For once, Sen found Murdin taking a break to eat when he returned from the hunt. “Limursa gems? Where’d you find those?” The mage asked Sen as he inspected the small harvest.

  “Is that what those are called? The slug bears?” Murdin nodded, a smile on his face, before pulling out one of the gems to inspect. “Solid harvest, too. Got any plans for those?”

  Sen shook his head. “I wouldn’t know what to do with them. Although…”

  Murdin tilted his head in curiosity, taking another bite of fruit. “One of my spells was particularly effective against these. I wonder if you might know why. Maybe if I inscribe it onto the creature’s gem, it’ll be even more effective?”

  “How would I know? I know nothing about your magic. You would be the one to answer that, I should think.”

  Sen picked up one of the little gems. It was small and clear, uncut and jagged. “I can’t use them for much unless I can inscribe a rune onto them. I know it’s possible to enchant light marbles, so I figured something like this must be possible, as well. Engraving glyphs and inscribing runes aren’t too different, in that respect.”

  With a thoughtful hum, Murdin looked over the gems once more. “You’re right, this is technically do-able. However, you’re quite far away from the skill needed for something like that, and I have other things I need to focus on, so I can’t help you.”

  With a sigh, Sen set the gems down. “Alright, then.”

  “Hold on,” Murdin said. “You’re not skilled enough yet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have something for you. It’s a little early, but you’re a fast learner.” Murdin took a final bite of his fruit, then turned and left the room. He returned only a moment later with a small stack of papers. He held them out to Sen.

  The papers were a set of schematics for a number of different small projects. They weren’t only glyphic enchantments, but tools, workbenches, and a variety of devices that Sen had seen and even used in Murdin’s workshop.

  “Fortunately, skill is not the only way to solve a problem. Sometimes, you can sidestep skill with the right tool that makes a problem easy enough to solve with the skills you already have.”

  “You think I should make my own workshop?”

  “Seems like a good investment. You know two types of magic that could benefit from most of these,” Murdin tapped the pile of schematics.

  “Yeah,” Sen said thoughtfully. “I just don’t have anywhere to put it.”

  “You can use the shack out back, and any of the scrap in it.” Murdin said, turning away. He stepped out of the room. “Back to it,” he sighed.

  “I can help, you know!” Sen called after him.

  “Just keep any monsters away from town! And don’t skip the reading! Good luck with the shack,” Murdin called back.

  Sen went outside to find the shack. He was surprised to find it mostly clean, despite Murdin never using it. It already had a few shelves and several pieces of scrap lumber. He still had most of the afternoon, and he could spend the night focusing on the books Murdin had him working through. It wasn’t as though he slept much anyway.

  He cast light, body-channeling the spell for once, and immediately realized something was different. The rune didn’t look right in his mind, didn’t feel right when he channeled through it.

  Why? I’m not doing anything differently. It’s not like anything has changed. I know I haven’t messed up the rune.

  Casting a spell through a rune required a painstaking process of rebuilding the rune from memory in his mind. That was why it took so much effort to memorize a spell to the level needed to remember it permanently, and partially why he’d always tended toward buying or creating scrolls for the more complicated spells he had once known.

  He regretted that decision now, but it had always been a habit, and even now he found it easier to use a scroll than to actually rebuild the rune in his mind every time he wanted to use a spell.

  This time, the rune seemed to flow out from him into his mind a bit faster than it usually did, but Sen felt something snag at him. Like a mental paper cut, it nagged him, setting him on edge.

  He closed his eyes, imagining the rune in his mind. Technically, this technique inscribed the rune on his soul, which allowed him to channel the magic through his own body. That had sounded dangerous the first time he’d heard of it, but the body itself had odd properties when it came to a mage’s own spells. For example, it was impossible for a mage to hurt themselves with their own magic.

  All mages had a natural, and highly robust resistance to all of their own magic. That meant even if Sen conjured fire and attempted to burn himself with it, he would never even feel the heat. The same was not true of other mages, though why magic worked like that, he didn’t know.

  The rune’s image in his mind looked… fine. There was nothing wrong with it, and he knew that, yet somehow it felt off. He combed through the rune, frustration building within him. It felt unfinished.

  It took him several minutes to realize there was, against every intellectual understanding in him, a mistake in the rune. It was small, minor enough that he would have never noticed it. Strangely, he knew it wasn’t a mistake in his memory. He had spent hours - days, even - memorizing the rune. He knew it perfectly. This specific whorl sat where it did, placed exactly in relation to a long curving arc nearby.

  And yet, he knew it was wrong. He could feel that it was wrong. Mentally, he adjusted the small mistake, and changed the rune to fit the odd feeling. The difference became obvious immediately, and it was a shocking change.

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  He opened his eyes to see the new light spell form into a single tone, a stark difference from the previously frenzied rush of colors. Just like that, and Sen felt a control over his light spell that he’d never had before, not even in his previous life. It came naturally, like an extension of himself rather than something he needed to wrangle control over. One by one, he worked through as many colors as he could think of, and each lit the small shack with clarity and ease.

  Confusion and shock ran through him. How? He asked himself. He’d been using his magic a bit more recently, but not enough to explain this sudden jump in ability. Much less the fact that I found a mistake in the rune, he thought to himself.

  It seemed unthinkable, but the only thing that stood out was that he’d been using body-channeling more often. Thinking back on it, he hadn’t ever used body-channeling all that much. In fact, he couldn’t remember a time he’d ever used the style of spellcasting more than once or twice in a year.

  Now, he used it once every few days, if not more. That didn’t seem like a significant change, but what if he - and potentially every master of magic from before the end - misunderstood the style all along?

  He sat down along one wall, then conjured light again, body-channeling the spell. It came quickly and easily, with none of the struggles he’d become so used to, and so annoyed with. His control felt snappy, and he felt a connection to the spell that suggested he could throw more mana into it if he wanted to increase the brightness, and more than he’d ever been able to do with a light scroll.

  A bit of testing showed that he could make it seem like a miniature sun in his hand. His newfound control didn’t extend merely to controlling the color, though. Sen realized he could break up the light into smaller pieces, moving them around in a circle. It was a struggle, but he even managed to add a different color to each of the orbs.

  After a few more attempts, he realized there was another small mistake in the rune. Curious, he corrected it, then tested light once more. By this point, he was nearly out of mana, but he didn’t feel any difference in his control. If anything, the spell felt lighter, though weight had nothing to do with it. Rather, it felt like he could stuff it full of as much power as he wanted.

  He threw all of his remaining mana into the spell. Normally, he would feel a limit to the amount of mana a spell could take, but this time, there was none. The brightness continued to grow until he had to look away.

  The subtle exhaustion of running out of mana overtook him, but it didn’t slow his excitement. He’d discovered something incredible. Body-channeling could help him improve his magic.

  Why, and how, he didn’t know, nor did he truly understand. But it was a path forward, and that was all that mattered right now. Sen had thought this form of magic would fall behind, eventually, unable to keep up with only the small amount of spells he had access to, and with almost certainly no information available anywhere.

  Why had Amery never taught him this? Surely it wasn’t possible that she hadn’t known. And yet, he thought to himself, I can’t see any reason to hide this. It makes learning a rune easier, doesn’t it? Control, power - they all seem to grow significantly faster than practicing through a scroll.

  Because mages resisted their own magic so strongly, it made no sense to think there was any danger to the practice. Could it be that the experts of his time had simply overlooked this method because of a few simple conveniences that scrolls provided?

  Sen couldn’t think of a better answer. It seemed ridiculous that something so simple could be so unexplored, which meant that the knowledge was either suppressed - which seemed unlikely, considering how widely the practice was taught, as a foundational skill - or the benefits truly had been unknown.

  Letting himself fall into unconscious thought, he began to work on the set of workshop schematics Murdin gave him. His mana would take some time to recharge, and until then, he wouldn’t be able to practice any more.

  Next, he wanted to work on fireball. What could he do with that spell if he built more control over the fire? If he could supercharge it to take more mana than it already could?

  Unbidden, a smile came to his face. Already, he could see a giant fireball flying from his hand to destroy… something.

  There was enough lumber in Murdin’s shack to build a single workbench. It was simple and blocky, without any smoothed edges or special luxury designs added, but it would be more than capable of giving him a space to work in.

  Halfway through the project, Sen realized lumber actually served as a luxury good, and he ran back inside to ask Murdin if it was acceptable to use the wood to make his workbench. The mage had laughed, then shoo’ed him back to work, saying that such a small amount of lumber wasn’t worth worrying about.

  Shrugging, Sen continued his work. The real effort wasn’t actually putting the bench together, but rather the numerous glyphic enchantments that found their way onto the setup. One served to give the entire workbench significantly more durability. Even a hammer or chisel would struggle to find purchase against the sturdy enchantments.

  Another provided a small glow which emanated from the top of the bench, serving as extra light. Incredibly, it was adjustable so that it didn’t make it harder to see, as well as configurable which parts of the table shown the light.

  A number of other helpful additions, such as stone magnetism - something he found incredibly satisfying to play around with, once he’d finished the glyphs for - allowed him to leave a number of stone tools tucked onto the side of the bench, rather than lying around or causing a mess atop the workbench.

  The most complicated part of the schematic, though, was a small area that somehow managed to serve as a replaceable battery. Once the glyphs were in place, any stone objects within a small section at the bottom of the workbench were used to power the enchantments. That meant the workbench itself would not slowly deteriorate until he needed to build a new one.

  When he finished, the sun had just started to fall into the horizon, and the sky shifted to purple and violet hues. He didn’t intend to let that bother him, especially now that he had a better handle on his ability to make more light for himself.

  The sound of footsteps warned him he wasn’t alone anymore, and he stepped outside of the shack to see Murdin leading along another priest from the collective temple. “More monsters?” Sen asked as the two approached.

  Murdin nodded, but didn’t speak, instead ceding room for the priest to step forward. It was Tered. “Tane. I hear you’re acting as the monster hunter while Murdin is injured, yes?”

  Sen glanced at Murdin. The mage had an annoyed look on his face directed toward the priest. “Yes,” Sen said.

  “Perfect,” he said as he grasped his hands together. “I’ve had another oracle, this one much clearer. There is a holy site just outside the wardstone net, one that will soon be overrun by monsters. If you don’t protect it, several standing blessings from multiple gods may be rescinded until the site is repaired.”

  Sen tilted his head at that, but the priest spoke before he could ask any questions. “Without those blessings, much of our farmer’s crops may lose strength, forcing the village to ration food to get everyone through the winter.” He took a breath, ready to speak more, but Sen held up a hand.

  “Ok, I get it. Monsters need killing. Just point me in the right direction.”