That night I logged onto Doom Sovereign, trading for a few instances of DS skill in order to make sure all my wishes got used. I also called Zeke, who basically told me he'd given me all the help he could and to deal with it myself. I understood his position, the geas he was under made him unable to help me too much and he'd been pushing, but that didn't make me feel any better. Once all that was done I decided that I was going to make use of my time to do something I'd been putting off. It was time to make my weapons.

The tonfas I was making were going to serve as my weapon for most if not all of G rank (or at least until I found something better) so I needed to make sure I made them perfectly. I pulled out the Force Pine, as well as my Blood Emerald. I'd considered using it separately to get in some practice, but the Might attunement would help with my results. I pulled up the local network and started looking for anything on Enchanting, doing my best to find any information on how permanent enchantments worked and how I would go about making one.

I found some threads on an Ascendant message board that illuminated the subject for me. As I was aware, Enchanting was a Skill heavily dependent on your own stats. You had to spend power to make power, so to speak. Enchanting at a higher level was the same, but the materials you used decided how much power could be held. Permanent enchantments could hold out long term because they had stats of their own that allowed them to channel and use power without breaking down.

With enchanting using non Ascendant materials the reason for the burnout was that channeling that energy caused the unsuitable structure of the object to be degraded. Hence all my exploding bats and tonfas. Materials with stats gave the power a proper outlet that allowed the item to be viable long term, and even occasionally gave natural boosts to the enchanting process, like that water form rune on the material that Callie had given Suki. Natural form runes were caused by materials that were extremely suited for one thing or another. Sort of an extreme variation of the Force Pine I was using.

Which meant that you COULD still blow out an object when enchanting with Ascendant materials, if you used too much power when you created it. Because of that, the first step to permanent Enchanting was to find out the exact capacity of your materials so you could tailor your enchantment to fit them. By adding the Blood Emerald (which I still mentally referred to as a ruby, despite knowing that technically the stones were a different material, unlike rubies and sapphires which were fundamentally the same stone with a color difference) I could increase the Might potential of the weapons and allow myself to place a more powerful enchantment on them.

Which enchantment was my biggest problem. I could just do my normal force explosion, but with twenty four runes possible for me per day I could do something much more intricate with my weapon. I just needed to decide exactly what. I pulled out the stone as well as the log of Force Pine and headed to one of the crafting rooms on the floor nearby. Nothing as extensive as the Academy's since these were just living facilities with a room for tinkering, but still, better than what I had on hand, and I couldn't use the really crazy stuff anyway.

I closed and locked the door and sat down at the small table complete with very bare bones tool layout to start contemplating my creation. It had to be within the tolerance of the materials, which based on the calculation formulas I'd found was a combined total of about fifty stat points, provided at least half that was Might. That wouldn't be a problem considering I could only make less than half that many runes and most of them would be a single point of power like the expression rune.

I had to be careful. Since I could originally only make a pair of runes daily, I never had to worry about running out of anything except Impact before. Now though, I had to plan out exactly what runes I would use so I didn't deplete all my Might or Vitality or Creation. It wouldn't be harmful, but if it was even remotely similar to overtaxing Impact it would SUCK and I wanted no part of that nonsense again. So I needed to pick my runes carefully. I read through the enchanting thread for a while to familiarize myself with any differences and began to plot out my rune structure.

First big difference was that having more possible runes meant I could make more form runes. Which meant my weapon could do more than one thing. Most times people set effects up to trigger one after the other with an expression rune or a specific law rune combination, but you could stack them if your materials could take it, or even add a third or a fourth. All of that was way too advanced for me, but dual function was a viable option, so I decided I wanted to try for that.

Unfortunately given the limits of the materials having multiple effects would lower the threshold for each of them, making each ability less powerful. I was fine with that, I'd seen in Benny's fight that utility could be a powerful weapon itself, and I had enough room to work on these stat wise that I could still make the abilities pretty powerful. So assuming I wanted my same old force rune on there, I needed to come up with a second ability that complimented it.

I considered my options for a while, before deciding that I was thinking of this wrong. I didn't need to enhance the force, if I was going for utility I could enhance the delivery. I thought back to the different fights I'd had and abilities I'd seen, and I didn't have any idea how any of them could work here, but finally I came to a conclusion on what I should do. I pulled out my tools, starting work on my force rune, and only using about ten points of Might on that one. It would have meant I couldn't make another form rune if I was planning to use Might as a base, but luckily I was using Fantasy.

Before I started creation I had to prep the materials, I followed careful instructions I found on the forums for preparing and shaping the wood, as well as splitting the Blood Emerald without dissipating it's power and how to set it properly into the pommels of my new tonfas. I had to perfectly prepare the materials to make sure they could handle the strain, and I triple checked every last detail as I went, thanking my Focus stat for being able to keep up with this kind of grueling mental strain.

Once that was done, I started my new rune, and just like before I felt the effort of a dozen different versions of me all trying to carve different symbols, somehow jammed together into a single action that was infinitely more tiring than it should be. Luckily I had much higher Vitality and Impact now, so while it was complicated and a mental strain, I knew I could keep going at this for quite a while. As I carved I mentally structured the form rune for the purpose I wanted, adding in Fantasy as I went, and bit of Creation to make it stick as I made an illusion.

I had considered the best possible way to make my weapon viable. Hitting harder was always good, but it was also something I could already do with a Skill. All my eggs in one basket meant if someone dodged I'd be screwed, so I decided to work on making that less likely. I called the new form rune hundred hands. It created a kaleidoscope of illusions around my weapons my arms attacking from a dozen directions. Unless someone had a much higher Perception than I did they would be confused and disoriented when I struck allowing my blows to bypass their defenses.

Once I had the form runes added I had to put in the expression runes, one set to trigger on impact, but the other set to trigger with intent. I had to work in a few law runes to adjust the intent trigger for the Fantasy rune, setting conditions on the activation so I didn't end up accidentally setting it off with an idle thought outside combat. Altogether it took me ten runes and about three hours to manage, and I was glad I'd put so much effort into it, because the resulting weapon was everything I had hoped for.

It was H rank, of course, given the low number of stat points, but it was an extremely practical H rank weapon that I could exponentially empower with my Skills and that fit perfectly into my combat style. Thinking of the ways it could synergize with my Mistwalking, or Mercy Kill, or Touch of Tears, I was more confident than ever in my choice to buy these materials despite how damned expensive they had been at the time. Once I was finished I looked them over, pleased by the stylish and well crafted exterior I managed with enhanced Focus and Might, with a bit of Perception thrown in. Then I got up and headed out to find Callie, hoping to test out my new weapons.

She answered the door at the third knock, smiling happily when she spotted me. "Shane! Hey there! I was just heading for a workout, what brings you over here at this time of night?" I noted the sports bra and yoga pants and realized I'd caught her at exactly the right time.

I held up my new tonfas. "Just put the finishing touches on my first permanent enchantment. Was wondering if you want to help me test them out. We haven't had a chance to spar since I hit G rank and I'd be interested to see what you can do when you don't have to hold back." Her stats were high enough that I imagine I would still lose, but it would be a lot closer without the ability to easily shrug off every single blow because of the Impact difference.

She grinned wolfishly. "Well aren't those pretty. I might need to have you make me something. But sure, I'm always up for a good scuffle. I'll get my costume." She looked down at her workout clothes. "Unless you're the worst enchanter ever I very much doubt this will stop a blow from one of those things." I agreed to go get my own costume on and meet her in the same training room I'd had Benny and Jessie fight in, then headed off to get changed.

Twenty minutes later found me waiting nervously in the room for her when she showed up, smiling happily as she spotted me. "Sorry to keep you waiting, this thing is a bitch to get into. Laces up the back. Anyway, since we're at the same rank now we should set up some ground rules. No lethal abilities or Skills. Like that poison shit you used on that golem is a no go here. I have no desire to melt into a puddle of flaming green sludge."

I burst out laughing at that. "No kill shots, agreed. I'll try to avoid aiming for the head too, just in case. Other than that we should each have enough skill and strength to stop the other from fucking us up too bad." I cracked my neck. "I have to say though, I am excited. I really can't wait to see what you can do when you're really letting loose." I took up position across from her, swinging the tonfas to get a feel before taking up a stance and nodding. "Now, fight." And we did.