Chapter 4

I quickly figured out that , even with all the help that Jules was giving me , I sucked pretty bad at external mana manipulation and quick invocation by chanting or other similar rituals. That was okay though, because I was a pretty good artificer(that is the term me and Jules came up with because we thought it sounded cooler than enchanter). What that means is that I could make implements and weapons to do the magic for me , basically I would be making gadgets to do all the work .

The second problem I encountered was that most sequence of symbols I use that exceed three seem to become unstable and break down when any mana is passed through them. The solution to this problem came from an unlikely source. I was fooling around with single use implements written on leaves( they are used and the mana going through them burns them up ) when the Sumerian rune for spark and a pentagram landed on the pod. Suddenly an undirected stream of electricity erupted from the pod until both leaves burned up. I stood there in a slack jawed daze until it dawned on me what had just happened. There were materials that conducted mana like metals conducted electricity , meaning I had just found a work around for the instability problem.

But that got me thinking, maybe I have been approaching this whole thing the wrong way. Maybe instead of using only ancient rituals I could try to form a more systematic form of casting using my knowledge, maybe I could even meld modern technology with my mana implements . In the end it turned out to be surprisingly simple. A combination of two pentagrams and the spark rune on a simple piece of metal gave me a pretty decent generator , do the same thing with the rune for spin and you get a motor. Granted it was useless to me at this point , but I had a feeling it would come in handy sometime in the future so I put that idea on the back burner and started making things essential for the near future. Most importantly I needed a weapon.

So I jury rigged two 'staffs' from panels I managed to pry from the capsule. Considering the kind of world that was probably waiting for me out there, the first one was anti-magic. It was simply a starting stone ( a stone inscribed with three pentagrams) set in in a ring I painstakingly made out of orichalcum ( that is what I will call the pod metal from now on)

which I wore on my left hand and a cane made out of orichalcum with a stone inscribed with the runes for mana and chaos set on top, so if I grabbed the cane with my left hand it will send out a stream of mana that could disrupt any enchantment or active magic in its way. The second staff was also a simple orichalcum cane with a stone on top but this one was inscribed with another pentagram and a rather nasty looking druidic rune I simply call sever. It was a weapon I will not take out unless I mean to kill something.

The final problem I had was the large, and now rather useful pod I couldn't leave behind. In the end a simple 'store' and 'summon' runes from ancient Babylon fixed that problem so I was finally ready to go beyond the glade at the entrance of the mine shaft, and a good thing too , another day eating hydroponic algae and various herbs and I probably would have gone insane.