Chương 58: Chapter 53: Don’t you love crafting? I love crafting.

I love crafting.

Liene had long since passed the point of decorating her workspace. She was now cultivating an ecosystem. Crystals hung from the shelves, and little woven charms had been tied around most of the drawer handles. One had so many that Fabrisse wasn't sure the drawer could still open, accentuated by the flowers sticking out from two half-open manuals nearby. There were seven pots on the windowsill now. Fabrisse remembered four. He pushed aside a trailing vine and found the corner of the desk beneath it.

At least the desk was still there. Liene, meanwhile, went straight to an overfilled bookshelf and reached behind a stack of specimen boxes. She pulled out a book thick enough to qualify as minor construction material and dropped it onto the little patch of desk they could still see. Somehow, she always knew where everything was. Fabrisse had accepted this years ago. What he had not accepted was her continued criticism of his organizational habits. Liene dropped something onto the desk. THOOM, came the manual.

Compendium of Introductory Thaumaturgical Artifice: Common Materials, Emotional Resonance, and Foundational Bonding Techniques. She opened it somewhere near the middle. Hundreds of pages slid past beneath her fingers.

"Metal compatibility... no... liquid catalysts... definitely not…" She frowned.

"Ooo, historical adhesives! That's fun. Don't you love crafting? I love crafting." Pages after pages turned.

"Fire... Fire…" She stopped.

"Page one thousand eight hundred and forty-two."

"You own the complete Artifice Compendium?" Fabrisse asked. Liene looked up.

"Of course. You have to if you want to prove you're actually serious. Besides, they're discontinuing Thaumaturgical Artifice next semester. If you ever wanted to take it, this was your last chance." Fabrisse was more disappointed than he expected. Then again, it was impressive the subject had lasted this long. Enrollment had been falling ever since the Synod outlawed modifying and enhancing dungeon relics. That had once been half the appeal.

You studied artifice because you wanted to restore an ancient focus, improve some forgotten relic, or drag something out of a dungeon and figure out how the hell it worked. Now you weren't allowed to do most of that. Fabrisse leaned closer to the book. At the top of the page, it read: No artifact possesses a single correct construction. Successful artifice is achieved by satisfying resonance conditions while maintaining harmony between materials. Liene clapped.

"Right! I brought everything we might need!" She opened one satchel, then reached for a second. Fabrisse hadn't even noticed the wooden storage case until she dragged that over too. Out came the Embermoth crystals, each wrapped separately in padded cloth, followed by three gauges of silver wire, copper filament, gold binding pins, polished riverglass quartz, smoky quartz, and a little wooden organizer full of brass spacers sorted by size. Then Liene produced a cloth pouch embroidered with tiny dancing flames.

"Emergency decorative feathers." Fabrisse looked at the pouch, then at the rapidly disappearing desk.

"We're making one necklace." Liene blinked.

"Well, obviously."

"I don't follow."

"You talk like you don't bring a thousand material parts every time you craft."

"I don't." Fabrisse gestured toward the manual.

"I consult the manual first. Then I determine the optimal materials. Then I gather only those materials." Liene tilted her head.

"But…" She looked genuinely confused.

"The fun part is trying different combinations to see which one's marginally better." He scratched his head.

"It is certainly a methodology."

"Exactly!" Liene beamed. Easy for her to say. Liene could test as many combinations as she pleased. Aether came naturally to her. If one arrangement proved disappointing, she simply took it apart and tried another. Not to mention he'd always worked on artifacts with Severa. With Severa, everything was decided before they started. She'd spend as long as she needed with the manual until she knew exactly what the work required. Then she'd start calling for things.

"Clear quartz." He'd fetch it.

"Twenty centimeters of silver wire." He'd measure it.

"Ashwood spacer. The smaller one." Usually, he already had it in his hand. This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source. Once she started casting, Fabrisse just kept things moving. He liked that arrangement. Liene flattened the page with one hand.

"Here." She pointed near the top. Embermoth Crystal Temperament: Restless. Aspirational. Highly responsive to emotional coloration. Embermoth Crystal responds strongly to emotions associated with Fire thaumaturgy, particularly Passion and Rage. Hesitation tends to weaken in its presence. For best results, pair with a conductor capable of carrying emotional resonance. A boxed summary sat beneath the description. Emotional Profile Resonance Rage +++ Passion +++ Joy ++ Anxiety -- That made sense.

Moths flew toward fire. Liene found the next entry. Volcanic Garnet Temperament: Forceful. Unyielding. Reinforces Rage and Conviction. Minor suppression of Fear. Favored in military-grade offensive catalysts due to its stability under repeated high-output casting. Quick Properties Aether Stability ++ Emotional Profile Resonance Rage ++ Conviction + Fear – Liene tapped the margin.

"See? It's much easier to buy than Embermoth Crystal. The emotional profile isn't as close…" She slid the garnet beside the crystal.

"But that's precise why I brought it." Fabrisse glanced between the two entries.

"You don't think the crystal might already provide enough Rage?"

"Maybe." She shrugged.

"The manual doesn't give a fixed limit. Look." She turned the page and pointed to another paragraph. There is no fixed limit to emotional reinforcement. An artifact may tolerate more or less depending on its construction and the artificer performing the binding. Beyond that limit, competing resonances may bleed into one another or destabilize the artifact entirely. So the answer was basically it depends. Better construction gave you more room to work with, as did being better at the actual binding.

Liene tapped the garnet.

"Maybe adding this makes the necklace stronger." Her finger moved to the Embermoth Crystal.

"Or maybe this is already enough." Her smile widened.

"That's why we brought everything. We can actually find out."

"You really like tapping," Fabrisse said. Liene looked down.

"I do, don't I?" She tapped the page again.

"You don't like it?"

"I didn't say that."

"Oh." She folded her hands behind her back for a moment.

"Oh well. Let's move on to the next page. Now, ashwood." She read aloud. Temperament: Patient. Accommodating. Reinforces Calm and Resolve while supporting emotional stability. Commonly used in defensive implements, healing foci, and beginner training staves. Liene frowned.

"See? Ashwood's amazing. And cheap! They grow everywhere. They're just not very useful here." Beneath the description was another summary. Emotional Profile Resonance Calm +++ Resolve + Passion + She picked up one of the polished beads anyway and rolled it between her fingers.

"If we were making a healing focus or a training staff, I'd use this without even thinking about it." Fabrisse looked from the bead to the Embermoth Crystal.

"The Calm would work against the Passion."

"Yeah, that's the idea." Liene put the bead aside.

"But there's another problem. None of these actually make you cast better. They just make certain emotions easier to reach and hold. That's great if you know what you're doing with emotional modulation." He didn't.

"Then the necklace still needs to work as a focus." Liene grinned.

"So you do remember the theory!" She rummaged through another compartment and pulled out a thin coil of silver wire.

"Here we go. Argent Thread." She found the entry a few pages later. Argent Thread Temperament: Receptive. Responsive. Exceptional aether conductivity. Favored for rapid sequential spellcasting due to minimal resonance loss during transmission. Quick Properties Aether Flow +++ Resonance Loss – Aether Flexibility ++ Liene pulled a length of wire between her fingers.

"This is doing most of the actual work."

"Carrying the aether?"

"Quickly. Fire spells tend to come in bursts, so if the conductor can't keep up, casting starts to feel…"

"Sticky."

"Yes! Sticky sticky." The Eidralith would probably call that increased DEX while casting. Maybe it would shave something off FP consumption too. Unfortunately, nothing in the entry actually mentioned Fire. Lightning should work just as well with it. Probably better, considering how quickly charge dispersed. And Shadow— Huh. He'd never seen Argent Thread recommended for Shadow, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.

There just weren't enough Shadow thaumaturges for anyone to have tested much of anything properly. Still, now he wanted to put Shadow through it. He looked up.

"So… when do we start?" Liene grinned.

"I was wondering when you'd ask."