Thomas was so engrossed in his reading that the entire night passed without him even noticing. When the candlelight had gone out he'd simply used his 'All Seeing Eyes' to see in the dark. When he came across something he didn't understand he would search through his other books and used them as reference materials. The information he absorbed broadened his horizons and filled his mind with possibilities. The only regret he had was that there was no forge for him to run to during the night to try some of the techniques and processes outlined in the book.

As dawn broke, he closed the book and let out a long sigh. He'd read the entire thing and felt like the next time he forged he would be able to create an Uncommon rarity item with just origin steel. Adding an enchantment would easily push it to whatever the next rank above Uncommon was. He couldn't help looking at his gear and seeing the failures and flaws of the equipment due to his own lack of understanding. Knowing that he wasn't ready yet he swore off making any new gear for the time being. Before he could forge anything new he needed to study more to make sure he had all the information needed to do the job right.

The benefit of his decision was that the next time he picked up his hammer he would make weapons and armor that would make anyone jealous. He smiled to himself as he stroked the gilded words on the cover to the book on blacksmithing, "Thanks Malachaie. I'll be sure to put what you wrote in this book to good use."

Thomas picked up the book, "True Forging by Malachaie Merrick", and placed it reverently inside of his inventory. Though he had read the book all the way through, he'd only read it once and hadn't come close to memorizing the contents. It would be excellent for reference material in the future when he came across higher tier metals to forge with. In all honesty, finding out about his failure was refreshing and reading how to do it properly filled him with vigor.

He turned around to look at Snowlily laying on her back with her legs in the air on the bed. She did not sleep in a very lady-like fashion and it just made him smile. She was awake and just lazing around while waiting for breakfast. When Thomas turned around her head swiveled to the side so she could lock her bright blue eyes on him. He chuckled and climbed to his feet, "Let's get breakfast."

At the magic words, Snowlily flipped over and leaped off of the bed to pace excitedly in front of the door. He could practically see her frustration at not being able to open the door herself. Together they made their way downstairs to enjoy a welcome breakfast then checked out of the inn. Thomas had chosen a perfect time to swear off working as he would be spending the next week or so just traveling to Utstad and taking a ship to cross the ocean. Their goal now was to find a caravan heading toward their next destination. He had no desire to work as a guard so all his time could be dedicated to reading.

It wasn't hard at all to purchase passage on a caravan heading in the direction he was going. Like the previous city of Djudavik there were plenty of merchant caravans heading northeast to the capitol. He would have to leave the caravan and take a different route part-way there but it wasn't much of an issue to him. The fee wasn't much just for him to hitch a ride while providing his own food. The trip was expected to take two days from Jarns to the capitol, Feldera, but his stop, Utstad, was only a little more than halfway between them. So it should be a little after noon tomorrow that he would arrive at his destination.

Once the guards, drivers, and wagons were all set the caravan left Jarns. Thomas found a somewhat comfortable spot with Snowlily and pulled a book on enchanting out of his inventory. Fortunately, the people who wrote the books were nice enough to put the related field of study in the titles. Back at the academy books had all sorts of titles that seemed unrelated to the topics discussed within them. Blacksmithing and Enchanting were the two primary fields he used when creating his gear. Leatherworking was barely used. Tailoring hadn't been used at all. As for Alchemy, he'd only studied the transmutation circles to use with his Transmutation ability. Those three fields could wait but Alchemy would definitely be next.

Despite not sleeping at all the previous night, Thomas had plenty of energy and spent the entire first half of the day immersed in the book on Enchanting. Immediately after making lunch for himself and Snowlily, he went right back to reading. He was happy to learn that he'd been doing enchanting properly so far and hadn't failed miserably. The big discovery he made involved the golden spec in the center of the boss mana crystal that he had purified. Mana crystals with high purity that contained a 'golden core' had a special property. The golden core could be infused with elemental mana to convert the crystal to that element.

For example, if he were to infuse mana that had been converted to the fire element into the mana crystal without casting a fire spell, the mana crystal would become a Fire Mana Crystal. The benefit of this was that it would greatly enhance the power of fire element enchantments that used the crystal. The size of the golden core also directly correlated to the boost the enchantment would receive. As his mana crystal had such a small golden core the effect would be minimal but still noticeable.

Knowing about the golden core made Thomas desire even more mana crystals from boss class monsters. With them, he could make much more powerful and effective shells for his Spell Cannon. The only problem he could think of would be that he would need more than one of them per shell. He also wasn't sure what would happen if he was to grind it up and reform it as he did with the smaller mana crystals. Going by what he'd read in the book, he doubted he could pull off the same trick if it involved golden cores.

Still, he could infuse them with magical energy and convert them to a specific element before grinding them up and recombining them together. He was liking where this was heading. Sadly, the book on enchanting was significantly thinner than the book on forging. There really wasn't a whole lot to the topic so he finished the book shortly after lunch. It was worth reading as he gained some insight on making more impressive enchantments. Between forging an embryo, adding in an ore such as Fahrentite, and elementally enhanced enchanting medium, he should already be capable of creating a much more powerful elemental weapon.

As for his own discoveries in enchanting, he found that enchantments such as the one on his gravity hammer did already exist. Enchantments with increasing effects based on the amount of mana fed into them were actually a rather common form of enchanting. The swappable enchantments on his Spell Cannon, however, were not known at all and could probably be considered a completely new discovery by him. There was a chance that some enchanter had discovered it before and it was simply a rare or well-hidden secret technique but that didn't stop Thomas from feeling proud. Until he found a book that listed swappable enchantments as a technique he could consider it to be his own discovery.

He stored the book on enchanting and pulled out the book on alchemy. It should probably be called a tome instead of a book given its thickness. It was at least twice as thick as the book on blacksmithing. Alchemy was a massive field and encompassed many various plants and materials to make the various potions and other things that people would use. Almost all of the treatments for special metals required an alchemic mixture of some kind. Compared to all the other professions, Alchemy could be considered to be the most complex and time consuming by far.

Thomas didn't intend to delve into Alchemy too far. It was far too time-consuming and the requirements for materials were off the charts. Every aspect of the world could be used in Alchemy. Plants, animals, monsters, and minerals could all be used for various things in Alchemy. Even the massive tome didn't list every possible ingredient and its use in alchemy. He was pretty certain that you could write a book on the materials that could not be used in alchemy and it would be significantly smaller than a book of what could be used.

The problem with alchemy was choice and availability of materials. There were constant staples such as health and mana potions that just about every adventurer would purchase. Those had been highly developed and had hundreds of recipes using various materials that could be commonly found and produce the same results. Then there were potions like elemental resistance potions. Those had been developed some and had a few variations but the materials required were much more strict. To become a true Alchemy guru would require a huge amount of resources and a vast network of contacts simply to get materials to make alchemic mixtures. Something that only a country or massive guild could pull off.

Still, the tome was worth reading as it gave him a deeper understanding of the subject matter at hand. It wasn't until he was halfway through the tome, having skipped pages filled with recipes, that he found something truly enlightening and helpful. References to transmutation circles! So far he had only discovered two real uses of his Transmutation, purification and reshaping. Combining materials together was just an alternate function of reshaping. The book referenced transmutation circles for true combining via mixing as well as extraction, conversion, and alteration.

Mixing would let him truly combine two materials into a single material. Extraction was similar to purification but instead, let him pull out just a specific part of a material while leaving the rest intact. An example would be that he could, theoretically, extract just the golden core from a mana crystal while leaving the rest of the mana crystal intact. Purification would destroy the rest of the mana crystal to get to the golden core. Conversion would allow him to convert one material into another. The classic lead to gold of old Earth alchemy was a great example. The fault was that the material you wanted to convert had to be extremely closely related to the intended end result. Gold and Lead were essentially only separated by three protons with gold having three fewer than lead. So, theoretically, lead could be converted to gold. Lastly, Alteration was closely related to conversion but more limited in scope. Instead of converting the entire material into another one you would add something to the base material. Something like adding an element to metal to create artificial elemental metals.

Thomas couldn't help smiling as he thought of a myriad of ways to use his Transmutation ability with those additional options. His own Transmutation ability was clearly far more powerful than the original circles. This would allow him to do things that were previously impossible. One thought he had was using a combination of abilities to extract smaller golden cores from mana crystals and combine them together into a single crystal. He would be able to create greatly enhanced enchantments using such a cheat-like process! He also couldn't help but wonder if he could make an entire enchantment just from a large golden core. Since such a thing was supposed to be impossible, he had no references to check.

There were some pretty big drawbacks though. First and foremost, mana. The conversion process was especially mana intensive. The bigger the piece of material he wanted to convert and the larger the difference between the materials the more mana it would take. It was also impossible to convert between the different classifications or materials. Meaning it was impossible to convert a plant to a mineral or a mineral to living material such as a monster part and so on. An example given for converting a piece of iron the size of a grain of rice to mithril would require a Magic attribute of a hundred minimum. The conversion process could not be done in stages either. Failing the conversion was also likely to completely destroy the material.

At his current strength, Thomas would earn more money simply working than converting a metal like lead into gold. He'd only be able to make a few rice grain sized pieces of gold in a day. Hunting in a dungeon could easily earn him thousands of gold in a day. When comparing the two it was clear which would earn him more money. Clearly mixing, extraction and alteration had far more uses to him at the moment than conversion. Now, he just needed to get his hands on copies of the transmutation circles for them and give them a try to learn how to do it himself! Hopefully, he could find his way to a large city with a good alchemy shop to buy them in. He'd check Utstad's alchemy shops when he got to the city!