System Architect - Ch 117

After two months of practicing my thrusting, Gregory was satisfied enough with my progress to begin teaching me more. Due to the nature of the weapon itself, the majority of the other forms were about blocking or parrying. The moves differed somewhat depending on what the foe would do, but they all followed the same basic idea: block, parry, and feint. The end goal was to lodge the point of the spear somewhere soft because that was what killed. Smacking them over the head with the haft could also work, of course.

“Alright,” Gregory said. “I’m going to attack you slowly so you can get used to how blows will come. Eventually, it will be muscle memory. When that happens, you can focus more on the strategy of the fight—like getting the opponent to extend or make some kind of mistake. Right now, I want you to memorize as much as you can, ok?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Makes sense to me.”

With each attack, he would correct my form and explain why doing it one way or another would be better. On and on the practice went. Now that I wasn’t moving as much—I was, but it was less than when attacking—the sessions lasted longer. It was Gregory who needed the breaks rather than me. I Healed him after every session so he wouldn’t be too sore the day after.

--------

The middle of summer brought about the end of the first woodworking class as well. After making the bowl—and another, larger spoon—I’d taken an interest in carving with knives, chisels, and gouges. There were specialized tools for what I was doing, but the teacher didn’t have them as part of the workshop. Most people preferred to work on framing, cutting boards, and other things like that. The ornamental aspects weren’t as popular.

“You might be interested in inlaying,” the teacher told me. “It’s the process of cutting out grooves in the wood and filling them with metal wires. It’s a rather neat craft, but it can be expensive. Precious metals are not cheap!”

“Thanks for letting me know,” I told him.

It was interesting, of course. Then I wondered about whether to take the metalworking class as well. If I liked inlaying, would I be able to make the wires I used on my own as well? I wondered what the process would entail. Before going down that route, I decided to give the inlaying thing a try.

Now that I was proficient with hand tools, I felt comfortable renting out workspace in a warehouse nearby. Though expensive, I built it out so that it would have everything I needed to do any project I wanted with wood. There was plenty of room for expansion in case I decided I liked metalworking as well.

To start with, I purchased some copper wire, inlaying tools, and wood to practice with. If I got good—and I enjoyed it—I could always get better tools, better wood, and more expensive wire. Copper was much cheaper than gold or silver, and it worked just as well for practicing! Or so the online tutorials I’d read told me.

As the teacher had told me, inlaying boiled down to cutting a channel and filling it with metal. A hammer would secure it by flattening the metal, which would then grip the sides of the channel and stay put. The devil—as always—was in the details. Inlaying required a steady hand, a solid design, and lots of practice.

I started simply—with lines. I marked them out with a ruler. Curves would come later when I was more comfortable. Straight lines weren’t easy. My hands weren’t as steady as they needed to be for that kind of work. I wouldn’t let it stop me, though. With practice, I would be able to make straight lines as easy as pie—or so I hoped.

The tools used a combination of strength and finesse. A hammer to push the cut forward,  a hand to guide the next cut. I could even push the tool with my strength, but the results weren’t as good that way. I stuck with the hammer most of the time. Using my strength was reserved for practicing that way and for anything a tap of the hammer couldn’t do—which is why I even tried to practice it at all!

Once the channels were cut, I took the copper wire and placed it over top the groove one section at a time. Then—with a hammer—I knocked the wire into place and flattened it. Then it was off to the next section. Figuring out how to keep the work I had done from coming out while placing the next bit was the biggest hurdle of this part. Compared to cutting the grooves, this part was far easier.

At the end of the run, I had to cut the copper wire to length before knocking it into place lest I have extra that would leave a sharp point somewhere. Then I sanded and finished on top of the inlay as an extra layer keeping it in place.

Once I mastered straight lines and sharp corners, I moved on to more flowing curves. Those proved much more difficult to get right. With a straight line, all I had to do was keep the tool steady as it went. With curves, I had to gradually turn the tool so that it cut exactly where I had marked. This meant a lot of small taps on the back of the tool with a hammer—and much more free-handing.

Compared to laying straight section of wire in place, the curves were about the same difficulty. Since the turns were less sharp, there was a lot less futzing to get them to lay just as I wanted.

A lot of time was spent practicing all aspects of it. I really liked the small details I could do if I took my time. The intricate designs that were possible made me feel accomplished. The whole process was meditative once I got the hang of it and could focus more on design than on the mechanics.

It was around the end of the year when I had an idea for something I wanted to try doing. It required a large, flat piece of wood. I used something that was harder to carve the grooves in because it would better retain its shape when completed. I cut the piece of wood into a round shape using electrical tools—I had learned how to use them in the second woodworking class.

Once it was shaped how I wanted, I began to pencil in the design. It was a complicated one that would take a lot of effort to bring to reality just how I wanted. Instead of copper, I used a mixture of different wires—silver, gold, copper, and mixtures of the three—to create patterns with the colors.

Painstakingly over several weeks, I carved the channels that would hold the wires. They varied in thickness, which made the process even more tricky than it already was. When I had the pattern carved, I slowly filled the grooves with the metal wires. That part was a lot faster than the carving had been—even when accounting for the fact that I had to lay different thicknesses of wire all over the place.

Once the wire was in place, I sanded and polished the surface. I didn’t cover it with anything in case what I was trying to do wouldn’t work that way—I could always test it out later and find out.

I took the object I’d been working on to an unused section of the workshop before holding it above a basin. I pushed mana through my mana channels and into the object. A grin formed as the mana found purchase in the object. Moments later, a small sphere of water appeared just above the surface. It had worked! I had made an enchantment!

It wasn’t as efficient as the spell—not by a long shot—but it worked. That meant people would be able to use enchanted objects to make water, start a fire, or any number of other things that would help with daily life. All it took was a steady hand, lots of practice, and a load of knowledge about how magic worked on the back end. In other words, it required me.

Further tests revealed that the enchantment worked—with some hiccups—even when sandwiched inside wood. The spell’s fractal needed modifying so that it would appear on the outside of the wood rather than partially inside. That made me wonder if it would be possible to do the same with metal. Wood was great and all, but it wasn’t the most durable of materials—especially when used every day.

Another part of me understood that knowledge of enchanting would mean opening the same can of worms that I had the previous life. It was buried in a profession, and it would take a small leap to connect the two together—skills and enchantments, that is. At the same time, making a skill using experience was the second part of it. That was really the issue. As long as the system allowed modification of skills through it—and I banned the ability for skills to be made directly—there was very little chance someone would do as I did. They would simply not know it was possible!

With that in mind, I spent the experience to lock manual skill creation. Buying skills was still possible. The ability to modify skills when they tiered up would come when I got around to it. But that was my plan for skills.

And while I was unlocking features, I decided that I would go with the trinity of stats—Mind, Body, and Spirit. After checking in with the more popular stories I was funding, that seemed to be the preferred method. Who was I to knock it if it worked? Sure, it wasn’t as precise when it came to modifying them for classes and professions, but I was fine wit that. I needed them active as I was going to learn how to beat metal into shape. Without the requisite strength, that was going to be impossible!

I raised myself to tier 2 to take full advantage of the unlocked features. While it meant I would look like a child for longer, I had let time take me for several years on purpose. Rather than looking like a ten-year-old when I was forty, I would be closer to fifteen or twenty. Still lower than I had hoped, but those were numbers I could live with.

--------

When I fought with Gregory next, he was surprised by how much stronger and quicker I was than I had been previously. I turned that surprise into a couple of quick victories before his superior skill asserted itself again.

“Did you have a balanced breakfast this morning or something?” he asked.

“Of course!” I laughed. “But that’s not why I am stronger now. You remember the whole magic thing, right?”

“Mmhm.”

“Well, I decided to make myself stronger. Not because I want to beat you—though that was pretty fun—but because I intend to learn how to work metal. Figured I’d need strength for that.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” he told me. “But whatever you did worked!”

“The downside—for now, at least—is that I won’t age very quickly. That means I’m going to look like barely a teen when I’m in my twenties!”

“That does sound like a problem. You don’t mind if I poke fun about it later, right?”

“Do whatever,” I shrugged. “I’ve lived long enough to not care too much.”

Gregory laughed.

We went back to sparring. I had improved significantly with the spear and shield. While not on the same level as him, I could hold my own generally. My biggest issue was range. As a consequence of him being bigger than me, he had a longer reach. When I fought defensively, I was able to negate that advantage somewhat. But the fact of the matter was that any spar was over quickly. That speed was something movies and games didn’t account for. Unless both opponents were very cautious, a fight would end within ten seconds—and usually much sooner than that.