Signing a magical contract was weird. Not how we got to that point or the fact that we were going to do it. It was just weird to feel another intrusion into the bond that Midnight and I had. Something constantly there, watching. Theoretically, that feeling would fade, if not the power.

The restrictions were actually fairly simple. Ethus was concerned about their knowledge getting out to other people in the same world, not to an alien planet in a different realm entirely. The main restrictions were that I don't use the information against them, allow it to, or teach it to anyone that might. It was basically one thing. In exchange, I got instructions on enchantment from Spellshot- also known as Khonsu among normal people. After all, nobody cared about using real names in that world.

He wasn't actually one of their experts- whoever that was they clearly didn't want me to meet for some reason. Statistically I wouldn't even punch them in the face, even if I wanted to. Traditional orcs were better, but I supposed Ethus was probably allowed to have their own culture. Even if it was worse.

Midnight and I would have struggled through the process with just the books they gave us, but having someone with at least some experience certainly helped. It was far better than having to speculate and experiment with natural upgrades and masteries and all of that. Someone who actually knew something was better than going off of vague hints in a handful of different tomes.

It turned out enchanting things was really easy.

"... What level are you again?" Spellshot asked. "No, you probably shouldn't answer that."

I could maybe trust Khonsu with that information, but if Ethus asked he's probably have to tell them. And they might tell other people and eventually someone I didn't want to know it might find things out.

Thus, I had to agree with him. "Yeah, probably better not." I had just hit level 44, after fighting Faceeater again. It wasn't that intense of a battle, but I got experience for most of the things that happened. Like how she annihilated a few castings of Energy Ward and Stoneskin. It was real combat with someone who wanted to kill me and not a spar, so it was pretty good experience. Too bad it couldn't be repeated easily without risking actual death. If there wasn't real danger, it wouldn't be as valuable.

"Anyway," Khonsu continued. "Most magical training overlaps with other fields to some extent. Enchantment is no different, since it's basically putting spells you know into something on a more or less permanent basis."

I agreed, it was pretty easy. I should have tried it sooner. Well, without some of the guidance from the texts we had I would have probably put in too much mana and blown things up, or not put enough for anything to last. It was a delicate balance at first. In fact, I had blown up a bunch of staves. Fortunately, they were made specifically for practice so they were just cheap wood. Particularly fragile wood meant for that purpose.

Now I had a staff that could carry its own Shocking Grasp. It was terrible, because hitting someone with it would probably cause it to break… but I did poke an Energy Ward protected Khonsu to test it out. The spell activated according to my intent and worked more or less as I wanted. It took a while for it to draw in ambient mana so it could do it again- it wasn't nearly as efficient as a person. Something like a few hours for a measly couple points of mana. Still, the concept worked.

We spent a few weeks enchanting various different sorts of things. Some robes, weaving in Force Armor and Energy Ward spells. Some individual bullets- because working on smaller things was more difficult and they weren't that costly. Then, when Midnight and I felt confident- and maybe Khonsu himself- we worked on some real guns.

If I exploded my gun, I could pretty easily replace it with one that was the same, but it wouldn't be my gun. This one had been with me through thick and thin. Though… I had replaced it in the past.

Within the books we had there was a debate about whether being in tune with an item provided actual benefits. Some claimed it resulted in better enchantments. Others said it was simply familiarity with the type of item that mattered. Ultimately, enchanting a specific thing you knew well was never worse than a generic thing of its type so if one was willing to risk losing it to unstable mana, it could be valuable.

Midnight wasn't willing to try enchanting his adaptable combat suit yet, which was reasonable. It already had advanced tech and super tech overlapping, so it might be too much. That left him open to help stabilize the mana I was putting into my gun, which I was quite grateful for.

I didn't want anything specific. Even Spellshot didn't want his gun to shoot elemental blasts without his will. Thus, we were going for something adaptive. Generic energy magic, as it was. It was unclear if Khonsu had a mastery, and I couldn't ask about it without revealing too much. Either way, he knew a bunch of individual elemental spells and could try to improve how they worked with his gun. He should get some advantages from his class, at least within that particular area. The class wasn't made for guns, but they had worked for all of his other abilities so enchantment should also be fine.

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I had drawn up plans over the course of a week for how I wanted to imbue my gun with magic. My ambitious side had told me to try to replicate the dispelling bullets Vilhelmiina had made. My other side told me they weren't as fun as fire bullets and also that I didn't have a mastery or the right materials.

So elemental had won out. I carefully imbued my mana into the barrel of the gun, trying to make it stick. I wanted the magic to apply to the bullets- there was precedent for bows applying spells to their arrows, and a barrel was far more encompassing so it seemed easy enough. I also set up little 'hooks' so I could change the energy type and intensity. I could only go so far, however, as how much complexity it could store was also limited by mana.

The final step I needed was to add a mana crystal. If we were going for maximum potency we would have made a new weapon from the ground up, imbuing it with special materials from the beginning, but most of the materials Earth had were high enough quality to hold mana. At least, anything I got related to the Power Brigade.

I took a large mana crystal, but instead of letting it decay I manipulated it to overlap with the gun itself. Fusing a crystal into the material itself was one of the parts that was most likely to fail, which was why I was glad to have Midnight helping keep things stable. Too many people manipulating mana would have been a problem, but a mage and intelligent familiar were a perfect combination.

In this particular case, larger mana crystals were able to store almost as much mana as I used to make them. Creating mana crystals was one of the few situations where I could go beyond my fatigue limit, so I had made this one the biggest I could- sixty-four mana, out of a theoretical sixty-six. It was better to have some leeway. And no, I was not going to try to double that by going into the negatives. That would probably create an inherently unstable mana crystal, which sounded doubly bad for enchanting.

The crystal was about the size of my fist. Not really round, but instead a bunch of overlapping segments sticking out in all directions. I never bothered with the shape. Living things naturally stored mana, but objects didn't. Enchanting was sort of replicating that process, or at least that was how I chose to think of it. The crystal became my gun's whole mana system, granted from me to it.

I stared at it for about a minute after I thought I was done, just wondering if it might blow up. I was pretty sure I'd lost a bit of potency during the process, limiting its maximum output as well as losing some current charge, but I was fairly pleased the process completed at all. If it imbued each shot with cantrip level magic, I could manage two or three magazines of shooting from full capacity. As long as I didn't change energy types too often.

It wasn't going to be as good as me firing off that much magic. It wouldn't have active control of the amount of power, but if I just needed to throw more than kinetic force at things it should be pretty good. I was proud.

Oh, and Spellshot succeeded too with his much larger rifle. It was probably better and stuff but it wasn't my business precisely what he did with it. As long as he didn't shoot me again outside of training exercises, and we weren't likely to have any more accidents.

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The Power Brigade would probably want me to enchant stuff in the case it could overlap with super tech, which was why I was teaching Bolster how to do that crap. Also Jerome. He could put some defensive enchantments in his shoes if he wanted to- and he did. I already trusted him not to set things on fire, so trusting him to not make things other people could use to set stuff on fire was reasonable. He did a lot of light magic and Storage, Clean, and utility stuff like that. In a couple years he might be a good fourth option for the Power Brigade and things like that.

Even if he wasn't doing anything combat related, they wouldn't hire him until he was at least sixteen. There were always some risks when working with supernatural stuff. The fact that he might undertake those risks anyway wasn't something that influenced the Power Brigade, since they cared mostly about their personal responsibility.

Anyway, Midnight and I hadn't tested overlaps with super tech and enchantments yet because we had a big project to get to. On Celmoth. The reason we finally sought out enchanting to begin with.

I really appreciated how I had a proper place to arrive, with hallways that were all tall enough for me. Obviously I didn't expect all of Celmoth to adapt to me, but I didn't like having to crouch around to get outside. We would often end up in other buildings that weren't all made with bipeds in mind, but only having to use Reduce some of the time was nice. Celmothians liked 'tall' hallways most of the time, so that was usually sufficient. Only occasionally did I actually have to crawl or something.

"Wow, this looks big and expensive," I said as we entered a room containing an anti-teleportation device. "Is it?"

"Don't think about it," Midnight said. That indicated to me that he didn't want to think about it, likely because he knew precisely how expensive it was. "We're only here to put minor enchantments on this. We don't need to replicate its job, just make sure it can't be bypassed by Spot. Or anyone else the Bunvorixians have managed to get magic to so far."

I nodded. They might not be as polite about interplanar boundaries as I was, which was saying something. People who couldn't already do magic were mostly cut off from my old world, but there was at least one place I knew of to bypass that and there could be more. Though the Bunvorixians might restrain themselves specifically to not allow their lower castes to become to powerful.

Either way, we had to worry about at least one not all that exceptional dane with magic that might try to break through Celmothian defenses. So we just had to enchant a room. No big deal.

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