Make It Heavier (2)

Let me pause here for a bit of TMI.

As everyone knows, fantasy worlds come with settings so entrenched they might as well be official canon. Elves are naturalists, dwarves are masters of the forge, dragons are strong as hell — that kind of thing. In this world, though, those weren't tropes. They were flat fact.

Dwarven craftsmanship, in particular, was the finest in the world. From intimate knowledge of materials to smithing technique to every branch of engineering you could name, the Empire's manufacturing industry sat, for all practical purposes, under dwarven monopoly. Even when they bickered among themselves over who was better, by human standards every last one of them belonged to a higher plane of existence.

Just watching what went on in this workshop, steeped in the acrid haze of hot metal, was enough to feel a trace of that dwarven influence firsthand.

A dwarf with a shaggy orange beard was carving away at a small piece of metal clamped to his workbench. The dwarf's name was Brokk.

I'd assumed he was just shaving roughly at it, but in the blink of an eye, hairline grooves sprang into being, spaced at intervals so regular they might have been laid down with a ruler.

"Brokk, you make even your parts yourself these days? You could just place an order with the city workshops, no?"

"Orders run late. Faster to make 'em myself than sit around waiting."

Brokk dusted off his hands and lifted something with a pair of tweezers. What he held turned out to be a gear that looked smaller than a pinky nail.

Hold on. He carved that by hand?

At this point, you might as well call the man a living semiconductor fab.

The moment Brokk fitted the gear into a component beside him, the tiny teeth meshed and began turning, smooth as silk.

"Noel. Pay your respects. This is Brokk, Chief Blacksmith of the Academy."

Only after Walter nudged his arm did the dwarf lift his head.

"Forgive me — it's just that I've never seen anything like this before. I'm Noel Brighthome."

"Brokk, that's me. So what's the business?"

I spread the necklace and the blueprint out on an empty workbench, and Brokk dropped into the chair directly in front of it.

"It's a training necklace that makes the body heavier. I've taken a commission to make it stronger than it is now. And while I'm at it, I'd like to add a function for adjusting the weight."

"And for your reference, Brokk — he also has a prior record of swapping a client's magic tool spell plate for an iron one without so much as asking."

"Oh, come now, Workshop Master. My iron plate performed better than the original platinum spell plate, if I do say so."

"...You're telling me you swapped a platinum spell plate for an iron one, and the performance improved?"

Brokk's interest was piqued.

"Ah — yes, yes. You see, I wrote the spell in a rather unconventional way. And the young lady who commissioned it loved the result, so I'm hoping to do similar work on this necklace."

Brokk opened the necklace up, inspected the inside, then set it down on the workbench.

"This unusual spell of yours — can I take a look at it?"

"Of course. Though before that, there's something I'd like to ask."

I turned the blueprint toward Brokk and pointed a finger at the outer rim of the necklace drawn on it.

"I want this part to change the weight applied to the body when it's turned, but I have no idea how I'd build that into the spell."

Adding the weight itself wasn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠so different from the bracelet. The problem was how to update the variable. The applied force was never going to change neatly on its own just because a ring rotated — I needed a link of some kind to connect the ring and the spell.

In theory, I could load in several spell plates with different outputs and swap them each time the ring turned. But was all of that really going to fit inside one tiny necklace?

"For now, I've divided it into five stages. Should I make separate spell plates and link them together?"

"Why? Is there any need to do it so boneheaded?" Brokk shot back.

"Sorry? What do you mean?"

"Control the output of the mana flowing inside the magic tool mechanically, and the problem's solved, easy. No call to go stacking multiple spell plates."

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow..."

"Tsk. Hold on a moment."

Brokk fetched a small mana lamp with a round handle from a shelf. He opened the lamp's base plate, seated a mana stone from his pocket into it, and held the thing out to me.

"Turn the handle. Slow, now."

"Oh — yes, of course."

— Click-click-click-click…

The instant I took the handle and turned it, the lamp lit up — along with the exact sensation of spinning the dial on a safe. As the handle went around, the glow swelled steadily brighter; spun the other way, it dimmed just as gradually.

"Watch close. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The works inside adjust the width of the channel the mana passes through. Let more mana through and it brightens; let less through and it darkens."

"Ohh, so that's how it works. Then the spell itself stays untouched, and..."

"That's it. Isn't that exactly what you were after?"

Whoa — he's right. There was a way to control the variable at the hardware level!

And he just thought of it like it was nothing. Dwarves really are a different breed.

"And one more thing. What kind of structure were you planning to build into the rim to control the mana?"

"Er... I'm a total layman on that front, so I honestly couldn't say. All I've heard is that there's supposedly something called a dial mechanism..."

"Figured as much. Have a look at this."

Brokk detached the handle from the mana lamp and showed me its underside. Out came an unfamiliar assembly: a wheel scored with grooves, a tiny ball, and a spring. The little ball rode along the closely spaced grooves, ticking softly as it went.

"They call it a detent mechanism. With this structure, every turn of the rim catches with a distinct feel, while letting you trim the width of the tool's mana passage a touch at a time. Set the intervals fine enough, and it's handy for the user, too."

"Oh... that's brilliant. Could you build it at necklace size?"

"Naturally. Here, watch."

Brokk began drawing a circle on the back of the paper. Inside it he sketched the mana stone and the spell plate, then worked the structure we'd just seen in between the two. He traced the points that needed reworking with his fingertip, explaining what each piece did — it was all I could do to keep up.

Seriously, does this fellow have design software installed in his head?

"One thing, though — fitting that new mechanism into this necklace would take some serious surgery. How about I just build you a fresh one?"

"A new one?"

"Aye. The way I see it, that's the faster road. Here, take this."

Brokk rummaged through a shelf and held out a small square plate about the size of a thumbnail.

"Ooh — is that a platinum plate?"

"Silver. Platinum costs too much. And besides, an enchanter making his bread with iron plates — that'd be a wound to his pride, no? Am I right?"

"That's right, that's right."

Walter nodded his head off at Brokk's question.

Excuse me, Workshop Master? If you second that quite that loudly, what does that make me?

"I'll prepare the necklace frame, so you just get that special spell of yours written down. This won't take long, so don't go dawdling."

"Hold on a moment. How exactly am I supposed to write on a plate this tiny?"

Before the words had left my mouth, Brokk pointed to a corner of the workshop. There stood a machine that looked like a microscope and a sewing machine forcibly bolted together.

"Huh? What's that?"

I asked because I genuinely had no idea.

"'What's that,' he says. That's a spell inscriber, you brat. Weren't you an enchanter?"

"Noel — don't tell me you've never even used an inscriber."

On the heels of Brokk, now Walter was asking too.

"No... this is my first time seeing one..."

"Good grief. And here I'd heard you'd dabbled in everything back at the orphanage. I'll teach you how it works."

So Walter led me by the arm toward the inscriber, while Brokk disappeared into the storeroom at the back of the workshop.

Using the spell inscriber turned out to be easier than I'd expected. How should I put it — it called to mind elementary school science class, peering at the cross-section of a leaf under a microscope.

Look into the microscope-style lens and there was a dot, like the scope of a sniper rifle. Press the button on the right side of the machine, and an extremely fine needle punched the dot's position, boring a hole into the spell plate. On the left side sat a stick shaped like a joystick lever; nudging it shifted the frame that held the spell plate in hair-thin increments. In short: think of it as writing letters by punching dots.

And Walter had drilled into my ears — until they ached — his solemn warning that the slightest mistake would send the spell plate straight to the trash.

I simulated the code spell I'd drafted in advance over and over for errors, and once I felt reasonably confident, I threw myself into the work.

The problem was time. This dot-punching business was grunt work of the highest order; engraving even a few lines of spell ate up far more time than I'd anticipated.

Speaking of which, the sheer volume of spell inscribed on the necklace Aurélie had handed over was staggering. How long had it taken to engrave all that? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Her filial devotion, it seemed, was no ordinary devotion.

And so, flowing along in a selfless trance, dot by dot, the spell I engraved onto the spell plate was as follows:

Roughly parsed, it meant: add to the wearer's original body weight an amount equal to the magnitude of the mana output flowing from the mana stone.

For the original body weight, I'd chosen to store it once, at the moment the necklace was switched on, and simply keep reusing that stored value.

The part that worried me was the unit configuration. I needed to verify how much heavier the wearer actually became with every tick of the output value. It wasn't a fixed-output item, after all — I could start it weak and ramp it up little by little and see.

And above all, my client Aurélie had explicitly requested it be made as heavy as possible, so if the output ran excessive, well — I judged that counted as a win in its own right.

"Done already?"

While I pulled my eyes off the inscriber for a stretch, Brokk held something out. It was a necklace-shaped frame. Just as I'd wanted, the ring around the frame's edge rotated like a safe's dial, clicking at every turn, and at the center sat an empty mana stone socket and a slot for the spell plate.

Seriously? He finished something this intricate in that little time?

"That's incredible. Would you care to see the finished spell plate as well?"

Brokk took the spell plate, examined it through a magnifying lens, then raised his head.

"...This is genuinely all of it?"

"Sorry? Did I slip up somewhere?"

"No — I'm asking whether the spell truly ends here. There's still plenty of open space left on the plate, no?"

"Ah — yes. That's the whole of it."

Brokk set the original necklace's spell plate and my silver one side by side and studied the pair for a long while.

"Remarkable. Let's test it, then. Walter, hold this a moment."

With Walter lending a hand nearby, Brokk slotted the spell plate in and assembled small components over it. Watching the things he'd drawn on paper take on physical form, I felt proud for no good reason. Granted, Brokk had done nearly all of it — but my ideas were in there too, alright?

Before long, the assembly was complete. The finished product was a touch rougher than Aurélie's necklace — about the same size, but where hers had sported lavish surface ornamentation, this one's defining feature was the ring structure running along its edge, sized for a finger to grip and turn.

"I should report to Lady Sermont, no? She did tell me to bill her for costs if need be."

"Aye. I'll have the invoice ready when you head back — you deliver it."

Brokk answered offhandedly, clamping the necklace into a machine I'd never seen before.

"Right then — starting with the mana resistance test."

— Vrrrrmmm…

A resonant hum rolled out of the machine. Every time Brokk worked the machine's lever, the necklace's glow flared bright and then faded, over and over. Once he'd cycled the output up and down while examining the necklace, he cut the mana and pulled the silver plate back out.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"Put it through a fairly brutal run and it's none the worse for it. So the bit about performance improving even with an iron plate wasn't hot air after all."

"I did say so, didn't I? Lady Sermont was pleased as well."

"All the same, don't go carelessly using iron plates again. There's no guarantee they'll keep holding up."

Brokk turned the silver plate over in his hands, then seated it back into the necklace.

"I'll take a proper look at your spell script when I find the time. You've left me curious now. Once I get a spare moment, I ought to go pay a visit to the Enchanting professor."

"Yes, sir. Do be sure to call for me when you go."

"Mm. Now test it yourself. Turning it clockwise switches it on and makes it heavier by degrees. To shut it off, wind it the other way, all the way around."

Brokk handed the necklace over. I hung it around my neck, gave the outer ring a slight clockwise twist, then took a stroll around the workbench.

Oh — not bad at all, actually?

It was far lighter than Aurélie's necklace had been when I wore it earlier that day.

"At this level, even a weakling like me should manage just fine."

"Good. Now raise the intensity."

— Click-click-click.

I held the necklace steady and turned the rim, met with the pleasant sensation of machinery clicking into mesh.

"It's definitely getting heavier little by little. It's not jumping all at once or anything..."

Huh? Wait just a second?

At some point, my core had begun to strain under the load. My footsteps dragged heavier than before — it felt like I'd strapped on sandbags. About a third of the way around the dial, the pressure was on par with Aurélie's necklace.

"Not bad — output's markedly strong even at mere silver-plate grade. Care to test it further?"

"Yes, let's keep going."

A little more turning of the rim, and my jaw clenched of its own accord. Call it the sensation of this planet taking a special liking to me. Gravity abruptly pressed down hard enough to make me want to sink to my knees, and I could only barely hold out, legs quivering like a newborn foal's.

I turned it barely a hair's worth and it's already this bad?

"You holding up, Noel? Your face is bright red."

"Hhkk…!"

Instead of answering Walter, I braced a hand on the workbench.

"Looks like that's beyond you. Switch it off now, nice and slow. The test's given us plenty."

"Yes — one moment..."

Phew. All that's left is to turn it off...

Huh?

I'd forgotten something crucial.

Was it clockwise that turned it off? Or was it counterclockwise?

Brokk had told me a full minute ago, but my mind was so scrambled that it had slipped clean out of my head.

Damn it — I'm screwed.

Calm down, Noel. Forget the corrupted memory and trust your gut. In a do-or-die moment, leaning on instinct is the best judgment there is. Or so they say.

And the direction my gut pointed was...

Clockwise!

Turn it clockwise and it shuts off!

Without a second's hesitation, I cranked the rim clockwise—

— WHAM!

"Ghhhaaaakh—!"

The monstrous pressure crushed me flat, and I sprawled spread-eagled across the floor.

"N-Noel! Are you alright?!"

"I told you to turn it off — why are you still twisting it clockwise?!"

Startled out of their wits, Walter and Brokk came scrambling over to me.