Everyone attending the seminars gathered in the banquet hall of the university for a catered lunch, and Wolfe found himself surrounded by fellow students of the beginner Artificer course.
"That idea of making a form is brilliant. I'm certain that most shops already have one, but we would have never thought of doing it that way. You see, while these wands are the basics of the craft, and one of the essential shapes, once you get past the apprentice stages, these simple shapes aren't used anymore.
Everyone wants a more powerful design." The crew cut young Nobleman who had been sitting in front of Wolfe explained.
"I'm sorry, I completely forgot to ask your na." Wolfe replied.
"Marcus, third son of Baron Suichi." He replied with a polite smile.
That ant he was basically at the bottom of the Noble ladder, but he was still young and once his strength started to build, he would likely manage to get a proper Noble Title of his own. They handed them out like candy around here, as long as you had magical ability.
There were more Barons in this city alone than Wolfe would have expected in an entire country, but that just ant that they had made it to Rank Two as a mage, and had served their ti.
"Good to properly et you, Marcus. I can see how everyone would want a more powerful arrangent, but if you have the gems, even the basic ones we're doing should be able to handle more power than most people in the dining hall can muster.
A good quality gem with no cracks won't shatter easily, but I can see how it would get expensive, and everyone would want the best return for their money by using a complex array of less expensive stones." Wolfe suggested.
The other Nobles in the course nodded along. "Yeah, that's the big thing. That and the spells. Most of us don't know the more intricate spells to enhance the designs. They're different for each one, since the number of runes needs to match the number of sides.
It's not exactly a secret, more of a case of industry knowledge that you don't bother to learn unless you need it."
"Ah, that makes sense. Even I would struggle to co up with the proper strings of runes, and I know the language." Wolfe agreed.
The students joked as they finished the al and returned to the room, where a small group of high ranked Nobles were staring intently down at Wolfe's desk, where he had activated the Kind Intentions spell.
They could sense the power, but he had cast it inside the wood, so there were no visible runes.
Not that it would help them, as it was a multi-layered array, and not a simple one, with hundreds of layers.
The Professor stood up at the front of the room. "For the mont, everyone, please set aside your gem array. We will work on the wand portion, as it needs to be matched to the gem array to create the desired effect.
The gems will focus a basic effect, which passes through the wand, or other magical item, which has the actual spell effects imbued into it. So simple ones, like the mana channelling wand, only need runes for mana transfer, not an entire spell.
But the process remains the sa for all magical items, unless the effect is so basic that the crystals alone can produce it.
So, these runes are the ones you need to engrave into your wand. Please draw them carefully with the pencils first. I will check everyone's work before you begin the engraving, so you don't end up wasting all your wand blanks on poor handwriting."
That made the students chuckle. Many of them had once had terrible handwriting, but they were all aspiring to beco Artificers, so they had worked on their skills until they were reasonably confident that they could write runes accurately.
For actual correspondence, many of them still had terrible writing skills, but they could at least write runes correctly.
Wolfe quickly wrote the rune string, which just said "mana" and likely wasn't even necessary, except as a guide for an unskilled user, and then waited for the Professor to co by before carving it.
"Do you want to look at mine?" He asked Lula as she erased her attempt for the third ti.
"I can see it, thanks. I'm just not good at drawing." She whispered back.
That was one way of looking at it. If you couldn't read the runes, it wasn't really writing, you were just drawing a picture the sa as the one you could see.
After two more tries, she had a version she was satisfied with just before the Professor made it up to them.
"Very skilled rune writing, all of you. I must say, though your areas of specialty are sowhat odd choices, your fundantals are impeccable." The Professor comnded them.
He couldn't know that as all three of them had the Inheritance spell, they could all read the runes, and knew when they had them exactly right.
"No errors at all. If you take out your small chisel and the jeweller's hamr, you can begin to carve them into the wand for durability."
Wolfe noticed that the Professor didn't ntion anything about filling the runes with a magically conductive material, so he wondered what the plan was to actually activate the runes, as wood was only a good conductor of Witch Magic, and that certainly wasn't this.
Well, Cassie and Ella could make this into Witch Magic, as an actual wand. That reminded Wolfe of the day he had fled Morgana Fortress City.
"Hey, Cassie, does this remind you of anything?" He asked, with a gesture toward the wand.
"The aura wand on the ride to the Academy." She giggled.
Ella smiled. She had seen the wand, and knew the story behind it. The mories of those early days had the three lost in reminiscence, and they almost forgot that they were supposed to be working until they heard the Professor's footsteps reach the front of the room again.
"Once you have your runes carved, you can finish your gem placents, and then we will move on to assembling the wands." He announced.
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