Chapter 56: It costs how much mana?

  “If we do it like this…” I explained, sketching a ritual inside of the ritual. “…the bag should be able to store a memory of what I copy so I can make a second copy later.”

  Leslie looked from the book to my drawing. “It says here you can make a lot more than two by adding extra layers.”

  “It will explode if he does that,” Woodie explained. “Your combined mana should be just enough for two layers.”

  “Who’s there?” Leslie jumped at the sound of the wooden voice and looked every which way.

  Woodie uncoiled from his place on my wrist and floated in front of Leslie, fluttering tools like tiny metallic wings. “Greetings, mortal. I am the proud and illustrious Woodie.”

  “Woodie?” Leslie gasped, looking at me for an explanation.

  “Don’t mind him,” I grinned. “He’s just my harmless tool.”

  “Tool?” the dragon hissed, emitting a stream of smoke. “You may call me master, or advisor, but never tool. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Leslie and I both echoed at once, kowtowing to the tiny dragon’s harsh words.

  “You understand…what?” The dragon cleared its throat again, placing tiny, tooled claws on what I presumed to be its hips.

  “Well, I’m not calling you master,” I grumbled. “I suppose advisor isn’t too bad. It just sounds weird. How about I call you Woodie, as we agreed?”

  “Fine,” Woodie hissed. “Just don’t refer to me as a tool again, and the girl calls me master.”

  Leslie giggled and patted Woodie on the head. “I don’t mind one bit, Little Master.”

  “I am not little!” Woodie roared in indignation, but his tiny voice cemented the new nickname.

  Leslie giggled. “You are kind of cute, you know?”

  Woodie clacked once, its mouth falling open. “I, uh, whatever! Call me what you wish. It matters not. What does matter is that you can only create two layers on your bag, even with your combined mana. Anything else would be catastrophic.”

  “Do you have mana, Woodie?” I asked hopefully.

  It snorted. “Only if you infuse me. You can use me to power bigger rituals, but it will take time. I only return a fraction of what you feed me.”

  I grabbed Woodie out of mid-air and tried infusing it with mana. The sensation was overwhelming. Woodie was an endless pit that devoured my mana faster than I could make it. I dropped to my knees in sheer exhaustion as I bottomed out.

  “As I just explained, you lack the power to satisfy my hunger.” his expression softened. “I will make do with a portion of the energy you exude as you use me to create wondrous inventions.”

  I groaned as Leslie helped me to my feet. “Ugh. Remind me never to feed him again.”

  “That would be a mistake,” Woodie clacked. “You will find I make your work significantly easier if I’m well fed. In fact, I can eliminate your need to involve others in your creations entirely once you’ve given me enough mana.”

  That got my attention. I rubbed my chin. “Okay, maybe I’ll give you a small meal from time to time.”

  “Relax,” Woodie chuckled, sounding like a wood grater. “I shall absorb a small amount of your mana when you carry me. Never put me down, and I’ll have all the mana you ever need…eventually.”

  I didn’t know how long eventually would take, but it couldn’t come soon enough. Woodie, it turned out, was very useful when it came to ritual crafting. Once I finished with the outer one, he floated over and proceeded to draw a duplicate in the middle.

  Woodie made rituals with ease, never having to go back and correct mistakes as I did. Its tooled claws raked the ground, and a perfect design was left etched in its wake.

  “Now for the fun part,” I announced. “We get to see if it blows up.”

  Woodie chuckled. “Link with your girlfriend, and the ritual should complete just fine.”

  We both ignored the quip, and Leslie put her hand on my shoulder as I placed the bag and prepared the ritual. A bright light exploded around us the moment my mana entered the ritual, lighting up the nearby buildings in the distance. It was all I could do to maintain contact and keep pouring mana into my creation.

  Then, just as soon as it started, the light was sucked back in, and the ritual was done. Left in its place was the very nondescript bag, looking as if nothing had changed.

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  Limited Bag of Mnemonic Mimicry

  Magic Item

  Grade: S

  Condition: 999

  Effect: Duplicates Contents a limited number of times

  Limitation: 2 items at a time

  Registered Users: 0/999

  Created by: Evans

  “Did it work?” Leslie groaned, pulling herself to her feet.

  She’d fallen on her butt behind me when she ran out of mana. It didn’t seem to matter, though, as the ritual had worked. I turned the bag over in my hands, trying to decide what to test it out with. I started with the only two items I had of any value, the Shadowbind and Leslie’s unfinished gloves.

  Items Registered: Shadowbind, Moonchrome Infused Glove

  Charges Remaining: 2

  I copied the glove. The second one that came out of the bag didn’t do me much good, seeing how it was another right-handed glove. Unless I found a way to reverse it, it wouldn’t be of any use to her. Then I had an idea.

  “Hey!” Leslie reached out when I sliced a hole in the top of the glove. “Why did you do that?”

  I took out the slender moonchrome battery. “This. I wanted to see if I could make a copy.

  Charges Remaining: 1

  Next, I tried making a copy of the Shadowbind. I removed the pair of vials and grinned.

  Charges Remaining: 0

  “Phooey!” I spat.

  Leslie glanced at me. “What?”

  I held up the bag. “I only get two copies total. That means I have to reload it before it will make any more copies.”

  Leslie looked at the ground, where the ritual circles had vanished. “You have to do that every time?”

  “I…don’t know,” I mumbled, placing both items back in the bag.

  Items Registered: Shadowbind, Moonchrome Infused Glove

  Charges Remaining: 2

  I heaved a sigh of relief. “Well, that worked. I guess I’ll have to replace the originals every time the charges run out.”

  Woodie cleared its throat. “That’s exactly how it works. It may seem inconvenient for now, but add more ritual circles, and you’ll have so many charges that reloading becomes unnecessary.”

  “And how much mana will that cost?” I asked.

  Woodie ticked off tools as it thought. “Well, that depends on how far you wish to go. The memory increases exponentially with every ritual. That means you need six layers before it isn’t an issue. You can get by with five, sure, but it will run out. Six guarantees over sixty thousand duplicates.”

  “Six?” I gasped. “How much mana will I need for that?”

  Woodie cleared its throat, which seemed a useless gesture considering it was made of wood. “While an embedded ritual’s mana cost does use a different formula, it still increases by quite a bit at every tier. The two of you have a combined forty-two hundred mana. That was just enough for the second tier. To get to the third tier, you will need at least thirty-two thousand.”

  “What about the sixth tier?” I asked.

  The dragon swirled in circles for a minute. “You’re going to need batteries to power a ritual of that magnitude. The cost will be just over sixteen million.”

  “M-million?” I gasped. “There isn’t that much mana in the entire world.”

  “Nonsense,” the tiny dragon roared. “I can hold much more than that. You need but feed me. For now, why don’t you focus on the fifth tier? That will allow the bag to memorize two hundred fifty-six items and has a much more manageable mana requirement of only two million forty-eight thousand mana.”

  I sighed. For a thirteen-year-old, he might as well be asking for two million dollars. When I thought about it, with the gold conversion rate, that might actually be easier.

  “We can ask people at the guild to help,” Leslie suggested. “Like they did with Miss Kirk’s armor.”

  “But sixteen million…” I trailed off, my mind racing for ways to accumulate that much mana. “Say, Woodie, do you think I can duplicate a charged battery?”

  The dragon shot up and scanned the battery with a little red light that emanated from its eyes. “That…might actually work. You have the duplicate of the moonchrome battery. Why not try infusing it and seeing if you can make a copy?”

  I looked at the silver bar. While I had absolutely no clue how a real battery worked, I knew the metal I held in my hand absorbed mana and stored it so it could be used later. I sat cross-legged on the ground and took a deep breath.

  Mana: 550/700

  I still wasn’t fully recharged from the ritual, but it would do, at least for the test I had in mind. The Moonchrome battery sipped hungrily at my mana, doing most of the work itself. It didn’t take long for me to bottom out once again.

  Leslie sat beside me and took my other hand in hers. “You can use my mana if you want to.”

  We shared a smile, and I activated Mana Link. Soon enough, I felt her mana flow through me and into the battery. While she had significantly more mana than I did, she had also used it all up in the ritual to create the two-tier bag. The Moonchrome battery wasn’t even partially charged by the time we were both drained.

  MoonChrome Battery

  Magic Item

  Grade: B

  Condition: 99

  Owner: Evans

  Charge: 1731/10,000

  “That should be enough for the test,” I sighed, plopping the minimally charged battery into the bag.

  Error: Please use the remaining charge before adding new items.

  Items Registered: Shadowbind, Moonchrome Infused Glove

  Charges Remaining: 2

  “Oh, right,” I said as I willed the bag to make more gloves.

  A wave of dizziness washed over me, and Leslie had to stabilize me as I nearly fell over.

  Error: Insufficient Mana.

  “Mana?” I asked out loud.

  Woodie replied. “What do you think the bag uses to power its creations?”

  I shrugged, and the dragon went on. “Just like anything else, it takes mana. Not a lot, just enough to activate the magic. You’re fortunate in that regard. Otherwise, your battery trick would never work.”

  “It costs…” I trailed off when I realized who I’d given the other bag to. “Beth! She hardly has any mana.”

  “Worry not, mortal,” Woodie clacked soothingly. “The mana needed to activate this creation is so insignificant that even a commoner can use it. Your friend may become fatigued after feeding all your friends, but she will recover quickly when she eats. That is the secret to faster mana recovery, by the way. A full belly.”

  My stomach rumbled, reminding me that, once again, I hadn’t fed myself.

  “Are you hungry?” Leslie asked. “Come with me. I know a place.”

  “I don’t know,” I hedged, still feeling drained. “I don’t want to walk all the way back to the guild.”

  She stuck out her tongue. “The guild isn’t the only place to get magical cooking. As I said, I know a place. It’s just down the street.”

  Leslie wasn’t kidding. My mouth fell open when she walked me into the bodega at the end of the block. I liked a good pastrami on rye as much as the next guy, but they were hardly magical.

  “Hey, Jimmy,” Leslie smiled at the man behind the counter as we walked past him.

  I scratched the bodega cat’s head affectionately. “Hi, Bagel.”

  The cat purred.

  “This way,” Leslie called as she walked through a door in the back.

  I cast one last furtive glance at Jimmy, who was preoccupied reading a newspaper, before following.

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