After more than a month of relaxing, Edward returned back to his busy schedule of magic research. He walked into the testing site he designed to create spells and test them.
"Morgana, create a sub-category under Arcane Rune Magic. Call it: [Chain Magic Circle/Magic Array]."
"As you wish, sir."
After that, a holographic pen and paper appeared in front of Edward and he began to draw. He first drew many magic circles of various designs. Then, he started to place them together.
Once all the magic circles were together, he surrounded them by another larger circle. As such, this particular magic circle looked like a large circle with many smaller circles inside of them.
Once it was done, Edward did not immediately test the result. Instead, he entered a virtual space to test it out. In the past few months, with enough data about runes and magic circles, Morgana can create a virtual space that can simulate the real magic circles effect.
For the next week, he tested and corrected all the errors or faults on the new spell. Finally, when it was ready, he tested it.
Edward stood in a desert with a baseball shooting machine in front of him.
"Ready?"
"Ready," replied Morgana.
Runes then started appearing in front of Edward to form a large circle with many circles inside. Once the large magic circle was formed, he nodded his head to the little elf.
The shooting machine shot a baseball at him with unmatched speed, so Edward immediately used his mana to activate the large magic circle. A white light flew from the circle and hit the traveling ball, then it stopped in the air.
A smile appeared on Edward's face as he said: "I can finally use Time Magic without relying on my gate."
Unfortunately, his smile did not last long as his face became stiff, he fell on the ground and started twitching like he was having a seizure.
'Damn it. I forgot to take into account the mana used for such a powerful spell."
More than half a minute later, he stopped and breathed out loud.
"Morgana, why didn't you remind me?"
"Master, I forgot," replied the little elf while dodging eye contact with him.
"You forgot?" said Edward as he glared at her. "Fine, you forgot. In that case, why did you wait for more than 30 seconds to instill mana inside my body?"
"My system had been malfunctioning lately, so I was late to respond."
"You!" said Edward as he knew that this little girl did it on purpose. She was probably mad at him for not including her in the creating process of this new magic system.
"Fine. In that case, I will not give you any credits for optimizing the new system."
"Master, you can't do this."
"Yes, I can."
"No," said the little elf as she started crying. Unfortunately, Edward ignored her. This little elf has become obsessed with receiving credits for her work. Because of her, it is required by law in the Empire for all wizards or scientists who used Skynet as a help in their research to put her name as credit.
Edward guessed that this personality flaw was probably the result of using Voldemort's soul to create her.
"Master, I'm sorry. I won't do it again," cried the little purple-hair elf.
"You should know what your punishment is," responded Edward. Morgana nodded her head before disappearing. Then, her consciousness descended into a regular human body.
That regular body then started to write: "I should not act out and respect the master."
For the next few hours, she repeatedly wrote these words, even when her hands ached tremendously, she continued. She did not stop writing until after the 100,000th sentence. By then, her little hand was numb with the pain.
While Morgana was reflecting on herself, Edward continued his research on his new magic system. He entered his forging room and took out a regular sword.
Using his Enchanting Pen, he engraved a magic circle on the sword. However, unlike previously where he needed to use mana for the engraving, this time he used his soul power.
Once he was done, he injected mana on the sword and swung it. A massive flame tornado manifested from it.
He was satisfied that his Arcane Rune Magic could be used for magic item creation. However, he was not done yet. Using one of the machines, he zoomed in on the sword until he saw the very atoms that it was composed of.
In the space between these atoms, he began to draw a magic circle. Because of how small this circle was, Edward required the help of machinery to accomplish it.
Once the circle was drawn, he controlled it to attach to one of the atoms. Then, a magical change occurred. A link connecting all these atoms was created from that single microscopic magic circle.
Additionally, the mana existing inside the metal of this sword suddenly became even more active.
"Interesting," muttered Edward. He immediately injected his mana on the sword and flame ejected out of it. The flame soon landed on a piece of iron and remained there, seeming to burn forever.
Edward observed this flame for at least five minutes before it was extinguished.
"Using the micro-engraving, the magic circle gains some kind of specialty," muttered Edward. He guessed that this specialty was probably "burning". Unlike the previous flame that only used high heat to burn things, this flame had an additional magical property that made it stronger.
Edward continued testing this new sword to gather data, and his guess was proven correct. No matter where the flame lands, it will continue to burn for a few minutes without having additional mana to support it.
To gather more data, he tried a different micro-engraving. He used the magic circle for the Wind Blade spell. As a result, the sword gained the "sharp" specialty.
Then, an ordinary magic iron could easily cut off metals that were harder and denser.
"It seems that this new micro-engraving enchantment has a lot of potentials."
The concept of micro-engraving was not new in the Empire. Many kinds of research were done before. Unfortunately, wandcraft enchantments were not possible for micro-engraving, and draconic language would not last long.
But with this new system, Edward finally succeeded.
Furthermore, he could see the vast potential of this type of enchantment. For example, engraving countless magic circles and attaching them to different atoms should have different results.
Nevertheless, despite this ground-breaking breakthrough, Edward did not continue his research on this subject. He had one more idea to try for magic item creation.
Title: Core Engraving
