Chaotic Craftsman Worships The Cube

While Delair trained in both her enchanting and connect, Ben having gotten her level in the new skill to the point where she could use the two together, Mora made items she could practice on while Ben explored the things he’d learned, making, materializing, and enchanting as he went.

Largely, the things he’d created in his realm had succeeded within the mortal plane too and of those that didn’t, the difference in results simply became a way for him to narrow down on the different rules the matter of reality played under, especially concerning how the magic materials could be used in chemistry. Any failed attempt meant that observations were taken and applied in different ways above before being retested below, letting him develop more robust theories as he began to model just how mana would alter one of the universe’s base elements.

With that being all well and good, leading to the sort of understanding on the topic that would make for an excellent paper to add to the library or even to show the grey for whatever they’d be able to get from it, but nothing that immediately helped him in what he considered to be his more important research.

That’s going to be materializing.

Using molecular structures he’d either managed to learn from the system in his study with Verbum or else arrangements he’d figured out himself, Ben materialized them all in the form of small cubes, applying enchantments designed to force their molecular arrangements into place, but on a far weaker scale than what he was truly capable of. He wanted to watch as the enchantments broke down, and the results that would have on his creations as each enchantment decayed before his eyes.

Leaving results clear across dozens of tests to determine what could or couldn’t be used. Every structure changed, but there was a clear difference between those that did it safely and those that didn’t, with some combusting, shattering into sharp shards, or outright exploding in a few cases that Ben had to contain, and questions on his mind about which ones to use.

Even the ones that get a bit dangerous during enchantment decay, considering that the enchantments I make should be able to last for thousands of years at a minimum, there’s actually not a huge concern about them breaking down. Even if I should avoid using some of these, I don’t need to play it too safe.

Besides, his test had looked at the results of his enchantments breaking down over the course of ten minutes. In a real-world scenario, his enchantments would instead break down over the course of years, making the change in the material a far more gradual thing. He didn’t want to pick anything that would destroy the substance as a whole when used, but if it was a slow shift like what Inux’s original body had to have gone through, then that would be a lot more manageable.

Which now comes the bigger issue I have, he sighed as he wrapped up those tests. Technically, I have more resources to work with than Inux’s maker, and that could make a huge difference in the quality of the end product, but I can’t use most of them.

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Surely, potential existed within the newly created magic materials, but given that most of them were affinitied and that the majority of the substances that made Inux up needed to be materialized, using any of them in anything akin to chemistry was a no-go from the start. He’d be able to do more with the non-affinitied ones; he just needed to run some further tests on them first, but given he’d already confirmed that he didn’t have enough information on them, that became a new barrier.

Which means I’m going to need to pass that too. Ugh, okay, looks like another late night out.

“No.”

“In my defense, I have things I’d rather be doing too,” Ben shrugged, seeing the tired look in Verbum’s eyes. “Unfortunately for you, you’re a very handy resource, and unfortunately for me, I’m not one to quit halfway on my goals.”

“This isn’t going to take all night again, is it? I don’t care what you or the gods of this world think; I can’t just live off of power naps.”

“It… probably won’t,” Ben told him. “There’s just a few more things I need you to look at, but hopefully, they’ll be a bit more straightforward than a living mythic item could be.”

“Things such as?”

“These.”

He materialized a few simple substances in front of Verbum, some of the new magic materials that had reached a point in their study where their purpose was known and understood, Ben holding high hopes for it all as he did.

The attempt came down to a level of uncertainty about how the system processed and stored information about the world. It would bind to every person, that was undeniable, and as such, meant that anything a person knew or experienced was stored within it, but there had to be more beyond that. The system was designed to spread, which meant that it extended off of anyone with access to it to a certain extent, and more than that, since Verbum could access information from the totality of the system, even concerning demon worlds countless light years away, that meant it was all still connected. Even if the exact limits of it and some of the details of how it worked were currently unknown to him despite having read up on the design documents provided by its very maker, there was a chance for it to take in information through non-mortal means.

Now, Ben wasn’t going so far as to hope that it would be able to tell him anything and everything about the various new magic materials that filled the world, though the research center for them was going to be the next step in their journey, but he did have his hopes that by combining observations the various researchers had made, some of which perhaps they themselves hadn’t realized were relevant, with whatever the system itself might have gleamed outside of the experimentations going in, that there’d be more to learn. Even if not every detail and magical effect, if he could find out just a few more, along with even one or two ways they’d react chemically with other substances, then he’d have a greater area of research he could explore before his true attempt at constructing a body at the rank he desired. He was attempting the impossible, after all, he needed every benefit he could get.

And as Verbum gave in, looking over the known examples Ben was able to provide, it felt like his overall odds had improved. This was the best chance he had, both for making a body worthy of Inux as well as making a mythic item, the path to that leading to a blessing like no other from the crafting gods and, if things would finally go his way, the awakening he so desired, leaving only to gather what final bits of knowledge and testing he could before it would be time to apply it.