Once he was done eating, he pulled out and opened the Enchanting Basics book.
It is very odd that everything I have encountered has been in or spoken English. There has to be so sort of System fuckery there.
Felix was surprised to find that the book appeared to be hand written. He suspected the book was duplicated by The System or a skill, but it had definitely been transcribed by hand originally. Luckily, master enchanters had impeccable penmanship through a combination of their ridiculous dexterity and their continuous practice drawing out enchantnts.
Though it was impeccable, their were stylistic differences which made it easy to see where the original manuscript had been modified, even if the text had been shifted around through magic. Felix often found himself confused until he read the annotation by the Edelis enchanting departnt which clarified things dramatically.
Reading the book, it seed like the original intention was for the reader to have a lot of enchanting experience and apprenticeship. Likely performing the most basic tasks, the equivalent of getting coffee, for the master enchanter they would pick up on customs, traditions and terms. When they would finally be given the original version of this book, he suspected they would have understood it much better than he did.
The enchanting departnt also needed a textbook for their students. They modified a book they knew had quality content to provide a glossary, appendix and annotations. The glossary clarified so of the terms enchanters had coined for their craft. The appendix held diagrams and visual representations of things to make them easier to understand. The annotations helped clarify esoteric concepts and generally confusing sentences and paragraphs.
Even with all the help provided by the Edelis enchanting departnt though, Felix still struggled to understand so of the concepts. He often had to reread many of the chapters and sections and still felt like he didn't have a great grasp of so things. The issue wasn't that the concepts were difficult to understand, it was that Felix thought the book was poorly written. It was entirely grammatically correct, it was just not concise at all.
There were tangents all over the place that didn't seem to have any relation to the chapter they were contained inside of. There were also a lot of random theories that connected to so higher level concepts that were sotis written in the appendix as: "ignore".
There was an annotation at the start of the book that explained, the more advanced concepts couldn't be described because that would likely increase the rarity and grade of the book. That was also why it couldn't show any actual completed enchantnts in the book. They showed the base components of enchantnts but nothing more. Everything else was loosely referred to but even descriptions were avoided.
This would probably be a lot easier to understand if I could actually enchant sothing.
The chapters he understood the best were the enchantnt combining section. There were chapters on sharing the mana between multiple enchantnts, laying out the enchantnts and specific patterns that could be followed. They relied on a lot of concepts from earlier in the book that he hadn't quite fully grasped but, he had just worked on doing exactly that so it made the concepts a lot less abstract. He even suspected he could majorly improve his attempt at replicating the example sword's enchantnts were he to try again.
Felix wanted to practice enchanting more and he knew one of the rooms attached to the rest room was an enchanting room, but he didn't have any materials. He had a handful of items in his inventory he could try enchanting, but he didn't want to accidentally ruin them. He thought about enchanting the arrows one by one, but decided he would wait until he had so more experience so he would get more value out of the enchanting.
Felix stowed the book and headed out to continue his sweep of the labyrinth around the rest room. He encountered a similar room to the last one with five breastplates, four enchanted and one plain one with an empty pedestal on the far side. Felix assud he had to combine the enchantnts together onto the plain breastplate.
Enchanting a breast plate was easier in the sense that it had better surfaces to work on, but it was much harder in the sense that it was bigger. The enchantnts had to all be balanced with each other and there were many more enchantnt nodes needed to create a coherent effect.
The book had labeled the nodes as sothing else with a difficult to pronounce word that Felix didn't bother rembering. The most basic of enchantnts consisted of a source, channel and nodes. The source retrieved mana in so way, either from the wielder, a battery or ambient. There were more complicated sources like the target for a sword or inline buffers, conversion of so energy sources into mana and other wild things, but none of them were detailed in the book.
The channel was the highway that delivered mana to the nodes, which contained the effects. The channels had different shapes to help distribute mana evenly as well as ways of splitting mana out to different nodes and keep them properly fed. There were also shapes to combine mana evenly into a single channel. Things only got much more complicated from there when multiple sources need to be split and combined to deliver the correct amount of mana to each node or mana had to be balanced.
The nodes were the effects, simple as that. They consu mana to do sothing, usually converting mana to so form of energy. The complexity was introduced when the nodes needed to be combined to perform effects that individual nodes couldn't accomplish alone, not to ntion sotis they interfered with each-other. It also complicated the channels because an enchanter had to contend with nodes consuming mana from the channels, like when the toilet is flushed making the shower water scalding hot. The channels needed to be able to keep up with the nodes and balance the mana delivered to them at all tis.
Felix placed his best attempt on the pedestal and it flashed white, green then blue, the sa as last ti. A chest appeared once again and Felix opened it to reveal about a hundred identical wooden daggers.
Stolen story; please report.
Ding You have gained a level in [E - Special] Arcane Engineer
[E - Common] Training Dagger
A blunt wooden dagger intended for training purposes.
I knew these dungeons gave a ton of materials, but still, this seems like a lot. The last puzzle dungeon I was in had over a thousand green rooms, that would be more daggers than I have ti to enchant. Hopefully it doesn't just give more materials than I could ever use.
The next room Felix found surprised him. He expected more enchanting but instead found a table with a quill and a single sheet of paper. On the paper there was an incomplete spell form diagram. Felix examined it and added a few simple lines to complete the diagram to the best of his knowledge before the diagram glowed once. A chest appeared and Felix opened it to reveal a single folded sheet of paper.
[E - Uncommon] Enchantnt Node
This piece of paper details a single enchantnt node.
Huh. I wonder if I had accepted and rembered that stupid word from the book if it would have been nad differently. It seems like The System modifies everything to better fit our understanding of them. I wonder if that's just for the tutorial or if that will always be a thing. It's probably based on intention I would assu. If you want to be understood you will be, it doesn't make sense for it to decode ciphers automatically if sothing is written in code. Unless it does, that would kind of suck. I'm sure people would co up with so other way of hiding things in that case.
Felix unfolded the piece of paper and saw a drawing of so kind of symbol that vaguely reminded him of the durability node, though he wasn't quite sure why.
Felix moved on to the next room and found another enchanting room. In this one there was a damaged enchantnt on one greave in a set. He had to fix the enchantnt by modifying it to work around the large gash that had broken it. The enchantnt had to function the exact sa way so that the greaves still functioned as a pair effectively. He was rewarded with another folded node.
The next room was a spell form room where he had to modify a spell form to replicate the effect being demonstrated, which was a simple push. The room was trivial for Felix who just felt the example spell and drew it into the sheet perfectly. There were a lot more lines missing from the starting spell form than he had expected. He was rewarded with 20,000 Tutorial Credits.
Felix managed to run through almost 40 rooms before he decided to sleep for the night, netting himself 2 profession levels. He managed to find more Training Daggers along with Training Bucklers and Bows as well as 2 channels, 2 sources, and 3 nodes. From the spell form rooms, he found sothing new. He was rewarded with blank spell scrolls. They allowed him to use an enchanting quill to etch a spell form onto them for a single cast, which was entirely useless to Felix though he imagined incredibly valuable for most. He also found many spell components, though so he knew and the rest he couldn't identify. He was hoping to find a spell form prir, but wasn't so lucky.
Felix slept in the rest room and drank so of the fruity slushy drink from his flask. The next day he decided to try and apply so of the concepts from a section in his enchanting book. He settled on the channels chapter of enchantnt. Yesterday, he looted a simple braid channel and a load balancer. The load balancer was not a channel in and of itself, but it was a useful component for channels to function, ensuring that the inputs were distributed evenly amongst the outputs.
In his previous attempts, Felix had varied the size of the nodes along the blade to accommodate the amount of mana being pulled into them. This was a functional solution, but it had flaws. From reading the enchanting book, Felix learned that making the node smaller tended to make it less stable which ant varying the size of the nodes was not the ideal solution. Felix thought it might be based on dexterity, that small nodes were more prone to flaws and required a higher dexterity to work. A minor flaw on a normal sized node was much bigger relative to the size of a miniaturized node.
Felix practiced different enchantnts with different nodes on bows as they were the longest item he had, aning the braided channel and balancers would have the greatest effect on them. He also decided to design so enchantnt layouts that he didn't think were ideal by any ans, but would maximize the need for balancers and better channels on the bucklers. He enchanted 50 bucklers and 25 bows before he was satisfied.
After that he decided to go and explore a few more rooms before sleeping again. He wasn't particularly tired as he was only keeping up his standard mind and nervous system energy buffs rather than buffing his body to run around. At this point, Felix constantly had the mind and nervous system buffs going along with so of his senses which kept his dexterity, agility, perception and intelligence buffed by about 45%. Felix's goal was to get the effects to at least 50%. It had been steadily growing as he used his energy, but he still felt like there was sothing missing. With the steady growth, whether or not sothing was missing at all, Felix should hit his goal in a week or so.
Felix managed to knock out another 10 rooms before deciding to head back to sleep. He found a channel splitter and rger as well as an ambient source, which he already knew from analyzing existing complete enchantnts. This ambient mana source was slightly different but he had no idea what the differences between the two, he now knew, were. He also found 4 spell components whose purpose was a complete mystery along with another 30 or so spell scrolls. Felix went to sleep rather disappointed with his ager loot. He was happy for the marginal increases, but he really wanted so kind of direction on spell forms so he could work on that as well.
Ding You have gained 2 levels in [E - Special] Arcane Engineer
Felix woke up so ti later, starting his day with the mystery fruity drink from his flask and the replenished feast from the table in the room. Felix decided, over his lavish breakfast, to just explore as many rooms as he could until he either found a book for spell forms or three days had passed. He didn't want to waste ti fumbling in the dark with spell forms if he was just going to get a book for it eventually. He also wanted to work on it during this dungeon so he would have so new spells to play with in case the next dungeon was a combat dungeon.
If he didn't get a book or sothing like it after three days, he was just going to have to figure it out himself. He had managed to gain 9 levels in his profession, which ant his mana had finally crossed the 10k mark at so point. The milestone felt bigger to Felix than it actually ant. There was no specific benefit to 10k, it just felt good to see the big number and it was a massive difference when compared to where he started. Of course, his mana was being doubled by the Amulet of the Wild, so he didn't technically have 10k mana yet as the amulet would eventually be replaced. Still, seeing the number was satisfying in it's own right.
He hadn't managed to find the blue room yet and also hadn't found the test room yet, at least he didn't think so. It was possible he did find the blue room and just perford poorly, but he was choosing to believe he hadn't found it yet as none of the rooms had stood out as particularly difficult. . . . . .
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