Year 2, Summer, First Month, First Week.
“… That’s it.”
Just like all the villagers listening to Wein’s lecture, Karl was speechless. After teaching his disciples for three months, he was used to Anya surpassing Wein in practically everything, the girl’s talent was only overshadowed by her work ethics and diligence. Wein wasn’t lazy or talentless, it was just a bad match to be paired with Anya. However, that could be changing, Wein’s lecture was, without a doubt, his debut in the history of the village ascension.
Master AI’s comment about him couldn’t hit more on the spot:
‘-- You should not wish for every disciple to be like Anya. The difference in experience, perspective and approach, will create a more diverse and creative environment, which is better for Alchemy to thrive.--’
If Wein had the same tireless and hands-on approach as Anya, he would never have come up with such an innovative and useful idea. On the last day of the deadline, Wein presented his idea for the magic re-drawer. First, he explained that the idea was born from the distress he felt to spend many hours a day re-drawing Arrays. If he could reduce those hours, how much time and spiritual energy would be saved for his studies? Of course, as the Alchemy Department Head, Reiner was rather thinking of how many more tools he would be able to re-draw with such a tool.
Indeed, marvel ideas could be born from the different experiences and struggles each disciple would have or sympathize with. Wein proposed to use the Manipulation Array to move the magic ink onto the drawing, he even said it was possible to create a magic imprinter, to draw the Arrays, in the future. From a technical point of view, his idea had many flaws and was clearly hastily prepared, missing even a simple draw to show which Arrays he was planning to use. However, from the creative point of view, Karl and everyone else was amazed by the idea.
Karl started to consider the possibilities and even consulted Master AI in the possibility of expanding it to a magic imprinter.
‘I could use the Focus Rune to reinforce the imprinted concepts on the Arrays, would that work?’
‘-- It would. The Focus Rune effect is to increase the energy concentration on the material by converting magic energy into it. Since the concepts are imprinted with spiritual energy, the Rune can reinforce the fading effect. However, you would need to offer a proper reference, or else how would the Rune know which concept would be reinforced?--’
‘Hm… Like using the same Array as a reference to reinforce it. For example, using a fresh Extraction Array as a reference to reinforce an older one, would that work?’
‘…’
The silence meant that Karl needed to test it, he would probably learn something from it.
‘OK, I’ll try it… ’
***
“Shoot it!”
The volley of arrows flew towards the wooden targets, but less than half hit them. Tael could only sigh at the performance, the targets were located too far, Old Bill even commented that only high-level archers would easily hit it. But, Tael was pressing the archers to get it done, after all, if he could do it, they should also.
Of course, the group of archers he was training right now was the elite archers, most of which had been with the team since the previous year. For them, Tael had requested training with the new arrows, which had metal arrowheads and were more expensive. Because the new arrows were a limited resource, they avoided training with them, mostly settling for the wood and stone arrows crafted by the Crafting Department.
Another reason why he expected them to match the ability of high-level archers with years of experience, was because they were using wind-enhanced bows. Because he requested, Karl had imprinted six bows and some arrows in advance to allow the archers to start training.
Besides the usual reasons for failing, like inexperience, he was pretty sure that the difficulty of using the magic-enhanced bows was preventing the archers to improve themselves. Holding and matching the positions for the two crystals (energy crystal and wind crystal) wasn’t easy and would sometimes even spoil their concentration. Even for him, it was difficult to manage the two crystals while shooting, but even so, the power of the activated arrows was worth the trouble.
‘I should talk with Karl about it…’
***
Kanin cleared the sweat from his forehead and pointed to the common bamboo stick that should be replaced by the magic reinforced one the boy was carrying. He sighed in relief, the fence was officially complete, now they could relax a little and reduce the security around the new fields.
After sending the boy away, he continued checking on the villagers working in the magic fields until he found another two that looked pale and sick. He disregarded their refusal and sent them to recover in the new healing pavilion. Since they started working outside the village barrier, the villagers have been suffering regularly with magic poison. It took some time for Kanin to accept that something that could improve their body could also harm it, but after feeling it himself he could only accept it.
Previously, this wasn’t a big problem because the hunt team exposure was limited to a day or two in a month, but the farming villagers would be exposed daily. The addition of some detoxifying herbs in their food, like the burdock plant, helped to manage the problem for the first month, but now it was becoming worse. The teams would bring more herbs but the supply couldn’t keep up with the demand, and there was only so much the herbs could help with.
For now, Kanin could only increase his vigilance and replace any villagers that showed symptoms of magic poisoning. Fortunately, after resting for a day under the care of elder Said, the sick villagers could go back to working in the regular fields or other tasks. The Council decided that only after a month, the inflicted would be allowed to return to work in the new fields. However, the numbers of poisoned villagers were increasing and soon they would be out of new villagers to pick up the job outside.
Thankfully, the installation of the new WET was helping decrease the numbers needed to keep the fields, the rest of the work was mostly done during the sowing and harvest. Actually, the WET was presenting daily problems, connections between bamboo sticks would break or get clogged, but the cost of maintaining one villager at all times checking and repairing it was worth it.
Next, Kanin moved inside the barrier to check on the regular fields. Even with the new magic fields, the Council decided to keep the old regular fields working, they would need every spare resource for what was coming. The tasks at the regular fields would keep him busy for the rest of day, after all, it was time for their first harvest. The summer harvest wasn’t as important and big as the fall harvest, at this early time, they could only harvest greens and some fast-growing vegetables, like radishes and green beans.
Previously, the villagers couldn’t spare a large space to grow these vegetables and greens because they would need to focus their limited space on growing staple foods, like roots and wheat. However, now they decided to use a third of their space to grow the fast-growing crops and improve their nutrition as soon as possible.
The sight of dozens of straw baskets filled with fresh green vegetables made Kanin smile unknowingly. After checking on all of the harvesting villagers and reminding them to be careful to don’t damage any parts, he joined them. This task would be very pleasant.
***
Teal looked curiously around the Alchemy Department pavilion, it wasn’t much different from the other ones. The entrance was a big opened side, next to it was a big stone table where many villagers worked on processing the magic materials while chatting about Alchemy. At the end of the table, Karl’s mother seemed to be counting some energy crystals before storing them on a wooden chest. Further, a dozen or so villagers sat on the ground, drawing on wood, stones and bamboo sticks. Finally, on the opposite side, Karl sat on the ground discussing something with his disciples while writing on the ground with a branch.
“We would need to keep fresh drawn Arrays to be used as a reference and place only one person to draw a particular Array in all the magic tools, Wein could take the Extraction and Activation Arrays, while Anya could do the Extraction Property and Direction Array… Oh, hey T… Can I help you with something?”
“Hey Karl, Can I talk to you for a minute… It’s about the bow and arrows…”
Karl nodded and Tael explained the problems they were having with the design.
“We could update the drawings in the bows and work with the Crafting Department to fixate the crystal to the bows…”
After discussing some details with his disciples, Karl joined Tael and went to the Crafting pavilion. They found Old Bill and Alfeur teaching some teens to work the wood, and exchange some greetings before explaining the problem.
The next day, Tael was already testing the newly designed elemental bow. Karl already had the design in mind for some time, but the imprinting cost was very high. However, now that the magic re-drawer had appeared into the picture, he could afford to be more flexible with the drawing costs.
The bow had two simple Arrays (Extraction and Activation) to power the weapon, the activation would be drawn where the Archer would hold the bow while shooting; One combined Array (Direction and Properties Extraction) to extract wind affinity and move it towards the arrowhead, the actual direction would be visualized when drawing the Array. Finally, in the arrowhead, the usual Sharpness Rune, plus the Focus Rune that would concentrate the wind energy attracted by the wind affinity.
Different from the other elemental weapons, the elemental bow would use wind affinity instead of other wind properties because the affinity would attract the wind energy available everywhere. Like the other weapons, the archers would have to pay attention to usage, only pressing the Activation Array before battles or at critical times.
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