Chapter 93: Leather Enchantment

"Joan, you’re not joking with me, are you?" Mr. Longfellow stared at the young mage in disbelief. "You really have a way to make fur garments clean themselves?"

"No joke. It’s just a simple enchantment technique," Joan said, and his mouth twitched despite himself.

In truth, the principle behind the enchantment really was simple: all it required was to imbue a garment with the first-circle cantrip known as prestidigitation, then, when cleaning was needed, speak the activation phrase to trigger the spell and restore the clothes to spotless condition in an instant. But a simple principle did not mean the process itself was simple. Under ordinary methods, even the enchanting stage alone would demand a great deal of time and effort. Joan’s advantage lay in his mastery of an entirely different enchanting craft: the use of runes to create magical devices.

Once Joan had settled on the idea of enchanting fur, he took the cloak made from the tanned hide of a dire badger as his test piece and set about experimenting.

First, he had to choose one rune from the twenty-four to serve as the vessel for prestidigitation. After some comparison, he selected the eighteenth rune, Beorc. Its meaning was rebirth, purification, and renewal, which matched perfectly with the need to cleanse dirt and freshen cloth.

He first drew the Beorc rune onto his cloak. For the sake of appearance, the rune could be placed on the lining without affecting the enchantment. He then used Beorc as the container and placed prestidigitation within it.

One of the great properties of runes was that they could serve as the medium or vessel between a spell and its recipient. A spell like prestidigitation, which took effect the moment it was cast, would, once infused into a rune, enter a kind of frozen state, with its magical power stored inside the rune until someone activated it with a specific phrase or a mental trigger. Once a rune was drawn onto the surface of an object or creature, it could not be erased or removed by physical means and could only be dispelled by magic.

Joan’s first attempt was a success. Prestidigitation was successfully stored within the Beorc rune. When someone touched the cloak and uttered the activation phrase Joan had set, the prestidigitation stored in the eighteenth rune would awaken automatically, making the cloak clean as new.

At first glance, the enchantment experiment seemed a complete success. But after a little analysis, Joan realized it was not.

When Beorc was activated, all the magical power stored within the rune would be released at once, and the cloak would revert to an ordinary object. If one wanted to clean it again, prestidigitation would have to be infused anew. In plain terms, all he had created was a single-use magical device, with the rune serving only as a storage container for the spell.

That was not the enchanted cloak Joan had imagined. If the spell had to be recast before every cleaning, why bother with rune enchantment at all? One might as well cast the spell directly. Joan wanted one enchantment to remain effective forever. Could runes achieve that?

Perhaps. But his knowledge of runic lore was still far too shallow; achieving simple spell storage was already the limit of his current ability.

After a full day of repeated trials, Joan had to admit a cold reality: rune-based enchantment could indeed greatly simplify the process and save far more time and effort than conventional methods. But if he wanted a spell to remain effective for the long term, the cost of materials would still have to be paid in full. Not a single coin could be spared.

The next day, Joan changed his approach. The first half of the process remained the same: he drew the eighteenth rune, Beorc, onto the cloak. For the second half, the casting stage, he adopted a traditional method—adding auxiliary materials, chiefly powdered magic crystal, at the same time as the spell was cast. During the casting process, these materials would automatically turn into vapor and seep into the Beorc rune, functioning as a remarkable stabilizer and power module.

A cloak enchanted with this hybrid method of old and new could activate prestidigitation once per day, perfectly meeting the need for frequent cleaning. The method saved both time and labor; its only flaw was that it did not save money. Joan spent ninety-four gold ducats on that tiny pinch of magic crystal dust, which in fact was not much different from the cost of conventional enchantment.

At least in the short term, Joan had no means of improving the technique further, and he himself lacked the capital to produce enchanted cloaks in bulk. He could only seek a financier with whom to collaborate. Since Joan intended to enter the business of fur enchantment, it was obvious that Mr. Longfellow, the owner of the leather goods shop, was the ideal business partner.

To win Mr. Longfellow’s trust, Joan had brought along the enchanted cloak he had used as a test piece. In front of Longfellow, he poured an entire bottle of ink over the fluffy garment, then recited the activation phrase. The wet cloak gave off a faint glow and, in the blink of an eye, returned to clean dryness.

"Good heavens! That’s simply miraculous!" Mr. Longfellow exclaimed, throwing his arms around Joan and planting a hard kiss on his cheek. "My dear little mage, you’re truly remarkable!"

Joan rubbed his cheek, which was prickling from the leather merchant’s bristling beard, and said awkwardly in a low voice, "Each enchantment costs about one hundred gold ducats in materials..."

"I know, lad. You made that very clear in your letter," Mr. Longfellow said with a smile. "We can work together like this: I’ll cover both the fabric and the material costs, and on top of that I’ll pay you fifty gold ducats in labor for each enchanted garment. What do you think?"

Joan knew that if he insisted on raising the price, he could probably get the labor fee increased a bit more. But with his personality, bargaining with others was a tremendous strain, and besides, Mr. Longfellow was already quite generous. The terms he offered exceeded Joan’s expectations, so Joan nodded readily.

Longfellow breathed a sigh of relief and personally selected five luxurious fur coats, handing them over to Joan together with five hundred gold ducats. He urged him to begin work as soon as possible and promised that if the samples sold well, future orders would follow.

Mr. Longfellow then had to think about how to craft a dazzling advertisement for the new products in his shop, which was not something Joan could help with. So Joan hefted the large bundle of fur garments onto his shoulder and took his leave, eager to get home and enchant the coats as soon as possible.

Once home, Joan set to work. Bulk enchanting items of the same kind was where the efficiency of rune enchantment really shone. It took him only a single morning to enchant all five fine fur coats one by one. After lunch, he delivered the finished goods back to Longfellow’s leather shop.