Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

“I did it!” Delair cheered as the notification rang out in her thoughts, telling them both that she’d gained her fourth level of enchanting and officially reached the point in both it and her crafting that Ben had hoped to get her to by the start of the next wave with months still to go.

“Excellent work, kiddo,” Ben laughed as he reached out to ruffle her hair. “I’m proud of you. Hmm, in that case, why don’t we change things up a bit here now that you’ve got that done. After all, you’ve got two new magics to go with it too, improving their levels will improve the power you get when enchanting with them.”

“Sounds great!” she said, her eyes gleaming in excitement. “What are you thinking?”

“Depends, how hard did you want to work?”

“Till I can beat all of your other students into the dirt!”

“Ha, a little extreme there but you got it. In that case, we’ll see what levels we can squeeze out of you. It’s going to be a little uncomfortable so just tell me when you want to stop and we will, okay?”

“Okay!”

“Perfect.”

He got her to take a seat at a desk, materializing a variety of stones and metals for her to work on and watched her look at each one while he adjusted her circlet, adding another mind to the three he already had it set up for and significantly increasing the speeds she’d perceive the world too as he instructed her by speaking directly into her head.

“I’ll give you different ways I want you shaping each substance as you go and I’ll let you know what magic you’ll be using each time but you’ll be balancing the both of them. It’s not more than I think you can handle but with your perception of time changed, you’ll find your mana being spent faster than you expect too but I’ll be making sure to keep your pool full so feel free to go wild. This is about you improving your skill, don’t worry about anything else. The only issue is that it’s going to feel uncomfortable so if it gets to be too much, just let me know and we’ll take a break, okay?”

“Okay!” she tried to tell him so fast that the word came out all at once, threatening to make him laugh as she dealt with the degree her thoughts were being sped as she started using her newer magics while Ben carefully poured the power she spent back into her, creating a small discomfort of having her regeneration rates exceeded but not the sort one would get for overfilling a soul, making sure he kept well below that point for his own experience with the pain such a thing could cause, all while he let himself watch her work, seeing as she excelled.

Like any person he’d pass in the streets, his student had benefited from his awakenings for the knowledge he could give, incorporating the feeling of how skills should be used within the depth of her psych and witnessing as she put it all into practice, all while he subtly gave her more.

While harmless, he’d seen in Foast that a big enough volume could leave one with a headache, though that particular example was after transmitting the information he held on hundreds of skills, but he still wanted to treat doing the same to Delair with care as he subtly gave her more, slipping all he knew about material science into her head to be used as if it had always been there and drastically changing the nature of the lessons he’d give for it.

Until then, he’d pull her into his head to teach her theory while getting her body to practice in the real world, but that was clearly no longer necessary. He could teach her things in a way that would leave her feeling like she’d already learned it long ago, both faster and more efficiently than any other way of helping her grow in those fronts. Doing anything else was basically pointless.

And since she’s benefiting from the effects of my knowledge skill there really shouldn’t be a need to reinforce it but… mmh, I’ll still give her a more traditional lesson once or twice a week, just to be on the safe side and to properly confirm that she’s both digested the information properly and that it really does stick. And then from there…

All there would be left was getting her to grow as much under his tutelage as possible in the time they had left and since the fourth level mark was already met, he was placing the new goal post at the sixth level for both her crafting and enchanting and when it came to her other magics, he’d just see what they could get. He didn’t view her plant magic as his concern, even if he had given her some help with it, and it was already at the fourth level anyway but as for the last two, the zeroth level they were currently at would doubtless be a few levels higher by then, even if it brought another thought to his head.

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She now has three non-affinitied magics. One more and then one day she could become a proper non-affinitied mage instead if she awakens them.

A result that could be valuable enough that it clearly needed to be discussed to give the girl some proper consideration, leaving him to reach out to gently pull the circlet from her head as he took a seat across from her, bringing her back to real time.

“Sorry, kiddo, looks like you need to take a small break because there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Alright, what’s up?”

“I know you enjoy enchanting and you’re doing real well at it, you’re already making for an excellent enchanter,” he told her, watching as she lit up under the compliment. “But, from the bit of practice you have with the two so far, how would you say you’re enjoying your two new magics, material user and destruction?”

“They’re fun! It’s neat having options to use besides plant and it gives me some variety for my enchanting too. I’m glad I got to learn them.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Then in that case, let’s talk about the future a bit. You’ve said before that you want to grow as much as you can and I told you I’d help you, so right now we’re going to discuss how you’d want to grow. Of the non-affinitied magics you’ve got, I’m comfortable calling your enchanting your main one and while this would still be a ways off for you, as you improve with it you have two options I want you to consider. You can either try to awaken the magic as is, or, you can gain one more branch of that magic type to aim instead to become a non-affinitied mage. All that matters is which option you’d prefer.”

He could sense her rising excitement as she considered it, even if she tried to stamp the feeling down a bit as she thought the question over, asking one of her own in return.

“Do you think I should try for that?”

“Ha, this is something you need to figure out for yourself kiddo, I can’t give you any answers. I will tell you there’s positives and negatives at both ends of the spectrum though. If you want to work as an enchanter then having non-affinitied magic will give you the entire magic type to enchant with which is basically a world of options to have at your fingertips but, if your passion is enchanting and not the totality of that magic then it will be a lot easier from you to level it further as an awakened enchanting alone since trying to level that general magic means practicing and studying that magic as a whole. Something I can help you do as well, if that’s what you want, but would still slow you down compared to how far you could go solely as an enchanter and if you don’t enjoy many of those other magics then you probably won’t get too far with it even with all of the help I can give you. Of course, at the same time, it’s not like you need to go far. If you become a proper non-affinitied mage then there’s not going to be much you wouldn’t be able to do even if you never get another level to it and that alone would be enough to make you a very, very rich enchanter. In the end, it’s all going to come down to how you feel and what you want to get out of your skills but this isn’t something you need to decide immediately, it’s just something I want you to think on and if you let me know in the future then we can work towards whatever specific goal you end up with, alright?”

He could see that the conversation had put her deep in thought, the young girl torn between imagining how impressive it would be to reach the level of a non-affinitied mage while at the same time questioning if that really was what she wanted compared to growing one of the skills she was focusing on as far as it would go, coming to an unexpected conclusion.

“Can’t I just do both?”

“Huh?” he let out as he thought it over, looking at what he knew of the magic and considering the question the best he could based on the information he held. “I mean, maybe? I’m not aware of anyone else doing something like that but I suppose there’s technically no reason you couldn’t work to awaken your enchanting and whatever other magics you care about before acquiring ones you care less about to work on raising to the level of a non-affinitied mage, although doing that would be a lot harder for little benefit… or would it? Okay, in theory, if you awakened a few magics in their individual forms and then managed to awaken to a complete non-affinitied magic after then that might actually give a pretty significant boost to the control and power you could demonstrate with your original magics but you’d still have to split your efforts between both to get to that point. It would definitely be harder than doing one or the other.”

“And cooler!” she told him, the difficulty ignored in favour of imagining how impressive it would be. “That’s the option, I want to do that!”

“Ha, alright, if you’re sure then that can be something we can work towards,” he told her. “But in that case, you now instead need to decide if you’re going to just try to awaken your enchanting before that or if you’re going to try to awaken either or both of your other two magics too, and from there, decide what four would be interesting enough to try to raise to the second tier together after because if that’s what you want to do, you need to have interest. And then if none of that scares you off, we can work out a study plan. Sounds good?”

“Sounds great!”

Well, ambition is a good thing to have at least. He told himself as he mentally ticked up what he’d need her to get to for all of her magics before the third wave arrived, lest she spend the rest of her life trying to turn those goals into a reality.