Chapter 293 293 Home Improvements
The mood in the Den as the meal was brought out so everyone could eat in the fresh air was nearly jubilant. Between the seeds and the new books, they had enough material to keep them busy for months, and the promise of more helpers from the villages made it even better.
The design schematics, in particular, were incredibly popular. The witches had spent the day making various useful items for the Den, small things and tools since more advanced electronics wouldn\'t work properly in this atmosphere, but they had stumbled across one page in a spellbook that was clearly Magi in origin and not a witch spell.
"Wolfe, come check out this Array. We\'ve drawn it just as directed, but it won\'t work. You\'re the expert on them. Can you tell us what we\'re doing wrong?" The Witch who had found the spell called out to Wolfe as he was getting to his feet.
"Sure thing. What are you trying to make?" Wolfe asked.
"We\'re trying to make a spell array to create wearable wings. It\'s like a regular flying spell, but the wings help give you stability. It would be way cooler than using brooms or staves all the time." She laughed.
Wolfe took a look at the Array instructions, which were seventeen pages long, and smiled at the Witch. This was one of the Arrays that required an upper layer of unaligned mana to tie everything together, and they had tried to do it with Air Magic under the assumption that as long as the layer wasn\'t activated, it would work the same way.
"The top layer needs to be pure mana, not Air Magic. I\'m not sure that a Witch can do that. Do you have the wings made already?" Wolfe asked her with a smile.
"Of course. They come with a harness to securely attach to the witch, and then they will be controlled by magic."
The group took them out from a protective bag since they were made of what looked like soft silk and attached them to one of the witches with tightly buckled harness straps.
The harness appeared to be a safety measure in case the spell holding the wings to the user failed, but Wolfe wasn\'t going to tell them that after all their hard work. She somewhat looked like she was about to go bungee jumping, and the eager look on her face was too cute to ruin it with bad news.
Wolfe arranged the layers of the Array and then cast the final top layer on them, bringing them together, then poured a surprisingly large amount of mana into them to get them working.
"If they need that much mana constantly, I\'m not sure this is an improvement on a simple gravity or Air Magic spell. But they should be ready for use now." Wolfe informed the Witch.
The witch lifted up from the ground with the wings, and the Faerie immediately began to laugh. The witch didn\'t seem to have any idea what to do with her body while she was focusing on making the wings work, and she was flailing around like she was about to fall out of the sky.
"See, what did I tell you, hopelessly adorably unable to maintain posture." The Faerie laughed as she flew over to Wolfe.
"What if I have them build a rig for them to put their hands and feet on? That would hold them in place, and they wouldn\'t look so amusing." He whispered back so that not as many of the witches could tell that the two of them were laughing at the situation.
A few did, though.
"What do you suggest instead? Do you think that you can improve on the standard flying broom spell?" The witch taunted.
"I think I can. Priya has a staff in her bag. If you would grab that for me, I will add another Array to it so that it can be used to fly on."
The witch brought the staff over before Priya could notice and warn her that it had already been enchanted as an offensive weapon, much to Wolfe\'s pleasure. If he had tried to get it, she would have known he was up to something and stopped him.
But now, he had a chance to make a super staff, capable of everything that a Witch might want a staff for.
Flying was obvious, but he could put a shield array on it as well, with automatic activation, since the staff had a large mana crystal. What it really needed was an illusion spell, but Wolfe didn\'t know any.
In theory, some of them were Air Magic, like a Mirage, so he might be able to find one in his inheritance.
Wolfe searched through the spells in his inheritance, specifically the Air Magic spells, until he found just what he was looking for. Ironically, it had the exact name as the concept he wanted. [Mirage].
It was a combination of fire and air magic that created a shimmering wall of hot air that would reflect the surroundings in strange ways, making it harder to spot the target. It wasn\'t perfect, nor was it invisibility, but it would make it very hard to spot a target high in the sky or moving through the trees.
The hard part was going to be getting all these arrays to work together and activate individually on command. They would naturally want to all activate at once, but many times you would only want one or two of the abilities at a time.
Priya didn\'t notice the staff was missing until she finished eating and went to get up. It was hard to miss that the large stick was not in her pouch or that Wolfe had it on the table, reworking the spells on it.
This time it didn\'t feel dangerous, so she simply waited for him to be done and to see what he had come up with at the suggestion of the Witches.
"There we have it. The ultimate Witch Stick, Beta version one point zero. It flies, it smacks, and it can create a Mirage to hide you as you travel." Wolfe gloated once he was sure that the spells were working properly.
"But does it fly better than the ones before it?" The witch asked.
"Hop on and give it a twirl. You\'ll see what I mean."
Wolfe had combined both gravity and air magic into the staff, along with a layer to lock the witch to the staff so she wasn\'t pushed off. It was the same magic he used on bullets, and with enough mana input, it would go supersonic.
That was a terrible idea with a witch on board, but at lower speeds, it was much more mana efficient than the old method as well.