Cubes

Eisen looked at the cup he just made and slowly poured his mana into the crystal, then watched as the enchantment at the bottom slowly began producing clear water. Due to the small size of the cup, it quickly filled out and Eisen even spilled some over the side.

"This is going to take some getting used to." He muttered out and placed the cup against his lips and poured the water into his mouth. It tasted somewhat pure, and pristine, as if it just came out of a fresh spring. Overall, it was incredibly refreshing! Eisen gave the cup to Bree and smiled.

"That was a great idea, Bree! Something like this will be quite useful to have on travels." He exclaimed and Bree nodded with a smile.

"Mhm~! It really is! Enchanting is really useful in general~!"

"Yeah, it seems like it! So, what should I make next? The self-burning wood takes too long to make to just watch it burn away instantly… At least until my skill rank is higher, that's going to be a 'No'. How about the cooling air thing?"

"Sure~! Summer is approaching, and it can get suuper hot around here!"

Eisen nodded and smiled, and then grabbed another Mana Crystal. He was surprised, however. Eisen had no idea that the game world also had different seasons. If that was the case, even though it's probably still a while off, it might be a good idea to think ahead for winter. But first, Eisen would make something that expelled air.

Eisen grabbed another piece of paper and sketched out the enchantment he would need to carve. It was fairly simple, really. Once more there would be no specification needed, so the outer ring was a simple circle. The elemental symbols were those of Air, a triangle pointed outward that was cut in half horizontally.

For the center, Eisen thought that maybe a fan would be a good symbol, as the effect he wanted was supposed to simulate a fan's air output.

Seeing that even the circles in the sketch weren't perfectly rounded, Eisen sighed out loudly. How was he ever supposed to carve perfect circles if he couldn't even draw them with the support of the game?

However, Eisen knew failure well. You can't learning anything properly without failing at least once, after all. Back in the day, when he was just starting out learning different craftsmanships, he failed at it every time. The first shirt he sewed had one sleeve that was far longer than the other. And Eisen doesn't even want to think of the first time he messed up while cooking.

Eisen grabbed the needle and poured his Mana into it, before activating his A Dwarf's Hands Skill and placing the needle's tip against the Mana Crystal. Slowly, he started in the center and carved the four blades of the fan, surrounding them with a cirlcle. After that, he placed the alchemical symbol for air around the center six times and carefully carved circles around them as slowly as he could to make sure it becomes a perfect a circle as it could.

And to finish the enchantment off, Eisen carved another circle around the whole thing.

[Simple Air Enchantment]

[Quality - Above Average][Rank - 0]

[Description] A Simple air enchantment that has been carved into a mana crystal. It will only expel a weak stream of air no matter how much mana is put into the crystal.

[Effect] Expells a weak but focused stream of air when in contact with pure mana

Eisen nodded and grabbed the mana crystal, puring some of his mana into it. At first, he didn't even feel a difference to before, but when moving the crystal closer to his face noticed a soft flow of air. Right now it didn't seem very useful at all, but maybe once his skill ranked up he could make something with a stronger airflow.

He handed the Enchanted Mana crystal to Bree, for her to take a look at it, and then began to think about the next enchantment he could make. The only element he hasn't done anything for until now was earth, but what could he do with it? Right now the only things he could do was have an enchantment expel one of the four base elements, and Eisen didn't really have an idea how to use dirt or rocks right now. Maybe he could just try and have it expel stone in different shapes? Yeah, that sounded like a good enough idea.

He grabbed another piece of paper and drew the enchantment he would need on it. The only really interesting thing about a simple enchantment like this was the center part. Other than that, the only thing that changed was the alchemical symbol, after all.

Into the center of the enchantment, Eisen drew a simple cube, as this was be the first shape he wanted to create.

Then, Eisen grabbed a mana crystal and completely flattened it into a disk using transmutation, and began to carve the enchantment. He first carved the small cube into the center and the circle around it, and then the alchemical symbols for earth, an inward faced triangle with a horizontal line, and surrounded them by circles, and lastly added the circle around the whole enchantment.

[Stone Cube Creation Enchantment]

[Quality - Average][Rank - 0]

[Description] An earth enchantment that has been carved into a mana crystal. It will produce a 5cm cube when enough mana is provided. Due to the low Rank of the enchanter's skill, it is highly mana-inefficient.

[Effect] Produces a 5cm cube for every 300 MP provided

"Holy crap, that's more than half of my mana!" Eisen yelled out when he looked at the description of the enchantment. 300 Mana was really a lot for him. Probably not for someone with a higher level, but it really was way more than Eisen expected. He sighed out loudly and placed his hand on the edge of the Mana Crystal disk, slowly pouring his mana inside. He only had a little more than 300 left in the first place, so he asked for Bree to give him some more again, so that he wouldn't pass out in the middle of the workshop.

For a while, Eisen watched the mana he put into the enchantment focus in a single spot in its center. The moment that Eisen lost exactly 300 MP, although they were instantly filled back up by Bree, the mana shaped itself into a cube, and then dissipated immediately, leaving behind the small stone cube that the enchantment was supposed to make.

Eisen picked it up and felt it in his hands. It was dense and seemed not to break or crumble even when he put pressure on it. Its corners were sharp and pointy. It seemed like the shape he wanted was perfectly replicated through this.

If he wanted to, this might be a good way to mass-produce smaller items. Maybe he could make boardgames to pass time during longer travels, or small decorative items that he might be able to sell for a little extra copper.

This was only a choice when he could fix the problem with the mana-inefficiency though, as before then it would be pretty annoying to need Mana-refills all the time.

However, Eisen noticed that this enchantment gave Eisen the most proficiency out of all the ones he made so far. Maybe that was because it didn't just give out the element itself, but because it also changed its shape and state.

The only thing that seemed to be able to be put into a shape was the Water, but that would just drop down and end up in a puddle anyways. Except if he could turn it into ice! It was worth a try, right?

Without even sketching another version of an enchantment on a piece of paper, Eisen got to work, grabbing another Mana Crystal and forming it into a new disk. The reason why he immediately began carving the enchantment was that it would be basically identical to the Stone Cube Creation one, only replacing the earth alchemical symbol with the water one, which was easily done by just leaving out the horizontal line, and imagining the creation of an icecube instead of a stone one.

A while later, the enchantment was finished and Eisen read through the notification.

[Ice Cube Creation Enchantment]

[Quality - Above Average][Rank - 0]

[Description] A Water enchantment that has been carved into a mana crystal. It will produce a 5cm cube when enough mana is provided. Due to the low Rank of the enchanter's skill, it is highly mana-inefficient.

[Effect] Produces a 5cm cube for every 200 MP provided

Immediately, Eisen poured his mana into the enchantment and waited for the cube to appear, and after a few seconds a tiny icecube dropped down onto the enchantment.

Happy that his idea worked, he grabbed it, and watched it slowly melt between his fingers, before placing it to the side somewhere and thinking of other things to do.

In the end, Eisen got the idea to repeat this again for other shapes, and did exactly that.

---

The next few hours were spent making enchantments to create small Stone and Ice spheres and pyramids. However, this wasn't nearly enough for Eisen to rank his skill up. Which is why Eisen repeated carving all the enchantments he made so far twice more, and after a few hours he finally managed to level his skill up enough.

[Enchanting reached Level 100 in Rank 0, upgrading to Rank 1]

[It is now possible to use non-elemental alchemical symbols]

[Due to Ranking-up your Enchanting Skill, you gained +1 INT and +1 WIS]

Satisfied that he could now try to break through the Enchanting skill with Morrom's help, Eisen stood up.

The only problem was that the best quality of the enchantments that Eisen managed to reach was 'Highest', and usually his average was at 'Perfect'. Eisen hoped to be able to make up for that with Morrom's expertise, since he really wanted to see what would happen if he managed to break through enchanting and finish the quest that Morrom gave him.

Eisen walked to the other half of the room, which he expected would be newly furnished to look exactly like it used to, but it was quite different. In front of the walls stood new shelves and tables, basically like it used to be, but now there was a small round platform with two steps leading up to it. The top surface of the platform, however, seemed to be a huge, three diameter surface made completely out of Mana Crystals.

When Morrom saw Eisen approach, he smiled brightly and extended both arms toward the platform proudly. "Look! This is stage for complicated enchantments! We can use it for your Breakthrough right now, but it's also perfect for other things I wanted to try out in a long time! The explosion was the perfect chance to remodel a bit!"

"I see… Just, what kind of enchantment takes such a big surface?" Eisen asked curiously, and Morrom crossed his arms.

"Well, multi-layer ones. Even a rank 0 can make them, but they need the know-how and the right materials. For normal enchantments you can use any material as a base, but for multi-layer ones you need already magical materials, such as mana crystals. So I just fused some together with Alchemy for this. Anyway, for complicated enchantments, you basically replace the alchemical symbols with their own enchantment circles."

"Oh! That sounds interesting! Do they all have to be the same, or can you mix and match them like with the normal elemental symbols?"

"You have to combine them to reach the effect you want, and each circle is a portion of the full process." Morrom explained, and showed Eisen some sketches for different complicated enchantments.

After explaining a few more details, Morrom stepped onto the platform with a smile.

"Shall we get to it, then?"