I didn’t go right into my meditation, but figured I should try to get more information out of my profession. The problem was I had no idea what I needed to try to think about to see if it would give me information. I picked up a screwdriver and tried to focus my full perception onto it. The screwdriver clarified, and I could easily discern the fine details and all the little scuffs it had from previous use.

  I repeated this with several of the tools lying around me. Wrenches, hammers, sewing needles. That last one felt oddly like zooming in on its eye. I was used to working on machines that, in general, ran independent of my direct input unless something went wrong. Magic items, if the disk was anything to go by, were similar in their independent function.

  But how did that independent function, well, function?

  Knowledge bubbled up to the surface just like magic, and I smiled as I sorted through the information.

  My pathways could be altered in their flows to create a ‘pattern’ of sorts that I needed to push into the item while simultaneously pulling the ambient energies around me into the pattern and locking it in place within the item.

  More specifically, my mana stream serves as the baseline blueprint or the frame of the enchantment ‘scaffold’, mostly because the mana is the easiest to use to pull in ambient energies. The shape I use will determine the kind of effect. A spiral will yield an effect that involves growth, expansion, or absorption, a lattice one of containment, durability, or barriers, and waves one of flexibility or flowing effects such as regeneration or adaptability.

  The metaphorical braces and platforms of the scaffold was my stamina flow. Pulses created bursts of stored power, explosive effects, or temporary boosts. Rhythms created endurance or longer lasting enchantments. A cascading form would create momentum based chaining effects.

  After the ‘scaffold’ is built and projected on the item, I had to fuel it with both mana and stamina to pull in the ambient energies to stabilize the enchantment. Once it is sufficiently stable, then I bonded the enchantment using my vitality. Treating it as threads created a binding enchantment to the wielder’s soul, as anchors locked the enchantment into the physical form, and echoes could allow enchantments to grow alongside the wielder, echoing their growth.

  The different types of forms had differing costs, and this increases dramatically when trying to create higher ranked magic items. I could only make inferior ranked items at the moment and I had no idea how the scale increased, yet.

  I picked up one of the chunks of marble I can broken off when trying to gain my profession. I’d seen in games and such before that stones were often used as sources for light.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Okay, item in hand, now…” I tapped my chin with a finger, “Spiral mana for absorption, Rhythm stamina for lasting effect, and anchoring vitality to keep it within its physical form, or at least to not require being bound to me.”

  Setting the stone before me as I sat, I entered meditation and focused on my internal flows. They were stronger by far than when I’d entered the dungeon, and I gently pushed my will into the spiralling coil. The three lines immediately uncoiled from one another, allowing me to tug on the mana flow.

  It felt odd as I pushed my mana out in front of me, coiling it into a tight spiral. Separating the section of the mana stream into the spiral forced me to continuously push mana into it to maintain the shape. I felt the stone and pushed the spiral down into it, floating it into the air to hover around my chest. I tried to focus on my stamina to begin the rhythm, but the mana spiral faltered and the marble clattered to the ground. In that short a time, I’d only burned through 20 mana. Not too bad.

  “Shit,” I muttered. This was going to be harder than I thought. “Okay, let’s try to multitask first before trying again.” I’ve never been awesome at multitasking, preferring to focus on one thing at a time. But, to become a good enchanter, I would need to figure it out.

  WIth the three types of internal energy separated into parallel streams, I formed my mana into a simple shape, a circle. I could feel that the cost to maintain the shape was significantly less than the spiral. Good start. I first focused on the circle, changing its shape between square, triangle, and back to circle. Trying to keep the circle in place, I slowly pulled the stamina stream and made an outline around the circle. It slipped a bit and the whole thing collapsed. For perhaps the first time since my change, I felt exhaustion wash over me. And my stomach growled.

  So, I chewed on the walls for a while. The dungeon’s insane amount of vitality made the walls that weren’t secretly doors repair as quickly as I could damage them. My hunger subsided eventually and I laid in the middle of the floor, awaking several hours later.

  This, it turned out, would be my life for the next several days. Practice until exhausted, eat the walls until full, rest. Rinse. Repeat.

  I practiced the different forms of each type of energy individually until they became second nature to create, or at least not absurdly difficult. This familiarity would prove to be a huge boon, as they became easier to maintain since I had a better grasp on when they began to shift into instability. During this practice, my profession had gained a single level, bringing it to 9. So close to a new skill choice!

  The rock floated before me again as the spiral mana held it aloft. Beginning the rhythmic stamina form, I began to feel the ambient energies being pulled into the stone and the spiral form. Holy shit it was working! As the energy built and built, I could feel the stone begin to take on luminescent properties. I felt a headache as my mana and stamina were dropping very low, and just before I had to drop the attempt I felt it stabilize.

  Painful exhaustion flooded over me as I pushed my vitality across the stable enchantment, the anchor form sealing it in place from the bottom up. My consciousness began to wane and the glowing stone clattered to the ground as I passed out.