The Chained Watcher

Venturing Once More Unto the Breach

~~~

Ignoring the Scar laying down on the top of his head, Grian delicately channels large quantities of magic into another (relatively) tiny bracelet, weaving protective intent through the little band of metal.

Why is Scar on his head, you might ask? Well you see, upon seeing that he was working on enchanting stuff, Scar had immediately dropped whatever he'd come here to do, watching the unconcealed magic do its thing with fascinated wonder. The techniques he uses are much too high end to learn from for someone at Scar's level, but you never know what his little wizard friend might miraculously pick up.

He'd sorted through all his high end gear the first couple weeks... Or rather, he made a little angel-like statue that he imbued with the intent to have it sort and catalog his stuff. Thinking ahead for once, he'd given it a core it could collapse into for easy transport, about the size of a golf ball. That way, he'd be able to bring it along when the Hermits swapped servers.

Making/finding the normal defensive stuff for his friends had been easy. He'd just cannibalized his old gear, specifically his mask, to make a set of matching bracelets for everyone. The defensive enchantments in it had been so heavily ingrained for so long that it easily accepted an enchantment to make a defensive shield around the wearer. He'd been reusing those materials for three Tiers now, so they work extremely well in a defensive item.

Mental defense had been... trickier. Watchers don't exactly have a tendency to use equipment that boosts mental strength, since it tends to just short itself out within a day of use, so he'd needed to start from scratch for these.

What he's finishing up right now is one of those. A bracelet that, when worn, should protect the wearer from mental attacks and invasions. It'll make a wall around their mind, and while he wouldn't trust it to work for long against a Tier 5, that level of Watcher is almost always secluded away in a facility or a retreat doing their own experiments, oblivious to the world. Upgrades can come once he has one for everyone.

The way he's doing this right now is a bit inefficient. Normally he would have dozens of minor variants of a design that he would systematically test and compare to find the one with the most power and the best efficiency, but he doesn't have the free time to indulge in that kind of lengthy experiment. There is one upgrade in materials he'll be doing once he has the time though. Blood metal.

Now, when he says blood metal, he's not talking about metal made out of blood. Not exactly. What he's talking about is the practice of submerging metal in magical blood for an extended period of time to give it enhanced magical properties. Most commonly, this is done with dragon blood, but he's also done it with kraken blood, unicorn blood, treant sap... And Watcher blood. His, to be specific.

As a craftsman at heart, he has a bit of a... strange mentality, regarding himself. He's well aware of the uses different parts of his body would have in crafting, and if it's easily replaceable and not too painful, he doesn't really care about using it. Things like feathers and blood, well, he's got so much of it, so why can't he use it?

Of course, even with fresh blood, it still takes an entire month for a material to absorb enough blood to take on magical properties related to it. He's got some mithril soaking in his storage room right now, actually. He would have it in here to explain how it works to Scar, but since he knows someone would give in to the impulse to try to drink the blood, he has it where they can't reach it. Magic poisoning is a pretty painful thing to experience, and while freely given blood is gentler, the magic in it is still Watcher magic.

Once it's ready, he'll replace these mental-protection bracelets with ones made of blood metal, but these will have to do for now.

The magic weaving through the bracelet floating in front of him settles into its pattern, and he lets out a breath, smiling at the grabby hands he can see Scar making towards the artifact at the top of his vision. He lifts it up, letting him take it to examine. Clearing the magic signature can come later, once he's ready to give it to someone.