Bucket O' Alumentum

Be careful of alumentum. The first few I made, nearly blew me up. It would ha been a truly epic end…

"Dave here, with a look at my product. Have you ever felt that your rags wear down too easily? Does all that scrubbing seem to get you nowhere? Then you need to try, The Magic Rag!"

I was currently propagating my business in the east section of town. People were gathered around admiring my performance. I could really draw a crowd.

"See this extremely dirty and greasy pan? Look how a normal washcloth barely gets the surface. Now, look how the magic rag cuts through all that mess."

People were being amazed. Looks of curiosity, abundant. Now it was time for the finisher.

"My big fellow near the back, yes you, come up here for a minute. Now you are a pretty strong fella, right?" I get a nod. "Do you think that those muscles of yours, could rip this fabric in half?"

"Yes."

"Ok then, give it a go." I said with my salesman smile. I handed him the normal cloth, and easily enough, he ripped it. "Now was that hard?"

"Didn't seem like it."

"Now folks, do you think this man can rip my special magic rag?" The response was mixed. "We are going to test that, right now!"

The moment I passed my poorer type of magic cloth to the big guy, the show began. With arms bulging, face reddening, and breath shallowing; he couldn't manage even a rip.

"Now, as you can see this rag lasts. Now how much more do you think this costs, compared to the other one? Ten times? Five? What if I said three? For just three times as much coin, you could have a cloth that will last. I won't lie to you good people, and say it'll last a lifetime. However, it will last a great long while compared to this cheap cloth."

…

I was walking to the marked with a shiny pile of coin. It both thrilled and exasperated me that my pouch was full again.

"Why does it seem like I can't keep hold of any wealth?" I look down to my grumbling stomach.

Dirk's conditioning was really showing progress. The only problem was that I had to pay for an additional ton of food. The first week had me sore and tired, wondering why I even do this. Around the second, I had gotten used too most of the exercises. The moment he sough me get used to them though, he would make up another. The weirdest was when I had to balance while doing handstand push-ups, with my sword held between my feet! The more normal ones, like doing normal one handed push-ups while swinging my sword to the side on the up position, were also challenging.

I now know why he only took a third of my cash, at the time. I had to eat so much. I also couldn't study the mysteries of thaumaturgy. Sleep had become my new best friend.

Thankfully just a few days ago, we had started doing sparring. Dirk was trying to get one swing of mine to flow into another.

"It doesn't much matter how you swing a sword. What really matters is the when and where. You must constantly look for any opening, while not showing one yourself." His lesson was rebounding through my mind. "You don't want to strike a hard bit of steel or a tough carapace. You need to find the softer parts."

…

Inside my room I had just completed Jerry's replacement. He is still cute, but the essentia he makes can't really be used.

In my bout of study and experimentation, I had started to make progress in using that infuriating bucket. The water only seemed to dissolve essentia while boiling, and there came a learning curve on how to use it.

I had to be quick about using it, as the essentia was less stable and diffused into the air, after decomposing into the primals. While I observed this behavior, I encountered a very eerie vis type. This vis seemed to form around the unstable essentia as it was being released. Precontatio mixed with perditio and formed something. I got a feeling in my gut, it wasn't good.

To imbue essentia into things, protecting them from the dissolution was important. I did this by wrapping vis around the object. This let it soak up the stuff safely. That however came with more downsides. Random items didn't seem to 'just work'.

I then started small, one piece of coal. I studied that one piece of flammable rock, for a ridiculous amount of time. How the vis seemed to interact with it as normal, ground up, or set alight; it was all carefully analyzed.

In conclusion I made a recipe, potentia, ignis, and perditio. It was my conclusion after starting at a rock, for entirely too long.

Because I still haven't made a measurement device, I took the more is better approach. So dumping coal and other bits into my diy crucible, I lowered the focus coal.

What resulted was a black grey sphere. And with how much was left over, I could make three more.

Figuring out what they could do turned out to be simple. I just set it in a tiny furnace made from arcane stone. The heat was intense, and lasted what seemed like forever.

…

Walking just outside the town wall the next day, I was enjoying my day off training. Breathing the fresh air and enjoying the quiet, I observed what I made yesterday.

Disaster struck as I stumbled upon something. As I was falling, I lost hold of what I came to call alumentum. Managing to right myself, my instincts screamed at me to run. As I obeyed, the new substance shattered upon the ground. The explosion flung me away. I would later find out it cracked my ribs. Hurrying home I limped to the best of my ability.

I blamed my condition on a creeper.

And so is told the tale of how I nearly died, because of my own stupidity. Thankfully I didn't explode. If I did, it wouldn't make a very long story…