Carpathian College of Magic, Akallas von Aerok's Experiment Lab [Open]

[akallas]

"... is reacting with quicksilver. Reaction itself is slow and does not seem uniform. This is the third time I have performed this experiment, and yet, I am nowhere close to solving exactly how or why this reaction occurs as it does," a figure calmly stated as he wrote down what he spoke unto a parchment notebook. "The lack of uniform reaction can be attributed to not being spread out as much as it could be. However, water has reacted much more uniformly than quicksilver has with Dust. Does this mean that quicksilver is not as fluid as we believe it is or is it because Dust is reacting with small bits of quicksilver in the reactions?"

Unable to get an answer and being frustrated as it was, Akallas von Aerok, headmaster of Carpathian College of Magic, threw his hands up, giving up for the day.

His frustration was also not helped by the fact that when he stared at the useless sludge like reactant of the quicksilver and Dust reaction, he thought of how expensive pure quicksilver and pure Dust had been.

To create Dust, he needed to get gold and heavy mana-infused water with a 1-10 ratio in volume. End result would yield him 10% of how much of the original gold there was beforehand. Pure quicksilver, on the other hand, had been bought, and due to how far City of Upper Carpathi was from the major cities and thus the bigger alchemy shops, he had to pay more than what was necessary.

To run the three experiments he had today, it had cost him roughly 3 gold suns. And he had no results to show for it.

Oh, he could probably make more gold or dig up some with his Gold magic, but they were inefficient, expensive, economy-ruining, and gold price dropping.

Sometimes, he wondered why he chose Gold Magic as his secondary magic.

Oh yeah, he was a kid with unhealthy infatuation with shiny things!

"Ugh," he grunted as he lifted his metal "hands" up into the air, throwing the notebook and his pen into the air as well. "Let's just start enchanting."

[akallas]

Akallas walked over to one of the many shelves in his lab room and pulled out a notebook with a bit too many loose papers shoved inside it.

This was his enchantment request notebook. The loose leaf papers were requests in either letter or mail form that he had received. Usually, he had his apprentices come and place the request forms that they received for him into it. So that all he had to do was to pull out the book to find what to enchant instead of having to receive every single one of his requests personally.

It would also clutter up his mail.

Oh, he didn't mind taking a few personal requests once in a while when someone visited him, but exceptions were few and wide.

He opened the book and pulled out the first unattached request form.

"'Dear Lord von Aerok,'" Akallas read. "'It has come to my attention...' Another one of those bloody uptight nobles. What does he want... A gem to add to his sword... made out of diamond... Does this guy think diamonds drop out of the sky? Probably thinks so, if the gold lettering in here is anything to go by."

The letter went on and on about how the noble wanted the enchantment on the diamond to be able to detect poison in his food, detect ill-intent, and so on.

All in all, it was a stupid request from a person who had no idea how magic worked, just romances about it.

As far as detecting poisons went, that one was actually moderately difficult due to how diverse poisons came. In fact, even allergies can be counted as poison. He didn't keep a full list of poisons nor did he care about them, so making this required him to gather matierals.

Detecting ill-intent was an art that was hard to materialize. In fact, it was a project that enchanters and artificers like himself had tried very long time to make it reality. Due to the complexity of the matters involved, however, it was unlikely to happen. The detecting ill-intent, or the art of malusreparium, was a mental art, not a magic art. It takes a bit more than magic to transfer mental art into a physical alarm.

He raised a metaphorical eyebrow before pulling out a clean parchment. "Lord Savas, I have received your letter, sir, but it has come to my attention that some of the requirements you have asked for your diamond are impossible due to lack of advancements in certain fields. As such, I will have to refuse your request."

Short and simple. Akallas didn't like to drag it out.

With that letter written and signed, he tossed it to the Out box, and pulled out another request.

This was a much simpler request from a local knight. Akallas read through it. The knight was asking for enchantments to be applied to his breastplate so that when he has to fight against fire or ice affinity monsters, creatures, or elementals, he would not receive as much damage as he would without the enchantment.

[akallas]

The problem was once again material. He could apply the necessary enchantments, runes, and charms upon them with his "above average" skill in his secondary magics, but they were unlikely to hold unless something bound them there. He could apply his dust to the knight's breastplate and forearm protectors, but the amount needed?

Oh boy, that was going to cost in the upper dozens of gold suns.

The knight probably didn't have that kind of money.

Then the other common materials he could use were silver, gems, magic-infused silk, gold, blood, and jewelry.

Again, it was unlikely that the knight would be able to obtain enough quantities of gems of acceptable qualities for his breastplate alone, never mind the rest of his armor set.

Silver, on the other hand, was cheap enough.

[akallas]

Akallas stood up and walked out of his experiment lab just in time to see one of his apprentices. "Oi, Senna, go get me some silver," he told her as he tossed her a small bag of gold suns. "And I need at least twenty ingots of them, so get going."

Then without another word, he went back inside his lab.