On the way back from Cristi’s farm, Sam said to Jen, “Your ability to sense mana is unbelievable. I had to be within 10 feet of those poison enchantment rods before I could sense their location.”

Jen replied, “I use my psych skill to sense the difference in the mana signals, emotions, and just about everything else in this world that uses mana, so I was able to sense the mana that just felt “wrong” and follow it back to the rods.” Jen then laughed and said, “I would love to be a fly on the wall when the farmer’s guild eventually takes those poison rods back to their supplier, and they realize that they are not working!”

Sam laughed as well, he was feeling good about being able to help Cristi and Joe. He felt like he hadn’t really helped anyone other than himself or Jen in years. Sam gave to charity, and he would help people in little ways all the time, but he felt like what they did today had really made a difference is some good people’s lives.

Sam then asked Jen, “I’m not complaining, and I am glad we were able to help Cristi and Joe, but why did you get us involved?”

Jen knew that Sam was not upset in any way, but was simply curious about her motives. She had to pause and think about it. She wasn’t really sure why she chose to get them involved either. She then replied, “Initially, I didn’t think it would interfere with our goal to get Kelly back, and I hated the idea of that slime Lee Zhang stealing property from anyone, but now, I’m just glad we could help Cristi and Joe. My soul actually feels like it is healing a little after being forced to kill all those bandits.”

Sam’s simple reply of “Me too,” made Jen’s soul heal just a little bit more again.

“My turn,” Jen said, as she looked to Sam and asked, “Why on earth were YOU, the guy who always blends in, crawling around on the floor in the Arc Guild’s public shop?”

Sam looked shameful as he responded, “I noticed the enchantment in the glass vault, and my gut was telling me something was wrong. I was thinking that if I could spot the problem, it would get us in the good graces of the Arc Guild and maybe get us some work. Before I realized what was happening, my focus and trance got out of control, and I lost myself, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor looking at the runes on the bottom of the enchantment and that sales clerk was hollering at me.”

“That’s scarry,” replied Jen.

“I just didn’t realize the depth of concentration my Words of Understanding and Meditation skill put me in. We were lucky I didn’t learn this somewhere else! I will not be doing enchantment decryptions in public in the future, not unless I have you ready to stop me from drawing the wrong kind of attention to us.”

Jen simply nodded and replied, “Yeah, this shit is all still pretty new to us; we need to watch ourselves more closely. What about the glass vault enchantment, were you really unable to fix it?”

Sam looked thoughtful for a second and said, “Probably not. I think I could have eventually decrypted the enchantment code, but I’m guessing it would have taken me at least several weeks of work to decrypt and go through the code. It would then take me several more weeks to get a complete understanding of what it did and what was wrong with it.”

“Why is that?” Jen asked.

“Understanding enchantments is kind of like looking at a 10-speed bicycle. If you have never seen a bicycle before and it was laying on its side, you would have no idea what it was for or how it worked. With my Words of Understanding skill, I use my power to create a user’s manual that explains everything about the bicycle. You can read the user’s manual and understand the part on how to shift the gears on the bike much easier than the part of the user manual that explains how the front and rear derailleurs work and how the gear ratios work. I have to actually understand the user’s manual to be able to fix the enchantment. If someone brought me a broken enchantment and told me what it did, then I can build the user manual more quickly, but depending on what is broken, I might be able to quickly understand how to fix it, or it may take weeks or months of study to understand how to fix the problem.”

“What about the excel app you created. Could you decrypt the enchantment quicker that way?” suggested Jen.

“Hmm, that’s not it. Let me give you an example. If the chain has slipped off the bike, I would quickly know how to fix the problem, but if a derailleur was completely missing, I would have to learn what it did and how it worked from the manual, and then invent from scratch a replacement. It may take months for me to complete this type of enchantment repair, unless I could “borrow” a working derailleur from another enchantment that I’ve fixed in the past, and then patch it into the one I’m trying to fix. With the glass vault, even if I eventually figured out how to fix the enchantment, I would then also have to learn how to etch enchantments on glass. Not to mention how long it would take me to charge up the mana in that type of enchantment. It basically holds a crap-ton of mana in case someone tries to breach the vault. They probably spent months initially charging it up, and I’m sure someone would need to top it off with mana everyday if they got it working again.”

Jen looked at Sam while shaking her head, and said, “So to summarize, bla, bla, bla, months to fix it maybe. Bla, bla, bla, some story about old boomers riding bicycles, and you don’t know how to etch enchantments on glass. Is that correct?”

Sam gave Jen a look of utter exasperation and pretended to be offended the rest of the way home, while Jen couldn’t keep the shit-eating grin off of her face.