From Greatest Mage to Lowly Smith

Robert had known that Anders was going to be his mentor as soon as he saw the building -that is to say that he could hear him... from the other side of the street.

"Hey Anders!" Stella said, smiling "I've brought your new apprentice."

Anders looked at Robert and snorted dismissively.

"You look like you've never used a hammer and anvil before in your life, you had better be better than the other two apprentices that the Craftsman's Guild has foisted upon me. Well?! Come in already!" Anders said, 'inviting' Robert in.

The door closed behind Robert and the interior of the workshop was revealed, it looked a lot like a traditional, medieval smith's workshop except for a few strange rune covered devices and the sheer size of the place, it looked as if someone had cleared all of the walls out of the bottom floor of their house and removed the entire second floor just to create this room. Looking around Robert quickly saw a familiar face, the man that he had 'fought' in the first round of the mage tournament.

"Oh, hey Ignatius." Robert said casually.

"Sup... smart dude..." Ignatius replied, clearly unable to remember Robert's name.

Ignatius was sitting beside another man, this one held far greater resemblance to Robert's idea of a smith, he was a large and well muscled man. The other man only briefly glanced up at Robert before returning to his original task -he was hammering a strange, shining metal into a semicircle shape.

Robert quickly learned why the man was basically ignoring him, as Anders's voice loudly blasted into the smithy. "Why aren't you working?" he shouted.

Robert quickly turned and replied "You... haven't told me what to do yet?" Robert replied quizzically.

While the other two got back to their work -Ignatius was twisting strands of what looked like molten gold over a spear, Robert was called into a side room by Anders. The side room was surprisingly small -still large for a room in a normal house, but no longer outside of the bounds of possibility. Anders informed Robert that there were strict rules for working under Anders. Rule one was that Anders would give each of them a project every week -it would come with instructions on how to complete it, and if they couldn't complete the project within the time frame then they would be ejected from their apprenticeship. The second rule was that his apprentices could only ask him one question a day. The final rule was that his apprentices could only look through his library's first floor, and only when they had finished their projects.

Anders also said that he had access to all kinds of rare resources and that his apprentices were free to use them for their own projects as long as they had completed their assignments and they ran it by him first -just to make sure that they wouldn't blow up the entire place. Anders gave Robert his weekly assignment -he had to inscribe spatial runes on a weapon to make it cut faster. Robert went back outside and went to work immediately.

Runecraft wasn't like other proficiencies, it didn't require magical materials -only knowledge. Robert immediately began to read the instructions that he had been given. They told him to use a very specific set of runes on the sword. Robert spent the entire day trying to inscribe those runes on the sword. Robert worked on it all through the night and into the morning, but he still couldn't figure out how to inscribe the runes. He had tried multiple times but he had instead produced a plethora of other effects. He had lengthened the sword, shortened it and even created a meter long gap between the two halves of the sword.

"Why can't I get these damn runes to work?!" Robert angrily muttered.

[Wait, are you serious?]

"Of course I am." Robert replied, he heard the sound of App facepalming in his mind.

[... Can you do me a quick favour, Robert?]

"I suppose... what do you want me to do?" Robert asked cautiously.

[Take your hand up to your face and stare at it.]

Robert did as he was asked, wondering what strange thing App was up to now.

[Good, now stare at your hand and try to hold it perfectly still, don't let any part of it move, at all.]

Robert stared at his left hand, after a few seconds he noticed something, he couldn't do it. No matter how hard he tried his hand twitched and spasmed, he quickly reigned in the twitching to the point that it was hard to see, but it still happened, it just snapped back into place.

[Perfect, if the nine elementals are the languages of magic, then runes are the letters. And magic's precise, if you make even the tiniest mistake then the runes won't work like they're meant to. That is why people use magic for rune carving, instead of their imprecise hands.]

"Ah, but what magic do I use?" Robert replied. While a normal mage would know a number of common tier spells of all destructive and constructive elements, Robert wasn't a mage, he used a purer form of magic. Because of this, Robert was worried that he wouldn't be able to cast a simple spell used for control over an inscribing tool.

[Don't worry, all magic is incredibly precise, you don't need a specific spell.]

Under App's guidance, Robert let out a wisp of mana and forced it into the shape of a hand. Robert then removed the fire elementals from the surrounding area until an icy hand was formed. Robert directed the hand to inscribe the runes in the sword. Within a few moments Robert completed the inscriptions, now for the next step. Now Robert would have to pull spatial elementals into the sword.

Robert sat down with the sword resting across his lap. Robert closed his eyes and felt for the thread that would lead him to the elemental world. Robert sat on the floor in a meditative pose for an entire day as he observed the elementals, he began to become nervous as he considered that it had taken him two weeks the last time he had done this. As Robert looked around he saw a few different types of elementals, fire -like tiny suns throughout the air, wind -those tiny mirrored particles could be seen everywhere, light -once again they filled everywhere around him, shining like fireflies. He had seen all of these before, but after watching the elementals for another day he witnessed some new elementals, he saw a strange jade-green particle that seemed far more common than the other particles -"Time," Robert thought. Robert looked around the room, seeing the walls that were packed with brown particles -"Earth," Robert thought.

Robert didn't see any other kinds of elementals until another day went by. Suddenly, he saw tiny transparent elementals that filled the entire room -"Void, and... jackpot" Robert smiled. Robert suddenly felt the thread present itself to him once again. He followed the thread until he reached the strange realm, he could clearly see the elementals and their paths here, he didn't even need to focus. Robert began to pull the void elementals into clusters, he then shaped those clusters until they were the same shape as the runes on the sword. Robert directed the runes to match their physical counterparts on the sword, and as they did, the rune engraved parts of the sword became transparent.

Robert was about to return to his corporeal form but noticed something strange about his right arm.

"It looks exactly the same." Robert said, looking at the part of his current flame based body that remained a hunk of arm shaped chromatic crystal. Robert realised that no matter how hard he looked, he couldn't see the elementals the arm was made up of. Robert tried to rationalize that it was just because he hadn't yet discovered the elementals that it was made of, during the course of his study, but he knew that something else was going on.

Robert returned to the corporeal world and began to push mana into the sword the same way he did for his staff. The sword had twelve runes, the first four lit up easily, the second four lit up slowly and the final four wouldn't light up at all. Robert began to examine the sword carefully, even getting confirmation from App that the runes were perfect. Robert continued to push mana into the sword until he felt the material straining and saw the ninth rune flickering, he tried to push more mana into the sword, but felt the metal strain under the pressure, feeling as if it would burst. seeing this, Robert decided that brute forcing the sword wouldn't work, he felt around the sword and saw that it was split into three sections. The first section, where the first four runes were suffused with mana. The second section, where the entire blade was suffused with mana and the third section, where -despite the blade almost bursting with mana- the runes were completely dry of the torrent of mana that flowed through the sword.

"That's weird." Robert remarked. Robert began to push the mana around the second section of the sword, eventually he caught all of the mana in the runes, and the second section of the sword mirrored the first. Suddenly, App piped up.

[Congratulations on learning level two of the Mana Knowledge skill, with this you have mastery over mana at the common tier and advanced knowledge of predator tier mana.]

As the second section of the sword had its runes fully integrated with it, Robert considered the amount of time it would take to break through again and complete the third level of the sword.

"There is no way that I can complete this before the deadline." Robert realised. Robert thought about this problem for a while, before being struck by the solution.

"He never said that we had to complete our assignments by ourselves..." Robert looked over at the other two craftsmen "If I help them complete their tasks then I can convince them to help me." Robert thought. Robert headed over to the two men, he quickly decided that it would probably be easier to convince Ignatius to help him, as the other guy was still giving him the cold shoulder -totally focused on his work.

"Hey Ignatius, I was wondering if we could work together on our projects?" Robert asked.

Ignatius looked up from his work, twining the strange, viscous, golden liquid around the spear he was holding. "I guess so, but we need to finish mine first." Ignatius calmly replied.

"Sure, what are you doing?" Robert asked.

"I'm enchanting, this is honey from Muzencaba bees, it will make the spear more flexible." Ignatius said.

Robert gestured for Ignatius to hand him the spear and Ignatius did so. Upon examining the spear closely, Robert realized something surprising. The honey was filled with magical runes, specifically water runes.

[Well of course, that's why runecraft is so far above the other proficiencies. The other proficiencies use magical beast parts to bind the abilities of those parts to a certain item. The reason that it works is because the magical beast parts contain runic patterns, it's how they do what they do. Like the flexible honey that Muzencaba bees excrete to absorb attacks from predators.]

"Interesting, so what's taking you so long?" Robert asked, wondering why Ignatius was still working on the same spear, four whole days later.

"The honey won't stay attached to the spear long enough for me to cast the binding spell that transfers its properties to the spear." Ignatius replied.

"That's all?" Robert asked. Ignatius nodded and Robert told him to keep going until he was ready to cast the binding spell again. As soon as Ignatius stopped pulling the honey tight around the spear, the honey began to disconnect itself from the spear. Seeing this, Robert pulled away the nearby fire elementals and froze the honey onto the spear. After keeping the fire elementals away for a few minutes, Ignatius finished his spell and the spear and honey fused into what looked almost like a joke, food weapon from a quirky game.

Afterwards, Robert had Ignatius help him with the blade. Robert asked Ignatius to hold the sword and pour mana into it until he felt like it was going to burst. As Robert watched, Ignatius pushed mana into the sword until the third section of the blade began to show minute fractures. Robert decided that this would be a good time to test out his idea. Robert created an orb of mana around the third section of the sword and constrained it to its current size while increasing the density of mana within, since the density of mana outside the blade was equal to the density of mana inside the blade, the mana no longer tried to force its way out.

With this system in place, Robert and Ignatius were able to increase the mana in the third section of the blade until a tiny trickle began to seep into the runes. Robert and Ignatius continued doing this over the next three days, until the runes filled with mana. At this point, the third section of the sword was suffused with mana, while it wasn't all inside the runes -like in the first two sections-, it was a working item. It had left Robert and Ignatius feeling like worn out husks, day after day. Luckily, Ignatius didn't seem to mind, never voicing any discontent with the situation and just greeting every new day of hardship with his usual, carefree smile.

Robert took the blade to Anders, confident that he wouldn't be able to improve the sword any more by the end of the week. Robert walked into Anders's room with the blade and saw his mentor moving a plate of potatoes towards his mouth using a hand made of mana, as Robert walked into the room, shocking Anders, the plate fell and was instinctively caught by Anders.

Robert watched in amazement as runes flowed out of Anders hand and across the plate, before pulling water elemental runes into it. The runes transformed the plate into a liquid that spilled out of Anders's hand and spread across the floor. The potatoes that had fallen into Anders's hand had turned into mana crystal embedded, gold nuggets with earth elemental runes that hardened them to the same degree as Apex tier armour.

Anders looked angrily at what remained of his dinner, before glaring at Robert. His entire face turned bright red and swelled up until it looked like a tomato.

"That was my second favourite plate you thrice damned bastard!" the ox muscled and tomato faced man screamed at Robert.