Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

Alright, of it all, test twelve showed the best results, now to just redo it to its full potential to get the maximum effect.

“Mmh, Ben?” Thera asked as she woke up, still groggy and trying to rub the sleep from her eyes. “Is it morning already?”

“Ah, no. Well, I mean, yeah but you can sleep a bit longer, sorry if I woke you.”

“S’okay, I can get up. Want help with breakfast?”

“Sure, in a bit, I just need to finish up here.”

She was too tired to notice his hand on her brace so she didn’t pick up what he was doing, the same thing he’d been doing all night.

Combining the various awakened skills he’d gotten on rings with the library of knowledge in his head, he’d spent the night testing enchantment configurations, trying to find the optimal one for getting the best results he could as fast as he could by utilizing both his unique mental structure as well as resupplying himself with Thera’s mana so he wouldn’t need to slow down or stop for breaks, same as when he’d been constructing gates throughout the world.

After dozens of such tests, seeing some that worked better and some that were worse, he’d finally settled on the best configuration, one he was just about to tell her about until he noticed she’d already fallen back to sleep.

Ha, she really is too bad with mornings. I guess it’s just good she manages to wake up on time in general.

He let himself watch her sleep for just a little longer, enjoying the peace that came with the morning before it was time for him to start his regular routine as he got up to make breakfast.

He decided to aim for something simple yet filling, going for a variety of easier dishes to make instead of one big one to draw the two women from their slumber. It meant more dishes to do but that was nothing he couldn’t handle and it was a nice change of pace from time to time, with everything he had on the go acting as a siren’s song, luring the two in.

“Morning,” Sonya yawned out before taking her seat. “It smells great in here.”

“It does,” Thera murmured happily, just awake enough by the time he was handing out plates to look at him curiously. “Did I wake up a bit earlier? I feel like I remember you doing something.”

“You did and I was. Since I got another level to my enchanting a couple days ago I decided to modify your brace while you were asleep and test a couple things. The long and short of it is I can guarantee that even if you can’t control your charm when it’s at the ninth level, you are officially covered for both your effects at a distance and on contact.”

That woke them both up.

“Really?” Thera asked him, looking at her brace with naked surprise. Until that point, she’d had been lingering at only a point or two of effect on contact left. Not enough to be a real concern for the majority of people in the world but still enough of a threat that she wouldn’t risk touching anyone. For it to go from that to so fully suppressed couldn’t help but catch her off guard.

“Really really. I’ve gotten the practice I needed for learning the subtleties of my new various skill rings while I’ve been trying to make legendary items and combined that with all of the things I’d learned at the magic towers along with my knowledge and thought speed skills. Easy-peasy.”

He was downplaying it a lot. He’d worked himself to the bone with his various tests while she’d been asleep and even before he’d started his attempts, each mind in his head had been trying to model and estimate just what could work, no matter how outlandish, with the final enchantment that had gone down pushing a rare ranked armband into being the third lower-legendary item he’d made.

He skimmed past the usual bragging and explanations though because he could see that even if Thera was happy about it, it still left a complicated feeling. She was still dependent on a tool, unable to manage her power by herself. 

Receiving it was undeniably great for her and she had no intention of being ungrateful, but still left the lingering feeling of what if? Ben had said she’d be fine up to the ninth level with it, what if she surpassed that? What if awakening would make her charm grow too strong and what if the brace wouldn’t be enough? It was worries she was trying to make herself learn to deal with while Ben took a different approach.

“If you still need it in the future then I’ll keep figuring out ways to make it better,” He told her in no uncertain terms. “This is the best I can do now, not the best I can do in a week or a month or a year. If you’re ever worried about it just remember that.”

“I will.”

She could see just how serious about it he was. He’d gotten to that point in his skills by consistently working hard and pushing farther and that mentality had given him the tools to keep doing so. Whether he was willing to admit it or not, his mind was basically alien compared to a standard human’s by that point, being powerful enough to shock gods. It wasn’t perfect, he couldn’t think of things he’d never consider, but it meant he could constantly work on and chip away at the problem, using everything he was learning to refine the brace enchantment to greater heights.

And there’s even a decent avenue for learning in town I’ll need to check up on today as well. I’ll mark that down as a later thing.

They only lingered on the topic of how the brace had turned out a little longer before changing topics, neither Ben nor Sonya wanting to keep it in Thera’s thoughts when they were still being conscious of how she was feeling and letting things take a turn for the lighter as they moved on to discussing the coming day instead.

“I’m supposed to go hunting with Aso later but I was thinking of maybe pushing it back a bit,” Thera sighed. “Since you made the gate I was thinking I should maybe go back to the magic towers to read up a bit more on non-affinity magic so I can hurry up and get my levels.”

It was a sentiment that Sonya couldn’t help but agree with. “I’ve never been myself but if you’re going I might join you. I haven’t actively been learning anything I can do with an awakened life magic. Of course, I’m not sure I’m up for being tested to get to the second floor.”

It probably wouldn’t be too hard for her given her skill but it was still a roadblock that would take time, not to mention the difficulty of finding anything that would be useful to her personally after she got up there.

Still, they both wanted to grow and improve no matter any small level of inconvenience and the two both started discussing if they should go, neither noticing Ben creating piles of books from the raw mana he was taking from Thera until he had a stack ten high.

By the time they had caught on to what was happening they both just looked at him, waiting for an explanation, even if they each thought they knew where it was going.

“Ahem, with all of the books there it can be a little overwhelming, I just figured it would be easier for everyone if I just made you ones with the most relevant information and maybe a few copies of the more interesting ones after that. It will only take a minute,” He explained while his thoughts all worked in tandem to organize and compile everything that mattered.

While he could have just recreated a few set books to match exactly what he’d read in the past, leaving them as word-for-word reproductions, he instead wanted to create volumes with a better layout than what so many of the ones he’d poured through had, creating something more akin to the textbooks he’d always dreaded reading back on Earth than the scholarly works of this world, complete with a table of contents and a section for finding keywords at the back.

Throughout it he put tables and graphs alongside the information he’d tried to make as simple as possible to understand, as well as a few notes here and there for sections he’d seen enough conflicting information on to warrant them, on top of a few of his own ideas he thought might work that just needed the testing of a proper mage.

The volumes on life magic were the simplest, only taking three and ranging from what could be done with it in its simplest form, followed by awakened magics, with the last ending on the most relevant parts of soul magic, but beyond that he was making other options too since he started.

With a volume for each of the non-affinity branches Thera had, he made two covering what a properly awakened non-affinity magic could handle given how much broader in scope it was before he moved in to cover the other branches Thera could handle, making ones that covered both earth and dark as well before making further books that covered the topic of where they’d intersect.

By the end he had twenty volumes he considered to be relevant and worthwhile, not only for them but for any mage who had those magics as a whole. There may have been plenty of areas that could have been expanded upon for academic study, but given the point was to help them learn and develop spells, what he’d created was more than enough.

Although I guess there’s a few more worth recreating to the letter.

As a final act to top it off, he perfectly replicated the books that contained the accounts of the signature spells of famous mages, the ones that had a level of complexity or skill that let them rise to their past fame, making sure every word was exact as he made them. He was only focusing on recreating ones that would be possible for either of the two to achieve if they put in the work, not creating anything that contained affinities they didn’t possess like fire or water.

From those sorts of books alone he’d created thirty, the majority going to Thera given just how many branches of magic she had access to, but there were still a few that could be done solely with life if Sonya felt inclined to some studying on the topic.

“I suppose I’ll make a bookshelf for the living room later for all of this,” He said, half thinking out loud while the two of them were each already grabbing volumes to pour over.

“Ben, this is… Shockingly detailed,” Sonya said after a moment of trying to find the words. “You could probably publish these and they’d be wildly successful as actual learning materials.”

Neither she nor Thera actually needed his first volume on life magic given they were both past that stage, he’d mainly made it for the sake of completeness, but both could see it was well put together in a way that would have made it an excellent supplement to any practice and hands-on training they got.

“Hmm, maybe I’ll pop through the gate later to show them to Killi,” He mused. “If I get her interest then she can handle the rest.”

“Well, in the meantime do you think I could get you to make a few more copies of the first life volume?” Sonya asked. “Maybe even a few for light as well? I’d love to hand them out at the clinic to help the staff.”

“Same for me please,” Thera said. “If I could take some to give out when I’m going to different clinics around then I might not find so many in a mess so often. And if you’re willing could I get you to make one on fire magic for Aso and whatever you think would be worthwhile for Sachel?”

“Hey, it’s your mana I’m stealing to make this happen so as long as you don’t mind I’ll do it.”

Each book was taking approximately five hundred points of mana to make, only possible because he was using Thera’s supply instead of his own. Just the fifty he’d made before had cost around twenty-five thousand points of it but as long as she didn’t mind then he wouldn’t stop.

So by the time I’m done, I’ll have used about a hundred thousand, goddamn. Can’t wait to end up with ‘printing press’ as a title.