Chapter 1148: Terrible Weapons
The thrill of creation never failed to delight Leon, especially if the thing he was creating held as much promise as the Stormborn branch did. The power contained in such a small thing was incredible, and harnessing it would take some doing, but from the moment Leon and Nestor returned to Nestor’s lab, they threw themselves into it wholeheartedly.
Over the course of a day, sketches were made, debated upon, and thrown out in minutes. They ran through dozens of different variations, all seeking to exploit the branch’s power in the best possible way. Leon only had the one branch, after all, so getting it right the first time was key.
Still, when focused entirely on their task, Leon and Nestor worked quickly. After working for almost thirty straight hours, they finally had something that just might work.
“… I think it’ll work,” Leon declared as he stared down at the completed enchantment. The other tables around him and Nestor were covered in previous versions of this enchantment, all heavily annotated and covered in corrections and red ink crossing out mistakes, flaws, and inefficiencies.
“It will work,” Nestor declared with more conviction. “The problem at hand is whether or not it’ll work well enough. With only one chance, we have to squeeze every spark of power we can from this thing; leaving any power on the table will only lead to regret and possible death.”
Leon’s eyes flitted across the paper, taking in every one of the thousands of tiny runes scrawled on the surface. It was elegant, yet complex, not drawing so heavily on the branch as to risk breaking it, yet also making efficient use of the power it could access.
Leon frowned slightly. “How long do we have until the shield falls? Four days?”
“Close enough.”
“We don’t have the time to make it perfect, and if we’re lucky, the tree we planted will grow more branches that we can use. This… I’d say we’ve done more than enough.”