108: Malleable Arcana

After a moment of quiet, the silence was broken by Elmas’s sigh.

“Bailey or Tatum. Do either of you volunteer to willingly get impregnated by Eris at this moment in time?”

Both girls went pale. Tatum gently shook her head, and after a moment, Bailey did the same. The blonde’s voice was quiet when she spoke. “Even if I wanted to, I’ve been using contraceptives for so long and so often that I’m not sure what kind of effect they’ve had on my body. I probably can’t even get pregnant if I wanted to.”

Elmas nodded.

“Grace is ineligible since she is already pregnant with Jasmine’s child, and I am ineligible since I do not have the proper parts to become pregnant, nor would I wish to do so. Impregnating Eris at this point in time is undoubtedly a bad idea, and I am personally removing the option for Charlotte to become pregnant because of her necessity as Eris’s protector. Impregnating her would be a tremendous hindrance.”

The three-fingered woman sighed, then stood from her chair.

“I will pass this information on and the Syndicate will look for volunteers. Ideally, you can complete the ritual later tonight or early tomorrow to get the benefits as early as possible. In the meantime, I trust that you will finish all this magic consumption… stuff, delegate your power properly, and then return to work?”

Eris nodded. Elmas did the same. “Good.”

With that, the new mother left the room, leaving Eris with just a little bit of disappointment. She never even had the opportunity to ask how Elmas and her wife were, much less little Elodie. Though, Elmas seemed to prefer keeping things on a professional level rather than personal. She turned back towards the rest of the ladies in the room.

“Alright, how many of the gifts are left?”

Bailey seemed to do a quick count- grateful for the change in conversation. “Uhh, looks like thirteen, but I’m not lifting that anvil onto the fucking- nevermind she’s got it.”

The blonde was interrupted by a heavy thud as what was easily a four-hundred-pound blacksmithing anvil was plopped onto the sturdy worktable by Charlotte, who had not seemed to struggle in the slightest while doing so. It was such a casual display of strength, but really made Eris appreciate what real soldiers of the Syndicate were capable of. All four of the crafters, in fact, seemed to look at the armoured woman in amused wonder.

Charlotte just backed away slightly, her cheeks turning pink. “Here you go.”

As Eris laid one hand on the base of the anvil that quickly began glowing, part of her mind wandered. It was hard for it not to, after all. If Charlotte was that effortlessly strong, Eris was left to wonder just what kind of other things that strength could be used for…

Regretfully, Eris pushed the thoughts away. There were other things that needed to be done right now. Plus, it gave Charlotte the opportunity to show Eris herself when they eventually got around to doing the deed. Right now, it was one magic object after the next crumbling away into a dust that was genuinely starting to get annoying. When she was done, Eris stood up from her stool and looked down at her body.

Her clothes were absolutely covered in the stuff, and trying to wipe it off made a cloud waft out from her person. It was covering the table and the floor in a six foot radius around her chair with a layer probably an inch and a half thick. She coughed.

“Charlotte, got that Cleansing Stone handy?”

When she looked up, the brunette was already holding it out.

“Oh, thanks.” Eris accepted it, rubbed her thumb over the surface and watched the yellow-brown hunk of amber begin faintly glowing from the inside. Just like usual, she started moving the stone just a few inches away from her body to start cleaning everything in a foot-wide radius around the stone; starting with her chest before moving to… her chest. And then dragging it over her chest again- even tapping the chunk of amber to her clavicle.

“Uhh, it’s not going away.”

Grace furrowed her brow, kneeling down and scooping up a pinch of the dust. “Cleansing Stones don’t work on inherently magical filth, so maybe the remains of magical items can’t be- oh.”

Her eyes widened in shock. Bailey’s own eyebrows raised. “Wait, what is it?”

Tatum, too, was now staring intently at the floor since attention had now been drawn to the dust-that-didn’t-seem-to-be-normal-dust. When the dark girl spoke, her voice almost seemed weak.

“It’s ichryte.”

At that, Eris focused her own vision and intent to the translucent white powder- something that seemingly none of them had done previously under the belief that the powder was mundane.

Ichryte

Durability: 0%

Magic Power: 0

A precious gemstone.

“Huh,” was all Eris could say in response. Arguably the rarest kind of gemstone- one that had only ever been pulled from the Obelisk and attuned magic not to any kind of element but rather the unattuned itself, and it was what was left behind when Eris consumed a magical item. Bailey, of course, cocked her head.

“Hold on, Eris is making ichryte?”

“Seems like it,” Grace muttered.

“Sure, why not?” Eris sighed, resting her hands on her dusty hips. “I can copy skills with naked cuddles, talk to a dead Artificer, the Hollow has now reached the mainland, I knock someone up to make myself stronger, eat magic items, and now when I do eat a magic item, I crap out one of the rarest materials the Syndicate’s ever come across. Because all of that makes perfect sense.”

Bailey chuckled. “If only Leyla had stayed for a minute longer. Seems like the kind of information she’d insist on giving to the higher-ups.”

“I- uhh…” Grace stammered for a moment, looking around. Walking over towards one of the shelving units, she fumbled around a bit before grabbing an empty, small glass vial and a cork. A moment later, she had walked back, scooped up some of the dust and corked the vial filled with the substance. “I’ll go run this to her and tell her. Maybe try collecting as much of it as you can? Gods, why does it have to be all over the floor?! It’s gonna be so cross-contaminated with sawdust and dirt…”

Bailey laughed. “Just go! We’ll clean this up. Tatum, grab that broom. Carmy, make sure that cauldron over there is clean so we can put all this inside. I’ll go steal a broom from one of the shops next door.”

“And I’ll go over in the corner and change out of these clothes,” Eris said, looking down at her dusty garments. Stepping out of the dust pile, she could even feel it like her socks were filled with sand. The stuff was everywhere. Grace vanished out the door and Eris groaned.

“Gods, I wish we learned this stuff was important before draining everything.”

“Yeah,” Tatum chuckled. “Next time, we’re laying out a tarp.”

In the minutes that followed while Eris slowly and carefully changed out of her clothes to try and keep the ichryte dust covering her relatively contained, she let herself get lost in her head.

Malleable Arcana

Magic Power: 10,113

Stat Modifications: 27

Control: 0% bonus.

Craftsmanship: 0% bonus.

Crafting Potency: 0% bonus.

Crafting Speed: 0% bonus.

Crafting Durability: 0% bonus.

Crafting Duration: 0% bonus.

Alchemical Potency: 0% bonus.

Alchemical Crafting Speed: 0% bonus.

Alchemical Duration: 0% bonus.

Culinary Potency: 25% bonus.

Culinary Crafting Speed: 25% bonus.

Culinary Duration: 25% bonus.

Leatherworking Potency: 0% bonus.

Leatherworking Crafting Speed: 0% bonus.

Leatherworking Durability: 0% bonus.

Metalsmithing Potency: 0% bonus.

Metalsmithing Crafting Speed: 0% bonus.

Metalsmithing Durability: 0% bonus.

Stonecutting Potency: 0% bonus.

Stonecutting Crafting Speed: 0% bonus.

Stonecutting Durability: 0% bonus.

Weaving Potency: 0% bonus.

Weaving Crafting Speed: 0% bonus.

Weaving Durability: 0% bonus.

Woodcarving Potency: 0% bonus.

Woodcarving Crafting Speed: 0% bonus.

Woodcarving Durability: 0% bonus.

Enchantments: 46

Just glancing over the veritable list of enchantments made Eris’s head hurt. It was so much information that it would take hours for Eris to reasonably go through it all. Between the fifty-eight gifts that were given, it had covered every conceivable stat modification that could be applied to a crafting tool, and every basic enchantment that Eris could have immediately thought of off the top of her head. Most of them had more than one enchantment on them- often two or even three. Given the fact that many of the enchantments were the same as one another and didn’t appear more than once in Eris’s internal information, the fact that Eris still got fourty-six unique enchantments all relating to crafting was baffling. At the very least, it made one thing clear- some enchantments were simply going to get ignored in favour of better ones.

Not that the enchantments themselves were bad, but if given the choice of levelling up an enchantment like that first one, Gorger, which increased the Quality of the tool every time it was used to make a culinary dish, or an enchantment like Flavourful Broth, which made soups cooked in the enchanted pot taste {10%} better, it was obvious which one was going to take priority when it came to putting an enchantment on a cooking tool.

In fact, Eris kind of wished she hadn’t drained all of those items, because now the information hovering in her head was so completely clogged up with enchantments, most of which she’d probably never even use. If for nothing else than to keep things neat and orderly, Eris wished that she could just cut down on some of the useless enchantments that were completely pointle-

Flavourful Broth vanished.

Enchantments: 45

Eris blinked.

Okay, that was something. Furthermore, there was another sense of tingling, and Eris followed it to let her internal perspective of her information shift until she was once again looking at a different angle. There, she could see the aforementioned-and-completely-useless Flavourful Broth sitting there, seemingly still available. A little experiment followed.

Enchantments: 46

Enchantments: 45

Enchantments: 46

Useless Enchantments: 1

Eris-Is-The-Coolest Enchantments: 3

I Can Change The Name Of My Enchantment Pages And That Is Amazing: 9

Eris sat back on the bed in the corner, not even caring that she was still naked. A little smile spread across her face. The fact that she could seemingly make new perspectives and pages of information to sort, store, organize and clean up her Malleable Arcana window made all the happy chemicals start pouring out of her brain. Eris couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would have been like after a while, if she had hundreds and hundreds of enchantments to try and sift through at any given point. Now, supposedly, she could learn an enchantment and decide where to sort it, or whether to file it away somewhere she never had to see it again.

Unfortunately for right now, that meant she still had fourty-four other enchantments to glance through and organize where they belonged.

Even worse, there were a lot of them that simply weren’t useful to her.

Three that reduced the effects of regular wear-and-tear in some minor way, which were all but pointless given the ridiculous Durability of Eris’s crafts.

Six that all related to keeping the workshop clean, either by condensing any sawdust or wood chips into a single block of wood, or removing sparks from flying when hitting metal with a hammer, or even reducing the amount of sweat that a wearer of the item would produce. Useful, absolutely, but not to someone with easy access to a Cleansing Stone in one of Charlotte’s many pockets. Or the Cleansing Stone that Eris planned to make herself, once she figured out how.

A staggering sixteen different enchantments that were all some kind of variation on having the item be repaired easier or recover missing Durability. Whether it was by soaking an item in boiling water, leaving it in an open flame, leaving it in sunlight, or moonlight, or keeping it locked in an airtight box, or some other odd method, they all related to repairing the item over time when not in use. Clearly, the many crafters of Marrix took particular interest in having to avoid personally repairing their tools and equipment, to leave more time for crafting. Eris just picked the most basic yet versatile one from the bunch and sent the rest to the Useless Enchantments section of her mind.

One that increased the Potency of a stat modification on an item but only if the item had no other stat modifications or enchantments. Not terrible on paper, but with Masterwork causing everything important Eris made to have at least three stat modifications and enchantments thanks to the natural one that Eris got with Lust, then it would never be useful. Then with all of her tools having Exhibition Efficiency adding yet another stat modification…

Yeah. Eris’s days of simple, one-effect items were done and dusted. Quite literally, she would add, since Bailey and Tatum were still sweeping.

One enchantment made the item glow in the dark, which was interesting but not something that Eris assumed would be needed except for extremely specific scenarios, so she filed that one away in a Not-As-Useless Enchantments page.

One that gave a very respectable bonus to an item’s Potency, but only when less than five Crafting Points were spent on that item. Obviously not useful for Eris. There was another doing the exact same thing, but for Durability instead. Again, not useful.

There were two that had effects somewhat similar to Ophelia’s skill that prevented her ability to be injured by normal crafting actions, which Eris didn’t focus on but did slide those in the Not-As-Useless section with the glow-in-the-dark enchantment.

One made the sound of crafting moderately quieter, so probably useful for a metalsmith hammering away on an anvil all day every day to prevent hearing damage. Then again, Eris could just use earplugs. Unique, but not particularly useful.

One that specifically prevented clothes from getting dirty due to the process of crafting. Not only pointless since Cleansing Stones were a thing, but also since there was a good chance Eris wasn’t going to be wearing clothes for a majority of her crafting anyway, if Exhibition Efficiency was going to end up being a recurring theme.

Lastly, an enchantment that made an item feel uncomfortably sticky

And that was it. Nothing else. The items didn’t even become actually sticky, so Eris couldn’t even potentially use it to make some kind of superglue. It was just the feeling of stickiness, as if it was covered in half-dried syrup.

Eris didn’t even know why that was an enchantment, how someone came up with it, or who it came from since she forgot to Inspect that hammer before she disintegrated it. Clearly though, it was someone with the sense of humour to see everyone giving heartfelt gifts to the Artificer and decide that throwing a sticky hammer into the pile was a good prank.

Though, it did make Eris chuckle.

After all that, Eris did take one of the new tools that had been made yesterday- the loom, and decided to use that as the experiment of what happens if Eris tried to consume her own magic. After all, there wasn’t a whole lot that the loom could do in terms of making parts for the next batch of tools. It would have saved some time yesterday had any of them thought that far ahead, but ultimately it wasn’t that much of a loss. If anything, it just gave Eris an extra sixteen-hundred and ninety-seven points and proved a building theory.

When all was said and done, Eris had successfully trimmed down the main ‘page’ of Malleable Arcana’s displayed enchantments.

Enchantments: 13

Gorger: {Level 2}

Every time this item is used to make a culinary craft, increase the Quality of this item by {50%}, stacking up to {3} times. Gaining another stack when at the maximum amount resets the number of stacks to 0.

Protective Varnish: {Level 1}

When this item is used to make a woodcarving craft, the maximum Durability of the craft is increased by {25%}.

Soot and Steel: {Level 1}

When this item is used to make a metalsmithing craft, the craft gains {1} additional stat modification.

Strange Brew: {Level 1}

When this item is used to make an alchemical craft, {1} stat modification or enchantment on the craft, chosen randomly, has its effects increased by {25%}.

Crosstitch: {Level 1}

When this item is used to make a weaving craft, the user’s Control stat is reduced by up to {2} ranks, and their Craftsmanship increases by the same amount.

Gentle Gem: {Maxed}

When this item is used to carve or shape minerals, unwanted damage to the mineral is far less likely to occur.

Severance: {Maxed}

When this item is used to create a bladed weapon, the weapon gains a Minor bonus to Physical Power, in addition to its normal stat modifications.

Skilled: {Level 1}

While worn, the user’s Craftsmanship stat increases by {1} rank.

Precise: {Level 1}

While worn, the user’s Control stat increases by {1} rank.

Analyst: {Maxed}

While worn, the user can determine the exact weight and volume of a material by sight alone.

Sharpened Sights: {Level 1}

While worn, the user can magnify vision for extremely detailed viewing of anything within {3 feet}.

Mending: {Level 1}

When this item spends a consecutive {12 hours] without being used, it regains {1%} of its missing Durability.

Exhibition Efficiency: {Level 1}

While the user is nude, any crafts made with this item gain {1} additional stat bonus of the user’s choice upon completion. Does not apply if nobody observes the crafter’s nudity for the majority of the crafting process. Crafting equipment, protective equipment, jewelry and body ornaments do not count against Exhibition Efficiency.

Somewhat surprisingly, there hadn’t been a single good enchantment for a Leatherworking tool. There had been Leatherworking enchantments, sure, but they had been the ones that gave bonuses when less than five CP were spent.

Looking at her current list of ‘useable’ enchantments, there were still clearly some outliers that were among the better options to choose. Granted, Eris had enough CP to potentially put every single one of the enchantments on her items, but that would be carving into the value of spending it on Excellence and Empower. At this point, it seemed like the balancing act of figuring out what the best distribution for Crafting Points was in a given item had officially begun.

For actual crafting equipment, it was pretty clear that Skilled and Precise were the most important, and it wasn’t even a question. Eris got the feeling that it could only be applied on things that were worn, and the existing enchantment on her current tools meant that clothes, for right now, weren’t an option. Therefore, it seemed like those were going to be primarily applied on jewelry and -as the enchantment seemed to suggest- ‘Body ornaments’. Then, naturally, Exhibition Efficiency itself was a major, major priority. More stat bonuses on items simply meant the power was being applied in even more different ways.

Mending would be useful on anything, but given Eris’s extreme Durability, the most likely chance for anything to become genuinely damaged would be battle-faring equipment like armour and weapons. Anything else may as well be indestructible, so she wouldn’t use that for her tools.

As for the rest, they really were delegated to whichever kind of crafting they were used for. So, levelling up those enchantments would only benefit that kind of crafting. Still useful, but lower priority than the general-purpose ones like Skilled and Precise. The same went for the stat modification bonuses as well. She’d still put some kind of bonus in all of them just in case they multiplied the effectiveness of each other if she stacked multiple different kinds on the same tool, such as both Crafting Speed and Culinary Crafting Speed on the same knife, but the all-included versions were what Eris focused on.

Coincidentally, that was also how Eris found out that spending Magic Power to level up the enchantments didn’t follow the same levelling ratio as her normal skills, of ten times the previous level. Instead, these only seemed to be five. Bringing Skilled to second level cost one hundred Magic Power, but then to level three only cost five hundred instead of a thousand, then level four costing twenty-five hundred. The same applied for Precise, brought all the way up to fourth level. Exhibition Efficiency was brought up to third. She could have gotten it to fourth level, but Eris figured that having those extra points for upgrading the stat modifications would be more useful.

Each of the other level-able enchantments were brought up to second level, because it didn’t cost all that much, Eris had the points to spare, and she wanted to see what kind of scaling each of them had. That brought her down to just about fourty-four hundred Magic Power remaining, and she turned her attention to the stat modifications.

Just to get things to a nice even number, Eris brought Culinary Potency and Culinary Crafting Speed up to fifty percent, from twenty-five. She was about to do the same with Culinary Duration but realized that since all of her crafts were incredibly durable or lasted long naturally, she probably didn’t need any bonus to that stat since she’d never actively apply it to her tools to get more Durability or Duration.

Of course, Eris then remembered that part of the reason her crafts were so incredibly tough and long-lasting was because she had been spending at least half of her CP on Unbroken up until now, since she couldn’t dump everything into Excellence without penalizing herself. Now that she had the ability to spend her CP on more stat modifications and enchantments, she wasn’t required to put thousands upon thousands of percentage bonuses into the Durability of an item just to use up all her CP. Therefore, while she had more options, her crafts would actually be taking a rather significant hit to the Durability/Duration side of things.

They’d still, of course, be tougher and longer lasting than anything else because of Eris’s Quality bonuses and the residual points in Unbroken, but perhaps a little bit of extra ‘oomph’ to their Durability wouldn’t actually be all that bad of an option. So, Eris brought Culinary Duration up to fifty percent as well. Then, she did the exact same with every single other stat modification she currently had, bringing all of them up to a fifty percent bonus.

With the points she had left, Eris weighed her options. The main thing right now was trying to make all of her new tools as powerful as possible, so that equipment she made from them would be even stronger. If that was the case, she really just needed to double down on the stat modifications that she would focus on putting on this batch of tools and crafting equipment.

The most important ones were fairly obvious. When all was said and done, Eris looked back over the information window.

Malleable Arcana

Magic Power: 0

Stat Modifications: 27

Control: 500% bonus.

Craftsmanship: 635% bonus.

Crafting Potency: 500% bonus.

Crafting Speed: 500% bonus.

Crafting Durability: 500% bonus.

Crafting Duration: 500% bonus.

Alchemical Potency: 100% bonus.

Alchemical Crafting Speed: 50% bonus.

Alchemical Duration: 50% bonus.

Culinary Potency: 100% bonus.

Culinary Crafting Speed: 50% bonus.

Culinary Duration: 50% bonus.

Leatherworking Potency: 100% bonus.

Leatherworking Crafting Speed: 50% bonus.

Leatherworking Durability: 50% bonus.

Metalsmithing Potency: 100% bonus.

Metalsmithing Crafting Speed: 50% bonus.

Metalsmithing Durability: 50% bonus.

Stonecutting Potency: 100% bonus.

Stonecutting Crafting Speed: 50% bonus.

Stonecutting Durability: 50% bonus.

Weaving Potency: 100% bonus.

Weaving Crafting Speed: 50% bonus.

Weaving Durability: 50% bonus.

Woodcarving Potency: 100% bonus.

Woodcarving Crafting Speed: 50% bonus.

Woodcarving Durability: 50% bonus.

Enchantments: 13

Gorger: {Level 2}

Every time this item is used to make a culinary craft, increase the Quality of this item by {50%}, stacking up to {3} times. Gaining another stack when at the maximum amount resets the number of stacks to 0.

Protective Varnish: {Level 2}

When this item is used to make a woodcarving craft, the maximum Durability of the craft is increased by {50%}.

Soot and Steel: {Level 2}

When this item is used to make a metalsmithing craft, the craft gains {2} additional stat modifications.

Strange Brew: {Level 2}

When this item is used to make an alchemical craft, one stat modification or enchantment on the craft, chosen randomly, has its effects increased by {50%}.

Crosstitch: {Level 2}

When this item is used to make a weaving craft, the user’s Control stat is reduced by up to {3} ranks, and their Craftsmanship increases by the same amount.

Gentle Gem: {Maxed}

When this item is used to carve or shape minerals, unwanted damage to the mineral is far less likely to occur.

Severance: {Maxed}

When this item is used to create a bladed weapon, the weapon gains a Minor bonus to Physical Power, in addition to its normal stat modifications.

Skilled: {Level 4}

While worn, the user’s Craftsmanship stat increases by {4} ranks.

Precise: {Level 4}

While worn, the user’s Control stat increases by {4} ranks.

Analyst: {Maxed}

While worn, the user can determine the exact weight and volume of a material by sight alone.

Sharpened Sights: {Level 2}

While worn, the user can magnify vision for extremely detailed viewing of anything within {30 feet}.

Mending: {Level 2}

When this item spends a consecutive {6 hours] without being used, it regains {2%} of its missing Durability.

Exhibition Efficiency: {Level 3}

While the user is nude, any crafts made with this item gain {3} additional stat bonuses of the user’s choice upon completion. Does not apply if nobody observes the crafter’s nudity for the majority of the crafting process. Crafting equipment, protective equipment, jewelry and body ornaments do not count against Exhibition Efficiency.

Eris stood from the bed, uncaring of her nudity. In fact, it was required for what was going to happen next, thanks to that enchantment on her current tools.

It was time to craft.