Andrew sat on his comfortable stool, surveying his collection of materials splayed out on the workbench in front of him. His chisel, two lengths of femur tipped with red jewels, several smooth river stones, five iron ingots, his book of runes and a varied assortment of scavenged leather scarps, cords and patches.

It's been a minute since I've had the chance to sit down and tinker. What are my priorities?

Increasing my skill levels to ten, for one.

That means Rune inscription, Mana inscription, and Blacksmithing. Empower Item is close at eight, but I don't think I'll wait for that one unless I have some sort of skill advancing epiphany. I get more experience experimenting with new combinations, so grenades are off the table for now.

Andrew pushed the collection of smooth river stones to the back of the workbench and away from the rest.

That leaves experimenting with new rune combinations. What are my tools right now? Air, Earth, Water, and Fire mana accumulation circles and their inverse draining circles. The binding runes that can contain accumulated mana within a given space, or drain it from a given space. Battery runes that hold accumulated mana for a set duration, and connection runes that allow stored mana to flow from one runic circle to another at variable rates.

What do we need right now?

Combat power, defensive equipement, information and scouting, supplies and provisions.

What can I solve right now with these tools, using the skills I need to improve?

Andrew pushed the two bone wands across the workbench to join the river stones. Testing those could lead to an explosion, I'll have to work on that away from camp.

Armor is noisy and time consuming, but an option. I don’t know of any way I could use my runic circles to assist with information gathering right now, so that's also a bust. Supplies though..

Andrew looked over the supplies he had in front of him again, then took a quick glance through the workshop around him. There were several barrels in a corner, lengths of scrap wood or assorted tools poking out through the open lids. Andrew dumped their contents into one of the empty wooden boxes around, and dragged them over to the space in front of his workbench. They looked pretty water tight to him, but didn't really need to be for testing purposes. He laid on down on it's side, then grabbed his chisel and climbed halfway inside.

Andrew was instantly presented with the first of his problems. The inside of the barrel was made up of individual lengths of wood tightly bound together. Unfortunately that meant the inside surface wasn't smooth. There were little ridges that traveled down the length, deep enough they would probably break an inscription circle in several places.

I might be able to get it to work here, but chances are if we load this thing on a wagon for a week it'll bounce enough to shift the planks, even a little bit will be enough to shut the whole circle down. Shit. Enough earth mana saturation might merge the planks. Either way that’s Inscription experience.

Andrew grabbed his chisel and headed out the door. It was easy enough to find a clear space between the buildings with relatively even ground, and he took a moment to carve out an earth mana gathering circle and a binding circle. He had to grab his book and consult the note there when he started to work on the far more complex connector runes. If he was going to improve his skills he needed to practice these more complex runes, even if they weren't strictly necessary. When he finished he dragged the barrel outside and placed it in the center of the circle. Then pumped one hundred points of mana into the circles, which quickly began to glow.

Andrew surveyed his work for a moment, nothing no breaks in the circle. The wood of the barrel began to darken slightly, taking on a rougher, stony texture. He watched until he was sure the gaps between the wood were smoothing out, then headed back into the workshop.

I'll let that cook for a while, then once it's done I think I'll try and replicate something like my stone forge. Fill the barrel with multiple water mana accumulation circles and binding circles. With enough mana it should produce a fair bit of water. Hopefully enough to work with. For now, maybe a simpler solution.

Andrew sat back down at the bench and pulled one of the smooth river stones closer. Chisel in hand he began carving multiple water mana accumulation circles into the stone. As many as he could, all linked together by connector runes. It required very precise, fine work, something he had plenty of time to practice while inscribing grenades. It took him nearly two hours of careful work, but he managed to squeeze a full six circles on the stone. They were layered, each one nested inside of the next, and spaced just barely far enough apart that the simplest configuration of connector runes could link them . When he finished Andrew leaned back from the workbench, flexing and stretching his aching fingers and arms.

No skill increase for that huh? Stingy bastards, that was some serious inscription right there. How well, time for testing.

Andrew stood and grabbed the stone, then walked outside. The barrel was greyish now, the circle still glowing, the cracks between lengths of wood smoothed out. Andrew stepped forward and scrubbed a foot through the outer binding circle and watched as the circled flitted out and the darkened air quickly began to thin.

I'm still going to give that a minute to clear before I reach in and pull that thing out. l don't want any stony fingers after all. Not rally sure what would happen actually, but I should probably tie a rope or something to the next one.

He stepped away a few feet and held the stone in a fist away from his body, then began to pump mana into it. At ten points his hand was already wet, at fifty it was dripping, at one hundred a steady stream of water was draining from the rock out from his enclosed fist. Andrew kept going. At two hundered points it began to give, the stone took on a tough, spongey texture, enough that his fingered indented into the stone when he squeezed hard. More water continued to pour out.

Well I'm literally squeezing water from a stone here. Not especially efficient, but it'll do in a pinch. Maybe a little too saturated, squeeze a little harder and the circle will break. I'll cut off the mana here and see how much I get out of two hundred points of mana invested.

Quite a lot as it turned out. Andrew's arm eventually grew tired and he dug a small hole in the ground where he dropped the stone. Then he grabbed the barrel and dragged it back inside again. It was much heavier now, but still empty and quite manageable. He turned it on it's side and inspected the interior. As he had hoped the planks were tightly merged into a smooth mass of textured stony wood.

Andrew stood and went outside to check on the stone. It filled the hole he dug with a small puddle and was overflowing out in rivulets through the dirt around it, the circles glowing merrily through the muddy water at the bottom of the hole.

Two hundred might have been a bit much. Could probably run for a little while on just a hundered, less chance of deformation too. Good news but those things are a huge pain to make. Okay, back to the barrel.

Andrew climbed into the barrel once again, and began inscribing his circles. There was far more surface area to work with here and he was able to work much more quickly. They alternated between water mana accumulation circles and water mana binding circles, hoping to concentrate and contain the water mana within the barrel as much as possible. He scratched the circles out around the circumference of the inside of the barrels, such that the inside of the circle was the empty space inside the barrel. As he worked he constantly had to shimmy out to readjust the position of the barrel, but eventually managed to complete his work. Five water accumulation circles, three water barrier circles, and a single delay circle at the top, designed to slowly trickle mana into the circles below. He didn't want the mana saturation of the barrels to accumulate strongly enough that it compromised their structure, like he did with the rock earlier.

When he was finished inspecting his work he lugged the barrel outside the workshop and leaned it upright. His mana was easily refilled by the time he was done working, his wisdom was higher than ever and he regained a respectable amount of mana even while actively using the chisel. He pushed a hundred points of mana into the delay circle. Watching as it began to glow, then the circles below it followed up in sequence until the inside of the barrel was filled with glowing bands of light. He stretched, popping his aching back and pacing around a little to clear the stiffness accumulated from crawling around inside a barrel for hours. The puddle rock was still glowing, and water was still seeping slowly out from the puddle, saturating the earth around and forming a steady stream downhill to join with the river.

I wonder. If I made enough of these, and had enough mana, could I make a lake? Hell could I make a whole river, an artificial water source? With enough mana I think that’s actually possible. I wonder if mana produced water is any different from regular fresh water? Hopefully there aren't any side effects.

Andrew returned from his pacing and peeked in to the barrel. He smiled down at the shallow pool of water accumulating in the bottom, and the beads of liquid running down the sides of the barrel at a steady pace, ever growing the supply.

Fuck yes. Okay, that works, that works. I'll need to make a few more of these for sure, but we have a consistent, portable water supply. That's incredibly important. We're on a river right now, so we don't need more of these yet, but we'll want a good few for when we leave this place.

Andrew walked back into the workshop and settled down into the chair again, looking over his remaining materials.

Well, that just leaves the bone wands and general experiementation. If I could figure out a way to increase fire mana conductivity I could give the kitchen staff a boost. Ideally I'd give them all a weapon like Kalan's but it would take considerable time. I should probably wait unit morning to start working with metal though. Shouldn't be too long now.

Andrew grabbed his sack and filled it with material, a few lengths of wood, some leather cord, his chisel, the two bone wands, the ingots and his rune book. He gathered up the bag in one hand and the torch in his other, then set off towards the forest. He walked up the length of the river on his way, noting that it seemed to have returned to it's previous height already. When he reached the tree line he set down his sack and found a cluster of rocks he could use to anchor his torch, using it's light to work by.

First things first, something I've wanted to test for a little bit.

Andrew headed over to one of the nearby trees, circling it until he found a low branch. He pulled out his chisel and began to carve an earth mana accumulation and earth mana binding circle into the trunk around where the branch sprouted out. When he was finished the circle began to glow dully without him adding any mana to it. He suspected it was pulling mana directly from the tree to fuel the circle. He repeated this process with several nearby trees, the next one he replaced earth mana with water, the one after was air, the one after that was both water and earth, the next was air and earth, then air and water. By the time he was finished the sky was growing lighter and he relied less and less on the torch for light. He returned to the first tree, but didn't see any definitive change, not yet.

Alright well I suppose that will probably take a while to set in, not sure how quickly those things suck mana out of the tree, but I'd like to see what it does unaided first. I'm more likely to get an unstable reaction if I pump a bunch of mana in all at once. Either way, I’m not about to try and accumulate a bunch of fire mana in one of these branches, probably end up starting a forest fire over here in the dead of the night like three days from now. Not worth the risk.

Andrew left his little experiment to stew and pulled the two bone wands from the bag. They looked to be formed form a human femur, and were decidedly unpleasant to hold. Up close he could see little nicks and scratches in the bones, he tried not to think too hard on how they got there, instead turning it so that he could inspect the gem set into one end. It was small enough to be entirely encompassed by the knobby end of the bone, set into an indentation that looked intentionally carved. He saw no sign of inscribed runes, or further modifications. It was just a gemstone stuck into the end of a length of bone. He picked at the gemstone with his fingernails, but it held firm, as though glued in place. There was no visible lip or binding keeping it in place otherwise. With a slight shrug, Andrew pointed the wand in the air above him and puled ten points of mana into it.

The gem glowed faintly in the retreating darkness of night, but the glow quickly faded and the wand returned to it's inert state once again. Andrew tried pulsing twenty points in, to similar results. Then thirty. Forty. At fifty a familiar beam of fiery light arched up and out, slicing across the night sky for a brief moment before winking out. Satisfied Andrew set it aside and tested the other wand with nearly identical results.

Alright, well they definitely still work, though they consume a lot more mana than I would've thought. Those goblins were able to fire quite a few shots off, one after another, so either they had pretty damn respectable mana pools, or they had some kind of related skill that reduced costs. Maybe they were casting a spell through it like Kalan does, and I'm just brute forcing it with pure mana. I'll have to track him down tomorrow and see if I can get him to mess around with it a little. Still have to figure out how these things work though.

Andrew grabbed his chisel in one hand, and one of the wands in the other. He pried at the gemstone with his chisel, not powering it with any mana, just trying to separate it from the bone. He was able to get leverage on the gem, but no matter how much force he put into it, the gem would not budge. He stopped prying at it when he heard the bone creak from the force being applied to it.

Not going to get much further there without breaking it. Good thing I have two, I have to see what's going on under that gem, there might be something to learn here.

Andrew wedged the tip of the chisel under the gemstone again, and charged it with mana. As soon as he did a burst of flame sputtered out of the tip and the gemstone seperated and went spinning off away from him. Andrew scrambled to find it in the grass for a moment before returning to his sitting position, gem in one hand, wand in the other, chisel undamaged and set to the side. The gem was flat and completely unmodified on the back. Completely unremarkable. The bone was blank as well, a small indentation where the gem was meant to sit was carved into the end, but there were no runes within. No hollow space, or filler material, or magical goop, nothing. Andrew tried pulsing mana into the gemless bone and nothing happened. He tried pulsing mana into the boneless gem and nothing happened. He took the gem and slotted it back in place, it fell out shortly after. Whatever was holding it in place before seemed to have broken when his mana empowered chisel made contact with it. He replaced the gem and held the wand at an angle such that it wouldn't fall out., then tried pulsing mana into it once again. Nothing.

Andrew held the gemstone in place on the end and focused his mana into the wand, activating his empower item skill. He pushed as much mana as he could manage into the wand, focusing his will.

You will transmit mana. You will absorb mana and expel it as fire from the gem. You will merge with the gem. You will transmit mana.

When he opened his eyes the gem looked to be half melted into the tip of the bone, and certainly wasn't going anywhere again easily. He pointed it into the sky and pushed mana into it once again. At fifty mana the gem only glowed slightly, at one hundered a small gout of flame burst out and Andrew was able to keep it going by pushing more and more mana into the wand.

Well, shit. Seems like I can't quite replicate the bone wand with my skill. I have a sacrificial skill that significantly increases the efficiency of empower item, maybe they have a similar skill. Probably related to bones judging by the amount of them they were wearing. Fire mana amplification seems doable, but I don't know how I would go about creating a beam. Dawn is still a little while off and I still need to work on skills. I have a good feeling about those trees, and it'll be nice to have a few extras to play around with.

Andrew returned to the trees and began inscribing runic circles on them again. He did one each of water, air and earth, then did one each combining water and earth, earth and air and water and air. By the time he was finished the sun was fully up and more importantly, his skills had increased.

[+1 Dexterity for preforming precise work]

[+1 Wisdom for sustaining constant mana control]

[+1 Wisdom for sustaining constant mana control]

[Mana Inscription lvl 9-10]

[Rune Inscription lvl 9-10]

Alright, tonight's work is paying off already. Just need to get blacksmithing set up and I'll be ready to finally pick out my profession, then catalyst. Finally. We'll need all the strength we can get.

Andrew walked a few quick rounds along the tree line to check on his work. The circles were glowing faintly, and the branches were slightly discolored, the water branches were slightly larger, the earth branches' bark was taking on a stonier, rougher texture, the air branches were thinning out and swaying disproportionately with the wind.

Nothing crazy so far with the branches, but they're easy to set up, and hopefully will be useful materials for future enchanting projects. For now, the sun is up and it's time to get back to base, see where everyone is at, see about getting a forge set up and my skills leveled. Level 10 here we come.