Mythshaper

Chapter 47: Charm

The two conditions I gave Mum were easy to follow, so she readily agreed.

The first was about the help she was allowed to give me. She promised her help would be limited to mere hints.

The other one involved all the materials needed for the crafting. I asked Mum not to hand them over to me for free. Of course, I would still work on her materials, but I'd bear whatever they cost. I already had a hundred silver leafs and some savings she’d given me from all the runework and artificing I’d done over the last few months. That was by far not a small sum—not for any common family—but it probably wouldn’t even be close to half by the time I was finished with the project.

Simply obtaining a couple of drops of Dusk Essence would halve my wealth, and there was still so much more I would need to get.

So here I was, doing runework in class while the history lesson went on in the background. I could have split my focus and paid attention to what the teacher was saying, but that portion of my attention was spent on Essence Unification.

The more aether roots and essence threads I accumulated, the stronger and more efficient I would become. Not to mention, it would also increase my influence, weight, and Will. With my recent advancement just a couple of weeks ago, I was twice as impactful as a shaper, so I saw no reason to slow down on Essence Unification. History, on the other hand, didn't hold the same sway. Besides, what Tearcer Caecila was lecturing was merely surface level information.

Having gotten good at multitasking, I could perform two intense activities at once, provided one of them didn’t require my full attention. Essence Unification exhausted my Will faster than anything else, but after practicing it for almost a year, it had become one of my more automated processes. Don’t get me wrong—it still drained my Will as before—but it simply no longer demanded the majority of my attention.

My other work, however, required as much Will as it did my concentration. Charm crafting was as delicate a process as runework, but it also involved the added difficulty of combining essence weaving with runes. The most exhausting part was imprinting my Will onto the charm.

My Will recovered at a far slower pace than my essence, making it particularly arduous to invest in the art of charm creation for longer. It was good practice, but I would craft no more than two charms a day if it weren’t for my immediate need for money.

Mum had suggested she’d lend me the necessary funds if I needed them, but I still wanted to earn a large portion of the leafs required for the process. Besides, this was an essential learning process if I ever wanted to reach Master Artisan rank.

I was currently crafting a water charm, not a combat variant. Combat charms were the most expensive to craft and purchase, so their profit margin wasn’t as large as that of a water charm, which was mostly used for bathing.