The Bonding spell produced several blue threads made of pure mana that passed through the crystals and the armor over and over again.
With each passage, the crystals closed in the armor until they touched its surface. The metal seemed to turn liquid, offering no resistance to the gemstones that sunk in until only their top remained visible.
Bonding was one of the many Forgemastering spells created by fake mages that employed the best next thing to Spirit Magic. Each blue strand worked as both a mana IV that allowed the energy from the crystal to seep into the metal, preventing its rejection, and as stitches, keeping the two together until the end of the process.
Lith took such effects for granted, whereas Nalrond had focused his studies on such branches of Forgemastering in the hope of unlocking Spirit Magic.
Lith placed the seven gemstones in pairs, on the shoulders, arms, and hips of the armor, leaving the seventh for the neck area. Being Bonded at the same time, the crystals created a collective mana circulatory system that spread evenly throughout the whole armor.
"Isn't it too much? I get that you are strong, little brother, but seven violet crystals are a tough cookie to infuse anything with even a single spell." Tista asked.
As long as Lith didn't need her help, Solus kept projecting the hologram of how the Scalewalker armor appeared on mana sense to allow the others to better follow the enchanting procedure.
"In any other circumstances, you would be right. With my old skill, it would have been impossible, but that's what Runesmithing is for." Lith replied while drawing several strings of mystical runes in the air.
The first set of his choosing seeped inside the armor, bringing with it Lith's energy signature. The mana from the runes and the world energy released by the crystals slowly merged together until they couldn't be distinguished anymore.
To reduce the rejection of his mana, Lith had poured in the set of runes so much energy that he needed to use Invigoration before moving on to the second set.
"At this point, a Forgemaster would need to take a break and, without Runesmithing, it would be too long a time for the incantation to succeed." Quylla explained to Nalrond.
"The good thing of the preparatory phase is that there is no rush, allowing even us fake mages who are unable to quickly restore our energy to split the process into smaller steps."
The following six sets of runes required much less focus and energy, yet Lith had to use Invigoration two more times to engrave them.
The second set amplified the strength of the pseudo cores while the third set would disperse the excess energy during an all-out fight. Together, they would allow the Adamant to better channel the energy that the enchantments would release and reduce the stress that the boosted pseudo cores would experience.
Even with the mana circulatory system, holding too many powerful spells would otherwise weaken the metal over time and cause the imbued cores a mana overload.
The fourth set of runes would allow the armor to replenish its energy reserves faster than normal. The runes absorbed the surrounding world energy and would aid the mana crystals to empower the pseudo cores once put in their place.
The fifth and the sixth set would respectively absorb part of the kinetic and magical energy that would hit the armor during a fight, turning them into a protective energy field.
The seventh and last set would cloak both the pseudo cores and the rune formations, making it impossible for any regular Forgemaster to study them.
From his last trade with Orion, Lith had learned how to protect his secrets. Phloria's father had given him a true masterpiece like War, but had made sure that no one, not even Lith could reproduce it whereas the workings behind Lith's Skinwalker had been easily unraveled.
Once he was done with the runes, Lith took a tonic and a short break to save as much Invigoration as he could before the enchantment process started. He took all the ingredients he needed out of his pocket dimension, studying them carefully.
A normal Skinwalker armor needed four pseudo cores, but his Scalewalker armor had to do better than that. Lith prepared the pelt of a polymorphic monster species known as a Skinwalker that would give the armor its morphing abilities.
Then, a few Hydra's scales gently offered by Faluel that would improve the hardness of the metal while keeping it flexible.
Also, he set a bowl of slime goop to use it as a stabilizer during the various Forgemastering steps, a petal of the Golden Phoenix flower that the dryads had gifted him years ago, and a Thunderbird's plume to boost the base material's defensive properties.
Thunderbirds had sturdy feathers as hard as iron, and their affinity to lightning granted them a natural electromagnetic field capable of weakening most attacks.
The last ingredients to Forgemaster a Scalewalker Armor were the pseudo core of a dimensional item to store the clothes that the armor would reproduce and a pseudo core holding the matrix of the Full Guard spell.
'Solus's help usually makes such spell useless to me, but now that she's regaining her body, I can't force her to sacrifice her personal life just to act as my bodyguard in the case I'm attacked.' Lith thought.
'By imbuing Full Guard into the armor, I will remove its cast time and the need to focus to keep the spell active during a fight. My only regret is that the aura will be visible, but adding gold to cloak it would weaken the Adamant and make the process even harder.
'If I had more than one Forge, I could make a recon armor and a battle armor, but since I'm no spy, the battle version takes priority.'
After a light meal and some rest brought Lith back to his peak condition, he refined the ingredients. The process required to channel his mana inside each one of them, enhancing their magical properties while destroying their physical forms.
In the past, Lith would use the released energy to form pseudo cores but now he knew better. He let the energy from the Skinwalker pelt and the Hydra's scales to merge with his mana, forming the runes of his choice before assembling them into pseudo cores.
"By the Great Mother!" The spectators looked with awe at the two rainbow-colored spheres in front of their eyes that were so similar yet so different.
The Skinwalker's ability to shapeshift made it capable of changing colors as well, giving its pseudo core a dull light. The power of all seven elements filled Faluel's scales, instead, making the resulting pseudo core emit a vibrant light as it absorbed world energy and split into its components.
Lith sighed while looking at the Golden Phoenix petal before burning it with his mana. Each flower was a priceless treasure and he had only a few left. The petal produced a string of fiery runes that assembled to form what would be the Scalewalker armor power core.
Powerful enchantments and runes needed Lith's mana to work whereas crystals could provide the armor solely with world energy.
The power core would not only fuel all enchantments, but also hold the other pseudo cores together, keep them from clashing with each other, and turn the world energy into mana bearing Lith's energy signature.
