Andrew Rowe - Sufficiently Advanced Magic

Item that allows for invisibility at will.

Item that removes sound from movements.

…

It wasn’t exactly how I would have would have listed things, but I understood the goals, at least.

These were not exactly simple things to build.

I read a little further, beginning to sense patterns.

Item that allows for the projection of an illusory self.

Item that allows for the detection of invisible targets.

Item that enables the wearer to see through walls.

Item that allows the wearer to see in the dark.

Most of the items were themed toward subterfuge and detection, but some of them were awfully specific. Specific like the kinds of things you’d be expected to demonstrate in a class for a certain attunement.

I folded the list. “You want to be able to fake having other attunements.”

“Yes.”

I was surprised by the confirmation. “…Why?”

“I’m taking the classes for three different attunements,” he admitted. “I must successfully meet the requirements for each of them.”

Well, that certainly helps support my “Jin is obviously in Spider Division” hypothesis.

It was tempting to ask him about Spider Division more directly, but I decided that it was probably more polite to be more discrete, at least for the moment. He would have volunteered that information if he’d wanted to.

I raised a hand to my chin, considering. “This is so you can keep it secret which attunement you actually have?”

“Good,” he said, voice wry. “You understand.” His lips twitched upward, but only for a moment before he looked away.

Well, I understood what he was going for, but I still didn’t understand why he needed to do that.

Something about his searching for Spider Division, maybe? I’d almost forgotten about that in the face of the much more serious problems at hand.

I tried looking at his aura with my attunement; I couldn’t resist. All it took was a blink.

Nothing. No aura.

Was it possible they’d let him into the school without an attunement?

I doubted that very seriously.

That meant he was either already wearing an item that blocked my vision — very possible — or he had an attunement that did the same. The Shadow Attunement, maybe.

“Okay. You said you could get materials, but this is going to require a lot of them. Some of these enchantments are not going to be trivial, and I may not be able to complete them all immediately. I don’t even know if they’re all possible at my level of expertise; some of them might be Carnelian-level or higher.”

“I understand,” he replied. He looked me in the eye, and his expression held something like relief as he said, “I trust you will complete this to the best of your ability.”

I… still hadn’t accepted, but sure. He was so earnest with the request that I couldn’t really refuse. “If I write down the materials that I need for each of these, you can get them somehow?”

“Yes,” he replied simply.

“How?”

He folded his hands in front of him. “My family is Dalen.”

I’d figured he was from another kingdom from his appearance, but that didn’t explain the resources in itself. “I’m not sure I understand. You’re from Dalenos. …Why does that matter?”

He shook his head once. “No. House Dalen.”

Oh, goddess. The royal family of Dalenos. “You’re… oh. Like a prince or something?”

He twisted his lips, looking uncomfortable. “No. Not precisely. I would rather not explain. Suffice to say that I can provide what you need for the items.”

That put things into a very different perspective. “…I don’t suppose you might be able to get any extra resources for my own projects, since I’m going to be making you so many things.”

He frowned. “You mean more materials?”

“Yes. To practice, and to make myself some items for my own classes.”

Jin looked away for a moment, his face considering. He turned his gaze back to me. “So long as you do not sell them. If you are making things for your own use, this would be acceptable.”

Huh. “That’s what I planned, but can I ask why you’d make that requirement?”

Jin nodded, looking serious. “The people here… you see the souls of monsters as currency. To us, they are the spoils of victory and sacrifice within the tower. To enchant is to bind the soul of an enemy for your benefit.” He paused, then his eyes widened and he hurried to continue, “This is an honorable task if done for one’s self, or for an ally.”

His expression hardened, “But to sell the spoils of bloodshed for coin? That’s an insult.”

He thinks monster cores are souls ?

…actually, that makes an awful lot of sense.

If monsters are essentially mana constructs, and the core is the mana that remains when it dies… it sort of is analogous to a soul, isn’t it?

But the cores aren’t alive or intelligent — at least as far as I know. The core is more like a corpse than a soul.

Probably.

It was a little bit of a disturbing idea, but something I could investigate later.

I extended my hand and he clasped it on the wrist. A very traditional gesture. “I believe we have a deal.”

It took me another week just to look up the enchantments that Jin wanted, look up the necessary component runes, and then look up the materials necessary for said runes.

I couldn’t make more than two thirds of them, even if I had the materials. The enchantments were just far too far outside of my skill range.

When possible, I suggested alternatives for these. Instead of invisibility, a weak blur effect. Instead of entirely cancelling sound, a simple dampening enchantment, like the one Professor Orden had used outside my room.

It wasn’t satisfying to tell Jin that I couldn’t do most of them, but when I marked down that several of his requirements were Carnelian or even Sunstone level, he understood.

We worked out a new list from the alternates, resulting in a total of eight items I’d have to make.

It was during that process that I learned another important limitation: magical items had a tendency to interfere with other items in close proximity to them. It was something that made a lot of sense, since they’d have overlapping auras, but I hadn’t thought about it a great deal until I started considering the practical implications of trying to fake three different attunements at once.

It didn’t help that Jin wasn’t willing to tell me which attunement he actually had. That would have saved me a lot of work. But it made sense; anyone knowing was a vulnerability in his plan. I suspected the teachers had to know what he was up to, but they were a lot less likely to tell than a student.

By the middle of the fifth week of classes, Jin had delivered the materials for the first set of items he’d requested, as well as a handful of small crystals for me to use for my own experiments.

That handful of crystals would have cost, by my estimates, about eight times more than my meager stipend up to that point in the year. I was pretty pleased.

The enchanting itself, however, was a lot of work.

Having an attunement on a part of my body that I wasn’t willing to use made everything inefficient. Channeling the mana from a single small crystal into a rune only took me a few minutes, but it also drained some of the mana in my own hand, which was used to facilitate the transfer. That meant I needed to wait hours between each enchantment, just to recuperate the mana I was using.

Since my attunement was linked to my mind, that mana would have regenerated much faster — about four to five times faster, according to my books. But the more I thought about the possible side effects, the more I worried the harm I could cause if I did anything wrong.