As soon as Aspen was asleep, I got to examining the gloves she wore. I really wanted to try poking and stabbing at them to get a better look at how the enchantment on it works, but I’ll have to try that later. For now, I would have to settle with simple visual examinations. Well, and also using the skill she taught me to use.

  Identify!

  Spider Silk Gloves

  ·  Enchantments:

  o Minor Piercing Resist

  o Minor Slashing Resist

  Oooh!

  Now that she told me what the enchantments were, they actually showed up on the identify screen. Before, it just showed that they were enchanted, but not what with. I guess that means the identify screen updates as I learn more about what it is I am identifying. Neat.

  I used my Domain of Awareness skill to get a better look at the gloves. Up close, I could see that the gloves were actually passively absorbing mana from Aspen. This must be what she meant by the mana cost of enchantments.

  I kept watching the mana flow in the gloves and saw that it was being dispersed through the entire glove and created a sort of mana barrier around her hand. If I were to try slashing or stabbing at said barrier, I’m sure it would probably prevent any damage to her hands.

  Now, how can I replicate that?

  I started by creating a simple glove out of my leaf material rather than bark. This material is much more pliable and would move better than if I tried making it out of bark. It was also the best ingredient I had for the task.

  I made the leaf glove and brought it over to my workshop. Rather than make a hole to bring it in through, I instead made a bubble around the glove and shifted the dirt around it to bring it in. I was pleased with how well it worked on quarantining the workshop and preventing any excess mana from leaking out. I did add a bit more though, just in case.

  Once the glove was in the workshop, I could tell it already started to absorb the mana from inside. This was excellent, as from what Aspen told me, the mana would make it easier to enchant.

  While I was in here, I checked on the staff I had prepared for Aspen. It looked to be completely full of mana, almost like the box I used to create my first drop of mana water. In fact, if I were to add a bit more mana…

  No! I’m here to focus on the gloves first! I’ll try the staff once I get the enchanting skill!

  I shifted my attention back to the leafy green gloves. They had only been in here for a mere minute, yet they were also just as saturated as the staff was. I assume that has to do with the sheer amount of mana in the room. That and how thin the material is

  Now that they are what I think is properly saturated in mana, I brought the gloves right back out the same way I brought them in. I took them back to the base of my trunk and examined them compared to the gloves Aspen wore.

  Besides the material they were made of and the flow of mana in them, the two looked almost identical. Her gloves, while made of silk, were practically seamless, which I was easily able to emulate through my Body Manipulation skill while creating these. I put them on my puppet to test the flexibility, and they moved almost perfectly. The knuckles were a little tight, but that was simple enough to fix by adding a bit of material.

  Now that I had the cosmetics looking good, I needed to try shaping the mana in my gloves to match the mana in Aspens gloves.

  The mana started flowing from the inside of the glove where it made contact with the wearer to form the mana barrier in line with the outside portion of the glove. If I didn’t have the zoom function of Domain of Awareness, I could almost think that the mana infused itself with the entire gloves instead of just the surface.

  As I watched her gloved hands, Aspen twitched just enough for me to see the barrier move.

  I see!

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  The reason the barrier was on the outside was so that it had room for Aspen to move, and it reacted in time to her movements. As her fingers flexed, her skin got closer to the barrier. The barrier then adjusted to compensate for the movement and kept her hand in the middle of the glove.

  That’s great and all, but it still doesn’t show me how to make the damn enchantment.

  I moved on from the little details and instead went back to my set of gloves.

  When Aspen was giving me her lecture on how enchanting works, she said the stats intelligence and charisma were the main ones that came into play. From what I remember of my time with Lilly and a bit of DND bologna, intelligence was the stat that increased both magic power and mana capacity. I had plenty of both. The key that I think I am missing is the charisma portion.

  Lilly never went into too much detail about it, but from what I remember of the old video and tabletop games, charisma dealt with how well you could force the influence of your personality into the world. That, and it lets you get laid a lot. But the main part was the influence.

  Aspen said it was something like imbuing mana with will, but I genuinely had no idea of how to do that. Was it like casting magic? Was it having to deal with mental power? Does that mean that I need to do a mental lobotomy in order to enchant something? But I thought that was only for building a golem? Why does so much in this world have to deal with tearing out chunks of my mind?!

  No. That can’t be it.

  If this world actually required me to tear off chunks of my mind any time I wanted to enchant something, then that would make enchanting the least popular profession. From what I hear of Aspen, there are plenty of people that are perfectly mentally capable enchanters. That means that there’s some other way that I’m just not seeing.

  Okay, what is will? How do I emulate charisma without having the actual stat? If it’s just the degree through which I can influence, I feel like I can do a good but of that, no? I mean, I made a freaking tornado on a whim, after all.

  I examined the gloves I made again and saw they were leaking mana. I watched it for a few minutes as the leak slowly trickled down and then stopped. It still had more mana in it than before it was saturated, but it was also less than it was before.

  Time to experiment.

  I reached into the gloves and started siphoning all the mana from within and letting it leak into the air. I stopped only when the leaves were completely drained. This was my first time trying to do this, so it was definitely an interesting thing to witness.

  The gloves started to dry out and crack. When the last drop of mana was taken from them, they crumbled into dust around the puppet hands they were on. It made me wonder what happened to the water content, the nutrients, and the other individual things that made the glove up, but I couldn’t think of a satisfactory solution.

  I made another pair of gloves and sat them on an impromptu dirt table I made in front of my puppet and its throne. I filled them with mana again and saw the mana leak out into the world once it reached its maximum saturation point. I could theoretically push enough into it to make a drop of mana water, but I didn’t want to waste any mana at the moment.

  She said it was will, so do I just have to will the mana to form a protective barrier around the user’s hands?

  I tried focusing on the mana in the green gloves and ordered it to protect the wearer’s hands. I focused as much on the idea of creating the barrier as I could before eventually giving up. I could determine no discernable difference between these and the pair that I disintegrated earlier.

  I pulled the mana out again and watched them turn to dust and flow in a passing breeze.

  Again and again, I tried making the gloves be resistant to physical damage, but again and again, it failed. Not once did I get the notification, and I was glad for it too. If that was all it took, then I would have been yelling at my mana to do things for quite some time now.

  A few hours after midnight, I decided to take a break and practice some Water Magic. It was the only one of my elemental magics that didn’t receive a boost from the death of the giant, and I feel like it has gone unused in battle for too long.

  I made a few water balls, water cannons, and other various water constructs out of some water I pulled from the air. It was a nice way to distract myself from failing so many times in the last few hours. I knew realistically that it should take days to learn what should be such a difficult skill, but I really wanted to learn this before the Laughing Viper trio up and left in the next few days.

  Yeah, that’s right. I still have a few more days until they leave. There’s no need to rush into things right now. Just relax and focus on what’s in front of you. Come on, Willow. You’ve got this!

  I played with the water for a few more minutes to calm myself down then went back to making leaf gloves. With the first one I made, I did it the same way that I had made the last hundred attempts. The next one though, I was just frustrated enough to switch it up.

  I had been trying to imbue the mana already infused into the loves with a new will, but this time, I infused the gloves with mana that had a will already imbued. More precisely, it went a little something like

  PROTECT AGAINST SLASHING, DAMN YOU! FUCKING BULLSHIT, STUPID ASS LEAF, PEIRCING BARRIER MOTHER FUCKER!

  while I jammed as much mana into it as possible. I might have inadvertently made a few drops of mana water while I was at it.

  It seemed to work, as I quickly got a notification immediately after.

  Through determined effort and will, you have learned the skill [Enchanting (R)].

  Oh. That was easy. Barely an inconvenience.

  I quickly moved the mana water to my slowly growing pool and used Identify on the gloves.

  Profane Leaf Gloves

  ·  Enchantments

  o Profane

  o Minor Slash Resist

  o Minor Pierce Resist

  Oops.