Ignoring the downright relaxing sensation of the magicka in my body and out of it being equalized the hall of enlightenment was not much different in design to the hall of attainment. There was the magicka focus pit in the center of the floor and rooms along the circular walls and stars leading up to the second floor. Finding Sergius's room was easy just like Urag had said. There was a rippling cyan barrier with runes moving over it's face in place of an actually door, as expected of a master enchanter I suppose.-
I walked up to the barrier and poked one of the runes causing the whole thing to quiver under my finger. The barrier snapped open to reveal a stern looking bald middle aged imperial man in a yellow robe staring at me.
"Do you need something student? I have a backlog of orders to get through." he asked impatiently.
"A few things actually. First I need anti-daedra warding on my room. Second and on a very related note I have an.... object. Something that I frankly can't understand but thought you might be able to make sense of." I said tiredly.
He expression turned strange "Why would you need anti-daedra warding? Have you been messing with advanced spells recklessly?" he asked seriously.
I shook my head helplessly "I wish that were the case. No, It seems that for some reason or other I happen to have the attention of several princes. First was Hircine then it was Mephala and now Vaermina and Sheogorath. The THING I mentioned came from that last one. All of this in the last month by the way." I said frankly.
"Are you messing with me!? What could you possibly have that would make four of the most powerful beings known pay you that kind of attention?" he demanded with a gravely serious expression.
I shrugged and he sighed "Fine, lets ignore that incredibly concerning topic for now. What's the deal with the basket? Is that the object Sheogorath gave you?" he asked eyeing the basket in my hand.
"No, it's this hat. It's alive and somehow also enchanted with the most ridiculous enchantment I have ever seen. I just can't make any sense of it at all." I said taking out the hat that pinched my arm as I grabbed it.
"A hat.... with pincers. That tracks I suppose." he sighed again and waved me in "I'll need to deeply examine the enchantment on the thing if I'm to figure out what it does and I'll need the table for that. Keep your hands to yourself in here, I have anti-theft wards up that are VERY sensitive and would likely make your day rather uncomfortable if you tripped." he said plainly as he led the way into his room.
Contrary to what I was expecting his room wasn't the same small one that I was familiar with but a massive chamber easily the size of the hall of elements.
"Spatial expansion? How in Oblivion did you manage that without destabilizing the college's innate enchantments?" I asked stunned as I looked at the massive chamber filled with runes, weapons, armors, artifacts and tomes.
"Oh? You recognize what I've done? That's unusual, space magics are highly restricted. Most don't even know they exist." he said intrigued.
"I'm an adept in mysticism, if I couldn't recognize the touch of the school I'd be ashamed." I said with a chuckle.
"I suppose that's true enough. We don't actually have any master mystics at the college. At best you'd find some who dabble in the art to supplement their own preferred school of magic, like me. Tolfdir might be an expert in it though, can never tell with that old man. He rarely shows his full mastery in anything beyond alteration after all." he said nodding in understanding.
"You dabbled in the art and did THIS!? Are you messing with me?" I asked incredulously as I gestured around at the chamber.
Space manipulation just like time manipulation was so ridiculously hard that I was pretty certain it fell into expert mysticism for any really obvious use. Forget something like this that was not only permanent but a blatant and powerful use of the magic. -
"Ah! You have a slight misunderstanding I'm afraid. You see this is not true mysticism, that is far beyond me. This is mystic enchantment, a replication of the magic in question via runes and careful management. As for how I avoided wrecking the colleges enchantments, I cheated. Look carefully and you might be able to spot how." he said in that usual tone a teacher takes when instructing a student.
I chose to trust him on this since he had no reason to lie to me and looked around carefully.
'I don't see.... wait! Is that? Oh this cheeky bastard!' I thought as I finally figured it out.
"You used anchors that aren't attached to the college. The space you are expanding isn't the room itself but the space that fills it!" I said and he nodded with a small smile.
"Correct. The end result is the same as expanding the room itself but doesn't actually interfere with the college's own enchantments. Creative work arounds like this are what separates a true enchanter from those that merely regurgitate the same enchantments they learned from disassembling one previously." he said proudly.
I nodded in agreement. Not that there was anything wrong with that approach to enchantment in and of itself. But like he said those sort of enchanters never actually made anything new, they were stuck with whatever enchantments they already knew. Anyways he led me over to a high end enchanting table that I practically drooled over. Unlike in the game there were in fact differences in enchanting set ups and they had very real and very important implications. You had the basic ones like what I had and what you saw in the game. -
These ones could allow you to disassemble enchantments to learn them as well was allow the placement of simpler or weaker enchantments. This set up was usually enough for most enchanting but did you no favors in any other regard, it was as plain as it got basically. Then you had the specialized set ups. These had all the usual stuff but were made to increase the potency of specific types of enchantments. For example a destruction specialized set up would make any enchantment of that school more potent than should be possible ordinarily on a standard enchanting set up.-
Then you had the master set up like Sergius brought me to that basically allowed you to push any enchantment to it's limits and gave a deeper understanding of any enchantment placed on it for study. There was another type of set up after this one but that set up was meant for large scale enchantments. Things that wouldn't fit on a normal sized set up basically, trebuchets and the like. Because yes those big ass siege weapons do also sometimes get enchanted, magical warfare is brutally insane like that.