A Relatively Powerful Mage

Now that Imri had a handle on his new abilities, his focus shifted to using them in enchantments. The first and most obvious application was a simple enchantment that allowed the wearer to have the effect of Low Gravity for themselves. It was essentially the same as his Time Dilation enchantment, with just the main rune swapped out. However, unlike the Time Dilation enchantment, it had more applications. The main reason was that it could affect objects, not just creatures. He could apply it to any item, and when activated, the item would weigh less and fall slower.

This gave Imri an idea for something he had considered for a while. He commissioned a new backpack made from Umbral Tiger leather. While such material was undoubtedly overkill for a simple backpack, he trusted that far more than pre-integration materials. He also had more than enough credits to be a little extravagant with his projects. Naomi, the leatherworker, was also able to produce much higher-level products than what pre-integration items would be, meaning Imri’s finished enchantment would also have a higher level of efficiency.

While waiting for the Umbral Leather backpack, Imri set himself up for success. One of his main bottlenecks was the production of leylines, and while Avery was good at making them, he already had far more requests than he could handle. Imri had decided to hire someone exclusively focused on making them to remedy this. He hired Toby, a young man who had been an electrician before the integration. Powerlines and leylines were fundamentally similar, and he had no issues picking it up. He even gained a profession related to exclusively crafting leylines. While his first few attempts hadn’t been quite as neat as Avery’s, they functioned well enough, and the gap in their skill closed rapidly as Toby had a few attempts to become acclimated to the work.

His second hire was less critical but was nevertheless important. So far, Imri had been hacking off chunks of the larger Espeonite crystals to use as a mana source haphazardly. Most of the time, they were crudely cut and were excessively large. This method also reduced the quality of the Espeonite crystal, which wasn’t too much of an issue due to its insanely high base mana capacity. He hired someone to be a gem cutter to make his finished products more aesthetically pleasing and conserve the precious crystals. Unfortunately, none of the nearly 300 citizens had been a jeweler. However, he found someone willing to try the profession, a woman named Zuri, who had been an artist before the integration. She also gained a profession directly related to the work she was doing.

His new hires were an immediate boost in productivity, now he only needed to work on the part he specialized in, creating runes. He had them work on projects he had examples for, such as the dimensional sabers or the Temporal Expansion rings, having them make copies of their base components. Their work was an obvious improvement over his own, looking more like a professionally made item than a jerry-rigged contraption.

Imri had them switch to work on the project he had envisioned. He had wanted to create this since he had gotten his Spatial Expansion spell, but two things had always constrained him. The first was that the mana to keep even a small Spatial Expansion spell running constantly was a significant drain, and it wouldn’t be useful as an enchantment unless it ran constantly. The second problem was that even if the backpack could fit more items, the backpack would still have the cumulative weight of everything in the pack.

He could have already solved the first problem, though it wasn’t practical until recently. He simply needed to offset the mana cost of the enchantments with higher mana production from an attached panel. Obviously, it wouldn’t have been practical to attach a full panel to a pack, so he had made another panel about 5% as large as the ones he used in his industrial panels. He did some math and concluded that the amount of mana produced by the panel could support a little over a 5% enchantment of both Low Gravity and Spatial Expansion indefinitely.

All this assumed the backpack was used in a mana-density region similar to the one they were in now. He also used a slightly larger piece of Espeonite to give the enchantments a decent mana reserve. In addition, he made it so the amplitude of the enchantments could be turned off or adjusted by touching certain runes. This allowed the backpack to charge up while not in use or be used at higher amplitudes for a fixed duration. This also made the backpack more versatile, allowing the user to switch between making it lighter or more expansive. For example, someone could raise the Low Gravity component when carrying dense materials that didn’t need Spatial Expansion.

It took him the better part of the day to complete the bag, which had multiple different types of runes. When it was tested and finished, he finally allowed himself to inspect the finished product.

Item

Umbral Tiger Leather Backpack of Storing: A backpack made from Umbral Tiger leather, enchanted to allow the pack to have expanded storage and low gravity. Mana Efficiency: 309.

The backpack was a success, though Imri wasn’t entirely satisfied. He had hoped for something with a bit more efficiency. This was nice to have, but it wouldn’t entirely change anyone's logistics, especially if it involved traveling to lower mana density regions. He looked at this as more of a prototype and enjoyed the process far more than pumping out simple but effective enchantments.

The next day, he dreaded returning to work on his more repetitive items when he received a visitor. Elliot, their de facto weapons manufacturer and bone shaper, had conducted an experiment of his own. He had taken the bones that didn’t have a clear purpose and condensed them down to form an especially dense hammerhead attached to a moderate-length handle, making a war hammer. Unfortunately, the giant hammer was too heavy for anyone but Zhaire to wield effectively. Elliot had almost thrown it out as a failure, but he decided to see if an enchantment could salvage it.

Imri had brought up the idea of collaborating on an enchanted weapon with all the crafters. His first idea was to enchant the hammer with low gravity enchantments, but this was only somewhat viable; if he overdid the amplitude of Low Gravity, it would entirely defeat the hammer's purpose. Ideally, the hammer would retain all its weight when swung downward or even preferably gain weight when it descended. The challenge was defining the two primary states of the hammer, ascending into position and descending as a blow. Imri essentially needed to incorporate a gyroscopic enchantment to define the motion of the hammer. Fortunately, this was pretty trivial using his True Distance enchantments to measure distances, in this case, from the celestial object's gravitational center. So, when the distance increased, the hammer was ascending, and the Low Gravity enchantment would activate. Conversely, when the distance decreased, it would be descending, and the High Gravity rune would activate.

He worked with Toby, sketching his design for the enchanted weapon in a notebook. While they were working on that, Zuri began cutting a crystal into smaller gemstones and polished them. Once the design was done, Imri transitioned to working on a third mana panel while Toby created the leyline grooves and Zuri slotted in the gemstone along the shaft of the hammer. They completed their portion of the project before Imri could finish the more monotonous panel. Not wanting to bounce between work more than he already was, Imri elected to finish the panel before shifting back to the hammer, considering that a reward for completing the less interesting work.

When he finally got to the hammer, he felt reinvigorated. The challenge in this enchantment was tuning the sensitivity; He couldn’t make it too sensitive, or a stray movement could cause the hammer's weight to fluctuate wildly. He eventually settled on a level of sensitivity after several trials and errors. He also made it adjustable, allowing the weapons wielder to adjust both modes to an amplitude that suited their purposes. The result was that the hammer fluidly shifted between light and heavy as he gave it a few experimental swings. Satisfied, he finished the enchantment.

Item

Warhammer of Gravity: A warhammer crafted from fused and condensed Drake Bones. Enchanted with both High and Low gravity that are activated based on gyroscopic motion. Quality 21, Mana Efficiency 313.

Imri Padar has reached level 18 (+2) in Runic Engineer (2F)

Primary Stats

Intelligence 201 (+2)

Willpower 167 (+2)

Secondary Stats

FP 128 (+1)

MP 480 (+14)

Mana Efficiency 456 (+9)

Crafting Efficiency 503 (+14)

New Achievement

Supernatural Being 1: One or more of your primary stats has exceeded the limits of what is naturally possible for your species.

.15% increase to all stats primary stats/rank

Imri smiled, having gained a significant milestone. The 200-stat mark that gave him an achievement was a pleasant surprise. While the shorthand of using IQ and the system's measurements had been somewhat synonymous to this point, it clearly departed from that convention going forward. It also further emphasized the idea that his intelligence, as defined by the system, was somewhat different than how it had been defined before the system. He wasn't some all-knowing genius just because his stat had surpassed human limits. It was closer to how a computer worked; he could easily recall and process things at inhuman speeds, meaning he could think faster. He also suspected that reaction speed was a combination of intelligence and agility, meaning his improved intelligence also helped him in a physical fight.

Imri called it a day with his work done, returning to his recently completed house, which was attached to the workshop. The house's interior was still completely bare, the demand for furniture far exceeding the supply, giving the house a feeling that it wasn’t lived in. The house was two stories and almost 200 square meters of space, almost double his smaller starter home from before the integration. They had enough space that Imri didn’t know what to do with most of the space, and the builder had insisted on building an even bigger house. It had taken Imri a lot of effort to talk them into keeping their house the standard size. Currently, they only used 3 of the rooms, one bedroom which they used for its intended purpose, another bedroom which was for meditation, and the kitchen which currently didn’t have any appliances, besides the small gas camping stove. Imri had felt wrong monopolizing so much space when most people were still living out of tents. As a result, he had invited several other people to occupy the two spare bedrooms until more housing was available.

It was the middle of the night, and Emelia was fast asleep on a sleeping pad that had been moved into the bedroom. Imri felt somewhat bad about the amount of time he had spent on his enchantments, so he decided to sleep by her, even though it was more efficient for him to meditate. She stirred slightly as he lay beside her. He gently draped an arm over her. She grabbed his arm, encouraging him to hold onto her like she was wrapping herself tightly. Imri obliged, continuing to hold her as he drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, he was very glad he had gone to bed, as they had used the bedroom for its other intended purpose. They had breakfast together before returning to their respective work.

As was his routine, he started his day with the soldiers going through physical training. On this particular morning, he felt good, like his body was starting to improve upon what it had once been before his illness. He easily kept up with the group, even finishing in the upper half of most activities.

“Might I have a word, Mr. Padar?” The major asked after he had finished his workout.

“Of course, but please call me Imri.”

“I was hoping to build a radio tower at the mountain's peak,” Major Harper said.

“That sounds like a great idea in theory, but there is a reason most of the tallest mountains before the integration didn’t have infrastructure built on them. It would be difficult for small teams to reach the peak with only the needed gear, let alone building materials. It was impossible to get heavy machinery up. This mountain range has those same problems, and then some; it's taller and more rugged than anything we had on earth.”

“I would say that makes it impossible, but we also have advantages we didn’t have back then, including your enchantments,” Major Harper said.

“I’m not sure how I can help. I’ve been working on backpacks allowing people to carry more supplies, but the constant mana drain means it has to have a fairly low amplitude effect. That will help but not solve all the issues,” Imri explained.

“I don’t need you to come up with a solution on the spot. I just wanted you to think about it,” The major explained.

“I will,” Imri promised, his mind already racing.