In-Name Student Pt2

Since it was already fairly late by the time we were done and I had such relations with the Golden Ferry and some of its important members I was allowed to use the platform up until midnight. At which time noise alone would be enough reason for me to stop my work.

When I found myself standing on the platform myself after half an hour of some general lecturing about what was essentially the programming of the 'mobile' workshop, I found myself in small little world.

The platform functioned as the nerve complex for the workshop and I was now its brain, injecting my magic awareness into every cubic centimeter of the platform's confines. This including the surrounding air within certain dimensions based on the size of the platform, just like the gourmet arrays.

However, all of my control functions were in the form of both alchemical and technical Telekinesis while using unique equipment and templates for working different materials as well as the constantly prepared alchemical reagents and augmentations. These were mostly targeted to the perpetually loomed or tanned fabrics and leathers, but there was also a part of the station devoted to poisons.

The Telekinetic and transmutation functions were all predesignated, so they could more or less take place on their own. Despite this, the mana source still needed to understand these processes for the fluidity of the controls. I ended up learning several new material enchantments, alchemical recipes, and even several designs for different equipment.

Most of this was really only useful for acclimating to the operations in the beginning, though, because I quickly learned how to cut off the flow of mana and awareness to different stations. Once I was able to relieve some of the consumption and pressure of working the platform, though, I was able to smoothly and swiftly loom out several dozen yards of thin canvas per minute.

This was just from four out of five looms, the fifth loom bore cordycep fruits in the form of living material with heightened mana conductivity as well as many more effects. Sadly, this loom could only put out about ten yards of such silk per minute. Even with the other functions turned off, the cost of working these looms was about one hundred mana every other second.

Every few seconds, though, I would regenerate as much as ten percent of my HP when in between mana expenditure, allowing me to perpetually run this part of the machine. Unlike when I was feeding Ferithar and some amount of mana was constantly being used up, there actually existed moments in which I was not spending mana.

Then again, I was also spending one hundred MP every other second fueling the cordycep loom.

After half an hour of looming out hundreds of yards of materials, I opened up some of the alchemy area and the rest of the tailoring quarters, adding about one hundred and fifty MP to the mana consumption. This was still negligible in both consumption and control, so I was fairly comfortable with the treating of materials.

Despite the comfort zone, the production rate of all the looms steadied out at ten yards per minute which was still plenty to continue feeding the current stations. Since most of this was going to be my material tribute, I did not need to actually craft anything yet. However, the compatible treating processes for cordycep silk and regular spider silk greatly varied.

Whereas the quarter-inch thick layered materials were the same on physical design, the spider silk could only suitably hold three different fabric reagents. This was only considering one of them was essentially a mana oil meant to boost the effects of things like general elemental resistance which functions with certain other lacquers, waxes, or even plain dyes.

Without it, the spider silk would only maintain something like common waterproofing oil under a fireproofing outer layer of magic resin. With it, both the reagents would mix by magic means and thoroughly boost both aspects of just the aforementioned combination. It even increased general conductivity and resistances.

Since these recipes were coming from a Grand Alchemist, everything that came out of the alchemy area as reagents were all A in grade. When slapped on the B grade giant spider silk, the alchemically treated material came out as top-grade 'A+'. when slapped on the already A-plus cordycep silk, the materials became a solid 'S'.

Better yet, the cordycep silk was a living material that could essentially consume the reagents. While all the other material had the same basic combination of fire- and waterproofing, the cordycep silk could take in and maintain increasingly smaller amounts of other reagents.

The first square yard of cloth was an experimental piece that came out with 'reagent resistances' of fifteen-percent water and fire, ten percent electric-resistance from a special resin, eight percent impact resistance from an 'earthen oil', and six percent penetration resistance from a finishing outer coat of a lacquer on top of the electric resin.

All in all, the alchemy reagents were all powerful in their own rights and I now had access to all of those recipes. Originally, Oleander had acquired or discovered only elemental reagent recipes but now I had acquired what were essentially two damage resistance recipes.

Working like a hamster in a wheel to power the platform for the Grand Alchemist was worth it already.

Next came the material enchantments when were done on three large tables inscribed with a layered combination of runes or arrays on the table and numerous areas of effect. Once as much as a hundred pounds of material was placed in an AOE it was gradually be manipulated on a structural level for material enchanting. This also included a basic conduction enchanting on the reagents applied to the materials, slightly boosting their effects while allowing the fabric itself to undergo structural shifts.

What was applied by the layered inscription besides the reagent conduction depended on which table was in use. Because of size for consumption and portability, leather and fabric and metal and wood all had their own tables. The fabric table's material enchantments were mostly basic because of the generalization for different materials but were still greatly effective in increasing flexibility, durability, and density.

Even without all the reagents, the spider silk canvas would have become more comparable to a hardened leather a few inches thick. While retaining the ability to fold and breathe for comfort and function. With the boosted reagents, the spider silk came out with beautiful benefits.

My own stock of cordycep silk, however, came out with only a single compilation effect of those three properties and a heightened conductivity. The compilation effect only increased the material properties by fifteen percent compared to the spider silk, but the conductivity properties were twice that of spider's silk and reagents.

Despite more reagents that had lessening effects, even the penetration resistance reagent ended up being boosted to ten percent. This material was honestly noticeably stiffer than the treated spider silk canvas that swelled to one third of an inch in thickness, but this material of the same size could still roll up easily despite by significantly heavy.

That extra weight equated to one third of the mass produced canvas and should suggest an increased density and durability.

Throughout this process, I would only regenerate around ten percent of my mana one every fiver seconds, which now equaled around two thousand MP. Ten percent of less than twenty-one thousand MP was around that much, which meant that I was just barely compensating my consumption with natural regeneration. Including any more work stations would be overdrawing my abilities.

However, I still needed to produce and process ancient alloy materials worth around a thousand swords for the city of Sierra. If each sword was really meant to be one of my Fuller Bastards, then this meant that each blank bar would weigh around ten pounds.

I had only done one personal dungeon run of the sepulcher and thus had only gained enough materials to cover half of my tithes. After having taken some taxes from the other members of the party, I barely had ten thousand pounds of scrap material. Everything I owned needed to be converted for the tithe.

So that I could maximize my personal profits, I continued producing silk canvas from all five looms until the four spider silk looms ran out of web material. By then I had accumulated almost five times as much canvas as needed for the tithe despite planning to give all of it to the city. From cordycep silk I specially loomed a total of five thousand square yards.

By the time the looms were finally cut off after an hour-and-a-half of running them, only half of the overall canvas material had been treated and enchanted while the other half was divided between the two processes. Cordycep canvas was only slightly further behind since they were afforded only a single AOE from the table and every hundred pounds took ten minutes.

Once the looms and their surrounding area were finally closed off, I opened up the rest of the transmutation section and the small forge area. Unlike one would expect, there was only a standing rectangular box about five feet wide by seven feet long which began heating up.

By the time the four-legged table of a box was so hot that it the quartz crystal itself was superficially glowing a bright red and emitting intense heatwaves safely straight up into the air I had spent over a thousand MP supplying the forge. After the box was empty, I simply threw several hundred pounds of ancient scrap and tens of pounds of alloying ingredients into the three-foot tall box that stood little more than waist height to me.

As soon as metals had entered the glowing box table, the table began vibrating intensely which created a high pitched thrumming noise from the table box and the surrounding platform. As the mass amounts of material were heating up to match their environment while the vibrations helped break them down at their softening points, it only took a minute or so before the contents of the table became a dense molten metal.

The molten metal was shining such an intense yellow that the entire room was illuminated as if it contained a small sun. over the course of this time, five hundred mana every few seconds had been spent while continuing to feed over a hundred MP into the alchemy stations every other second.

This amounted to around a thousand MP every other or every third second depending on the different rates of consumption and regeneration. I was no longer capable of meeting my needs and was steadily missing around five percent more mana every time I managed to regenerate mana.

My overall MP was around sixty percent by the time five hundred pounds of ancient alloy had been slagged and mold cast in the table, forcing me to stop and take medicinal measures while the alloy was actually cooling in the turned off table. This process only took about five or six minutes thanks to the thermal control of the now permanently room temperature table that acted like water surrounding the steel.

Overall, five hundred pounds took around five thousand mana per minute and but the actual fueling process was only five minutes long as well. My following break was also five minutes long as I let my mana slowly refill while maintaining the alchemy station. Then I was right back to work.

Several hundred mana per second disappeared as I moved the cooled slab of metal from the forge table to the alchemy station, costing me several thousand points to complete the task. My next regeneration after briefly pausing the alchemy station barely covered the cost.

Then I simply started the station back up with the addition of mass material enchanting the slab of ancient alloy as well as slowly dividing it into fifty ten-pound portions. This process would cost an additions one-fifty MP every other second to the preexisting one-fifty from the fabrics table.

As well, a single slab of metal required twenty minutes to be enchanted and divided. By the time I finished the next slab, I needed to directly transmute the dividing process myself to shorten the time down to a final two minutes. The slab had already cooled but I was still under the buff of a biscuit and regenerating close to thirteen percent every second or third second with a little extra every other second depending on the alchemy station.

With such a short break, though, I was just under ninety percent by the time I managed moved the completed slab pieces to a small dumpster-like containing and replaced the slab. This directly cost me a couple grand and dropped me closer to eighty percent.

As the cycle continued in this fashion, only resting for two or three minutes during the cooling of a slab, I continued to find myself missing much more than five percent more MP every slab exchange. After an hour of this, I was closer to forty than fifty percent.

However, in this fashion I was able to craft five hundred ten-pound blocks from five thousand pounds of alloy.

Half of my quota had been reached and it was still roughly two hours before midnight in the city instance. I was feeling honestly relieved as I took a full five-minutes rest and another biscuit. With this rest and refresh of my regeneration buffs, I should be able to once again muscle through the process.

With a third biscuit clamped in my mouth to break down and swallow easily, I was able to shave roughly a minute off of the average craft and rest time. This really only shaved around ten minutes from the process, but this still allowed me more time with the platform.

Because it was so late, only Ferithar and a few of the more committed assistants remained and examined the materials I produced. This small group of people had discovered the source of my power in less than twenty minutes with Ferithar's guidance. It would have been sooner if Ferithar had said it outright, but I honestly had no clew how long he took to identify the cordyceps.

They never even remarked on it beyond the material itself after a few minutes of silences upon discover, but afterward the simply went right back to more heated speculations and debate. Ferithar himself claimed the final hundred pounds of cordycep material from the alchemy station before it ever saw the enchanting table and divided among himself and his students,

I let them. Ferithar was far more magically capable and knowledgeable than I was so he would surely find better ways of using my materials. Once he found ways to improve them, simply using them myself would improve them all over again. It was a no-fail situation as long as they kept their mouths shut.

Before I had even reached the forging process, the rest of my party had arrived at the Golden Ferry and also underwent a spring cleaning process in other parts of the building before convening here. Of course I could have used their mana to smooth out and speed up the process but this was something I felt like I needed to do.

If they ever wanted to work this or another platform with their own materials, I would certainly assist them magically because they would not be able to do it any other way!

As well, thanks to saving over an hour of time, I was able to study the tools, stations, and platform itself in order to discover memorize its magic signatures, inscriptions, flow patterns, and even the tools themselves. Since it was a relatively silent task and the mobile workshop belong to him, Ferithar allowed me to attempt limit breaking some of the station tools to learn their enchantments.

Since the enchantments themselves were fairly complex in the layering of their intentions, patterns, and inscriptions, I could only limit break every third or fourth tool before transmuting and enchanting anew the equipment. From this process alone I managed to acquire over a dozen points in either of my magic stats and five in Luck for my successful limit breaks.

The experience rewards alone were also enough to level me up with less than then thousand spare change experience.

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