Chapter 394
Chapter 395 of "Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube" opens revealing the plot: As Thera returned, Ben gathered the main items he would need to begin to see... Discover what happens!
As Thera returned, Ben gathered the main items he would need to begin to see if what he was doing was even going to be possible. Diamond sheets Thera had brought him back from Anailia days prior, a hundred of them each a centimeter thick and a square meter in size, all to serve one purpose; to act as a medium for the spell.Normally, magic was simply cast through the air or water depending on where the species doing it lived, but that wasnāt an option for Ben. He couldnāt simply fire off the spells, he needed to examine them through the lens of enchanting, yet at the same time have them structured like a regular spell instead of through any one of the enchanting systems he was aware of. To combat those limitations, what heād come up with was the idea of creating slices of the spell at a time on a sheet before holding them all together and letting mana pass through it all to see what the outcome would be, essentially holding the spell within a solid.
It was an excellent workaround to the issue in the difficulty of testing it, though it had some flaws. One of which was that the summoning spell didnāt just incorporate mana, but faith as well, though he was sure that he and the gods could calculate the difference at the end of things. The far bigger issue was just how much time it was going to take to test every section.
The summoning spell was big. Unreasonably big. When heād first looked at it he thought it was roughly the size of a large house, and that opinion still stood. Heād thought it had been such a good idea when heād gotten Myriad to cut it into pieces for him, but that forced him to consider an aspect he hadnāt had to before. Volume. By dividing the entire thing into cubic meters, heād been left with an altogether ridiculous number of 8100 to have to look through, with many more to go. His only saving grace was that there didnāt seem to be any of the same sort of detail work heād seen on Galwaxās trial after his mana examination had improved. Everything that was there was within his current ability to replicate with his enchanting, meaning he wasnāt going to need to further subdivide it all just for his tests.
Helori scoffed in his head.
And with that last back and forth he finally got started.
With all of his magic rings on his fingers, Ben began what he needed to, grabbing his first sheet and placing his hands on it, using his connect to create dots and patches of magic throughout it with his enchanting. Some sections being pure mana of whatever affinity it represented, others having the mana mixed and blended in ways reminiscent of ritual magic and his blending system, only in precise quantities that were meant to achieve goals he couldnāt begin to imagine.
It was comparatively simple work, even if it did require a bit of care to ensure the placement of it all was correct, and as he finished the first one he moved on to the next, and the one after it and so on, with all one hundred taking just over an hour to complete between ensuring everything went down correctly and letting his mana regenerate as need be.
From there he lined each sheet up, making sure all of the edges were flush before he used his material skill, gently blending the sides to keep everything in place without damaging what heād already done as he looked at the way the mana would move through what he had set up, constructing yet more enchantments to activate at the endpoints.
He would need to test all of the affinities to be sure they wouldnāt react in different ways, but to start he used what he was sure would be safe. Barrier magic, specifically an enchantment built onto each endpoint of the manas flow, with the barrier not being enchanted in any of the ways he normally would in order to let him see how it would be affected in its purest form.
With that setup, he moved to attach bits of rainbow mana crystal to each starting point, letting the bound spell take in the mana each crystal stored as it moved through the strange and unusual paths created in the enchantments till it reached the barriers, as each of them exhibited a different effect.
Perhaps it wasnāt correct to say each of them considering that some simply didnāt activate, but that was still a result in itself as Ben took different notes of what had happened in each area, making down the changes he could see. It was early enough in his research that he couldnāt begin to determine why some of the enchantments were stronger or weaker as he poked at them or hammered his finger against them, let alone any of the stranger effects.
In at least three areas, the enchantment had taken on properties he hadnāt built it to have, being either warm to the touch, the colour changing from a translucent greyish white to a sold blue, and one where it had taken a property that heād never been able to achieve through his own efforts, the barrier bending under his finger, the rigidity of the spell completely lost as it felt more like cling wrap, yet not breaking as he tried to push through.
āOkay, I extra want to figure out why that one happened,ā He muttered to himself, imagining a future of impenetrable barrier outfits before getting back on track. There was a lot more to test after all, and once heād finished recording everything heād seen to the greatest level of detail he could he removed the mana crystals and destroyed the barrier enchantments, replacing them with dark for as the very visual dark spell activated with its effects as he continued through each affinity.
He told himself as he flipped through his notes for the first block.
Even if he didnāt know what was happening yet, heād gotten some interesting results. While a few of the sections that hadnāt worked the first time had for later ones, many of them continued to do nothing, telling him that they must have needed some of the following bits to show their worth, but the more interesting ones were the three that had altered the barrier.
For each other section, those areas had shown equally unusual changes for the spells of other affinities, telling him that there was something going in in the areas mana passed through as he took detailed notes of the particular flow for each, wanting to go back and study the results in detail to see if the changes would still exist if he mimicked those particular parts or if they were dependant on the greater whole.
Beyond that, whether areas would be strengthened, weakened, or display how heād expected would vary, while a few of each affinity didnāt seem to activate at all in sections that had been fine for the others.
Helori told him dryly.
Myriad cut in, leaving Ben to shrug.
He ignored the grumbling in his head as he turned to his girlfriend, seeing Thera passed out in his bed with a book in her hands as a tiny bit of guilt gnawed at him. He couldnāt let this project consume him when either of them could be dead in a couple weeks, after the night was up heād be sure to exclusively work on it when he knew she would be going to sleep.