Noah was taking a shower when Tessa's voice sounded in his head.
“This is a bit troubleso, dear, you should hurry up a bit. We have a Royal guest, it seems. Making them wait is uncourteous. I will find a few excuses to stall for ti for you to get ready, but if I do it too much they will realize what I am doing and this may be seen as an offence.” Theressa said.
“I’ll be ready shortly,” Said Noah. “But why would a Royal family mber co unannounced like that?” Asked Noah, surprised.
“This must be related to announcing Cil as the next Thesalia.” Said Theressa.
“Seamstress title that you had in the last?” Asked Noah. He knew about her recent activity to a degree, as they were often speaking in their minds through their connection, while he was away the past month, but he did not delve deeply into it, trusting her to do what’s best for herself and their whole family. “I understand it’s an honorable position but…still a Royal visit so suddenly? Is this sothing that needs a congratulation so hurriedly?”
“Umm. They aren’t here to congratulate. They are most likely here to threaten to rescind my decision." Said Theressa ekly.
Hearing her voice Noah stopped in mid movent, suspicion creeping up into his mind.
“I feel like I am missing sothing here. And hearing your guilty voice I suspect there is sothing you are omitting. Why would the royal family be so worried over a seamstress title?” Noah asked rinsing the foam off himself and taking a towel to dry himself.
“Umm, you see, dear, rember I told you that I am a master at weaving and puppeteering? And that Cil and Bri each inherited talents for one of these skills?”
“Yes. So?” Said Noah stopping for a mont, rembering the ti when he just got acquainted with the Threadweaver family. It seed to him like a long ti ago, but they actually were together less than half a year. Compared to his mates’ long lives it was just a spec of ti. He was sure there would be a lot more to learn about them, so he wasn’t surprised when later Theressa ntioned that she was actually the bearer of one of the most prestigious titles among the people with support class systems - Thesalia.
Although she was a monster and had no system like all humans do, she managed to achieve the title of the best seamstress of the Kingdom and at so ti was considered as a royal seamstress, making the most extravagant and luxurious dresses that nobles could allow themselves to wear.
However, was there more to this title that he did not know?
Support class systems like seamstress, blacksmith and the likes were a lot more frequent than fighting class. There must have been a tough competition, surely there were dozens of people who were at least close to her skill and could also bear this title, thought Noah. So what was the issue here?
“Umm, when we t, I'd been ignoring it for more than a hundred years, so I brushed it off, and did not explain it well, as I had no intentions to pick it up back then. I am sorry it seed like I was hiding sothing. That wasn’t my intention.” Said Theressa apologetically.
“It’s alright, but maybe you should explain it quickly while we have so ti? Otherwise I’ll look like an idiot if our guests find out I don’t know anything.”
“You see, dear, for a monster it is not a small matter to have a Dutchess status like and Cassandra. The reason I was given such a high status is because I have a very important responsibility in the Kingdom and the entire human realm in general.”
“What kind of responsibility?” Asked Noah, picking up an angular object, one of Theressa’s newest creations that she intends to bring to the markets so ti soon. He sent a bit of mana into the small bead on the grip and a soft warm breeze started to blow from the other end. He pointed it at his wet hair and started to dry his head.
“I am responsible for making Thesalia masterpieces.” Said Theressa. “Every ti a new High-noble family is announced or an event like the wedding of the inheriting scion cos up, I am obliged to provide the young ones with a set of gowns on the Royal family's order." Answered Theressa.
“I see. A royal wedding gift, made by a royal seamstress. I’ve heard of it. But still, it's hardly a matter needing a royal mber to oversee. It’s a matter of a Royal Chancellary and a simple ssenger would be enough…” Said Noah with confusion but Theressa interrupted him.
“No. It’s not so simple, dear. You see, I don’t make just “so dress” set. I weave Thesalia garnts.”
Garnts? Thought Noah. A weird way to call a ball dress.
“Alright. I understand that I am not aware of sothing crucial here. What is Thesalia garnt?” Asked Noah.
“Do you rember I said that Arachna silk is very precious because it is one of the sturdiest things in existence when imbued with magic. Well the thing is, the best armors in existence, the so-called, legendary class battle armors, are actually made with the help of arachna silk.”
Noah almost dropped the fan from his hand when he heard it.
The material he wore so casually ever since starting to live with Tessa was not just fancy luxury, it was the material of the best weapons humanity has ever produced?
“Dear?” Asked Theressa after not hearing any answer from Noah for a few seconds.
“Sorry, you just surprised .” He answered, putting the fan down on the dressing table in the corner of their room.
“It’s just I thought that it's a good material for mages' robes, but you can make armors out of it. And legendary? You an those things I only heard off in stories and fairy tales?” Asked Noah bewildered.
“Not entirely, only their inner layer. The magic layer. From top there are all kinds of materials, like dragnite, adamantite, mithril or sothing of the likes. But from inside they all always have a soft thin layer of dress. This soft layer is the core of armor, its functional part. It turns a pile of expensive scrap tal into a legendary class armor. That is what Thesalia class garnt is. The functional part of the legendary armors. The core of it.”
Noah looked at a new set of suits laying on the bed prepared for him. By now he had a whole wardrobe of them. He always felt that the suits she made for him were already sothing considered a fortune in the world. But she made it in re seconds.
“My suits…” Noah muttered raising his eyebrow.
“I know what you think, but no. Weaving a suit that I made for you is child's play. Any human seamstress if she is skilled and very careful can replicate sothing of this level as it uses simple Arachna silk with no mana imbued in it. Once it’s imbued with magic, the strings are too sharp for humans to handle. And weaving a magic garnt needs imbuing silk with magic while weaving fast, before the mana wears out. The degree of skill is so complicated that for a thousand years since I produced such a thing for the first ti ever, it has been absolutely impossible for humans to replicate it. And believe humans tried a lot of tis. However, up to this day, all their attempts have failed.”
“Hold on, hold on… Impossible to replicate? Then that ans… You made the core garnts for the Kingdoms number one treasure the Royal Blue Phoenix Fire battle armor, the one King wears only on grand occasions? The legendary guardian armors worn by Archdukes into battles in which they are said to be able to slaughter hundreds of elite monsters. The legendary armor of heroes that they wore in battle with the Demon Lord, that are said to be able to withstand a God’s punch? The Holy Battle Garnts of the Saintess, a sacred white piece of cloth that is said to be worshiped in Central Cathedral almost as much as the Saintess herself, the ones I saw on her when she barged into my dream last ti… All these legendary things that I’ve read about from books and heard from stories…
“Yes. The magic enchanted garnt on which they are all based was made by . And not just for this Kingdom. By Saintesses order each Royal family in the human domain has one of my creations. And these garnts are deed humanity’s shared treasure. This Kingdom may not monopolize it. So if another kingdom wishes to buy it, the Kingdom can not ban it. However, I only deal directly with Royal families. Nobles may only buy or receive them through the royal family of their kingdom. They are always sold under the guise of the Queen dresses.
“Queens dresses…” muttered Noah “The twenty five masterpieces that the first Thesalia was said to make.”
“Yes. All of them are just cover for the twenty five legendary armor enchanted core garnts that I’ve made. On the outside I make a masterpiece of a wedding dress or sothing like that. But behind the scenes I make an Arachna silk magic battle garnt that would co with it as an inner layer. Later that garnt would be integrated into so kind of finely crafted armor, made by so artisans and blacksmiths, becoming a legendary armor. People would see the tal craft and think of the skill that blacksmiths put, but it is what inside of it, is what makes it truly a legendary class.” Explained Theressa.
“This was the arrangent I made with the Kingdom to beco a Duchess so many years ago, receiving a Duchess Threadweaver na. But of course people would ask a lot of questions as to why would dresses cost so much and why only I could make them, which would also let everyone know that I am a monster. So the Kingdom made it a "hereditary" title. Where hereditary thing was just a facade. In fact no one ever had a title other than . I had been changing nas and identities for centuries pretending to be soone else, but the title bearer was always and alone. And would stay this way forever. At least the Kingdom believed so. No one expected Priscilla to co into the picture. Until you cured her, no one even believed it would be possible for to give up my title.”
“Umm, not that I doubt your decision, love. But why did you decide to give it up?”
“Well it is partly a cold calculation, I thought it through for quite so ti, just did not have an opportunity to do this. I have my title of Duchess, it may not be stripped now that I’ve learned to produce sentient offspring, however the title of Thesalia will help protect Priscilla and let her gain so weight to stand on her own in the future. But the reason I decided to do it now is because I am pissed.” Said Theressa, anger sipping into her voice.
“At the Kingdom?” Asked Noah.
“No. I don’t really hold any grudge against Kingdom. They did as much as they could. I can understand all their decisions. And to the end they never outrught gave up to help . No. I am pissed at the Holy bitch that threatens you. Not once, but twice her dogs tried to hurt you. No one threatens my man! I will not just sit by swallowing her threatening you.” Theressa’s voice now sounded in Noah’s head, outright furious and malicious.
“Wait. How is this decision concerning the Saintess?” Asked Noah.
“The war is coming, my dear. Soon humanity will need more battle garnts. Sainetess always secretly forbade the kingdoms from having too much of this level of armors, fearing unrests and trouble they could cause. Or maybe just afraid the Kingdoms could pose her a threat. But now she would be forced to lift all bans. She would need lots of garnts for Central Cathedral and White Tower forces. But she can’t just monopolize all of a sudden. Kingdoms would not look good on this.
However with soone else holding the title, it is possible for her to hire fullti so to say without the Kingdom being able to say sothing about it. So what I do is make arrangents to beco the Saintesses' own seamstress.”
“What if she doesn’t co up with the idea?” Said Noah.
“We would just have to use human greed and have soone else point her in that direction. I still have a few connections here and there and know quite a few families who’d be able to press the Saintess once they hear that they can get their hands on one of my masterpieces.” Said Theressa wryly.
“So how exactly providing people that threaten with your magic products is helping you protect ?” Asked Noah bemused.
“Well being White Towers seamstress will allow an access to so useful information and new connections within Central Cathedral, but what I am most interested in is bugging all their gear to be able to spy on everyone and if necessary turn the garnt against them and kill them all if such a need arises. With bugged gear they will never again have a chance to catch you by surprise and if they do, they will be the ones regretting it.”
“If sothing like that is found out you will be deed an enemy.” Noah said, creasing his eyebrows in a serious expression.
“It’s an extre asure. We will be able to avoid it by secretly listening to their plans.” Said Theressa with a cunning tone.
“Still wouldn’t sothing like that be found out?” Said Noah.
“I doubt it. The reason I never did it was purely out of consideration for my agreent with humans, not because I feared being found out. To find it they would need to dismantle it without damaging it. And they have no skill to do it without ruining the weave and the enchantnt.” Said Theressa with absolute confidence.
“But it's an enchantnt right? It uses magic circles and humans are well versed in enchantnts, why wouldn’t they be able to decipher it? Humans do make enchanted armors themselves. Maybe not the legendary level, but still. My father used to have high grade armor and it was made by the local master.” Said Noah.
“There is a vast difference in the way the usual armor enchantnt and Thesalia garnts enchantnts are made, dear.”
“Different how?” Asked Noah.
“Alright, we still have so ti, so I think I will be able to explain it to a degree. So I’ll start with explaining how the normal enchanted armors are made.” Said Theressa.
“You know that magic is not just randomly omnipotent power. It has rules and principles, just like any other law of physics. And one such rule is that you can only ever enchant a solid piece with a magic circle. If you try to make one circle spanning several solid pieces of material, magic would leak through the seam in the place where material is divided into parts. This will make your circle highly inefficient. Flawed. These flawed magic circles are sotis more dangerous than wrongly made. At least wrongly made ones would not activate. Flawed ones will leak magic and may uncontrollably activate sothing you did not wish to activate.”
The second rule is that several enchantnts on one solid piece may interfere with each other if activated at the sa ti. It happens because mana in each circle permutate in its own way, becoming different from each other and being locked within the sa piece it starts to clash with each other just as two magics of two different people may clash.
So knowing these two rules you have a problem. You need to enchant each piece with only one circle. But if your armor consists of two pieces of tal, each has to have a separate circle. For example if your armor has levitation magic in it, you need this enchantnt on all pieces of armor, otherwise only so parts would levitate while others will still be heavy adding weight to the mass that spell has to lift and increase the mana expenditure from the user.
The second problem is making two different magic enchantnts ans you have to control them separately. aning one at a ti. A good mage can divide his mana flow and activate several separate enchantnts but dividing your mind is a separate story. Mages use their mind to control each enchantnt and any human would be hard pressed to control such a huge amount of enchantnt circles at the sa ti. Hardly any one would be able to use such armors. And without adequate mana control of a mage you would not be able to use such armor in battle at all.
And the third problem is that you can’t use another enchantnt while using the first one. For example you activate levitation to fly, then you can’t use protective magic or attack magic. All you do is fly around without doing anything much to attack, while also becoming vulnerable in the air.
Also levitation is just that. Take off from the ground. To actually fly around you need another enchantnt to direct yourself. Flight control circle as we call it. To solve the problem you can put flight control enchantnt circles on so different parts of armor than levitation but again, those parts do not levitate and add to the weight, increasing the mana consumption for both circles. Well, it's just an example but I think you get the gist.” Explained Theressa.
“So making levitation magic with all these problems is simply useless and wasteful for anybody. What people did instead was make a big powerful enchantnt, for example a barrier or a fire field surrounding you, burning enemies around you.”
“But we do have armors with multi enchantnts” Said Noah.
“Yes. What I described is how armors were made thousands of years ago when the first monsters invaded this world. People could use only one enchantnt at a ti. Things changed since then and magic theory advanced. With ti people learned the laws better and found ways to use multiple enchantnts at once.” Theressa continued her explanation.
“One thod that people found is to integrate several circles into one big circle. It’s like one big circuit made into a line that spirals within itself until it completes a circle. It’s more like a circular labyrinth than just a circle. We call it a circuit. You power up one of the circuits only but at the sa ti you control all magic circles that are integrated into the circuit. It uses more power if you need just one enchantnt, as you need to power up all enchantnts that are within the circuit, but it allows you to control several enchantnts.
However with this you have a problem with space. You can have only so much space on your armor piece for such a complex circle. And these circuits tend to grow exponentially when you add new features to it.
So how do you solve that? The answer that people ca up with was cell structured armor in which circles would be overlaying each other and connected from layer to layer. By overlaying circles in different layers you can construct a one complicated circuit that would take less space as it spans now into the third dinsion. Thickness. With this leaking mana from a flaw in the circle between the seam of material, seep back into the sa circuit but on the other level.
The addition of more layers of material, however, adds hell of a lot more weight to armor. Lightening weight magic may help but you need to constantly spend mana for it to be active.
Also there is a certain capacity of mana that a material can hold. So the smaller the pieces the less mana you can imbue in them, aning the weaker magic they can produce.
To solve the problem of weight and mana output, humanity needed better materials. Either ones that would allow more mana be input into them without damaging the material, or to find lighter materials that would allow the construction of thick armors from multi layers without being too heavy.
The first materials that humanity found most suitable were of course monster body parts. But not only monsters can be used. Other magic creatures including spirit beasts were used for these purposes. Which is why humans and spirit beasts did not get along until recently.
With this thod however humans faced another problem.
Magic creature's hides, and carapaces, as well as innards in so of the cases are already adapted to these exact uses, so they were the easiest solutions. However, the stronger the magic creature the better the material.
You can imagine what you need to do to get the Dragon scales, which are said to be as strong as adamantite. So getting their hands on so of the materials wasn’t easy. Not only were so monsters very rare, but also only very powerful people could hunt them. Of course such powerful people would first of all empower themselves and their followers with these materials before selling them to others.
The scarcity of so of the best of the materials pushed people to continue their research until they learned to make synthetic magical materials. And the best materials humanity learned to make were mithril, adamantite and orichalcon.
Well, that civilization and their scientific research has been mostly lost, but the secret of making the best materials humanity managed to salvage.
It is impossible to produce these tals in mass now like back then, but at least they are still available.
Mithrill can be imbued with the most amount of magic from all the known tals. It allows humans to make tal cells up to ten tis smaller than with any other magical material and not lose the power of its enchantnts in comparison. Or you can make it into bigger cells and make just a few enchantnts but very powerful imbuing them with massive amounts of mana.
However mithrill is not very light weight while also quite soft as a material. That’s why it is absolutely unsuitable for making weapons. At least their outer layers.
These shortcomings of course can be overco with the enchantnts, which ans you need to add even more cells and complicate the enchantnt circuit.
Another way is to just cover mithril with sothing else. Sothing a lot harder and sturdier.
And that’s where adamantite cos in handy.
The most lightweight yet the most indestructible of all tals that humanity managed to create. Imbued with magic it is said to be harder than diamond while preserving the elasticity of tal to not make it brittle and chip or crack. It can be molded into shape when it's not imbued with magic and then made into indestructible when it's filled with magic. This tal is most unsuitable for enchantnts as it seeps away mana to beco indestructible. In other words it has the biggest mana resistance.
But it allows making very lightweight and the most durable armor and weapons.
Separately both materials are like opposites of each other. But it is when they are used together is where they shine.
Mithrill and Adamantine are said to be a pair made in heavens when it cos to making magic weapons and armors.
Heavy mithrill chainmail with thousands of enchantnts protected by the layer of adamantine armor is a standard equipnt of Royal Knights to this day. That guarantees the Royal Knight the status of best forces of the Kingdom.
In such armor a normal soldier would be able to take on an army of normal monsters and not even get a scratch. An elite warrior dressed in such armor becos a walking fortress, a weapon of mass slaughter on any battlefield against monster hordes.
The only way to put such a person down is to tire him out and let him use up all mana. You can only imagine how heavy a price you’d pay to try it. Well another way is to heavily overpower him. As in use a magic that would break through their magic barrier in one go.
Anyways. A heavily imbued core of mithrill, covered by the adamantine that is made indestructible by the mana that seeps into it through the core is a best way to make armor and weapon. Well, at least it was until another material ca into the picture.
It was light, elastic, durable as adamantite and yet could be imbued with an astonishing amount of mana. The only problem is that it cos in very thin string form and is very scarce. So no one could use it well in the armor until that is. As I studied human magic and enchantnts I ca up with an entirely new principle of making armor layers.
A lightweight net like cloth of thousand upon thousand of interlayered enchantnts that are made from the sa string and that are woven in a complex way so that the massive single enchantnt circle would be packed into a cloth just enough to cover a human. Sothing similar to a human body nervous system.
Then from the wearer side it is covered by a conducting mana material, such as mithril, that is inlaid with a few more support enchantnt circles that allows the wearer to power up and control all enchantnts in the core layer without much need for mana training, and with magic cores placed in separate spots even a normal person without much mana can use it.
Finally, from outside it is covered by an impenetrable layer of adamantite that both protects the user and holds together the core layer. Kind of like a three layered pie. No more problems with enchanting tal itself, a lot more functionality than before and easy to use. Though extrely expensive and hard to make.
"Doesn't a massive enchantnt circle need a lot of power to activate?" Pondered Noah.
“Yes, you are smart to notice. I can make activation circles very small, allowing to pack a lot more circles in the sa space as you would with any other material. But the amount of mana needed is still massive if you activate the whole thing. That’s why I separate it into several different massive circuits and spread them around. It’s like a labyrinth where paths of different circuits pass by but do not interfere with each other. The complexity of this multilayer architecture is hard to describe. I spent centuries figuring out how to do it.
Just to make a simple example you can imagine a mithril chainmail that I ntioned before. Imagine how its link overlaid to form several separate magic circuits. From a distance it looks like one chainmail just made of links but at a closer look you’d see that so parts of it are different from the others.
Now imagine hundreds of layers of those chainmails and all packed into the sa space.
Now think how you would find a few bugged enchantnts hidden sowhere between those hundreds of extrely complex architectures. Explained Thessa.
“I see. Even if soone can understand it. It's impossible to look into that, without ripping apart all the layer” Nodded Noah.
“Exactly. Well enough chit chat, dear. We are close to the mansion. I hope you are ready to et the guest.” Said Theressa.
“Yes. I am on my way.” Said Noah buttoning up his suit before looking into the mirror, making sure he looked impeccable. Then nodding to himself in the mirror he walked out of the bedroom and walked to the main hall to et the guest.
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