The Crafting (5)

Jien took some time to truly rest before the start of this final phase of crafting. He decided to lay down and take a short nap, knowing that he would need as much mana as he could gather for this last part. After all though a person could use mana crystals as a source of power for formations those would often be formations with an on and off switch. A crafting formation would require the controllers mana to allow for the finite control needed.

Jien woke up an hour later and then left his room and the still hibernating plant to have lunch with his father and mentors. They had been paying attention to him remotely to ensure that they could act if needed, but had also made sure not to crowd him. They didn't wish to burden him with external pressure should he not succeed but wanted to ensure his safety to the best of their abilities.

As Jien ate it was Emily who started the conversation asking how his project was going. She internally still had misgivings about what he was going to turn the fencing style into but it was a part of tradition that the heir to the style would make their own contribution without outside influence. As such she was stuck in what she could do to change his mind. She had focused on helping him improve the style using only wind based magic in the hope that he may change his mind and just stick to that concept, but here they were with him two thirds of the way through his crafting.

Jien told them about the process he had gone through to this point, highlighting both the positives and negatives of the splicing attempts as well as the difficulty in drawing out the multiple overlapping formations. He then discussed his plans going forward for the rest of the project. The conclusion of the explanation left Earl smiling proudly and Emily with her mouth hanging open slightly. While she knew what he intended to do from a basic standpoint by joining plant and blade she had not thought about the specifics. Jien's thought process on the matter had left her both stunned and impressed despite her misgivings. Mark on the other hand had a positive impression of the matter, after all if he succeeded Jien would be further prepared for what would come next.

It was only after having a filling lunch and a decent conversation that Jien decided it was time to try and wrap up his experiment. It was time to either succeed or fail, as generally speaking there would not be a real in between. If the forging were to fail the most likely scenario would be the formations exploding or the plant being outright killed. If either were to happen the experiment would be a failure. Any other final product would be considered a success, even if not perfect it would likely be usable to some degree and would provide a basis for further experiments in the same field.

Jien stood in his room looking at the plant that had remained still the whole time, curled around the small table it had been placed on. He took several deep breaths to steady himself before casting a minor wind based spell to gently sweep the plant over to the created formation. To ensure that only the plant was used in the crafting he had drawn it out very carefully from the pot that it had been planted in. This revealed a fist sized seed like mass with several roots protruding from its bottom and the vine sprouting from the top.

After ensuring that the plant was not disturbed by the process it was gently placed in the center of the formation circles. Only after it was properly settled and still not moving did he sigh in relief. He was still unsure how the plant would evolve but it it would wake up before he had some level of control over it then he knew that it would be dangerous. After all, even if the mandrake made its 'temperament' calmer Serpent Vine would still retain its thorns and poison as well as its nature of constricting and then shredding apart prey.

Jien took a few more moments of silent focus before he sat on the ground cross legged before his completed formation. He stretched out his had and placed it on one of the corner nodes made of Allstone. This would be the entry point from which his mana would flow to fill the formation and allow him to complete his first real forging project.

He calmly began to pour mana into the formation, paying close attention as the lines of mana conducting ink began to glow ever so lightly with a slightly blue tint. He watched as more and more lines filled, paying attention to the feeling to ensure that if there were blockages in the mana flow he could back off and protect himself from what would be an inevitable explosion.

Despite his worries after about a fifth of his mana capacity was drained away all three of the interlocked arrays had successfully been filled with enough mana. The nodes ensured the smooth flow and balance of the mana through the lines of ink, leading to a beautiful design of lightly glowing lines and runes surrounding a coiled vine at its center.

Jien kept his had on the node and continued to supply mana as he focused on the first stage of the forging process. He would need to bind the sealing formation to the plant, then the output control formation would need to be bound to the plant and fused to the sealing formation to ensure that it was in control of that formation and not just the plant. Lastly he would have to use the forging formation to shape the final product he had in mind.

He took a deep breath and turned his focus to the sealing array, forcing his mana to pour more directly into the forging formation. He was using the forging formation to fold the sealing formation into the body of the Serpent Vine. Upon committing his mind to the action the sealing formation seemed to begin to detach from the larger formation, floating in the air ever so slightly, its two dimensional lines gaining a third dimension and the lines themselves gaining a brighter blue glow.

As he focused further the shape of the formation began to shrink and then twist around the coiled shape of the Serpent Vine. The formation seemed to stretch in specific ways to match the length of the vine. The core of the formation seemed to center and imprint itself into the seed like structure at the end of the vine. Once the glow of the blue lines had fully stretched along the length of the vine the glow seemed to fade, leaving light silver trails along the vibrant green of the plant. Small runes of the same silver color could be seen along the edge of the lines. The first step had been a success meaning that even if the second part was to fail as long as it didn't destroy the plant it was likely to be a usable end result.

Now came the hardest part of the process. He turned his focus to the output control formation and it began to follow the same process as the sealing formation had. However, this time rather than just coiling around the vine as the previous had it continued to hover as Jien focused on the plant. He needed to spot specific nodes of the sealing formation to bind this formation to. Just overlapping them would not have the correct result. He needed them to act together as one joint formation for the best result.

He spent another five minutes continuing to stare at the vine in concentration, doing his best to map the nodes on the stretched formation pattern. After finding enough of them to complete the process he turned his focus to the floating formation. Differently than the first this formation took its time in adjusting in an unusual stretched shape. It did not center itself around the Serpent Vine but instead around specific point on the first formation before imprinting itself in another patter of silver lines and runes.

At this point the vine looked more like a hand painted ornament of greens and silver than a live plant, but Jien could only see it as the success that it was. This last piece was the easiest, and the part that had not taken him long at all to figure out. The final formation glowed with a fiercer blue, the Serpent Vine being lifted in the air rather than the formation. The vine began to writhe about, but not because it was attacking or 'awake' but because the formation was forcing it into a new shape.

The seed seemed to have a hole formed through it, the roots forced to gather about it as if a protective wall of brambles. The vine was coiled in such a manner that it looked like it had been weaved in between itself like the threads of cloth, the end result sloped gently as if a woven dome of lush green. It then began to shrink as if compressed by a great force until the thick vine looked more like metal that had been forged and then painted.

What sat in the middle of the formation was a new guard for a rapier. One could slide it down the blade and then lock it in place. Jien could only pant as sweat soaked his brows and back but he was smiling brightly.