It took the better part of three days for Vance to finally succeed in creating the gatherer construct that Thomas had taught him. The majority of his time was spent honing his shaping skills so that he could perform the task quickly enough.

It seemed that if he took too long shaping the construct, it would cause him to wear out his will and he wouldn't have enough power left to lock the construct in place.

Eventually, he got there. He shaped ambient mana into the shape of a sphere with dozens of tiny holes. With his other hand, he conjured and shaped metallic mana into a tiny, smooth ball, inserting it into the overall construct. Then he pushed at the surface of the tiny metallic orb with his will in what he estimated was a twisting motion, sending it into a spin.

With a gesture, he ushered the construct into the stone, where he brought forth the full force of his will to lock it into place.

He leapt to his feet and thrust his hands into the air, palms open, victorious. He would've let out an excited cry if it wasn't the early hours of the morning. He didn't need to make enemies of his neighbours right now, so he did a little dance instead.

It'd been just over a week since he was attacked in his room and he'd heard nothing new on the subject. On the plus side, he was feeling a lot better now. His nose wasn't too tender anymore and the rest of his injuries had healed up nicely. The skin on his left hand felt a little leathery, but otherwise mostly healed.

In the morning, he went out straight away to find Thomas. Fortunately for him, he only had to wait around for about an hour before he showed up. Thomas once again invited him in and Vance excitedly produced the stone, which had practically filled to the brim with mana by now.

"That was well worth it for the practice alone, thanks, Thomas."

"You know, you really should be calling me Tom by now. Especially if we're going into business together."

Vance had never really agreed to that, but he hadn't exactly refuted him at his last suggestion of this type.

"It's good quality, not bad at all. The construct is firm, the rotation of the core element is good, the mana absorption rate is passable, well done."

"Out of curiosity, what's the next step?" Vance was beaming with joy at Thomas' words, but he kept himself somewhat in check.

"What, you thought I wasn't going to show you or something? Sit down."

Vance sat opposite him after Thomas pulled out the desk from the side of the room and placed the stone on top of the table.

"So, an enchantment construct is basically what it sounds like, it makes something bigger, better, faster, stronger. That sort of thing. In our case, we're going to make a Firestone charm. The basic premise is that we cause the device to absorb pure mana courtesy of your gatherer construct, transform it into fire mana with a shifter construct and when it detects natural mana of a certain type, we cause the device to expel some of its gathered mana to help bolster the effect. Got it?"

"I think so."

"Good, this is where it gets a little more personal, as well. As you know, everyone aspect shifts mana a little differently, and so when you create your shift construct, it'll behave a little different from mine. That's a property of mana that we don't understand too well, but all it really means that different people often make slightly different versions of the same magical items. For example, my fire mana is quite violent, meaning when I create this, the effects will consume more pure mana than ordinary and produce a slightly more intense effect, though it won't last too long before it needs to recharge as a trade-off."

He waited a moment for Vance to catch up, then continued, for clarity.

"Your fire mana is a bit more relaxed, so yours will create a more subtle effect, but will probably last much longer."

Thomas gave it a moment, then proceeded to conjure a construct that looked like a funnel made of pure mana, but towards the end of the funnel, he conjured a litany of small strings of fire mana. He condensed them to such a degree that they appeared like a bright hot wire stretched into a lattice across the end of the funnel. Then he shrank the construct down until it was tiny, shifted it into the stone and attached it to the outside of the gatherer construct that Vance had already placed within.

He locked it into place and pure mana began to pour into the newly attached construct. Slowly but surely, it converted the mana to fire, where it gathered on the lattice.

"That's my shifter construct. Next, enhancement."

The next construct he created was similar to the gatherer construct in shape, but the core was constructed of fire mana and showed no signs of rotation. In addition, the sphere had no specific holes drilled in it but was instead constructed of a similar lattice to the exit end of the shifter construct.

With a force of will from Thomas, the lattice began to pulse outwards and then inwards, like it was breathing. When it pulled inwards, it brought with it tiny traces of fire mana from nearby sources, and when it pulsed outwards it sent a much larger amount of fire mana back towards the aforementioned source, pulling from its flame core in the centre, fuelled by the shifter construct.

The tiny candle on his desk began to burn brighter and the flame stood perhaps half an inch taller.

"It only works on natural mana, for the most part, there are some advanced enhancement constructs that can bolster other magical contraptions, shaped mana and the sorts, but I'm afraid that's way beyond my level."

Vance paid attention as best he could, these constructs were even more difficult than the gatherer one, but he certainly wanted to give them a try.

"And there we have it, one Firestone charm. Decent quality. Fit for the market, I'd say."

"I don't want to sound greedy or impatient, Tom, but how much do these things sell for?"

"Hmm, somewhere around 4 gold pieces? Thereabouts."

Vance's jaw hit the floor. That was nearly more money than he'd come here with!

"So much? But it seemed so easy for you to make!"

"Easy? I think you'll find that was very, very difficult! Even for somebody with a fire core, that enhancement construct takes a lot of mana. It'll take me a day or two to recover that amount of mana, you know."

When he honed in with his mana sense, Vance realised how mistaken he was. Yes, Thomas made it look easy, but the amount of mana in there was really nothing to joke about. Gathering that amount of ambient mana would take hours at the least and even then, you'd probably run out of willpower before you had the ability to cement it in place. No wonder Arcanist fawned over cores so much.

"Come to think of it Vance, this might be a great fit for you. That feather of yours is some sort of advanced enhancement construct, right? Maybe that'll make it easier for you to amass fire mana. You should experiment with that when you get a chance."

Vance wasn't ready yet to let on that he'd been doing exactly that in his practice time, he wanted to be sure he had a proper grasp over the fire mana in his strange core before he started waving it about.

"So, I performed two of the constructs, you performed one, how does a 2 to 1 split sound to you?"

"More than fair." Vance was elated, that'd give him enough time to try to make his own. "Thomas, was there anything special about that stone? Could I just pick up a rock and...?"

Thomas gave a hearty laugh. "No, I'm afraid not. That thing has been reinforced with Earth mana. It's a very subtle enchantment but is almost essential for any functional construct. You can do it with metallic mana too, but it's less suitable when you're working with stone. Better to use metallic mana for swords and the likes."

Vance nodded again, every little bit of information he could squeeze out could help him massively.

"Do you know the construct for that?"

"You don't need one. It's just a shaping trick. In fact, that coin you carry around your neck is a prime example, it's just a mana shell of a specific aspect shaped to the rough outline of the object. In fact, that one you've got is way too strong to be useful, all the usable space inside is basically gone. The only thing that's good for is not breaking. The key is getting the amount of mana right for the construct you're working with. Too much and you won't have enough room, too little and it'll explode. Literally."

He protectively squeezed the coin. Wait, was he offended that Thomas was talking smack about his special coin? Vance would psychoanalyze himself for that later.

Vance focused on the stone for a moment, bringing out the full force of his will to enhance his mana sense. Sure enough, if he paid close attention he could feel it, earthy mana spread amongst the whole thing, emulating its rough shape. Not much power, but enough to strengthen it enough to support the internal mana constructs. It was particularly hard to spot amongst the normal earth mana one might find inside of a stone.

Vance made a mental note. "Learn how to shift earth mana, then you can pluck magical items out of the local pond."

Thomas fiddled in his backpack for a minute, then handed Vance a gold coin and a handful of silvers.

"Here, take this now, that way I don't have to track you down after I've sold it. If you want to practice, you can probably pick up another one of those rocks for a couple of silver pieces. You'll need to find someone who can perform a decent earth shift though, that one's a bit rarer amongst the students."

"Thanks, Thomas, you've really bailed me out here."

"Think nothing of it. I heard what happened, by the way. I didn't bring it up before because I didn't want to stick my nose where it didn't belong, but..."

Vance went to laugh, but he put on his best angry voice. "Is that supposed to be a broken nose joke?"

"What? No! Bad choice of words." He recoiled for a moment, then shrunk a little seeing the smirk glued to Vance's face.

With a huff, he carried on. "Anyway, are you alright? Have they found out who it was yet?"

"I'm more or less fine. Nose still hurts a little now and again but other than that, I've healed up nicely. I think I'll be back to normal in a few days. Also, No. Nobody has told me anything, to be fair."

"That's weird, the college usually takes these things quite seriously. I suppose they did just lose two Masters, they're probably busy with the fallout."

"Either that or it's been dealt with quietly. James told me he thought it might've been some aristocratic idea of a joke, some noble's prank."

"He could well be right. Still, you should be careful. For two reasons, actually. Mariah has been looking for you. As soon as she heard you were attacked she told me that she was going to track you down and talk to you about self-defence, or something."