Wish upon the Stars chapter 61

That night I logged onto Doom Sovereign, trading for a few instances  of DS skill in order to make sure all my wishes got used. I also called  Zeke, who basically told me he'd given me all the help he could and to  deal with it myself. I understood his position, the geas he was under  made him unable to help me too much and he'd been pushing, but that  didn't make me feel any better. Once all that was done I decided that I  was going to make use of my time to do something I'd been putting off.  It was time to make my weapons.

The  tonfas I was making were going to serve as my weapon for most if not  all of G rank (or at least until I found something better) so I needed to make sure I made them perfectly. I pulled  out the Force Pine, as well as my Blood Emerald. I'd considered using it  separately to get in some practice, but the Might attunement would help  with my results. I pulled up the local network and started looking for  anything on Enchanting, doing my best to find any information on how  permanent enchantments worked and how I would go about making one.

I  found some threads on an Ascendant message board that illuminated the  subject for me. As I was aware, Enchanting was a Skill heavily dependent  on your own stats. You had to spend power to make power, so to speak.  Enchanting at a higher level was the same, but the materials you used  decided how much power could be held. Permanent enchantments could hold  out long term because they had stats of their own that allowed them to  channel and use power without breaking down.

With  enchanting using non Ascendant materials the reason for the burnout was  that channeling that energy caused the unsuitable structure of the  object to be degraded. Hence all my exploding bats and tonfas. Materials  with stats gave the power a proper outlet that allowed the item to be  viable long term, and even occasionally gave natural boosts to the  enchanting process, like that water form rune on the material that  Callie had given Suki. Natural form runes were caused by materials that  were extremely suited for one thing or another. Sort of an extreme  variation of the Force Pine I was using.

Which  meant that you COULD still blow out an object when enchanting with  Ascendant materials, if you used too much power when you created it.  Because of that, the first step to permanent Enchanting was to find out  the exact capacity of your materials so you could tailor your  enchantment to fit them. By adding the Blood Emerald (which I still  mentally referred to as a ruby, despite knowing that technically the  stones were a different material, unlike rubies and sapphires which were  fundamentally the same stone with a color difference) I could increase  the Might potential of the weapons and allow myself to place a more  powerful enchantment on them.

Which  enchantment was my biggest problem. I could just do my normal force  explosion, but with twenty four runes possible for me per day I could do  something much more intricate with my weapon. I just needed to decide  exactly what. I pulled out the stone as well as the log of Force Pine  and headed to one of the crafting rooms on the floor nearby. Nothing as  extensive as the Academy's since these were just living facilities with a  room for tinkering, but still, better than what I had on hand, and I  couldn't use the really crazy stuff anyway.

I  closed and locked the door and sat down at the small table complete  with very bare bones tool layout to start contemplating my creation. It  had to be within the tolerance of the materials, which based on the  calculation formulas I'd found was a combined total of about fifty stat  points, provided at least half that was Might. That wouldn't be a  problem considering I could only make less than half that many runes and  most of them would be a single point of power like the expression rune.

I  had to be careful. Since I could originally only make a pair of runes  daily, I never had to worry about running out of anything except Impact  before. Now though, I had to plan out exactly what runes I would use so I  didn't deplete all my Might or Vitality or Creation. It wouldn't be  harmful, but if it was even remotely similar to overtaxing Impact it  would SUCK and I wanted no part of that nonsense again. So I needed to  pick my runes carefully. I read through the enchanting thread for a  while to familiarize myself with any differences and began to plot out  my rune structure.

First  big difference was that having more possible runes meant I could make  more form runes. Which meant my weapon could do more than one thing.  Most times people set effects up to trigger one after the other with an  expression rune or a specific law rune combination, but you could stack  them if your materials could take it, or even add a third or a fourth.  All of that was way too advanced for me, but dual function was a viable  option, so I decided I wanted to try for that.

Unfortunately  given the limits of the materials having multiple effects would lower  the threshold for each of them, making each ability less powerful. I was  fine with that, I'd seen in Benny's fight that utility could be a  powerful weapon itself, and I had enough room to work on these stat wise  that I could still make the abilities pretty powerful. So assuming I  wanted my same old force rune on there, I needed to come up with a  second ability that complimented it.

I  considered my options for a while, before deciding that I was thinking  of this wrong. I didn't need to enhance the force, if I was going for  utility I could enhance the delivery. I thought back to the different  fights I'd had and abilities I'd seen, and I didn't have any idea how  any of them could work here, but finally I came to a conclusion on what I  should do. I pulled out my tools, starting work on my force rune, and  only using about ten points of Might on that one. It would have meant I  couldn't make another form rune if I was planning to use Might as a  base, but luckily I was using Fantasy.

Before  I started creation I had to prep the materials, I followed careful  instructions I found on the forums for preparing and shaping the wood,  as well as splitting the Blood Emerald without dissipating it's power  and how to set it properly into the pommels of my new tonfas. I had to  perfectly prepare the materials to make sure they could handle the  strain, and I triple checked every last detail as I went, thanking my  Focus stat for being able to keep up with this kind of grueling mental  strain.

Once  that was done, I started my new rune, and just like before I felt the  effort of a dozen different versions of me all trying to carve different  symbols, somehow jammed together into a single action that was  infinitely more tiring than it should be. Luckily I had much higher  Vitality and Impact now, so while it was complicated and a mental  strain, I knew I could keep going at this for quite a while. As I carved  I mentally structured the form rune for the purpose I wanted, adding in  Fantasy as I went, and bit of Creation to make it stick as I made an  illusion.

I  had considered the best possible way to make my weapon viable. Hitting  harder was always good, but it was also something I could already do  with a Skill. All my eggs in one basket meant if someone dodged I'd be  screwed, so I decided to work on making that less likely. I called the  new form rune hundred hands. It created a kaleidoscope of illusions  around my weapons my arms attacking from a dozen directions. Unless  someone had a much higher Perception than I did they would be confused  and disoriented when I struck allowing my blows to bypass their  defenses.

Once  I had the form runes added I had to put in the expression runes, one  set to trigger on impact, but the other set to trigger with intent. I  had to work in a few law runes to adjust the intent trigger for the  Fantasy rune, setting conditions on the activation so I didn't end up  accidentally setting it off with an idle thought outside combat.  Altogether it took me ten runes and about three hours to manage, and I  was glad I'd put so much effort into it, because the resulting weapon  was everything I had hoped for.

It  was H rank, of course, given the low number of stat points, but it was  an extremely practical H rank weapon that I could exponentially empower  with my Skills and that fit perfectly into my combat style. Thinking of  the ways it could synergize with my Mistwalking, or Mercy Kill, or Touch  of Tears, I was more confident than ever in my choice to buy these  materials despite how damned expensive they had been at the time. Once I  was finished I looked them over, pleased by the stylish and well  crafted exterior I managed with enhanced Focus and Might, with a bit of  Perception thrown in. Then I got up and headed out to find Callie,  hoping to test out my new weapons.

She  answered the door at the third knock, smiling happily when she spotted  me. "Shane! Hey there! I was just heading for a workout, what brings you  over here at this time of night?" I noted the sports bra and yoga pants  and realized I'd caught her at exactly the right time.

I  held up my new tonfas. "Just put the finishing touches on my first  permanent enchantment. Was wondering if you want to help me test them  out. We haven't had a chance to spar since I hit G rank and I'd be  interested to see what you can do when you don't have to hold back." Her  stats were high enough that I imagine I would still lose, but it would  be a lot closer without the ability to easily shrug off every single  blow because of the Impact difference.

She  grinned wolfishly. "Well aren't those pretty. I might need to have you  make me something. But sure, I'm always up for a good scuffle. I'll get  my costume." She looked down at her workout clothes. "Unless you're the  worst enchanter ever I very much doubt this will stop a blow from one of  those things." I agreed to go get my own costume on and meet her in the  same training room I'd had Benny and Jessie fight in, then headed off  to get changed.

Twenty  minutes later found me waiting nervously in the room for her when she  showed up, smiling happily as she spotted me. "Sorry to keep you  waiting, this thing is a bitch to get into. Laces up the back. Anyway,  since we're at the same rank now we should set up some ground rules. No  lethal abilities or Skills. Like that poison shit you used on that golem  is a no go here. I have no desire to melt into a puddle of flaming  green sludge."

I  burst out laughing at that. "No kill shots, agreed. I'll try to avoid  aiming for the head too, just in case. Other than that we should each  have enough skill and strength to stop the other from fucking us up too  bad." I cracked my neck. "I have to say though, I am excited. I really  can't wait to see what you can do when you're really letting loose." I  took up position across from her, swinging the tonfas to get a feel  before taking up a stance and nodding. "Now, fight." And we did.