Tamako was waiting at the kitchen table. She was refusing to go anywhere until Sam came out of his workshop with her shield. She even skipped arena practice, telling Jen to go on without her. Her blood was rushing with anticipation, and her mana control was even a little chaotic. She was trying not to get her hopes up too high, but she’s seen some of the amazing things Sam had come up with before.

Sam still wasn’t finished with the shield when Jen came home for dinner. Jen knew that Sam sometimes overestimated the speed at which he could finish some of his enchantments, so she went back out into the City to work on improving her psych hypnotic technique by trying to increase the number of people she could influence at one time.

Tamako was trying to be patient, but she was getting antsy waiting. It was almost nighttime when Sam finally came out of his workshop, holding the shield, and Tamako literally ran over to Sam, taking the shield from him while asking, “What did you do?”

Sam looked around for Jen and not seeing her anywhere, asked, “Do you want to wait for Jen?” Sam noticed Tamako looked like she was about to attack him, and said, “Okay! I guess we’re not waiting for Jen.” Let’s go out to the courtyard.

“Don’t run! Don’t Run!” Tamako was saying to herself as she was trying to maintain her dignity on the way to the courtyard. To Tamako, it felt like an hour walking the 20 feet. When they were in the courtyard, Tamako said, “Please explain,” as she noticed a name that Sam placed on the inside of the shield, which read “Tamako’s Shield Sucks.”

Sam could see that Tamako was out of humor. “Hold the shield up.”

Tamako looked back at him, but when he refused to say anything more, she rolled her eyes, snorted impatiently, and then held the shield up.

Sam pulled an apple out of his ring and threw it right at her shield. Tamako looked on with wonder as the apple disappeared, or appeared to be sucked right into the shield. “Keep it up!” Sam directed.

That’s when they heard Jen yell, as she was coming inside the house, “That’s what she said!”

“Ha! Good one!” Sam laughed and shot a crossbow bolt straight towards the edge of the shield.

Tamako commented in disbelief, “The bolt disappeared! There wasn’t even any impact!”

Sam repeated, “Keep it up!” as he fired a small lightning bolt at another part of the shield.

“Holy Crap!” exclaimed Jen as she witnessed the lightning bolt disappear into the shield.

“Keep it up!” Sam ordered, and he pulled a short sword from his ring and smashed it into the shield with a loud “clang”. Tamako expecting it to also disappear, paused for a second, but then said with surprise, “Oh, I could almost feel that Sam!” Sam cringed, knowing what was coming next.

“That’s what she said!” laughed Jen.

Sam gave himself a pity laugh after Jen’s verbal attack. “O.K., just a second Tamako, while I set up these targets. Now, let me hold the shield.”

She reluctantly handed him the shield, and out of the shield he fired the apple, crossbow bolt, and lightning bolt into the targets he just set up.

Sam then handed the shield back to Tamako and said, “This is just like one of my space rings, I am transferring it so that you can bind it to yourself.”

While Tamako admired the shield and its enchantments, Sam explained, “You have the option of having the projectile immediately shoot back in the direction it came from, or you can ‘save’ the projectile and release it later. Remember, it only works with projectiles. As you experienced when I smashed the sword into the shield, since I didn’t intend to ‘release’ the sword, it did not go into the space shield. If I had thrown the sword at you, it would have disappeared just like the other projectiles.”

Tamako smiled and started thanking Sam, but he interrupted her and said, “That’s not all. It will be difficult, but with practice, you might be able to coordinate the activation of the storage enchantments on the shield to absorb the kinetic force of the sword strike when it hits the shield, taking away all the force of the strike.”

Jen couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and stated, “This is impossible! You don’t have enough mana to make a storage enchantment the size of a shield!”

Sam smiled slyly. “If you look closely, I actually enchanted the front of the shield with hundreds of interwoven space ring enchantments. Whatever part of the shield the projectile hits, that is the part of the shield the projectile will enter and be released from. I used a lot of mana with the creation of each space enchantment, but if you add together all the mana I used for each individual space enchantment… It adds up to a staggering amount.”

Jen marveled, “That’s ingenious!”

Sam gave her and Tamako a crazed look, and Jen said, “Why are you looking at us that way, weirdo?”

Sam raised both his arms and balled his hands into fists and jokingly screamed like a mad scientist, “Because I have saved the best for last!”

Sam’s pronouncement stunned Tamako into silence, but Jen said, “Oh my god! Are you serious? It can do more?”

“Yep, the last enchantment I am going to explain; is something a little like the front door, and unfortunately, it uses a lot of mana. There is a low-quality, but very expensive power-stone, that you will need to keep charged up with your personal mana on the inside of the shield. I’ve tied this power stone into the enchantment.” Sam then turned the shield in Tamako’s hand in order for him to show her the activation rune near the shield’s handle. Sam then said, “kneel behind the shield as if you were trying to protect your entire body.”

Tamako replied, “ready!”

Sam said, “activate the rune.”

Tamako gasped as the shield became translucent, and she could see right through it. She then turned the shield, but the front side hadn’t changed, and she said, “it’s like the door, a one-way window, but much clearer!”

Sam replied, “pretty cool eh, but deactivate the rune so you don’t waste the stored mana in the power stone. If you leave it activated more than a few minutes, you will burn out the power stone. Make sure you recharge the power stone before it goes empty, or it will burn out, and that will cost you another 20 gold! Additionally, like the front door, the shield doesn’t actually become see through. I can’t imagine how much mana that would take. I’ve actually just redirected the light waves around to the inside of the shield, where what you see is re-created.”

Tamako and Jen were both dumbfounded by the weapon Sam had created. Tamako spoke first, “Sam, do you realize that in only two days you’ve created an ‘epic’ weapon! This shield is unique. I have never heard of anything like it. It might sell at auction for 10 or even 15 thousand gold, or more! It’s a truly priceless item. I can’t even use the shield in public, or we will have entire guilds trying to kill us for it!”

Jen interrupted, “Don’t worry about others seeing it, we can use the same illusion spell on your shield that we use on our mana system, but you will need to be careful not to show its power off in the arena too much.”

Sam continued, “It may be worth a lot of money, but we’re not selling it. I don’t want anyone outside of our party having the ‘good stuff’. Anyway, let me tell you about what I had to do to create the custom dimensional ring enchantments to cover the shield…”

Jen and Tamako in unison interrupted Sam, saying, “NO!!!!” and Tamako followed up with a delayed but heart-felt “thank you!” She then explained that she wanted to start training with it immediately.

Sam sulked as he headed towards his room to get some sleep. “Well… I’m kind of too tired to explain it to you anyway. Crapshoot would find my dimensional ring enchantment runes amazing, but ‘No’ I can’t tell anyone that would actually appreciate my enchantments… Don’t worry Kelly, we’re coming.”

Jen laughed as she watched Sam go, and said, “he is so awesome! I just love that guy!”

Tamako quietly replied, “Yea, me too” and her voice might have cracked just a little bit with emotion, but Jen didn’t point that out.

Before Sam went to sleep, he reviewed the gambling reward he received for building an epic weapon. He had been hesitant to accept the gambling quest, because he wasn’t sure of the definition of an epic weapon.

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System Message

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You have 2 points to distribute from reaching level 29

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You are awarded enchanter’s boundary. This enchantment hasn’t been seen in the first four decks in over 400 years. This augmenting enchantment will expand the target enchantment to cover the entire surface of the item being enchanted.

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Sam inspected the enchantment that was downloaded into his mental onboard app by the system. He was both frustrated and ecstatic, but mostly ecstatic. The augmenting enchantment was so simple, he was kicking himself for not already thinking of it. With Enchanter’s boundary, instead of engraving hundreds of enchantments, he could just engrave one target enchantment, and one augmenting enchantment to multiply the effects across the defined boundaries of the item being enchanted! The days of work he spent interweaving the sweat, heating, cooling, and dimensional ring enchantments on their robes, weapons, and armor, could be done in hours!

Sam thought he was going to have a hard time going to sleep with the excitement of imagining all the things he could do with his new enchantment, but he was wrong, and he fell asleep within seconds of his head hitting the pillow.