The Concept of Crafting

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Consuming Lance

An expertly made lance forged from petricite and hungering truesteel, it will consume both blood and mana to fuel its strength.

When fed mana: Empowers the lance, increasing its strength.

When fed blood: Repairs damage to the lance and activates the innate ability [Vampirism].

[Vampirism]: Slowly absorbs mana from the victim with each strike, storing excess. Wounds opened by this weapon are harder to heal. The lance will begin to drain the target's blood if kept within an open wound.

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I just stare at the description for a while before beginning to chuckle. Before long, I'm laughing so hard my eyes begin to tear up. In the span of a few hours, I got my class, made myself a temporary replacement leg, and created a weapon that would put master smiths to shame.

I could vaguely hear Allysa mutter something about how Mythic classes are unfair before chuckling along with me. Still chuckling, I retrieved a few pieces of leather and threw together a basic sheath for my lance, just a simple harness with a few loops that the lance sits in across the side of my lower half.

Taking several steps to make sure it holds, I make Allysa the promised bar of hungering truesteel before finally turning back to her, still smiling as I pass her the incredibly expensive metal. She takes it almost reverently before putting both bars somewhere into her robes. She starts to say something, but pauses as I suddenly sway a bit, a massive headache setting in now that I stopped crafting. Allysa grimaces, steadying me and helping me to a seat.

“Eh, guess you got a bit overexcited, huh? Seems like you have mana exhaustion. It's what happens when you empty your mana stores repeatedly or extensively in a short time. Looks like your skills do cost mana after all.” She explained as I held my head in my hands, wishing this had been explained before. I could vaguely feel several system messages awaiting me, but those could wait until I could think straight. Reaching once more into her robes, which I was now convinced had an entire vault under them, she withdrew a glowing cyan bottle that I recognized as a mana potion. Allysa helped me drink it, the faint taste of raspberries washing away the headache.

“Thank you…” I sigh. “But seriously, how much stuff do you have under those robes? First two large ingots, then a potion, and I assume there's more?”

She raises an eyebrow, leaning back a bit. “Oh, so you want to see under my robes, do you?” Allysa said, grinning. I opened my mouth to respond, then closed it and blushed such a bright red, I could have charred wood. I buried my face into my hands and began mumbling to myself in my embarrassment as Allysa fell to the ground clutching her stomach, laughing so hard it turned to wheezing. This continued for a few minutes until I managed to pull myself together enough to look anywhere but my palms and Allysa could breathe again.

“Aha…haha…That never gets old,” She said, still trying to catch her breath. “And to actually answer your question, I have a spatial pocket on the inner lining of my robes that is linked to a special subspace. If the pocket gets damaged, I simply have to repair the enchantment and it will automatically connect to it.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. Thinking it over, I blushed again when I realized that I actually wouldn't mind seeing what she had underneath her robes. Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, and drawing a strange look from Allysa, I stood once more.

“Well, I've tested all my skills, but I think it's time to check a few other things.” I said, glancing over at a couple squirrels sitting on the edge of the roof nearby. She followed my gaze, becoming confused before understanding dawned on her. Allysa nodded, quickly casting the first spell I'd seen her use and freezing the squirrels from the neck down, causing them to slide off the roof with a pitiful squeak. I trotted over and collected them, bringing them over to the table as they struggled uselessly against the ice. Wasting no time, I stripped the arbor essentia from a piece of wood and infused one of the squirrels with it. I wanted to know what imbuing essentia into living things did, and wood seemed the most appropriate for a squirrel.

The moment I imbued it, there was a sickening crunch, and then a dull thump as the squirrel imploded, the ribcage folding in on itself and limbs compacting into its torso. A small fountain of blood was ejected from the crater where its head had been, and both of us recoiled in disgust and horror. The other squirrel, seeing this, began thrashing even more violently in its futile attempts to escape. I gulped at the squishy mass that had been a squirrel, before turning to the other one. Unfortunately for both it and my stomach, I had one last thing to test, and the ice wasn't going to hold much longer. I reached out and checked the concepts within the squirrel, which turned out to be life, beast, and something significantly more vague which I believed to be thought. The more surprising thing is that the bestia essentia had intent to it.

Though interesting, I wanted something a bit more useful than the concept of thought, and so attempted to strip the beast concept along with its intent. There was a significant amount of resistance, even from just a squirrel, but I overcame it after about a minute of struggle. This one was even more horrifying than the other one, with the squirrel just… unmaking itself, its pelt, bones, flesh, and blood just falling apart and disconnecting from each other. I stepped back rapidly, the essentia in my hand forgotten. I could hear Allysa vomiting somewhere behind me, and honestly, I couldn't blame her. I turned away from the pile of gore that was slowly disintegrating into nothingness and walked over to Allysa, holding her hair up and patting her back as she continued to throw up.

After a few minutes, she managed to pull herself together a bit, and it was about then that I noticed something odd: the essentia I was holding was significantly smaller than what I had extracted from the squirrel, and it seemed to be shrinking even more. I quickly dropped it as I realized that it was slowly sinking into my hand, but by then it was too late. I noticed several more System messages appearing in my log, but waved them away for now. Using sense concepts on myself, I noticed that I couldn't tell the difference from one concept to the next within my body, and checking the now recovered Allysa yielded the same. However, I could sense the beast concept I just accidentally absorbed mixing and fusing smoothly with my own essentia until it vanished completely into the mix.

The only thought I had at that moment was: Well, shit.