Chapter forty three

I was currently experiencing one of Michael's signature back breaking hugs.

"Do you know what you just did? Do you even understand the power of the artifact you gave my daughter? Any mage would sell their soul for it. My little girl , she desperately needed it and you just simply whip it out and gave it to her as if it was nothing .You do understand that this increases my debt to you even more, I mean you just made my little girl the most powerful battle mage in the city."

"Just let me breath before I pass out and we'll call it even."

"Come now, we're going to have a great feast in your honor tomorrow. I'm calling everyone to celebrate .Which reminds me I have to go prepare."

"That's really not necessary, it was a simple enchantment. You don't have to do this."

"Nonsense, you helped my daughter control her power so that she no longer is a danger to herself. You might even have saved her life from some awful miscast. I am her father and I know the extent of her problem wasn't as small as you're trying to make it. What you did is nothing short of another heroic deed, and that means I'm holding a feast to honor it."

Then he walked away muttering something about a hundred barrels of beer.

* * *

That night I had an interesting idea I wanted to try out.

Because of my discovery of the 'intent' rune there were runes I could use now that I couldn't use before, these are runes that are useless without fine control.

One of these runes is the 'illusion' rune, without fine control the enchantment had no way of knowing what illusions to create, making it useless to me. But now that I could use it, I thought it could become a very useful resource to have in my arsenal. Then I had another idea, what if I combined the rune 'illusion' with the rune 'solid'.? I wasn't sure what the results would be but I was excited to find out , so I embedded a piece of metal enchanted by said runes into my palm.

The results?I could make an illusion of almost anything, and technically whatever I made would be solid, but from trial and error I found out the limitations of this enchantment.

Although solid, the illusions made are not made out of the same thing as the thing your making an illusion of. All of it seemed to be made out of material the hardness and consistency of really hard plastic. I couldn't create heat or sounds in my illusions .The mana usage also rose drastically with the increase in size and complexity of the illusion. The funny thing about these solid illusions was that I had a choice of letting them stay permanently in reality, or dissipate them and recoup some of my mana.

This didn't mean that it was a useless enchantment, on the contrary it had great utility. Since I am creating illusions out of my imagination I could create things that are normally impossible. Although it was difficult at first because I couldn't wrap my head around it, I was able to create a monomolecular blade, a blade so thin that it could cut almost anything. I also finally achieved flight by creating a small platform underneath me and manipulating it to rise up into the air. The best thing about it was that both illusions were not complex and their size was small so the mana expenditure was also quite small. Particularly the monomolecular blade, I could spam that thing all day and never break a sweat.

I was having so much fun playing with the new enchantment that I didn't go to sleep until the sun was peeking over the horizon. I would have continued experimenting with it but I had a party to go to that night .

* * *

After careful consideration I decided that I wasn't going to wear my cowl to the party. I was sick and tired of hiding my face day in and day out, plus if I wanted to become incognito at some point in the future, I'll just simply use my new skill with illusions to make myself a mask. But for tonight I made some brown contacts to cover my weird eyes and wore some clothing that reminded me of a tux.

I went to Lidia's room and knocked politely, she opened her door in a night gown.

"What are you doing Lidia ? There's a feast in like twenty minutes and you're not even dressed."

"But I wasn't invited."

"To hell with that, you'll be my date ."

She smiled happily at my declaration then went back inside to change. A couple of minutes later she came back in a red dress that left her shoulders and back bare. She looked positively ravishing and it took me a moment to notice that my mouth was hanging open and close it. I offered her my arm in as gentlemanly way as I could and she accepted. Then we walked arm in arm to the castle's main hall.

It was time for the feast.