Chapter 5: Practicing enchantments!

Fourteen days. This was the amount of time he had before he had to go to the academy. Villin had read a multitude of books ranging from history to mortals to magic. Sadly it seemed that the books about mortals were rather old and most of the things written in the books about magic he didn't understand as he was. Something that would surely change once he got his magic.

When he read books of enchanting all of them agreed on the two core principled behind them. The first part behind enchantments were the runes. You had to memorize all the required runes and their variations. Then depending on the object and effect, you have to use specific runes or even their specific variations. The second core principle of enchanting was 'intent'. According to the intent of the caster, the same runes on the same objects could have a different effect.

Without either of these core principles, enchanting would become impossible. Now, for the time being, Villin wouldn't be able to practice intent. After all, that consisted out of magic. He could, however, learn the runes and how to apply them.

The first step would usually be memorizing the different runes but obviously this wasn't much of a problem for Villin. The second step would be drawing each of these runes in their most basic form.

At first, Villin thought this would also be done in an instant but sadly, in this case, he was wrong. He never really cared much about his handwriting so it had always been rather sloppy. It seemed that now that might come back to bite him.

Four days had already passed and he had only been able to consistently replicate a third of the required runes. It was now that he found a way to speed things up.

He figured out this method on accident when copying one of the more difficult runes. He had a blank sheet of paper before him and the book showing the rune just above it. This way he didn't have to look through his memories to properly find the required rune and comparing it was also easier.

It was at a point where he stared at the rune he had to draw for about ten seconds truly trying to understand every tiny bend on the rune. Thanks to this he entered a state of hyper concentration, which made it so that other then the two papers before him he didn't sense anything else. It was now that something peculiar happened. When he looked down to the blank sheet he could vaguely see the rune imprinted in it perfectly. Even though this was only in his mind, he simply followed the lines to draw on the paper and a near-perfect rune appeared onto the paper.

At first, Villin thought this would probably only be a one-time thing as reaching such a state wasn't easy. But he soon found that if he truly focused on an image first and then tried to mentally move it onto a blank piece of paper it would still work.

And so within five days, he had managed to get the basic runes down. Next came variations. If it was simply drawing the variations and getting familiar with them, he would be able to use the exact same technique, but alas, it wasn't quite so simple.

The difficulty in variations didn't lie in remembering the runes, after all, they only had small differences compared to the basic ones. The difficulty lays in knowing when to use what variation. For example, if you were enchanting a cup and one of your runes lays on a curve, you would probably have to use a variation to make sure everything would work properly.

This was one of the most obvious examples too. The material of the to-be-enchanted item, the specific enchantment, the variations on other runes. These were just some of the things that could influence the runes.

Checking if he did things right wasn't simple either since he couldn't properly do the full enchantment and so he had to ask Silver for help.

She didn't hesitate to agree. Whenever he finished with an object he would have to put it on the kitchen table and then she would look it over when she had time.

As for how he would put the runes on the objects, he used a special pen for that, one of the ones that would be able to write on nearly anything.

With only ten days until classes, Villin was extremely pressed for time. He wanted to make sure he had at least some skill in one of the classes already. This would make him look less like an easy target, a label he desperately wanted to avoid getting.

The first three days went horribly. He spent over ten hours a day making practice enchantments and yet he hadn't gotten even a single proper enchantment done.

If he truly wanted to get one he knew he would be able to. After all, he could take his sweet time and think back on all the books he had in his head, identifying potential problems. This wasn't something that could help him though. If he needed an hour to make a simple enchantment he would be laughed at even more than those who failed.

Instead of doing this, he picked up random non-magical items in the house. Then he would use his own skill and do his best to create an enchantment within ten minutes. This way he had rather realistic practice as enchantments might be required on any object.

The fourth day Silver finally looked at one of the objects he fake-enchanted with a nod of satisfaction.

"Even though this would be a low-quality item, it might just be sellable if it were a proper enchantment, please do keep practicing your enchantments properly!"