"Forgemastering requires not to shape the core, but to build it with the proper set of runes according to your needs. To overcome the limits of fake mages, you must imbue the runes made out of Spirit Magic with your willpower, or the mana will fall apart."
"Fuck me sideways! I can't believe I did it wrong the entire time." Lith's yell drew the attention of the class to himself.
He knew the runes of the regular Skinwalker armor like the back of his hand, having crafted dozens of them between practice and prototypes. Several strings of runes floated in front of him, almost resembling a musical score.
Lith removed a few runes, replaced some, and rearranged others, forming the four pseudo cores that comprised the enchantments of the Skinwalker armor. They weren't just perfect in shape and size, but also their mana flow was stronger and smoother.
"Exactly like that." Faluel clapped her hands. "That would be the Verhen's Skinwalker armor, but if I were you, I'd add a fifth core to give it my personal touch. Something to really make it my own."
'By my maker! The good news is that thanks to the thorough study of runes we did until now, we can easily step up our game. The bad news is that we wasted a lot of time.
'Manipulating and combining the runes in our books to achieve new effects would have been much easier than studying the pseudo cores since we had to reverse engineer even the small stuff.' Solus had never felt so dumb before.
"Why did Protector never tell me about this?" Lith was on the verge of tears with frustration.
"Because he didn't know. I'm breaking this to you only because otherwise you'll be stuck with your crappy Runesmithing. Are you done whining or do you need a moment to collect yourself?" Faluel hated to be interrupted.
Lith repressed all the rage and the self-loathing he felt, hoping that Faluel's teachings would allow him to make up for the lost time.
"Where was I? Oh, yes. Runes are the language of magic. It doesn't matter if you form them with your mouth and hands like fake mages or with your mind like true mages.
"It doesn't even matter if you arrange them in a temporary form like a Warden does or in a permanent item like a Forgemaster. What you have to understand is that, by arranging them in the correct order and infusing them with willpower, you can achieve infinite effects.
"During your fifth year at the White Griffon, you learned about the Bonding spell. It allows you to fuse magic crystals to an item to boost their powers." Faluel placed a communication amulet in front of the class and activated her breathing technique.
"Magic Crystals grant a mana flow to inanimate objects, by creating what we call a mana circulatory system. Always remember that only living beings offer little resistance to mana, whereas objects lacking a core are damaged by a strong flow of mana."
The mana circulatory system was akin to a network of veins, that spread the mana coming from both the pseudo core and the gemstone throughout the amulet.
"This is the only part where true and fake magic are identical. We all add gemstones because otherwise even metals like Orichalcum wouldn't stand too many pseudo cores without crumbling and because powerful spells need a power source."
'At least I did that part right.' At those words, Lith sighed in relief.
"At this point, you might ask, what's the purpose of Runesmithing and why such discipline bestowed to both Menadion and Bytra the titles of Magus and Rulers of the Flames?" Faluel said.
Magus was a title that humans bestowed upon mages who shared their knowledge with everyone, whereas Awakened made Ruler of the Flames those that allowed true magic to greatly surpass its fake counterpart.
"The answer is incredibly complex yet simple at the same time. If you remember what I said a while ago, the more runes you use to form a core, the more complex it becomes.
"Menadion's Runesmithing allowed the mage to apply a new effect to a pseudo core without making it more complex. Each set of old runes allowed her creations to overcome the boundaries or Forgemastering.
"This way, she could craft items impossible to make even for someone with her talent, because she would inscribe the most complex properties outside the pseudo core, avoiding the need of a new pseudo core to just add a single enchantment.
"Enchanted metals can hold many pseudo cores and an enormous amount of energy, but with the old methods, no mage could tap into their full potential because even Awakened have only so much mana.
"Runesmithing allows you to add the most complex enchantments in the preparatory phase and to craft the most complex pseudo cores without worrying about exceeding your limits.
"New runes are even more amazing. Menadion needed a set of runes for each pseudo core she wanted to affect, whereas Bytra's technique allows each set of runes to influence all the pseudo cores at the same time.
"As long as the enchantments you apply synergize between them, the complexity their pseudo cores can reach and the power they hold can go through the roof. Let me give you an example."
Faluel took three daggers out of her dimensional amulet and channeled her breathing technique, Lifestream, through one of them at a time.
"This is what you call tier five Forgemastering. It's comprised of pseudo cores, mana pathways, and circulatory system. Without runes, there's a limit to how powerful each enchantment can be, and to make matters worse, it's easily replicable.
"An Awakened doesn't even need spells to understand how it's done and steal your work, since the only thing you have to study is the pseudo core." The first dagger had three pseudo cores that Faluel showed one by one.
"This, instead, is the same artifact, bur realized using Menadion's runes." The entirety of the surface of the weapon was covered in a fit network of runes only revealed by Faluel's breathing technique.
"Each one of them is linked to a single pseudo core, making it more powerful and altering its structure so that reproducing the dagger with just Invigoration is almost impossible.
"Without a proper spell, there's no way to distinguish which set of runes is linked to which pseudo core since only the maker knows the exact number of runes each set is comprised of."
She activated the various enchantments, revealing that each core was more complex than it seemed and their shape and size varied accordingly to the mana channeled. It made it impossible to distinguish what properties belonged to the core and what to the runes.
"This, instead, is what you get with Bytra's runes." Even though it had been engraved with the least number of runes, the last dagger had the biggest and most complex pseudo cores Lith had ever seen.
Unlike those realized with Menadion's runes, their size didn't vary with the activation and the pseudo cores were so close that they would often overlap.
"Studying this even with spells is nigh-impossible. All craftsmen use the extra space to add a personal set of runes whose only purpose is to prevent the artifact from being examined by a rival Forgemaster."
