The Wand

(AN: This is my first time creating some complex crafting system, so please let me know if it is interesting, engaging, or needs to be improved.)

The girl's eyes went wide open, the familiar sight of the water-damaged ceiling assuring her of her return. Her hands still trembled after nearly dying for her third time. The image of the lightning was still vividly ingrained in her thoughts.

"I can't be so careless the next time. A bit later, and I would get struck by that thing."

She patted around her waist, immediately calming down as her sack was safely there, carrying all of the bounty she painstakingly harvested.

Tiredly, she closed her eyes, resting against the softness of her pillow.

The next morning:

A stick of smooth, perfectly white wood, a bottle of thick red liquid, a small cooling container, and a couple of colorful gemstones were neatly placed on the small table.

"I should have all I need." She gave once over on the materials.

//

The quest was cleared!

Rewards: 1 x witch point; 1 x [Apprentice Artification]

//

Artificing was a precise and delicate craft and a major and important field of witchcraft that was the foundation for creating magic items.

She dipped her finger into the blood and leaned over the old floor of her room. With a precise movement, she drew a singular thin curved line that soon formed a large circle.

She didn't pause, gracefully moving across the floor, tracing smaller circles around the central one. Each smaller circle received the same careful attention, and then she further divided them by drawing precise halves with strokes of her finger guided by the skill.

"Now for the fuel."

With a sense of satisfaction, she retrieved the red and transparent gemstones from the pile and carefully positioned two of them on each of the smaller circles, pairing one transparent and one red gem together.

Gazing at her creation, Tia nodded approvingly. The energy-gathering focus was now complete, designed to extract and concentrate the energies stored within the gemstones, channeling them toward the center of the formation. It was a crucial component of her intricate process and supplemented her own limited mana capacity.

"The more energy, the more effective the process will be."

The wand consisted of three main components: the conductor, the core, and the focus.

"Let's first create the conductor."

With steady hands, Tia took hold of the white stick and retrieved an empty pot. The strong iron smell emanating from the bottle of fireman's blood caused her to instinctively hold her breath as she cautiously poured it into the empty container.

"Yup, with this I have both the base material and the source material from which I will be extracting."

Once the pot was filled, she positioned it at the center of the circle she had prepared. Her eyes darted around the room, ensuring that no prying eyes were watching her every move, preserving the secrecy of her ritual.

"Even if I can explain the rest with my insanity, there is no way I would be able to explain this."

Finally, she nodded in approval and lowered her hand above the pot, allowing mana to gracefully flow into her fingers and extend towards the bloodied mixture.

In a mesmerizing display, the luminous gems erupted into a cascade of radiant mana and light, their particles swirling and intermingling with the encircled blood in a mesmerizing vortex of pure energy. The amalgamation of her innate mana and the fiery and null affinities of the gems fused seamlessly under her control.

She directed it straight into the pot, and as soon as the stream mana touched the blood, it burst into a brilliant red glow, illuminating the surroundings.

"This should be enough to fuel the elemental extraction and infusion."

The mixture began to swirl, forming a mesmerizing vortex that centered around the stick.

With closed eyes, Tia focused intently, skillfully manipulating the swirling mass of impurities and diverse elements under her control.

"I need only null and fire elements." She slowly guided them into the stick, droplets of sweat forming on her forehead as she tried to filter the blood.

The mixture of various elements, most prevalently the blood, fire, and null, all interwoven in a chaotic swirling mixture rushing into the stick, only to be dragged into Tia's hand.

A slight pain burned in her hands as she meticulously filtered the blood, tainted mana flowing through her veins as she circled it to filter the impurities and unneeded elements. Her hands trembled with the rapid depletion of mana, vanishing like a vortex pulling energy into a dark abyss.

The purer mix of fire and null affinity mana flowed out of her hand, straight into the stick like lightning toward a lightning rod, while the pain in her hand quickly intensified, growing from the slight tickling into the searing hot sensation of burning.

"Ahh."

With a sudden reaction, she stepped back and halted the flow of mana. Gasping for breath, the searing pain in her hand nearly caused her to crumble to the ground, witnessing the vivid rainbow, mostly red veins pulsating beneath her skin.

"This can't go like this. I need proper tools, and a lot of them."

Her gaze fell upon the outcome of her efforts, and a hint of disdain crossed her face. The once pristine white stick had now transformed into a tainted orange, marred with faint, dirty hues of red and illuminated by glowing white veins that snaked their way up its tip.

The colors appeared lackluster and pale, revealing the impurity of the mana and the ingredients she had employed.

"Phh, there is still too much of the blood element that tainted it. I have reached the peak and yet now I have to start from the bottom." It frustrated her beyond any measure. She saw the top, and now she was again forced to crawl back at the bottom of the hierarchy, all her hard work gone.

Like potion-making, artification also depended on manipulating elements and their properties, imbuing them into runes, materials, and objects. The purer they were, the stronger the effects were and easier to control.

"Fire will amplify my pyrokinesis, and null should amplify my telekinesis." She could only sigh at being forced to use the null element. "Motion, gravity, force, or energy elements would be better, but there is no way I could extract them in pure enough form in my current state."

There were four basic elemental manipulations: fusing, splitting, purifying, and degrading. When extracting elements, some would always be more prevalent.

For example, when extracting properties from fire, the resulting elemental energy would always be inclined to mostly appear in the form of fire elements.

One could either fuse them with, for example, earth elements to obtain magma elements. Purify it into its higher, purer form, heat, and as it was already the lowest tier base element, it couldn't be split into its sub-elements or degraded into its inferior, impurer version.