Chapter 160: Object Manipulation
Xiaoshuang startled, immediately on guard. "Don't you go getting ideas about my gemstone."
"No one's after your gemstone. I just asked. I actually had a thought — I'll give you this one instead." Evan, amused by her defensiveness, tossed the talisman over to her.
"It's a finished gem — no, wait, there's a sigil array hidden inside it, same as my little sword. Shame it's too big. You've given it to me and I still can't wear it," Xiaoshuang said, cradling it in both arms, frustrated.
"Ah." Evan frowned. He'd meant it as a form of protection for her, but clearly it was too large. "You've got room to stash something that size easily enough — I just didn't think of the sizing. Should've asked Ortlando to make it smaller from the start."
Even saying it, Evan felt a little unfair to Ortlando — he'd already forged it on the smaller side; shrinking it further would have been genuinely difficult. Evan didn't realize that a proper mage's craft had its own limits, and Ortlando's array was already powerful enough that the material could barely contain and internalize that much force — already close to the practical ceiling. Evan was measuring by his own standard, having undergone a strange transformation of his own that let him internalize magic far more compactly than most.
"You keep it, though," Xiaoshuang said, handing it back reluctantly. "I do have a natural storage space of my own, but this thing won't do me any good unless it's actually worn." Then her eyes lit up. "Wait — Wang, you can craft things yourself, can't you? Make me a small one!"
She gritted her teeth and produced, from somewhere, a magic gemstone — enormous by her own scale, irregular in shape. She studied it for a while, then used her flying sword to slice a protruding corner clean off. Evan blinked in genuine surprise — that she could manage that kind of precision told him her control over the flying sword had reached a new level entirely.
She tucked the larger gemstone back into her personal storage space. Evan looked at the piece she'd cut off — barely bigger than a mung bean, though to her it was the size of a pigeon's egg, and a substantial gem by any adult's standard.
Evan gave a rueful look. The little sword he'd made for her, barely over two inches long, had already counted as an enormous blade in her hands — fortunately, she controlled it through mental force rather than her own grip, which made it manageable. But working a full sigil array into something the size of a mung bean was, for Evan, genuinely difficult.
Still, he decided to try. He pinched it carefully between two fingers and told Xiaoshuang, "Go activate the protective array. Announce that I'm going into seclusion."
Evan settled cross-legged on the floor, guiding his mental power carefully to nurse the tiny stone along. Small as it was, it hovered before his eyes. What Evan didn't realize was that he'd unconsciously slipped into object manipulation. Controlling the crescent blade before had mostly involved channeling mental power to trigger a sigil array directly — an ordinary mage's mental power had no innate ability to manipulate objects on its own. Of course, producing an object-manipulation effect through magic wasn't especially difficult either; a mage's mental power naturally drew on ambient free-floating energy anyway, and from the outside, that could look like object manipulation too — it simply wasn't called that.
Evan's unconscious object manipulation belonged to an entirely different system of cultivation altogether — one working from within outward, spiritual sense breaking free of the physical form. Evan had no idea of this, and gave it no particular thought. Had he examined it closely, he'd have noticed he wasn't visualizing any sigil array at all — he simply felt this small object ought to hover before his eyes, and so it did.
He fixed his focus on it, feeling the stone should soften, and it began to soften. His mind emptied of everything but this tiny gem, still holding a few flecks of impurity within it that he could somehow perceive clearly. He thought the impurities ought to separate out, and they did, dispersing into the air. The stone became a single droplet, and he recalled how diamonds were cut into dozens of facets — following the thought, fifty-seven facets began to take shape.
Mana Gathering, Reinforcement, Force Field Repulsion — array after array pressed silently into the stone through his spiritual sense, and the gemstone began to give off a clear, pure light, small in size but glowing with the presence of something the size of a football.
Evan let out a breath, and the light settled. He reached out and caught the mung-bean-sized gem — successfully forged now. Without thinking, he reached out with a natural pinching gesture, and his hand froze mid-motion.
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It came back to him then. He hadn't visualized any sigil array at all — the tiny stone had simply floated up before his eyes on its own. What was this? Some kind of paranormal gift? He found himself recalling something from his old life, though he had no name for what he'd just done — object manipulation. Some faint understanding surfaced: he remembered hearing once of witches, women the Church had branded servants of the devil, born with all manner of unusual gifts — and levitating objects like this had been one of the abilities commonly attributed to them.
A useful gift, this. Worth seeing how far it could go. Holding the gem between his fingers, he felt a real drain on his focus — as though forging this small object had genuinely cost him something.
What he didn't realize was that he'd shaped this object using pure mental effort, and it had, in a sense, come alive — his spiritual sense fused into it, which was essentially the same as what this world's divine practitioners called divine consciousness. The method he'd used already belonged to the true craft of divine artifact-making — only the object was so small that when its inherent nature was activated, he hadn't noticed the sigil array failing to blend fully with that nature, and the resulting quality had suffered noticeably for it.
"Finished already?" Xiaoshuang had been perched on the rafters the whole time, watching. Seeing the gemstone flare with a football-sized burst of clear light, her mouth had fallen open in disbelief — Evan hadn't seemed to move at all, and yet the stone kept gradually growing more radiant.
"Finished. I still need to finish it off — turn it into a necklace. Come down here, let me measure you for the chain," Evan said, waving her over. Without meaning to, he channeled object manipulation again. Xiaoshuang had just started to fly when some force suddenly tugged at her, pulling her straight toward Evan.
She let out a startled shriek and darted upward fast. Evan felt the strangeness of it too, freezing for a moment before understanding settled in, and he quickly released the pull. He realized this object-manipulation technique seemed to rise from the mind itself — especially easy to trigger when the mind sat empty.
"What was that just now? I felt some kind of pull," Xiaoshuang asked.
"Nothing — lost control of it for a second. Some leftover effect from the forging process. Something like mind-over-matter, maybe," Evan said quickly.
Xiaoshuang, still full of doubt, watched as Evan roughly measured out the chain length with his hand and headed off toward the alchemy lab. The lab in his own quarters couldn't compare to the school's proper facilities, but it handled most ordinary alchemical work well enough.
Evan fired up the alchemical furnace, added refined mithril, and pulled out a rough, irregular gem — an ordinary one this time, not magical — and began cutting it into shape. Once cut and set aside, he took the leftover scraps and cut them further into gems smaller than sesame seeds. Even with his skill, the whole process took over a day before the necklace was finished.
The finished piece was tiny and delicate — the mung-bean-sized magic gemstone set at the center, flanked by a hundred and eight tiny gems, all strung together on a fine chain of refined mithril. Genuinely elegant work.
Once finished, Evan let out a long breath. To an ordinary person, ignoring the magic entirely, the necklace would barely be worth anything at all — far too small. But for Xiaoshuang, it was another matter entirely. The moment she put it on, she looked positively regal.
Fairies never wore anything of metal or gemstone at all — even fairies who loved beauty tended toward woven flower crowns and the like. Xiaoshuang had just become the first fairy in history, as far as anyone knew, to own a proper piece of jewelry.
"Practice with it the same way you learned the sword," Evan told her. "Its protective layer is strong — even at full strength, I doubt I could break through it."
Xiaoshuang's eyes crinkled with delight at that. She tested it at once, and a football-sized sphere of clear, pure light rose to shield her whole body. She flew around in delight, then took off straight for the mountains to show off to her beast friends.
Evan stepped outside. He hadn't been to work in several days — fortunately, he had no classes this week. Seeing the "in seclusion" sign still hanging on the door, he shook his head; Xiaoshuang's array might be off now, but she hadn't bothered to take down the sign.
He looked around and spotted Emma and Jessica enjoying afternoon tea nearby. He waved from a distance in greeting. The faculty housing district sat quiet and peaceful.
Emma and Jessica noticed him too and waved him over. With nothing else to do, Evan wandered over.
Their homes stood about a hundred cubits apart — some fifty meters. The two of them sat at a stone table beneath a tree, the westering sun filtering through newly grown leaves, casting dappled light across the ground and table both.
"Good day, ladies. Quite the leisurely afternoon," Evan said with a smile, taking a seat at the table.
Jessica gave a small flick of her hand, and a cup materialized out of nowhere. She poured black tea into it, set it before Evan, and nudged the pastries closer. "Good day. We saw your protective array active yesterday morning, and that sign on your door — 'in seclusion.' Rather evocative. What were you in seclusion for?"
"Crafting a few magical items for Xiaoshuang," Evan said.
"You really are good to her. Where did you even pick up that fairy — I've never heard of a necromancer keeping a fairy as a familiar. Most necromancers keep something like a shadow cat instead," Emma said.
"Found her in the Black Forest. Strange, honestly — we just clicked. By the way, Jessica, did you pick up your dress order yet?"
"Ages ago. Xiaoshuang's has been ready too, but she hasn't worn it — human clothing looks nice enough, but it can't match a fairy's own natural fabric in quality," Jessica said.
"Anything happening around school these past couple of days?" Evan asked.
"Not much longer now and school breaks for the season. The quadrennial Plowing Festival celebration is coming up," Emma said.