Chapter 43 - Practice Makes Perfect

Guy considered himself immensely lucky to have met and become acquainted with Karmin Zola. Just as he was struggling to find a way to bolster his skills in enchanting, a ripe opportunity gently landed on his lap. Because of this, Guy made sure to make full use of this to his benefit.

The same day that Guy received access to The Burning Forge's workshop and storage, he immediately retrieved a few low-quality mana gems, and a standard set of ingredients to make basic inscribing ink, and started to inscribe a simple Reinforcement enchantment.

He chose this because according to the introductory books in the guild's library, the Reinforcement enchantment was the simplest and the starting point for newbies. Unfortunately, simple was a relative term in this case. For a seasoned chef, determining the exact measures of ingredients to prepare a fabulous meal would be a trivial task.

The main issue Guy faced in inscribing the enchantment was in completing it in its entirety at a steady, unflinching rate. First off, unlike his own modular spells, all the inscriptions published in literature adhered to the established system, containing a plethora of snaking, weaving, looping, interconnecting, and flourishing lines. This required Guy to have the entire image readily prepared in his head, and anticipate the next move while maintaining a constant pace.

Along those lines, Guy found it extremely difficult to utilise the inscribing tool for its purpose. It was a clunky device that strained his wrists. It had to be held in a fixed orientation, otherwise, the flow through its nozzle would vary causing a nonuniform inscription. The ink itself had to be siphoned into the tool from its rear-end, and it would constantly swirl and gyrate within causing the centre of mass to vary.

Guy's first attempt was an utter failure. His inability to hold the tool properly resulted in a large infusion of ink immediately at the beginning. Guy had to dispose of the gem right away.

The second attempt wasn't any better. This time, the flow rate was much, much slower. So slow, that he barely registered a line after 10 minutes of concentrated work.

Guy ran through many low-quality gems before determining an optimal approach angle with the inscribing tool. But that was just the start! Many more failures followed as he optimised his technique. Time-wise, it took Guy around a week-and-a-half to gain the experience to produce an average-quality Reinforcement enchantment gem.

One must note that Guy did not exclusively spend his time in The Burning Forge's workshop, improving his enchanting skills. Although it was important, he couldn't offload his own responsibilities as a teaching apprentice, and as a master to Markus.

Guy later spent another week to improve his consistency, all the while familiarizing himself with the mana gems and ink used in the Empowering enchantments for the sale order.

With regards to the enchantments, the Reinforcement and Empowering enchantments were similar but were used in differing scenarios. The Reinforcement enchantment was typically applied on armour pieces, while Empowering was for weapons. While it was possible to stack them together, their redundancy made it an inefficient combination.

In addition to that, the Empowering enchantment had a slightly raised difficulty of the two due to a few additional shapes involved in the construct. Guy would have loved to deconstruct the two enchantments and categorise the individual components, however, since it wasn't of immediate importance Guy shelved it for a later date.

One should note that both the Reinforcement and Empowering enchants were passive in nature - their effect was to passively augment the weapon or armour they were slotted into. This begged the question, why bother adding these enchantments if instead, we can use stronger and more resilient metals? Although that was a logical solution, sometimes it was cheaper to use average metals, and then augment them with these enchantments. Economically, if the purchase of mana gems, ink recipes and metal, exceeded the price of only a metal that was much stronger, people tended to lean towards the former option.

After Guy finished practising, he moved onto the real deal, albeit cautiously. He didn't want to muck things over by rushing into things too quickly. And so, Guy spent one day going over the nuances of it thoroughly.

First, compared to his test pieces, he was no longer working with low-quality or faulty mana gems. The minerals that were to be embedded into the weapons were of very high quality and were optimal for the Empowering enchantment. That is since the enchantment was not attuned to a specific element, the minerals were similarly neutral in flavour.

Second, the ink Karmin intended to apply for this order had a different composition compared to the recipe published in the newbie guide in the guild's library. Through cross-referencing, Guy determined that this new recipe was highly specialised for the Empowering enchantment. While in the former, the constitution ensured that a wider roster of enchantments could be accommodated, the specialised ink discarded these deviances and doubled down on the Empowering properties. Due to Guy's lack of knowledge of the rarer ingredients, he couldn't discern the properties of some of the lesser-known components, but the ones he did recognise supported his hypothesis.

Apart from that, Guy observed that all the swords set to be enchanted were uniform. Because he knew that this world hadn't undergone an industrial revolution, he was amazed by the skill of the craftsmen employed by Karmin to be able to maintain such a level of consistency in their works. Additionally, since the Empowering enchantment was basic, the weapons didn't need to undergo any arcane processes during forging. He could basically slot an inscribed mana gem into the empty slot on the weapons and move on.

After a thorough once-over, Guy began his enchanting marathon in earnest. Karmin had informed him earlier that the order was due within a month. Guy had sufficient confidence in his skill by this point, and he was sure that he could meet that deadline. So, Guy started by scheduling his work. He was a firm believer in spreading the work over the duration of the task. Unlike many of his students, who preferred to complete all their work the day before the deadline, Guy fervently preached the dangers of rushed, last-minute work.

He found that if he finished three to four enchantments every day, he could complete the entire order, with a few days to spare. The pace was manageable, so Guy went with that plan.

His first day of enchanting was a little stressful. Even after all that practice, he just couldn't overcome the jitters on his first official enchantment.

After meditating and centring himself, Guy brought down the tool. His hands moved at a steady pace, maintaining his posture and techniques cultivated through weeks of practice.

Following a strained hour, Guy finally lowered the tool and heaved a sigh of relief. He spent another minute going over the inscribed gem, taking note of any possible issues. Although the enchantment was successful, minor inconsistencies or errors could manifest much later through repeated activations.

After Guy was satisfied with his work, he carefully placed the mana gem and pumped his fist in celebration. It was a glorious moment for him, and he was immensely elated at achieving the first step in his multi-step plan.

Without wasting any more time, Guy moved on to the next gem.

Guy completed his work steadily. He didn't have to slot the gems into the weapons personally. All he had to do was transfer the inscribed gems down the pipeline, to one of the many smiths on standby in the workshop.

Even though inscribing the same enchantment again and again was a banal process, Guy found a weird serenity in it that was lacking in his usual meditation. There was a calmness in all that monotony. In all the hubbub after transmigrating into this world, this was the first time Guy truly managed to centre his thoughts.

One day, while Guy was immersing himself in the lingering peace from his day's work, he ran across Karmin's office and noticed the man staring into space with a visible frown.

Guy didn't want to interfere with Karmin's thoughts, but just as he was about to leave he heard a defeated sigh from Karmin.

"After all my years of being cautious, my one lapse in judgement cost me everything..."

Guy wasn't one to interfere in other's life willy-nilly, but Karmin was his meal ticket and saviour, for the time being. So he felt morally obligated to lend an ear and shoulder to the depressed man.

Guy knocked at Karmin's ajar office door and signalled his presence. The sound pulled Karmin's attention.

"Oh, it's you, Guy!" Karmin said with a visibly strained smile. Clearly, the man was trying to put on a brave front.

Guy decided to circle the area before hitting the target, so he commented, "It's great to see you! I am nearly three-quarters of the way there with the enchantments. I've inspected all of the completed pieces, and they seem to be in perfect form. Even Callum is satisfied with the work."

Karmin's smile immediately deflated as he turned moody again. "I forgot to tell you. The client backed out from the order."

"Excuse me?" Guy asked in shock.

"They just cancelled their order the day before yesterday. I was a bit preoccupied with other matters and forgot to let you know. I'm sorry that you wasted your time for nothing," Karmin added apologetically.

Guy quickly shook his hands and refuted, "Please, don't apologise! I am grateful for the opportunity in and of itself. But I don't get it. Isn't there a heavy fee for breaching the contract so unceremoniously?"

Karmin snorted, "That's the thing. They broke the contract and coughed up the entire amount for breaching it too!"

The then sighed, "It's just one out of the many unfortunate series of events that have befallen by company in the past few weeks..."

Guy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He could see that Karmin had completely lost himself. Although they weren't officially friends, Guy was indebted and grateful to Karmin in many ways.

"Is there... anything I can do to help?" Guy asked with a mix of unsurity and concern.. Even if he wasn't a strong and influential individual such as Al, Guy was willing to do his best and help Karmin out.