Focuses

The Focuses were harder to make than I originally thought for a few reasons...

Firstly, they were a tad more complex since they were meant to gather, focus, and amplify the mana of the wielder in a far larger amount than the weapons I had made, which meant that the little details needed to be hammered out to perfection lest I create something flawed.

Secondly, the intricacies in crafting something this small and maintaining its shape perfectly was far harder to do than just shaping a blade or carving out some wood into a cylinder; this took far more skill than what I had to use on the weapons.

Lastly, Magisteel itself was already difficult enough to shape due to its mana enhanced structure, but now that I was moving the pieces individually and taking it from an ingot to an amulet... well, it was much, much harder to do.

Like I had said with the weapons, there were just some things that made more sense with each person to me, and one of them was that Heila and Prixisa would benefit more from something they could wear over something they had to carry, so I gave them amulets to make it easier on them, while Kalia would be receiving a wand, since the Dark Elf seemed to enjoy the theatrics of showing off her ability to interact with the Weave over trying to just cast and incantation.

To start, I began working on Heila's first, mainly because I had no real idea on the Doe's abilities nor what element she was attuned with, so I instead took this opportunity to practice my jewelry making as well as making a Focus as I began to slowly and methodically turn a small circle of Magisteel into something beautiful and practical.

The symbology on the amulet was rather blatant as I shaped it, the long, branching antlers connecting to a deer skull giving me the perfect chance to make it mean something and work on something a tad more complex, with the antlers needing to be rounded out and smoothed so that they wouldn't harm the wearer while still maintaining their imposing shape.

Sadly, hers was one of the creations that was destroyed by that 10% chance of failure, meaning I had to do it all over again with a new ingot of Magisteel, but I just told myself that the practice I got from the first time around made the second one even better.

When I moved on to Prixisia's amulet, I thought for a few moments before deciding to do something that was... admittedly, rather cheesy, but I thought that it'd be a fun experiment and that it would look really cool when I finished it up, and that was to make an ouroboros, or a snake that was slowly eating its own tail, representing being whole or infinity.

Again, cheesy for the Lamia to wear, but I thought it fit her and would provide yet another fun challenge for me as I set about carving the metal out this time instead of shaping, making it about an inch and a half across and hollowing it out before carving in the details.

Both amulets turned out beautifully, but the only problem I had was that I had no metal chain to attach them to, so for the time being a rope of twisted leather would do well to hold the amulets, and with that I had the hardest Focuses out of the way for the others, allowing me to turn my attention towards the Wand for Kalia.

That choice wasn't hard at all; I made a handle out of Magisteel and socketed it around a long, smooth piece of Mana Wood, the silver and brown materials blending together well as the simplest, yet one of my favorite Focuses of the night was crafted.

With that, I had created eight weapons and Focuses for my family, and their stats... their stats were pretty good for my first set of Magisteel gear.

[Magisteel War Spear : +25 Atk, +10% Mana Gathering, +20% Mana Damage]

[Magisteel Pike : +20 Atk, +25% Mana Gathering, +20% Mana Damage]

[Magisteel Long Sword : +20 Atk, +15% Mana Gathering, +25% Mana Damage]

[Magisteel Broadsword : +15 Atk, +5% Efficiency, +10% Mana Gathering, +10% Mana Damage]

[Magisteel Long Bow : +15 Atk, +20% Mana Gathering, +25% Mana Damage]

[Magisteel Amulet (x2) : +35% Mana Gathering, +35% Mana Damage]

[Magisteel Wand : +40% Mana Gathering, +35% Mana Damage]

Overlooking their stats, I nodded to myself as I compared them to the basic steel counterparts, which all had half of their damage increase and that was it.

Not the flashiest gear ever, nor the strongest, but it was a start, and I needed to find and gather materials for their respective elements to continue to empower them... but for now, this was perfect.

For the weapons, they were capable of dealing more damage to someone and more durable as well, while their magical capabilities made it so that if they decided to ever use spells in combat, they would find it easier to do and cause more damage with those spells as well.

By quite a bit too for such beginner weapons, which made me curious about the higher level items I could eventually make...

As for the strength difference between them and focused gear, I wasn't too worried since it would seem that my level influenced the bonuses that some gear got; for example the Sanguisteel Amulet that used to have 20% Mana accumulation and 25% damage now was 40% and 50% respectively, and if I covered the amulet in blood, that shot up to 80% and 100%, which... was incredible.

That gave another incentive to level myself up, and it made me even more curious about the gear I could craft a year from now, when I was double or even triple my current level...

Wouldn't I be creating items that increased Mana Gathering by roughly 300%?

Damage by that same amount?

What would those items be capable of..?

It made me giddy, but for the time being I got to work on the last thing that I wanted to make for today... something for myself, of course, and something that would hopefully turn out good as I continued to craft away, enjoying this type of work immensely.