Chapter 266

Going through the portal was as violent of an experience for him as the tornado, leaving him grateful to be alive, even if he was worse for wear.

The speed he had been moving at left him rolling across the floor until he crashed into the wall at the other end, breaking his arms and legs as he went, and he was sure a few ribs too. His face felt wet from what was undoubtedly blood, but his first thought wasn’t about his own pain, but the safety of the crab secured in his pocket, which he forced himself to unzip, already afraid of what he might find.

“Legs, what the hell was that about!” Greed yelled as he got out, looking no worse for wear and leaving Ben relieved. “What happened to the plan? What-”

He only stopped as he got a good look at Ben, seeing him broken and bleeding cut his complaints short. “Alright, Let’s get you to a state where you won’t die on me and then tell me what happened,” He said as he began using his powerful healing spells, swearing as he did. “Infinite hells, why is this going so slowly?”

Ben personally thought it was going far faster than he was used to, but then, for a person with an awakened magic to have any difficulty, it was probably a surprise.

God, I don’t mind my resistances much but having the effectiveness of healing spells cut by over thirty percent is still rough. Now that I think of it, was all of that powered by air magic? How freaking bad would that have been if I didn’t have my resistances?

He couldn’t be certain given that Anailia’s trial seemed to circumvent them somehow, but with what he’d just gone through he decided he would take whatever win he could. He was alive, that was all that mattered.

After many hours, Greed had all of his more serious wounds treated and moved on to fixing his face, making it so Ben could explain what happened as he worked on the rest of the injuries.

“Damn it,” The crab spat. “Of course there was a fucking time limit. So what now?”

“Well, I thought I could get us out because we were at the entrance, but now I’m not sure. For all I know, we’d have to go through that again, but honestly I vote no on that.”

“Agreed. It was crap enough before you threw me in your pocket.”

“So that just leaves us with one option then,” He said as he got up and looked around. They were in a room nearly identical to the first one they’d been in before falling into that endless sky, with a fountain and table, as well as a door that he was sure to take him to some equally horrible place as the last. There was just one difference he could see. Along one wall was a pile of discarded items. There must have been hundreds sitting there and he could only worry about what that might mean for whatever was coming next, but the thought was broken off by Greed.

“The problem is, that last option means I’m either dying in the trial or dying as I starve. Not really a fan of either.”

“…Give me some time to think. I need to check how long we have first.”

He went along the wall to look for more moving rings and found them shortly, seeing that they were configured in an identical way to the previous area, meaning that they should have nearly three days. It felt like a small amount of time to prepare when he had no clue what was to come, but it was better than nothing as he spent a few hours examining the rest of the area, looking for any variance in the enchantments he was seeing from what he’d seen before as he went around, continuing to build up his theories on just what everything did.

It was only as he’d finished that he made his way to the pile of items, finding Greed already digging through it.

“Find anything interesting?”

“Just a bunch of ancient junk.”

Ben couldn’t help but agree as he started digging through it himself. Weapons of every size, their item quality no greater than lower rare with many enchantments almost completely broken down from lack of upkeep, the weave and other methods of arranging the magic being pointless to repair. He doubted anything he was seeing could have helped during the last part of the trial, though he couldn’t know for sure if they would be useful for the next.

As he stared at them something was picking at his brain though, the same way it was when he’d realized what was happening before was a countdown, he just couldn’t put his finger on what.

There’s just something about these all though… Maybe I could organize them?

He didn’t have any better idea so he did just that, going through the pile to gather together knives and spears and shields and all manner of other weapons into their own groups, before moving on to what was left. Small things whose purpose was lost to time, clothing of all shapes and sizes, and other items he could only consider pointless nicknacks. He went through all of it until he got to the bottom of the pile, stopping at the last three items as just what was bothering him snapped into place.

The three he was seeing seemed the oldest by far, and yet their enchantments looked pristine in comparison to what else he saw there. The rings of mana that made each up were still holding strong after what could only have been thousands of years in there, but it put the rest of the items he was seeing into perspective. The creatures that worshiped the god of this trial used their magic in the same way, the fact that he was seeing other systems of enchanting in place, no matter how decayed, could only mean that they weren’t left from the god for the next section of the trial, but from the people thrown into it.

A lost and found maybe? For anyone to pick up their stuff that ends up lost in the last part? Honestly, I could see that happening a lot, but…

He looked again at the clothing. Some of it fresh, some undoubtedly centuries old, with what he first thought was grime far more likely to be the ancient blood of whatever race shed it. If he had to bet, he would have said it was a combination of both options. The trial storing not only whatever was lost, but the items of anyone who died.

He couldn’t begin to guess why, but he wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, especially not for the nearly pristine items that must have been made by the race of the trial’s god. What looked like a cup, an armband, and a metal circle. They were all built with the same enchantment arrangement as the trial but on a far simpler level. A mortal level, meaning he could experiment with it and learn from them, seeing how they worked in a way he simply couldn’t with something as large as the trial, and after gaining every bit of knowledge he could from the limited form of analysis his ninth level enchanting gave him, he took the plunge and poured his mana into the cup to gauge its effect.

It was sad to say, but it was underwhelming in a way that he felt supported his theory. The items around were nothing special, even if they were valuable clues on how he might learn about the magic structure of the long-dead race. The cup did exactly what he’d guessed from the fact that he could see the enchantments on it were water and air affinitied. It pulled moisture from the air to fill it.

With that done he grabbed what he suspected was an armband, though there was no way it would fit him, it was too small. The main enchantment on it was the non-affinitied barrier magic, and as he ran his mana through it a barrier extended around it, providing additional defense as it did.

The final one was a metal circle that looked like it would fit on his head, a fact he felt was confirmed by the fact that the main enchantment on it was dark magic.

“Hey Greed, I need a hand,” Ben called out as he placed it on.

“What’s up?”

“I’m going to test this out, I just need you to be prepared to rip it off of me if need be.”

He laid down by the crab and passed his mana through it, feeling its effects as he did. Since the magic was acting on him specifically, its effects were significantly weakened, and Ben suspected it was doing even less than it should have since it wasn’t built to handle a mind anything like his, but he thought he felt an effect that would compel him to focus.

It was a handy application of dark magic. There were always times in life that a person might know they needed to devote their attention to something but still not manage it, he could see an item like that selling well and tucked the idea away for later. Given he had blessed focus at the ninth level it didn’t do much for him, but he’d been able to figure a few things out in his examination.

“Now just to test them out,” He muttered as he grabbed three almost identical knives from the pile and stripped them of their nearly vanished enchantments before he began applying his own.

He did the first in the weaving method he’d learned, which was probably the most standard way of enchanting, and decided to make it with the fire ring he had access to, to heat up the blade.

Next he tried to make another knife show the same effect, but with the blending method he’d developed with his god based upon the principles of ritual magic. Since by its nature he had to use other magics to get it to show its full effects it wouldn’t work as a perfect comparison between the two, but it would be good enough for his purposes.

Finally, he attempted to use the ring method he was seeing. He took the fire spell he wanted to work with and tried placing it down on the knife before him, starting at one end until it met the other, giving him a circle of mana, but he could immediately tell something was wrong. He could clearly see that his enchantment didn’t look right compared to the ones that were already made, so he stripped it and tried again. It was only after multiple attempts that he accepted he was doing something wrong.

Let’s see, there must have been a particular method to make this different, if not they would have just discovered the weave method. Of course, who am I to say they didn’t? Maybe this is just that much more efficient, or maybe they preferred this one for some other reason. Either way, if I’m not stretching out my mana and connecting it to its end, how am I making it work?

He tried a few different things, playing with his mana to try and get the configuration right, taking note of what was on a closer track to the proper way of doing it, along with what didn’t seem right at all, and after a few hours of struggling and effort he finally got it.

“Success,” He happily sighed. It all came down to compressing his mana and making the ring of it before it was placed, and with all three knives ready he tested them one by one.

The weave method reacted as he expected it would, the knife quickly taking a red glow, with a lower mana cost than it would take if he had simply placed the full spell on it.

Next came the blending method, where the enchantment was the same size, but the difference was in the cost and effect. He could feel more mana being drawn from him to make it work, but at the same time the blade of the knife grew white hot in an instant, and Ben canceled the effect for fear it might melt.

Finally, in the moment of truth he checked the ring method, running his mana through it and having every mind in his head focused on the results. The mana cost ended up being in the middle of the two, more like he had just laid down the skill as a whole to get its effect than anything else, with the amount of power he got from it being slightly higher than using the weave, but not enough to choose it when one accounted for how much mana they’d need to spend.

He could only assume that the race that enchanted like this had an unusually high amount of mana to them if this was their standard, but that didn’t help him. Aside from that, there was only one thing he was sure of, and that was that the enchantments were unusually stable.

While the methods he was aware of would usually need to be maintained after a hundred years or so, possibly longer depending on the skill of the enchanter who made them, the fact that there were even three examples for him to look at in almost perfect condition made that fact obvious. It just gave him one last thing to test as he stripped the knives down and looked them over, finding the one with the ring enchantment to be harder to remove by far.

Ugh, I would have preferred to have three perfectly identical knives for testing this, but if it’s the best I can manage then oh well. It’s better than nothing.

He began again to put a weave on one of the items, only this time he kept building it up, making it as complex as he could until it shattered. That wasn’t a problem though, it was what he expected. He’d kept perfect track of just how he’d built them up, how complex it had gotten right before it broke.

He did the same with his blending method, remaking the enchantments until the knife they were on was destroyed, taking about the same time as the first. It was as he started on the ring method that things changed. He carefully built them up, taking great care since it was a system he wasn’t used to until he reached the point the other two broke and kept going. He was able to keep building up effects until it was almost twice as magically dense as the others until it finally gave in, the knife turning to dust in his hands.

“This is the most stable way of making enchantments I’ve ever seen!” He said happily, a grin plastered across his face despite the severity of the situation. “This method doesn’t just break down slower, it puts so much less strain on the item it’s on! Can I incorporate it with the way I currently enchant? Even if it ends up a bit weaker by trying to make it work with blending and weaving it would be worth the tradeoff. God, I need to experiment with this more, but there’s so many other things to do. Crap, how am I going to make time for this all?”

He was so deeply in his thoughts that it was a miracle Greed was able to draw him out of them. The crab’s loud and shocked swearing getting just enough of his attention to make him look away from the item in his hand to the side, where a familiar grey was standing patiently.

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