the essence back into the Serpent Vine which was now in a state of hibernation despite the fact that it was no longer under a spell.

The hibernation in itself was the result of the fusion with external essence to a living organism. It was a forced process to facilitate the absorption of foreign energy and assimilation of the properties that had been selected. This was even more true for the vine since it had been blended with two plants one right after another.

This was done on purpose, as if he had let the plant evolve and then tried to splice the new plant once again it was possible that the new plant would lose any matching characteristics with that of the plant that he wished to fuse second. Jien was also focused on completing the entire process before the evolution truly set in. This is why he had requested the day off from training with his mentors. After the plant finished its evolution it would become much harder to control and shape. However, if he was able to properly shape it and blend the formations into its structure as it evolved he theorized that it may evolve to better fit the structure he wished to shape it into.

Of course this was just a hope on his part. He was doing something that none of those around him had done and that the guides only covered in separate pieces. Luckily, the next portion of the project was something that was covered decently in the notes of the blacksmithing guide. He could only hope that that knowledge and the formations that he had chosen and experimented with would result in a decent end product.