A Relatively Powerful Mage

The moment Imri finished his speech, he used Blink to disappear out of view. He quickly returned to his workshop, a sanctuary from judging eyes. He took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. He could feel Emelia’s amusement through their Soul Bond.

‘It wasn’t that bad,’ she sent telepathically, the delight in her thought speech uncontained.

‘I think I would prefer going and facing the Hive Queen over that,’ he sent back.

‘If it’s any consolation, your theatrics had the desired effect. Everyone is in awe or fear of their near-omnipotent lord. That should be reassuring when the council breaks the news of another impending war,’ Emelia sent.

‘Good, then I can focus on the rest of what I need to get done. I will spend a couple of days doing as much enchanting as possible before making a quick trip to New Chicago. With any luck, they’ll see reason and listen to what I have to say,” Imri sent.

‘Do you really believe that?’ she asked.

‘Not really, but if asking nicely doesn’t work, there are always other options,’ Imri sent.

Imri had zero expectations that New Chicago would acquiesce to his demands, but he wanted to give them a chance to do the right thing. However, with the threat of the Azala looming, he had no patience for games.

Imri also had zero patience waiting for the mana to recharge, especially considering his Runic Engineer rank-up quest was just days from completion. He entered a state of focus and spent the next eight hours doing nothing but enchanting mana absorption panels. With his significant gains in overall crafting efficiency, the finished products were considerably more potent than those he had previously completed. Unfortunately, the raw materials used in the enchanting weren’t keeping up with his gains, so the final enchantment wasn’t twice as powerful.

Imri considered the three panels he had just finished. They had enough mana efficiency to be used in a lower mana density region and still have positive mana production. However, the final mana output would be considerably lower than if they were in Celestia, but the ability to produce mana elsewhere was too valuable. He would have to bring these to New Chicago to enable mana charging.

His next block of time was spent on the enchantments for another permanent portal. He intended to constantly improve the portal in Celestia since it would be the one doing most of the heavy lifting. He would then move the terminal from its current location to New Chicago. He would rely on Toby and Zuri for the guide stones and leylines, which would need to be moved stone by stone to its new location.

He hadn’t accomplished any amazing feats in those sixteen hours of crafting, but it was something necessary to keep moving forward. He had even gained a singular level in his Runic Engineer profession, partly thanks to his improved efficiency.

Imri took the time to have a meal with Emelia. She smiled as he tried to converse casually, but it was impossible to fool an empath. They both knew he was focused entirely on preparing for the upcoming war.

“It’s fine. The fact that you care is enough for me,” she said, lightly kissing him.

“Just let me know when you need me. I’ll teleport to you in an instant,” he said seriously.

“Seriously?”

“I anchored a beacon a few meters away from you. Wherever you are, I can be next to you in a second,” Imri vowed.

Emelia mock glared at him, but it was less effective because Imri knew she was touched by the gesture.

He returned to his workshop and wondered if he should also place a permanent beacon there. He probably would have, but they now required several hundred mana to create. He went to his workbench, which contained several examples of the Collective Intelligence's enchanting.

He had spent a considerable amount of time studying it. While he hadn’t been able to reverse engineer anything practical, he now had a general idea of which blocks controlled which function. However, one common rune linked everything to a central block that presumably executed each function. Based on his fights against the sentinels, where he had used Dimensional Tears to separate pieces from the core housing, he knew that the metal needed to be connected by something.

What confused him was how the information in the central node was transmitted to each independent piece of the sentinel. He had assumed the central node sent out a tendril of mana to each connected piece, sending them signals to act. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find any rune that would accomplish that.

Imri stared at the various salvages for hours. He did his best to throw out all preconceived notions. The Collective Intelligence paradigm was utterly different from anything he had ever experienced. He thought of them as an advanced AI with near-unlimited power, and while that was accurate, it wasn’t helpful. He had unconsciously considered them computers with more power, but they were altogether different. They ran on a series of runes that allowed them near omniscience due to how much mana they could wield.

When he got past his preconceived notions, something clicked into place. It wasn’t the node sending commands to its various shards but the shards listening to the node. The node didn’t need to send commands to its extremities because the moment it thought about something, the command was already being executed. Essentially, the rune that had him stumped was a mind listener rune.

Now that he knew the rune, the rest fell into place. He quickly was able to decipher the various parameters that the mind listener would need: a subject to listen to, a sensitivity, and a frequency. The subject was easy to conceptualize; it was the wearer of the enchanted item. While it was a bit more technical to implement, it wasn’t overly challenging. Frequency was how often the listener would check for the correct mental input. He defaulted that to 50 times a second or every 20 milliseconds, roughly the time it would take someone to think to activate the enchantment.

Sensitivity was the hardest to put an exact value on, and it would likely vary between different enchantments. For something dangerous, like his Dimensional Saber, he wouldn’t want it to activate when he fantasized about hacking something to bits because it annoyed him. He needed it to require a very intentional thought to activate. For something less deadly, like the lights in the house, it was acceptable if an errant thought activated it, though it still needed some sensitivity so stray thoughts didn’t cause the lights to flicker constantly.

As with many significant breakthroughs, it compounded upon itself. Now that Imri knew the structure of the mental rune, he could quickly reverse-engineer another rune. It was similar to the Mind Listener rune but sent information instead. It helped the Sentinel know precisely where each shard was, whether it was damaged or not, and a whole host of other information that could be gleaned. Like the Mind Listener, the Mind Sender rune needed three parameters: the recipient of the information, what information to send, and when to send it.

Excited by his breakthrough, Imri began working on a simple enchantment he made hundreds of times: Temporal Expansion. This time, there would be no clunky UI where he would need to tap or twist the ring. Instead, he would need to think about activating the enchantment or adjusting its amplitude, and it would happen.

The rune required to get the mental activation working was fairly complex. However, because he could remove the clunky runes that created the physical activation, the number of runes would be about the same. However, that wasn’t the case when he started feature creeping the hell out of the enchantment. He added a Mind Sender rune that would tell him exactly how much mana the enchantment had and what its default amplitude was set to.

Imri also added various activation modes: default activation, specified amplitude activation, or time-dependent activation. The default was how the enchantment functioned before his breakthroughs. The amplitude was defined ahead of activation and would run until it was out of mana. The specified amplitude was similar; only it was set when the enchantment was activated by providing the amplitude to the Mind Listener. Time-dependent set the duration for which the enchantment would run, and then the runes calculate the amplitude it could sustain for that time.

With all the features Imri added, the enchantment had become incredibly complex. He had to go slowly and etch tiny, intricate runes into the ring. Several hours later, the enchantment had been completed and successfully tested. He sealed the enchantment into place with his highest-level Drake core.

All the new functionality had added to the constant drain of the enchantment, though that was somewhat alleviated by Imri’s overall crafting efficiency. He had also added a feature where the listener and sender runes wouldn’t be active while the physical item wasn’t being worn to mitigate the cost further. Even if it was a slight cost, the ease and speed of use easily offset the cost.

Imri had intended to eventually remake his supply of enchanted items because of his vast improvements in crafting efficiency. Now, he had two reasons to do so.

Over the next couple of days, he remade everything he had crafted for himself. He made a pair of Dimensional Sabers, a Gravity Hammer, a Ring of Celestial Gravity, a Ring of Low Gravity, several Immovable Platforms, and an Omni Measuring Device. He worked tirelessly, getting as much done as soon as possible without sacrificing quality. On several occasions, Emelia had to remind him to eat and get some rest. Imri would scarf down an incredible meal he barely tasted and get a few hours of meditation.

Developing the correct rune work for the Mind Listening on each enchantment had taken some experimenting and design work. However, the improvements also allowed him to create more versatile items; his new Omni-Measurement enchantment was a great example. He had stuffed it with his various true spells that allowed him to measure everything from gravity to temperature. It also had variable precision that could be adjusted with a thought.

Imri also devised a way to improve the effectiveness of his personal enchantments: a charging station stored in his Inner Domain. This required the panels and leylines to be completed outside his domain, and then the whole setup was placed inside. Whenever he wasn’t using the enchanted items, he returned them to the charging station within his domain. It took him some practice to place the items in the correct location, but he was eventually able to do so without issue.

His Inner Domain wasn’t just convenient for storing industrial-grade magical infrastructure, but was also the most efficient location for them. The ambient mana that resided near the core was so high it was faintly visible in the air without mana sight. While Imri suspected it was many times higher than around Celestia, the rate of mana the panels could absorb was limited. He suspected it was a combination of the vigor and growth aspects of the mana; it was great for flora, but the panels required pure mana. Even with that limitation, it was almost twice as effective as outside his domain.

With that effectiveness, he repurposed all readily available panels that could easily be disentangled from the existing infrastructure. He then used them to charge some of the large Espeonite crystals before returning them fully charged.

With that exploit, he completed his Runic Engineer rank-up quest before he needed to leave to deliver his ultimatum to New Chicago.

Profession Rank Up

Runic Engineer 2E

Primary Stats/Level

Strength .05%

Agility .1% (+.05%)

Constitution .1%

Intelligence .45% (+.05%)

Willpower .35%

Charisma .2% (+.05%)

Secondary Stats

HP .15% (+.05%)

FP .15% (+.05%)

MP .8% (+.3%)

Mana Regen Rate .9% (+.15%)

Crafting Efficiency 1% (+.5%)

Imri Padar has reached level 29 (+2) in Runic Engineer (2E)

Primary Stats

Agility 127 (+2)

Intelligence 293 (+5)

Willpower 238 (+2)

Charisma 129 (+2)

Secondary Stats

HP 336 (+5)

FP 251 (+8)

MP 1604 (+146)

Mana Efficiency 1236 (+42)

Crafting Efficiency 1617 (+242)

New Skill Gained

Runic Refresh (2F): Refresh a touched enchantment you previously crafted, with the new enchantment having an efficiency based on your current crafting efficiency. The etching quality and base items remain unchanged, but the core energy seal is removed. The mana cost for the refresh is equal to what it would have been to etch the runes originally with a 10% discount. There is a 10% reduction in core energy to re-seal the enchantment if the core level is equal to or lesser than the original seal. Otherwise, the discount is 10%/ratio of old seal / new seal.

Imri smiled as he read his new skill. While it technically didn’t do anything he couldn’t accomplish with a few hours of work, his time was at a premium. With this skill, he could re-enchant as many items as he had the cores and mana to support. He was as ready as possible; it was time to bully some tyrants.