Bihu, or Silver Wood, is the purified version of Iron Wood and it is one of the best materials to make magical items with. It's a bit hard to work with given that it is tougher than steel, but with Mawfern, an enchanter can carve out their intended runes on its surface.

  And that is exactly what she is doing right now. It's a bit tedious, but it beats trying to learn how to bake. Fuzz said a lot of things that went over her head, honestly — most of the terms she used were just confusing.

  The smell coming from the oven is tasty though... If the Mawfern she’s working with were still alive, it would have begun to drool and produce digestive enzymes like there's no tomorrow.

  "By the way, why do Mawferns feed off of other plants? Doesn't it make more sense for them to eat insects?" Like, the ones back in her world did just that. Why are the Mawferns vegans? "What do they get by eating other plants?"

  "They don't eat other plants specifically," Fuzz turned away from the oven and then at the exposed garden of Mawferns. They didn’t wall the plants because it could potentially root out and start eating the other plants they're cultivating without them noticing. "It's more so they feed off of other magical plants for the innate mana present within them."

  "So it's not because they're hungry?"

  "Not at all." Fuzz shook her head. "It's because they want to become more powerful, didn't you read the ecology section of the alchemy book? Mawferns reproduce by splitting themselves in half after gathering a certain amount of mana within themselves."

  "Yeah, I never really went there." Wilona shrugged. She also ignored the first book she was given, which was about foraging. "Plants are never really for me. I mean, I like them, but I'm not interested enough to learn more about them, you know?"

  "You're an alchemist. There's an inherent risk to you refusing to learn the functions of flora."

  "Yeah, yeah," Wilona rolled her eyes and waved off the warning given to her. What risk? All she needed to do when making a potion is follow a recipe, and also, "Aren't you supposed to be the one who wants to focus on making potions?"

  "Yes, but it cannot hurt for you to know how to differentiate magical plants and learn more about them. Especially if you want to pursue the path of magic."

  "I guess?" Wilona tilted her head. Is it really that important for magic? "I'll do that at some point."

  "Good." Fuzz nodded and left the conversation at that. She went back to focusing on her baking and Wilona continued etching runic markings across the Silver Wood's surface.

  Mawfern enzymes specifically specializing in breaking down magical plants made the work much easier. The added bonus of the liquid having a stronger effect on more potent materials is also pretty good.

  Wilona could feel the energy humming underneath the glossy surface of the Silver Wood. The metallic sheen even looked like it reflected at different angles when she poured some mana into the branch, which Wilona thought was kind of cool. Like, is this thing crystalline or something? Can she make a kaleidoscope out of this thing?

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  That would be kind of cool, wouldn't it?

  ...And also profitable. She could totally make a bunch of money selling things like that at the amusement park — kids love toys! And now that she thought about it, maybe she could also get a bunch of stuffed animals for sale?

  Maybe get some for herself? Her room was devoid of the stuff and she was starting to miss their presence.

  Wilona made a mental note to sell stuffed toys at the amusement park and went back to carving out the runes. She didn't want to make her magical staff specialize in a single category of spells, so her main runes revolved around amplification and purification to make the mana running through the staff stronger, while her planetary alignment centered around the planets that complemented her skill set.

  Zenova for magic, Vyrnex for her plants, and Lunex for manipulating the wind, and sitting comfortably next to the nexus, where all the mana gathered by the staff is stored, is Lytheris, the world she is in.

  Since she liked to manipulate the natural elements of the planet regardless, Wilona thought that it made sense for her to use Lytheris as the center of the alignment.

  Wilona tested her half-finished magical staff by casting a spell with it.

  She'd been practicing manipulating mana raw for a while now. She didn't use anything to control it with as an exercise to improve her control over the energy, and now that she was using a magical staff again, she realized just how easy it had become for her to move mana.

  Manipulating the raw energy almost became instinct for her and she could do it with her eyes closed and her hands tied behind her back. Well, maybe not that last one.

  She cast Fireball, recreating the technique she'd been practicing where she layered multiple bands of mana into a thick ball and then ignited it, and was amazed at how easy it had become. She noticed that the ignition that started the fire also came from her magical staff, allowing the spell to activate and manifest fully.

  Wilona tested how long her new staff could hold the Fireball together and finished it with "several dozen minutes." She didn't wait for it to die on its own naturally because she assumed that it'd take a while and she didn't want to wait for an hour for something like that to happen.

  After that, she proceeded with testing how much mana would be consumed from her staff whenever she ignited a Fireball and confirmed that the amount of power needed to activate a spell grew alongside the spell's power.

  A weak, less dense Fireball catalyst didn't even get energy from the staff — it just took it from the environment around them and then burst into flames. On that end, the denser a Fireball catalyst got, the more energy it needed to manifest.

  Did Wilona already know this? Kind of. She had a feeling that something like that happened behind the scenes but wasn't able to confirm it until now.

  Her other spells had different requirements for reactivation, with her Wind Barrier actually never needing to be activated and instead having a requirement which she had to maintain. This maintenance got harder and harder the more the barrier got hit, and doing it felt like trying to hold a door closed while someone was ramming against it.

  If she specialized her magical staff to maintain a barrier spell, she would be able to do it without effort, but since the only thing that's doing that in her current staff is the planetary alignment of Lunex and Lytheris, she's essentially forced to put some of her processing power into doing that job.

  Wilona thought it was a good exercise to do. It's not like it's hard, too. All it amounts to is basically keeping the space of the barrier — an easy task when you only focus on expanding the air inside of the barrier.

  She remembered something from doomscrolling too. She didn't know which website it came from, but humanity made a device that is basically a lock that used the entire atmosphere — as in the entire atmosphere, all of it — to stay closed, and she remembered the video saying that opening it is like trying to fight against the pressure of the entire ocean.

  It was vacuum-something. She wasn't sure what the proper term was, just that it existed. And as for how she could do that...

  She remembered the video saying that air needed to be taken away? Which didn't make sense, so she was probably thinking of something else.

  Wilona shook her head. Enough about that. Back to magic—

  Her staff was a jack of all trades. Sort of. Her plant magic was boosted further by the staff because of all the amplifying and purifying runes she placed on it. It helped a little bit with her wind magic as well, but the pure mana the staff produced mainly centered around the former because the purer the mana, the better the plants.

  And with how powerful her plant magic was, it was kind of an obvious choice. Like, of course she'd make it so that her magical staff complimented her best spells.

  There's also the fact that if she ever found something better, she was going to plant this staff in her garden and, assuming that it was sealed by that point, boost the growth of her plants because it also had the ability to purify ambient mana.

  Kinda neat, really. It's too bad it was still unfinished. Tomorrow she'd go and visit the town again and see if the workers and merchants that the nobles from the capital sent had the gemstones she needed.