Alice had someone get her a few old iron rings to start her first experiment with System enchanting. Most System enchantments were on rings or articles of clothing, and while Alice wasn’t entirely sure why that was the case, it didn’t hurt to follow suit until she knew more.

It only took a [Servant] twenty minutes to get her a small crate of cheap, worn-out iron rings. Alice pulled out her first iron ring, and started thinking about what she wanted to do.

She had never created a System enchantment before, and she hadn’t had any opportunities to observe other people create System enchantments. Alice had devoted most of her time to studying the System itself, and had focused on learning her traditional and consumable enchantments when she had extra time. Which was unfortunate, because Alice was now realizing just how useful System enchantments would be in her current situation.

Ever since the System had collapsed, Alice had a problem. She wanted examples of System fractals to study, and she had memorized several of them using her memory Perks and her mana-construct analyzing Perks. However, it was still very useful to observe new kinds of System fractal where possible, and to have active chunks of System mana to study. After all, Alice’s memory was now perfect, but she could only remember things she had observed in the first place. As her [Perception] stat got higher and she gained more Perks to analyze and observe mana, she also needed new samples of System mana to investigate.

The System was gone, so Alice naturally couldn’t observe the System itself except during those weird surges of System mana that seemed to flood the planet every so often. But they were unpredictable, and the last surge of rainbow mana had also been followed by monsters growing stronger, which clearly wasn’t part of the System’s regular programming. Alice wasn’t even sure how much use there was in observing the strange floods of rainbow mana.

Which left System enchantments and class seeds as the best sources of new observations. Alice had already put a great deal of effort into studying how class seeds worked, so there was much more value in tapping into new ground. Alice wanted to create a System enchantment using her Perk, and analyze them as if they were constructs created by the System. It wouldn’t be perfect, since System enchantments didn’t have anywhere near the range of abilities the actual System did. But it was still a way to keep her investigation going.

For her first System enchantment, Alice decided to try enchanting a ring of +1 Intelligence. It was one of the simplest enchantments Alice could possibly add to an item, and before Alice did anything more complicated, she figured it was reasonable to make sure she could at least get the perk working and had a rough idea how the process worked.

She started out by trying to visualize what she wanted the ring to do, and trying to feed mana into her newly created Perk. Alice wasn’t quite sure how to make a System enchantment, but she was hoping that the Perk would just automate the whole process if she fed it some mana.

This did not work. It only took Alice a few seconds to realize why. System Enchantments were primarily used by people who weren’t magically gifted. In other words, System enchantments should be created without the use of her magic seeds at all. Trying to use magic to create a System enchantment was totally wrong from the beginning.

Alice frowned. She was so used to using her mana to create enchantments that she hadn’t ever thought about how to create enchantments without her magic seeds. She tried just activating the Perk while holding the ring, just to see what happened. Once again, her Perk failed to accomplish anything.

Alice started feeling rather silly.

She held the ring closer to her face, and squinted at the band of metal. She concentrated on what she wanted the ring to do.

She wanted the ring to make the wearer more intelligent.

She wanted whoever was wearing the ring to have a faster and more nimble mind, and a better understanding of the world around them.

Alice concentrated on her vision of what she wanted, hoping that somehow, the Perk would just make everything fall into place… and once again, nothing happened. Alice didn’t even feel her Perk try to activate – it felt like nothing was happening at all.

Alice sighed, wondering what she was doing wrong. A few moments later, she realized that she didn’t have to puzzle this out on her own. There were plenty of other people that had access to System enchanting Perks, and Cyra should have a lot of people who could help her. After all, System Enchantments were offered to most crafting classes beyond level 50, and they were popular enough that people often picked them.

Alice exited her room, and looked for a [Servant] to help her find a [Tailor] or [Blacksmith] who could help her out. Instead of a [Servant], the first person Alice ran into this time was Illa.

“Lady Illa,” said Alice.

“Lady Alice. It is a pleasure to see you again. I hear that you have conducted a few experiments on some spidercrabs. Did you get anything useful out of the experiments?” asked Illa.

Alice nodded. “I have a few notes about how monsters seem to have adapted to the circumstances we find ourselves in. I’ve already passed everything I found to Immortal Ethan, so he’ll probably give you an in-depth report soon. I wanted to ask about something else. Could you get someone with a System-enchanting Perk to come help me? I have a System-enchanting Perk that I really need to tinker with, but I’m not sure how to operate it. And the Perk’s description doesn’t give me any hints about how to get started.”

Illa paused, and then nodded. “I’ll get someone to bring over one of the town [Tailors]. There is a level 60 [Tailor] named Tallie who should be more than willing to help you for a decent price. Will that suffice?”

“Yes. Thank you, Lady Illa,” said Alice.

“I’ll have her sent to the room you used for spidercrab testing, then,” said Illa.

Alice nodded, and returned to the room she had used to experiment on the spidercrabs.

She noticed that the corpses of the spidercrabs hadn’t all been cleaned up yet, and reached out a kinetic mana tendril to toss the corpses into one of the rubbish bins. And then, as Alice sank one of her mana tendrils into the spidercrab, she blinked in surprise as she felt her mana tendril sink into the spidercrab shell far more easily than it usually did. It was as if the shell was more willing to accept mana than usual.

This was rather interesting. Alice decided to file that away for further study once she was done messing with System enchantments. However, for now, her thoughts were filled with questions of how to get her new Perk online and make her first System enchantment.

Half an hour later, she heard a knock on the door.

“Come in!” yelled Alice.

A moment later, a tall woman with decent [Charisma], black hair, and an easy smile stepped into the room, before giving Alice a close inspection.

“I assume you’re the one I’m supposed to help, Lady Mage?” said the woman. “My name is Tallie. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Alice nodded. “Thank you for coming, Tallie. I’m Alice. I need help getting System enchanting to work. I got a somewhat unusual Perk for it recently, but I can’t quite figure out how to make a System enchantment with it.”

Tallie nodded. “Never taught a Mage how to do something before. What specifically are you trying to enchant? That makes a pretty big difference in how you need to approach a System enchantment.”

“Is that so?” asked Alice.

Tallie nodded. “It is. Did your Perk not have a description about how to activate it?”

Alice shook her head. “With how messed up System descriptions are these days, maybe my Perk was supposed to come with a more detailed set of instructions, but I can’t see it right now. Do they usually have detailed usage instructions?”

“It’s normal for a System enchanting Perk to have a paragraph or two discussing how you’re supposed to make it work, since the process is usually somewhat unique to the Class and Perk. The way a [Blacksmith] makes a System enchantment is different from how a [Tailor] makes a System enchantment. Though there are some commonalities between the two.

“As a [Tailor], my System-enchantment Perk requires that I focus on a certain concept while stitching threads together to create a piece of clothing. The more of the cloth within the clothing is added before I lose concentration, and the better I focus, the better the System enchantment turns out. It also helps if I am doing something related to whatever enchantment I’m trying to make, although that isn’t always practical. It’s exceptionally easy to add an enchantment for [Dexterity], since it already requires nimble fingers to sew and weave. But if you want to imbue a strength enchantment on a dress or a shirt, it’s easier if you add in some way to incorporate your strength into the creation process. For example, adding some weights to your sewing needles, or using your legs or arms to lift up the table you’re sewing on.” Tallie shrugged again. “It’s a bit harder, but there are ways to make it work. The closer you get to the ‘concept’ of what you’re trying to enchant, the better the enchantment will turn out. It can be the difference between a dress that gives +2 Dexterity or +5.”

Alice pursed her lips in thought.

Doing something related to whatever she was trying to enchant wasn’t an approach she would have thought of, but given what she knew about how Class seeds worked, it did make sense. Alice was becoming more and more aware of the fact that a lot of System-related mana constructs responded to concepts. Meanwhile, traditional and consumable enchantments seemed to have much fewer ‘weird’ requirements one needed to fulfill to create them.

“Tallie, just making sure, you can add a System enchantment to anything, right?” asked Alice. She was pretty sure she already knew the answer to this question, but there was no harm in double checking everything.

“Yes, you can add a System enchantment to anything as long as your Class can interact with it. I don’t need to use a special kind of cloth to add a System enchantment – theoretically, I could even use some leftover rags to make a System enchantment, if I wanted to.”

Alice nodded. Consumable and Traditional enchantments all required special materials to get started, while System enchantments seemed to have no such requirement. While Alice knew of a few Perks, such as {Kinetic Enchanting}, that allowed one to add ‘instruction’ slots to materials, Alice wondered whether System enchantments worked by adding an extra ‘instruction’ slot to a material, or simply circumvented the problem in a different way entirely.

Something else that she was eager to observe. But first, Alice still needed to figure out how to get her Perk working.

Since Alice’s System enchantments would all be related to her Perks from her research-oriented Classes or her mental stats, it probably made sense to try doing something ‘intellectual’ while activating her Perk. Tallie said that each Perk’s enchanting style was related to the Class one had gotten the Perk from, so Alice needed to figure out what a [Scientist] would do to enchant something.

The first thing that came to mind was one of the stereotypes from home that Alice had seen several times. In the stereotype, [Scientists] spent all day pouring various fluids from one flask into another in some sort of nonsensical chemistry experiment. Even though it seemed ridiculous, if Alice needed to align her actions with the ‘concept’ of whatever she was trying to add to her enchanted items, leaning into stereotypes might work.

Or it might be going in completely the wrong direction. It was worth a shot, at least. If that didn’t work, she would try writing a scientific paper or reading a book.

“Are there any other things to keep in mind?” asked Alice. “And could you show me the process of you creating a System enchantment as well?”

“Things to keep in mind? Well, if you try to enchant an item with a PERK instead of an attribute, it’s much harder,” said the [Tailor]. “You’ll also need to sort of… feed the Perk into your System enchanting Perk, if that makes sense. It’s kind of hard to describe the feeling, but once you get a better idea what the process of creating a System enchantment looks like, it should make a bit more sense to you. I can show you the process of me creating a System enchantment as long as you pay me for my time.”

Alice grinned. After becoming Ethan’s apprentice, money was one thing she didn’t lack. She quickly pulled out a stack of ten gold suns and handed them to Tallie, whose eyes went round at the sight of the money.

“At your service for however long you need, My Lady!” she said.

After that, Tallie requested a few sewing needles, some bolts of cloth, measuring tapes, and a variety of other tools to get started. Apart from that, for some reason, Tallie also request mirrors and colorful objects. Once everything arrived, she got to work.

Alice watched as Tallie frowned in concentration, before she started tailoring the bolts of cloth to fit the figure of an imaginary person. Tallie was creating a dress.

A few moments later, Tallie took out a mirror and set it in front of the dress, before setting up another mirror to view the dress from a different angle. She worked on stitching parts of the skirt together, while at the same time occasionally pausing to admire the skirt, or layer in a different set of colors to create decorations.

At the same time, Alice saw little bits of rainbow colored mana slowly take shape around the dress as Tallie’s class seeds furiously worked to keep everything functioning. Alice quickly located and ignored the more normal looking Perks, which were probably making Tallie’s work faster and easier, and focused on the System enchantment that was being shaped inside of the dress.

Alice was used to System working like a filter for mana that already existed, but in this case, Alice was instead reminded of steeping tea leaves in hot water. Rather than filtering what was already there, it seemed more like the System fractals Tallie had created were slowly infusing rainbow mana into the dress itself.

After about two hours, Tallie wiped the sweat away from her forehead, before grinning at Alice.

“Done, Lady Mage. This is a dress that gives the wearer six points of Charisma,” she said, grinning.

“Thank you for the help, [Tailor] Tallie. Your assistance was much appreciated,” said Alice.

Tallie nodded, and after the two traded a few more words, Tallie left.

Once Tallie left, Alice looked at all the iron rings she had just gathered for experimental purposes, and sighed.

After a few moments of thought, Alice discarded the iron rings, and instead asked for somebody to get her a few sets of glass goggles. On Earth, Chemists often wore eye protection gear to keep dangerous substances from getting into their eyes.

Of course, on Earth those were usually made of plastic, but Alice figured that as long as it looked close enough it was probably fine.

Then, Alice started quietly reading a book while wearing her glass eye protection gear. At the same time, she started thinking about the nature of intelligence, and tried to push that idea into her goggles entirely through her Perk.

It wasn’t entirely successful, but Alice could at least some traces of rainbow mana exit her body and flow into the glass goggles, even if they were few and far between.

Alice was encouraged by her partial success, and kept going for a few hours. However, Alice became increasingly aware that something wasn’t quite right about her method of adding a System enchantment to the glass goggles.

Perhaps reading a book was more ‘scholarly’ than scientific?

Alice tried again. This time, she got a piece of paper out, and started writing out a copy of the paper she had written and submitted to her magic academy a few months ago. Science had a lot to do with testing, verifying, and sharing the results of experiments and ideas, so Alice hoped that writing a paper for peer review would get the Perk working.

This time proved quite a bit more successful, and after she finished copying her scientific paper, Alice saw System mana start to flow out of her body and towards her goggles. It was rather interesting to see – rather than mana being filtered and shoved into an item, the way Alice had expected a System enchantment to work, it looked more like a newly created System fractal inside of her body had floated over to the points where her skin was touching the object she wanted to enchant. Then, the System fractal started filtering mana from inside of her body and fusing it into the pair of glass goggles, rapidly constructing an entirely new System fractal inside of the goggles. A few moments later, the System fractals inside of her body returned to normal, and the goggles now had a newly created System enchantment.

At the same time, Alice started to feel very tired. It was as if she had just run a marathon. Alice winced.

It seemed that her new Perk took a lot out of her every time she activated it.

However, while it hadn’t been a perfect trial run, Alice had still gotten her new System enchantment online, and had observed the process of System fractals slowly flowing out of her body and fusing with the glass goggles. It was another step in the right direction.

Then, Alice yawned. The new Perk had taken a lot out of her. She glanced at the spidercrab corpses again. They had seemed rather more conductive of mana than usual. Perhaps the changes to the monsters had also created some sort of other change in their corpses? It seemed worth testing later.

She walked outside of the room and found a [Servant].

“Keep the spidercrab corpses preserved for me, and make sure everyone else knows not to mess with them,” said Alice. The [Servant] nodded, and then Alice finished walking to her room, before she went to sleep.

Testing the results of the spidercrab corpses and tinkering more with System enchanting could wait until tomorrow.

You have leveled up!

Careful Enchanter: 30 -> 32