The Good Teacher

Guy applied for leave with the academy's personnel management department with visible apprehension. He was only a teaching apprentice, and he wasn't entitled to many days off till his apprenticeship was completed. However, Guy remembered that he had saved up his vacation days since joining the academy and planned to cash them in. He expected some pushback, but surprisingly his request was accepted without any back and forth.

He intended to finally create the enchanted item for his student over this break. Thankfully, with the influx of cash from the steel weapon and armour sales, Guy's entire timetable was pulled forward and he was able to check off a lot of boxes on his plan. His initial estimate suggested that he would only have less than a month left till the tournament by the time he'd have finished his project. However, he was now flush with both cash and time, seeing as there was a little over five months till the deadline!

This was great news, and Guy could barely hold in his excitement. At this point, he had everything prepared and all that was left was to bring it all together.

The first step in accomplishing this was to inscribe a mana gem with the variable-type enchantment he discovered in his early research.

Guy solicited the use of one of the workspaces in The Burning Forge for this since he found the ambience tranquil and conducive to tasks that required intricate workmanship. Furthermore, Guy wanted to be prepared in case he needed miscellaneous items. He planned to requisition them from the shop's storage. It was one of the underlying benefits Guy gained through his partnership with Karmin.

Guy still held some concerns with regards to the design set to be inscribed into the gem. After rereading the case study on the variable enchantment in the guild's library, he had a greater understanding of the requirements and the subtleties behind the process. And through that, he determined one significant limitation which was that although the inscription could vary, the possible variations that it could assume were limited.

Essentially, the enchanter would have to inscribe a diagram which was the superposition of all the possible spells the variable inscription could assume in the future. This multiplied the difficulty of the inscription the more variations were required from the enchantment.

This problem stumped Guy in the beginning. He wanted to develop an enchanted item that could accommodate any spell Markus intended to cast using the modular spellmaking strategy. Guy couldn't anticipate all the permutations derived from those modular spells, because there would be near infinite.

One solution he considered was to simply inject a blob of inscribing ink into the mana gem, and let Markus control the liquid to form the spell constructs he needed. On paper, this sounded logical, however it was impossible to implement in practice. Throwing in a massive blob of inscription ink inside the gem without any foundation caused the enchantment to collapse, turning it into a dud. The best way to visualise this is to think of inscribing as removing parts of a wall. The more you take out, the less stable it becomes.

Overcoming this problem took a week of intense work on Guy's part. Because his application case was so novel, there weren't many existing solutions to address it.

In the end, the method Guy used took inspiration from modern technology back on Earth - LED displays!

He started experimenting by drawing the inscriptions as closely spaced dots. Guy had to try multiple times to get the perfect rhythm down so that the inscription process didn't fail, and he had to determine the optimal size of the dots and separation between them so that the enchantment was valid and the mana circuit formed by the mithril in the ink didn't disconnect.

Ultimately, he was able to finalise those parameters.

Next, he envisioned the final inscription for the enchanted item as a 2D grid of evenly spaced dots, similar to pixels on a display. He wanted to make it so that when Markus intended to form a construct, he just had to activate the appropriate "pixels".

This idea brought its own set of problems. First off, unlike the flowing inscription from the process journal, this scenario resulted in small pools that were stationary. This meant that the ink used had some functionalities and ingredients that were redundant.

So through a lot of trials and cross-referencing, Guy was able to optimise the ink constitution to fit his needs. Although he wasn't able to test it out, He was able to confirm that theoretically his intention would be achieved.

Of what remained, the key ingredient of note in the ink was the Slime Residue, which allowed the inscription to become variable. Slimes by nature do not have a solid body. They are a special breed of lifeforms that come into existence with a core already formed. Their closest relatives are wisps.

Their bodies are made of a liquid substance that is inert, except for its ability to digest biomass at a slow and steady rate. However, when infused with a stream of mana, the liquid substance becomes activated and can be shaped and formed like a non-Newtonian fluid.

The slime residue in the enchanting ink leverages this property to activate and deactivate specific inscription formations according to how the mage channels their mana. This leaves only the pertinent part activated and everything else deactivated.

Using Guy's pixel-based inscription method, the separation between dots was sufficient for mana to move through without excessive resistance. Guy posited that the final strategy would be for the user to visualise the spell in their minds, and impose a mana-based projection of that spell onto the gem which in turn would activate the appropriate pixels. Then, the mage simply has to channel their mana through the enchanted item to activate the spell.

With all of that in mind, Guy got down to business.

He carefully mixed the ingredients following the prescribed measurements and poured them into his inscribing tool. He then retrieved a vial of molten Mithril from The Burning Forge's inventory and steadily poured the substance into the tool.

With that done, he began inscribing on his chosen gem. For this project, he resolved to use a medium-large unattuned mana gem because it wouldn't clash or augment with any spells.

His wrists gyrated in a steady rhythm as his hand translated in a perfect horizontal. Once it reached an estimated end, it quickly reverted and restarted the translation. It reminded Guy of the old dot-matrix printers his parents once showed him at a museum.

However, Guy couldn't afford to reminisce on those pleasant memories! He further engrossed himself in the task and maintained his pace as per his practice.

At a measured rate, a corporeal projection of dots began to materialise before the mana gem. Guy started to strain his eyes so that he wouldn't lose his position or skip a dot.

'I'm gonna need glasses if I even have to do something like this again,' Guy lamented internally as he shifted his buttocks deliberately.

Day turned to night by the time Guy applied the final dot. The moment he separated his inscription tool from the mana gem, the corporeal projection turned brighter and started to shrink.

Once the inscription concluded, Guy started to massage his neck and followed a set of stretching exercises to loosen his body.

'I'm never doing this. Ever. Again.' Guy declared while trying to work through the pain and stiffness. Since the work was engrossing, he was oblivious to the pain. But without anything to distract him, Guy became fully aware of his own body!

Suppressing his anxiety and excitement over the successful inscription, Guy ran through all of his exercises and thoroughly loosened his body.

Finally, he picked up the gem and inspected it. He checked to see if the dots inside were proper.

After five minutes of a thorough once over, Guy exhaled in satisfaction and pumped his fists in the air.

'I did it!' He congratulated himself.

'Now, to see if it works...'

Guy recollected a spell from his memory. He chose a spell that was specifically modular in nature, and included more intricate and smaller shapes. He wanted to stress test his creation to check if it could withstand the worst-case scenarios.

With another exhale to calm his mind, he imprinted the construct as a mana projection onto the gem. Slowly, the gem started to illuminate.

As Guy peered at the gem, he saw the pixel inscriptions lighting up together and forming the exact construct he envisioned in his mind.

'Yes!' Guy exclaimed as he deactivated the mana gem. Just as it lit up, the pixels dimmed and turned inert. In total, the activation and deactivation were instant, barring the time taken to form the spell in his mind. This was a promising outcome!

'Next, we embed this into an item,' Guy commented while carefully placing the inscribed gem inside a cushioned box.

He then walked back into the inventory and beheld the materials before him.

'But what do I embed this on?' Guy pondered.