NOVEL NEXT Chapter 105
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Before anyone knew it, the mid-year exams were here, I blasted through the written papers, only having some trouble with some spelling in the Elven language exam, as for the practical exams, it was alright. I had no issues slinging the spells required for Advanced Spell Theory, for Advanced Combat & Tactics, I sparred with an instructor and demonstrated the sword forms, for Blacksmithing, we did a whole Forged in Fire episode where we needed to forge a weapon displayed before us, which in this case was a Quillon Dagger, for Array Architecture, we were tasked with making a detection array, and then, there is my final practical exam that was just around the corner, Enchanting.
The practice of enchanting in itself was not the hard part, if I just followed the basic method we were taught, I doubt I would have any trouble passing the enchanting practical exam tomorrow, but I did not just want to pass with some bog standard enchanting style, I wanted to pass with distinction by expressing my own unique style in this world.
So before the exam, after doing a lot of window shopping and seeing many examples in the market, I went to my Blacksmithing instructor, Professor Steelbeard, and asked him if he had anything I could practice my enchanting on, he pointed me to an assortment of rejected weapons that were destined to be melted down.
Having an idea of what I wanted my style to be, I started practicing and refining what I envisioned in my mind. And on the day before my exam, I lifted my latest practice work and smiled.
***
The next day, I was standing in the enchanting workshop with the rest of my classmates as the invigilator read out the rules of the exam. It all boiled down to us picking out something to engrave, be it a weapon, armor, or jewelry, and we will not be graded so much on the effect of the enchantment, but the technique applied.
So when the timer started, I went to collect the equipment I wanted to enchant and materials I was going to use like I was some MasterChef contestant, after grabbing a shortsword to use as my base, I went to collect the other materials and tools, but unlike the other contestant- I mean my classmates, I went to the section that stocked metals and grabbed myself some Mana Copper.
Like the Mana Steel my word is made of, Mana Copper is a metal that has been artificially imbued with mana, and it is most likely the cheapest mana conductive metal around.
As for what I did, with the shortsword and Mana Copper? Well, I applied some blacksmithing… not exactly, but close enough, luckily the practical exam was taking place in a well-stocked and equipped workshop, so I had all the clamps and tools to do what I wanted.
I started by securing the shortsword to the bench and started sketching out my desired design on the shortsword with a pencil, this was followed by me grabbing some hand-engraving tools. Mana Copper wire and a few other tools.
When I had everything I wanted gathered on my workbench, a few of the invigilators around gave me questioning looks but kept silent. It was only Professor Bixby who gave my gathered material a look of interest, especially because the material I gathered did not include any mana-conductive ink everyone else was using.
When I was ready, I started the engraving process. The engraving tool bit into the steel of the shortsword as I used a small hammer to tap on the back of the engraving tool. But a few minutes in, I realized that I was going far too slow for the allotted time given, so I decided I was going to need to use an advantage the other kids around me most likely did not have, Aura, and nowhere in the rules for this exam say I could not use aura.
I activated my aura, catching the attention of almost everyone in the room, and with my enhanced strength and me pushing my aura into the engraving tool, I forwent the small engraving hammer and carved a groove along the lines I sketched, only slowing down to either rotate the shortsword or reposition myself.
It took slightly longer than the time it took to sketch my engraving on the shortsword, but I was done. I checked my engravings to see if there were any mistakes and found a few places that needed a touch-up before I proceeded with the next part.
After the touch-up, I looked around to see how much time I had left and noticed that more than half the time had passed, and as I looked around, I saw that more than a quarter of the class was already done with their inscriptions and were waiting for the ink to dry so they could activate the enchantments and test for any flaws.
Knowing that I was cutting it close with what I had left to do, I got back to work.
Now that the engraving was done, it was time to inlay the engraving with the Mana Copper wire, but first, I had to purposely scuff up the inner grooves of the engraving on the count of me not using a hammer and just pushing through with the engraving tool in a smooth motion with my aura empowered body, because if I did not do so, the softer mana copper may have trouble gripping onto the engraved grooves when I inlay the mana copper wire.
After I was done scuffing up the inner grooves of the engraving, I started inlaying the mana copper wire into the grooves with the help of the peen side of a ball peen hammer to smash and deform the softer mana copper into the grooves.
When I was done with the inlaying, the only thing left was to sand away the deformed mana copper that did not fit into the grooves and I would be done.
“You all have ten minutes left.” the invigilator announced.
I looked down at my work and internally cussed, I will really be cutting it close. My hand became a blur as I burned through sandpaper
“10, 9, 8.” before I knew it, the invigilator was counting down as I finished sanding my shortsword. “5, 4, 3.” having no time, to check the effects themselves, I only had time to run my mana thru the blade to make sure that all the mana copper traces were intact and feeding mana properly.
“2,1. All work and tools down, the practical exam has come to an end, if you are found to be still working, you will be disqualified from this exam and brought up on charges of academic dishonesty.”
As I looked down at my final product, it was a shortsword that had its flat side end up looking like a metal version of a modern circuit board.
The only difference was where a person in my previous world would expect to see resistors, capacitors, diodes, and other components, there were now runes and glyphs, and where other students were happy just to use a mana conductive ink to inscribe the runes, glyphs, and the traces that connected them, I took the risker route and used the cheapest mana conductive metal there was to do all my inscription onto the cheap steel shortsword.
Soon, Professor Bixby, his minder/warden Brunhilde, and an invigilator with a clipboard walked to the first table, Professor Bixby started inspecting the presented works and graded them as the invigilator with the clipboard wrote stuff down.