Ugly Bastard

Noah was taking a shower when Tessa's voice sounded in his head.

“This is a bit troublesome, dear, you should hurry up a bit. We have a Royal guest, it seems. Making them wait is uncourteous. I will find a few excuses to stall for time for you to get ready, but if I do it too much they will realize what I am doing and this may be seen as an offence.” Theressa said.

“I’ll be ready shortly,” Said Noah. “But why would a Royal family member come unannounced like that?” Asked Noah, surprised.

“This must be related to me announcing Cil as the next Thesalia.” Said Theressa.

“Seamstress title that you had in the last?” Asked Noah. He knew about her recent activity to a degree, as they were often speaking in their minds through their connection, while he was away the past month, but he did not delve deeply into it, trusting her to do what’s best for herself and their whole family. “I understand it’s an honorable position but…still a Royal visit so suddenly? Is this something that needs a congratulation so hurriedly?”

“Umm. They aren’t here to congratulate. They are most likely here to threaten me to rescind my decision." Said Theressa meekly.

Hearing her voice Noah stopped in mid movement, suspicion creeping up into his mind.

“I feel like I am missing something here. And hearing your guilty voice I suspect there is something you are omitting. Why would the royal family be so worried over a seamstress title?” Noah asked rinsing the foam off himself and taking a towel to dry himself.

“Umm, you see, dear, remember I told you that I am a master at weaving and puppeteering? And that Cil and Bri each inherited talents for one of these skills?”

“Yes. So?” Said Noah stopping for a moment, remembering the time when he just got acquainted with the Threadweaver family. It seemed to him like a long time ago, but they actually were together less than half a year. Compared to his mates’ long lives it was just a spec of time. He was sure there would be a lot more to learn about them, so he wasn’t surprised when later Theressa mentioned that she was actually the bearer of one of the most prestigious titles among the people with support class systems - Thesalia.

Although she was a monster and had no system like all humans do, she managed to achieve the title of the best seamstress of the Kingdom and at some time was considered as a royal seamstress, making the most extravagant and luxurious dresses that nobles could allow themselves to wear.

However, was there more to this title that he did not know?

Support class systems like seamstress, blacksmith and the likes were a lot more frequent than fighting class. There must have been a tough competition, surely there were dozens of people who were at least close to her skill and could also bear this title, thought Noah. So what was the issue here?

“Umm, when we met, I'd been ignoring it for more than a hundred years, so I brushed it off, and did not explain it well, as I had no intentions to pick it up back then. I am sorry it seemed like I was hiding something. That wasn’t my intention.” Said Theressa apologetically.

“It’s alright, but maybe you should explain it quickly while we have some time? Otherwise I’ll look like an idiot if our guests find out I don’t know anything.”

“You see, dear, for a monster it is not a small matter to have a Dutchess status like me and Cassandra. The reason I was given such a high status is because I have a very important responsibility in the Kingdom and the entire human realm in general.”

“What kind of responsibility?” Asked Noah, picking up an angular object, one of Theressa’s newest creations that she intends to bring to the markets some time soon. He sent a bit of mana into the small bead on the grip and a soft warm breeze started to blow from the other end. He pointed it at his wet hair and started to dry his head.

“I am responsible for making Thesalia masterpieces.” Said Theressa. “Every time a new High-noble family is announced or an event like the wedding of the inheriting scion comes up, I am obliged to provide the young ones with a set of gowns on the Royal family's order." Answered Theressa.

“I see. A royal wedding gift, made by a royal seamstress. I’ve heard of it. But still, it's hardly a matter needing a royal member to oversee. It’s a matter of a Royal Chancellary and a simple messenger would be enough…” Said Noah with confusion but Theressa interrupted him.

“No. It’s not so simple, dear. You see, I don’t make just “some dress” set. I weave Thesalia garments.”

Garments? Thought Noah. A weird way to call a ball dress.

“Alright. I understand that I am not aware of something crucial here. What is Thesalia garment?” Asked Noah.

“Do you remember I said that Arachna silk is very precious because it is one of the sturdiest things in existence when imbued with magic. Well the thing is, the best armors in existence, the so-called, legendary class battle armors, are actually made with the help of arachna silk.”

Noah almost dropped the fan from his hand when he heard it.

The material he wore so casually ever since starting to live with Tessa was not just fancy luxury, it was the material of the best weapons humanity has ever produced?

“Dear?” Asked Theressa after not hearing any answer from Noah for a few seconds.

“Sorry, you just surprised me.” He answered, putting the fan down on the dressing table in the corner of their room.

“It’s just I thought that it's a good material for mages' robes, but you can make armors out of it. And legendary? You mean those things I only heard off in stories and fairy tales?” Asked Noah bewildered.

“Not entirely, only their inner layer. The magic layer. From top there are all kinds of materials, like dragnite, adamantite, mithril or something of the likes. But from inside they all always have a soft thin layer of dress. This soft layer is the core of armor, its functional part. It turns a pile of expensive scrap metal into a legendary class armor. That is what Thesalia class garment is. The functional part of the legendary armors. The core of it.”

Noah looked at a new set of suits laying on the bed prepared for him. By now he had a whole wardrobe of them. He always felt that the suits she made for him were already something considered a fortune in the world. But she made it in mere seconds.

“My suits…” Noah muttered raising his eyebrow.

“I know what you think, but no. Weaving a suit that I made for you is child's play. Any human seamstress if she is skilled and very careful can replicate something of this level as it uses simple Arachna silk with no mana imbued in it. Once it’s imbued with magic, the strings are too sharp for humans to handle. And weaving a magic garment needs imbuing silk with magic while weaving fast, before the mana wears out. The degree of skill is so complicated that for a thousand years since I produced such a thing for the first time ever, it has been absolutely impossible for humans to replicate it. And believe me humans tried a lot of times. However, up to this day, all their attempts have failed.”

“Hold on, hold on… Impossible to replicate? Then that means… You made the core garments for the Kingdoms number one treasure the Royal Blue Phoenix Fire battle armor, the one King wears only on grand occasions? The legendary guardian armors worn by Archdukes into battles in which they are said to be able to slaughter hundreds of elite monsters. The legendary armor of heroes that they wore in battle with the Demon Lord, that are said to be able to withstand a God’s punch? The Holy Battle Garments of the Saintess, a sacred white piece of cloth that is said to be worshiped in Central Cathedral almost as much as the Saintess herself, the ones I saw on her when she barged into my dream last time… All these legendary things that I’ve read about from books and heard from stories…

“Yes. The magic enchanted garment on which they are all based was made by me. And not just for this Kingdom. By Saintesses order each Royal family in the human domain has one of my creations. And these garments are deemed humanity’s shared treasure. This Kingdom may not monopolize it. So if another kingdom wishes to buy it, the Kingdom can not ban it. However, I only deal directly with Royal families. Nobles may only buy or receive them through the royal family of their kingdom. They are always sold under the guise of the Queen dresses.

“Queens dresses…” muttered Noah “The twenty five masterpieces that the first Thesalia was said to make.”

“Yes. All of them are just cover for the twenty five legendary armor enchanted core garments that I’ve made. On the outside I make a masterpiece of a wedding dress or something like that. But behind the scenes I make an Arachna silk magic battle garment that would come with it as an inner layer. Later that garment would be integrated into some kind of finely crafted armor, made by some artisans and blacksmiths, becoming a legendary armor. People would see the metal craft and think of the skill that blacksmiths put, but it is what inside of it, is what makes it truly a legendary class.” Explained Theressa.

“This was the arrangement I made with the Kingdom to become a Duchess so many years ago, receiving a Duchess Threadweaver name. But of course people would ask a lot of questions as to why would dresses cost so much and why only I could make them, which would also let everyone know that I am a monster. So the Kingdom made it a "hereditary" title. Where hereditary thing was just a facade. In fact no one ever had a title other than me. I had been changing names and identities for centuries pretending to be someone else, but the title bearer was always me and me alone. And would stay this way forever. At least the Kingdom believed so. No one expected Priscilla to come into the picture. Until you cured her, no one even believed it would be possible for me to give up my title.”

“Umm, not that I doubt your decision, love. But why did you decide to give it up?”

“Well it is partly a cold calculation, I thought it through for quite some time, just did not have an opportunity to do this. I have my title of Duchess, it may not be stripped now that I’ve learned to produce sentient offspring, however the title of Thesalia will help protect Priscilla and let her gain some weight to stand on her own in the future. But the reason I decided to do it now is because I am pissed.” Said Theressa, anger sipping into her voice.

“At the Kingdom?” Asked Noah.

“No. I don’t really hold any grudge against Kingdom. They did as much as they could. I can understand all their decisions. And to the end they never outrught gave up to help me. No. I am pissed at the Holy bitch that threatens you. Not once, but twice her dogs tried to hurt you. No one threatens my man! I will not just sit by swallowing her threatening you.” Theressa’s voice now sounded in Noah’s head, outright furious and malicious.

“Wait. How is this decision concerning the Saintess?” Asked Noah.

“The war is coming, my dear. Soon humanity will need more battle garments. Sainetess always secretly forbade the kingdoms from having too much of this level of armors, fearing unrests and trouble they could cause. Or maybe just afraid the Kingdoms could pose her a threat. But now she would be forced to lift all bans. She would need lots of garments for Central Cathedral and White Tower forces. But she can’t just monopolize me all of a sudden. Kingdoms would not look good on this.

However with someone else holding the title, it is possible for her to hire me fulltime so to say without the Kingdom being able to say something about it. So what I do is make arrangements to become the Saintesses' own seamstress.”

“What if she doesn’t come up with the idea?” Said Noah.

“We would just have to use human greed and have someone else point her in that direction. I still have a few connections here and there and know quite a few families who’d be able to press the Saintess once they hear that they can get their hands on one of my masterpieces.” Said Theressa wryly.

“So how exactly providing people that threaten me with your magic products is helping you protect me?” Asked Noah bemused.

“Well being White Towers seamstress will allow me an access to some useful information and new connections within Central Cathedral, but what I am most interested in is bugging all their gear to be able to spy on everyone and if necessary turn the garment against them and kill them all if such a need arises. With bugged gear they will never again have a chance to catch you by surprise and if they do, they will be the ones regretting it.”

“If something like that is found out you will be deemed an enemy.” Noah said, creasing his eyebrows in a serious expression.

“It’s an extreme measure. We will be able to avoid it by secretly listening to their plans.” Said Theressa with a cunning tone.

“Still wouldn’t something like that be found out?” Said Noah.

“I doubt it. The reason I never did it was purely out of consideration for my agreement with humans, not because I feared being found out. To find it they would need to dismantle it without damaging it. And they have no skill to do it without ruining the weave and the enchantment.” Said Theressa with absolute confidence.

“But it's an enchantment right? It uses magic circles and humans are well versed in enchantments, why wouldn’t they be able to decipher it? Humans do make enchanted armors themselves. Maybe not the legendary level, but still. My father used to have high grade armor and it was made by the local master.” Said Noah.

“There is a vast difference in the way the usual armor enchantment and Thesalia garments enchantments are made, dear.”

“Different how?” Asked Noah.

“Alright, we still have some time, so I think I will be able to explain it to a degree. So I’ll start with explaining how the normal enchanted armors are made.” Said Theressa.

“You know that magic is not just randomly omnipotent power. It has rules and principles, just like any other law of physics. And one such rule is that you can only ever enchant a solid piece with a magic circle. If you try to make one circle spanning several solid pieces of material, magic would leak through the seam in the place where material is divided into parts. This will make your circle highly inefficient. Flawed. These flawed magic circles are sometimes more dangerous than wrongly made. At least wrongly made ones would not activate. Flawed ones will leak magic and may uncontrollably activate something you did not wish to activate.”

The second rule is that several enchantments on one solid piece may interfere with each other if activated at the same time. It happens because mana in each circle permutate in its own way, becoming different from each other and being locked within the same piece it starts to clash with each other just as two magics of two different people may clash.

So knowing these two rules you have a problem. You need to enchant each piece with only one circle. But if your armor consists of two pieces of metal, each has to have a separate circle. For example if your armor has levitation magic in it, you need this enchantment on all pieces of armor, otherwise only some parts would levitate while others will still be heavy adding weight to the mass that spell has to lift and increase the mana expenditure from the user.

The second problem is making two different magic enchantments means you have to control them separately. Meaning one at a time. A good mage can divide his mana flow and activate several separate enchantments but dividing your mind is a separate story. Mages use their mind to control each enchantment and any human would be hard pressed to control such a huge amount of enchantment circles at the same time. Hardly any one would be able to use such armors. And without adequate mana control of a mage you would not be able to use such armor in battle at all.

And the third problem is that you can’t use another enchantment while using the first one. For example you activate levitation to fly, then you can’t use protective magic or attack magic. All you do is fly around without doing anything much to attack, while also becoming vulnerable in the air.

Also levitation is just that. Take off from the ground. To actually fly around you need another enchantment to direct yourself. Flight control circle as we call it. To solve the problem you can put flight control enchantment circles on some different parts of armor than levitation but again, those parts do not levitate and add to the weight, increasing the mana consumption for both circles. Well, it's just an example but I think you get the gist.” Explained Theressa.

“So making levitation magic with all these problems is simply useless and wasteful for anybody. What people did instead was make a big powerful enchantment, for example a barrier or a fire field surrounding you, burning enemies around you.”

“But we do have armors with multi enchantments” Said Noah.

“Yes. What I described is how armors were made thousands of years ago when the first monsters invaded this world. People could use only one enchantment at a time. Things changed since then and magic theory advanced. With time people learned the laws better and found ways to use multiple enchantments at once.” Theressa continued her explanation.

“One method that people found is to integrate several circles into one big circle. It’s like one big circuit made into a line that spirals within itself until it completes a circle. It’s more like a circular labyrinth than just a circle. We call it a circuit. You power up one of the circuits only but at the same time you control all magic circles that are integrated into the circuit. It uses more power if you need just one enchantment, as you need to power up all enchantments that are within the circuit, but it allows you to control several enchantments.

However with this you have a problem with space. You can have only so much space on your armor piece for such a complex circle. And these circuits tend to grow exponentially when you add new features to it.

So how do you solve that? The answer that people came up with was cell structured armor in which circles would be overlaying each other and connected from layer to layer. By overlaying circles in different layers you can construct a one complicated circuit that would take less space as it spans now into the third dimension. Thickness. With this leaking mana from a flaw in the circle between the seam of material, seep back into the same circuit but on the other level.

The addition of more layers of material, however, adds hell of a lot more weight to armor. Lightening weight magic may help but you need to constantly spend mana for it to be active.

Also there is a certain capacity of mana that a material can hold. So the smaller the pieces the less mana you can imbue in them, meaning the weaker magic they can produce.

To solve the problem of weight and mana output, humanity needed better materials. Either ones that would allow more mana be input into them without damaging the material, or to find lighter materials that would allow the construction of thick armors from multi layers without being too heavy.

The first materials that humanity found most suitable were of course monster body parts. But not only monsters can be used. Other magic creatures including spirit beasts were used for these purposes. Which is why humans and spirit beasts did not get along until recently.

With this method however humans faced another problem.

Magic creature's hides, and carapaces, as well as innards in some of the cases are already adapted to these exact uses, so they were the easiest solutions. However, the stronger the magic creature the better the material.

You can imagine what you need to do to get the Dragon scales, which are said to be as strong as adamantite. So getting their hands on some of the materials wasn’t easy. Not only were some monsters very rare, but also only very powerful people could hunt them. Of course such powerful people would first of all empower themselves and their followers with these materials before selling them to others.

The scarcity of some of the best of the materials pushed people to continue their research until they learned to make synthetic magical materials. And the best materials humanity learned to make were mithril, adamantite and orichalcon.

Well, that civilization and their scientific research has been mostly lost, but the secret of making the best materials humanity managed to salvage.

It is impossible to produce these metals in mass now like back then, but at least they are still available.

Mithrill can be imbued with the most amount of magic from all the known metals. It allows humans to make metal cells up to ten times smaller than with any other magical material and not lose the power of its enchantments in comparison. Or you can make it into bigger cells and make just a few enchantments but very powerful imbuing them with massive amounts of mana.

However mithrill is not very light weight while also quite soft as a material. That’s why it is absolutely unsuitable for making weapons. At least their outer layers.

These shortcomings of course can be overcome with the enchantments, which means you need to add even more cells and complicate the enchantment circuit.

Another way is to just cover mithril with something else. Something a lot harder and sturdier.

And that’s where adamantite comes in handy.

The most lightweight yet the most indestructible of all metals that humanity managed to create. Imbued with magic it is said to be harder than diamond while preserving the elasticity of metal to not make it brittle and chip or crack. It can be molded into shape when it's not imbued with magic and then made into indestructible when it's filled with magic. This metal is most unsuitable for enchantments as it seeps away mana to become indestructible. In other words it has the biggest mana resistance.

But it allows making very lightweight and the most durable armor and weapons.

Separately both materials are like opposites of each other. But it is when they are used together is where they shine.

Mithrill and Adamantine are said to be a pair made in heavens when it comes to making magic weapons and armors.

Heavy mithrill chainmail with thousands of enchantments protected by the layer of adamantine armor is a standard equipment of Royal Knights to this day. That guarantees the Royal Knight the status of best forces of the Kingdom.

In such armor a normal soldier would be able to take on an army of normal monsters and not even get a scratch. An elite warrior dressed in such armor becomes a walking fortress, a weapon of mass slaughter on any battlefield against monster hordes.

The only way to put such a person down is to tire him out and let him use up all mana. You can only imagine how heavy a price you’d pay to try it. Well another way is to heavily overpower him. As in use a magic that would break through their magic barrier in one go.

Anyways. A heavily imbued core of mithrill, covered by the adamantine that is made indestructible by the mana that seeps into it through the core is a best way to make armor and weapon. Well, at least it was until another material came into the picture.

It was light, elastic, durable as adamantite and yet could be imbued with an astonishing amount of mana. The only problem is that it comes in very thin string form and is very scarce. So no one could use it well in the armor until me that is. As I studied human magic and enchantments I came up with an entirely new principle of making armor layers.

A lightweight net like cloth of thousand upon thousand of interlayered enchantments that are made from the same string and that are woven in a complex way so that the massive single enchantment circle would be packed into a cloth just enough to cover a human. Something similar to a human body nervous system.

Then from the wearer side it is covered by a conducting mana material, such as mithril, that is inlaid with a few more support enchantment circles that allows the wearer to power up and control all enchantments in the core layer without much need for mana training, and with magic cores placed in separate spots even a normal person without much mana can use it.

Finally, from outside it is covered by an impenetrable layer of adamantite that both protects the user and holds together the core layer. Kind of like a three layered pie. No more problems with enchanting metal itself, a lot more functionality than before and easy to use. Though extremely expensive and hard to make.

"Doesn't a massive enchantment circle need a lot of power to activate?" Pondered Noah.

“Yes, you are smart to notice. I can make activation circles very small, allowing me to pack a lot more circles in the same space as you would with any other material. But the amount of mana needed is still massive if you activate the whole thing. That’s why I separate it into several different massive circuits and spread them around. It’s like a labyrinth where paths of different circuits pass by but do not interfere with each other. The complexity of this multilayer architecture is hard to describe. I spent centuries figuring out how to do it.

Just to make a simple example you can imagine a mithril chainmail that I mentioned before. Imagine how its link overlaid to form several separate magic circuits. From a distance it looks like one chainmail just made of links but at a closer look you’d see that some parts of it are different from the others.

Now imagine hundreds of layers of those chainmails and all packed into the same space.

Now think how you would find a few bugged enchantments hidden somewhere between those hundreds of extremely complex architectures. Explained Thessa.

“I see. Even if someone can understand it. It's impossible to look into that, without ripping apart all the layer” Nodded Noah.

“Exactly. Well enough chit chat, dear. We are close to the mansion. I hope you are ready to meet the guest.” Said Theressa.

“Yes. I am on my way.” Said Noah buttoning up his suit before looking into the mirror, making sure he looked impeccable. Then nodding to himself in the mirror he walked out of the bedroom and walked to the main hall to meet the guest.