Gennady smiled, but shook his head. "Not exactly, but you are correct. From what I’ve observed, there are slight differences in the way the symbols in a spell circle take shape. Furthermore, the complexity of the patterns formed by casting a simple Light spell would make any Tinkerer give up on even creating a basic light crystal."
I stared at the four symbols. My mind was racing. Mana tools. They worked just like magic, I always knew that. Everyone knew that magic also used mana in some way or another. But this? This felt like I had finally formed a proper connection between the two; as though both were one in the same, just executed through different means. "I… what does this mean?"
"Hmph, I’ve theorized on that quite a bit. I don’t think it means casting a spell is inherently superior to using a mana tool that achieves the same result. I speculate that it’s because of the very workings of magic that gives it its extra layer of intricacy—"
"No," I cut him off. I turned to Gennady, staring into his eyes. "Do people know about this? That the Great Hero Xander based his ‘gifts from the Goddess’ off of magic?" I spoke quickly, like a kid who just learned about Santa Claus, and was asking their parents all about the mysterious red man who gave out presents to everyone in one night.
The Dwarf’s answer, however, made me lose that excitement. "I, uh, yes?" he said, scratching the side of his head. "At least, everyone educated about the history of mana tools would know. The average layperson would probably find this pretty shocking, but it would not change anyone’s perspective on magic."
"Oh," I said, voice sucked dry of emotion.
Gennady saw this, and he hesitated. "Do you, uh, still want to…?"
"Yes," I sighed. "Please continue your lesson."
"Right." Gennady righted himself, and pointed to the symbols on the piece of paper. "These symbols represent the four basic elements: fire, water, earth, air."
His finger passed through each one slowly: the shape for fire took the form of an inverted ‘y’, skewered in half by what appeared to be a small cross with a tail coming out of it; water roughly looked like a man missing his arms and legs lying on his side, with lighting bolts lying parallel above and below him; earth was a square with curved lines inside of it like pillars holding up a structure, with two small dots in the opposite diagonals; and lastly, air was the simplest of all the designs, taking the shape of a ‘Z’ with its bottom half cutting back up through the top.
"And each of these symbols lets you create their elements when you etch it onto a mana crystal?" I asked, leaning in to get a closer look.
"Not exactly," the Dwarf said, and quickly explained. "That’s just how we categorize them. Putting any single one of these four symbols onto a mana crystal will not let you do anything with it. But if you want to, say, create a small spark with a mana crystal, you can arrange four of the symbols for fire in a diamond shaped rune, and only then it would work."
"That…doesn’t sound too difficult," I commented, to which the Dwarf laughed.
"Trust me, lass, it’s not that simple. Not only do each of these symbols have to be equidistant from each other, you’ll have to restart if you get one of the symbols slightly wrong."
Ok, maybe that’s a little bit difficult—
"Plus," Gennady added, raising a finger as he did, "the same rule does not apply for the other symbols. If you want to create a drop of water, you can’t just make a diamond with the symbols for water. In fact, it doesn’t create water, but forces precipitation onto a single point. Same thing with air— the simplest design simply blows air. And earth doesn’t manipulate the ground like Geomancy would, instead, it affects the properties of whatever solid it is in contact with."
...that’s very difficult.
"It’s pretty complicated," Gennady said, as if he read my thoughts. "Once you mix in different symbols together into a rune, you start getting different results. For example, the pattern for a light crystal mostly uses both fire and earth symbols, with a select few water symbols. But don’t worry, there are various books on the subject that outline the various combinations of symbols to give you a basic understanding of how it all works. Right now, you probably just want to practice etching each symbol onto a mana crystal to get used to it, then you can try and create your first mana tool some time in the future."
"I…" I trailed off, realizing how difficult actually learning a proper skill was without any cheatlike powers to help me. The Dwarf noticed my apprehension, and lightly slapped me across the back.
"What’s wrong, lassie? Already giving up, eh?" he chuckled. "I know it’s much, but once you get the basics of tinkering down, you can probably focus on being an Artificer. You’re good with magic, so that’s probably a better route for you to go down rather than wasting time learning all the in depth details of being a Tinkerer."
I stared down at the four symbols drawn on the piece of paper, then at the set of tools sitting next to the unaltered mana crystal; I felt my hands balling up into a fist, as I stood there conflicted. Before I finally decided.
"No," I said. "I’m not giving up. And I’m not just going to take the easy way out by becoming an Artificer. Sure, that’d be a good skill to have, but so is learning how to tinker. I’ll do it." I reached for the mana crystal and one of the carving needles. I firmly gripped the large crystal in my right hand, and
