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1066 Words
Matt grinned as he looked at the others.
They had hit the jackpot with this item.
As the pirate had said. Take everything and give nothing back.
Armed with a compass and a key, they intended to do exactly that.
16
Matt looked around the empty space he found himself in for the second-floor theme challenge.
Genesis Cultivation’s final test wasn’t considered a hard one, but it took more thought and creativity than most other challenges.
While Eternal Darkness’ challenge was a simple chase, Genesis Cultivation required them to create something. There were no rules or limitations, but they needed to give form to something on their own. The final test was to form their own genesis. The better their creation, the more efficient the conversion from essence to Genesis Energy would be. They wouldn’t remember most of their work, most of their trials, or the details of their final submission, nothing truly actionable. Just what they finally managed to get working, and maybe some foggy recollection of a few of their failures.
It wasn’t very difficult to get some level of reward from the challenge. Pretty much any creation would result in ‘success’ as far as Minkalla was concerned, but to truly push the quality of reward they could receive, they’d need to put everything they had into their attempt. Curiously, non-crafters actually had it somewhat easier, as Minkalla cared less about how objectively good your creation was—though that never hurt—and more about how much of a personal challenge it was.
At least, that was the theory behind getting the minimum reward.
If you created something grand and pushed yourself to new heights, Minkalla would reward your ingenuity. And Matt needed that reward. Even with their compass leading them to prizes, they had just barely enough Genesis Energy to enter this challenge without having to delve sideways to kill more monsters. It was a chore they were glad to avoid, considering the overall difficulty of the second floor. If they were to leave now, on floor two, they wouldn’t be able to get the second-floor exit reward even if they wanted to.
Walking around in the nothingness, Matt started forming a copy of his crafting station that he had in his house.
His tools and such appeared around him where he already knew they were.
The workshop was more organized than it was in reality, but he knew that this one would become messier as he went.
Pulling a metal slab out of a vague ‘supplies’ box, Matt started testing.
Minkalla would let him test anything he liked, as much as he liked, before he submitted his final design. That in and of itself made it a crafter’s paradise, with the ability to endlessly test your creation with perfect real-world accuracy. In that sense, it was as much of a ‘reward’ as Folded Reflection’s mirrored lives were.
Time was accelerated in this test, so he didn’t have to worry about the usual wait times that crafting could entail, which was a weight off his shoulders.
Putting his carving pen to the metal, he started to create a circle, and once he finished, he hewed a second, then third one. Each one touched at the edge but did not overlap.
Then, he added a fourth circle in the center that overlapped its predecessors, connecting them into a single whole.
Happy with his first test, Matt started to carve the runes that he believed were necessary.
His AI still ran off Genesis Energy, but he didn’t bother to try it. From his understanding, AI generally didn’t work in this test at all.
Letting an AI craft something for you would defeat the purpose, after all.
When he had the outer shape of the formation created, he started to fill in the circles with runes to direct mana. They would absorb and direct any mana siphoned to them toward the bottom of the rune. It was a simple rune that was seen on all formations and productions that were powered by ambient mana.
He repeated that rune over and over until he had directed all of the mana to condense at the center of the formation plate.
Testing the plate, he pulled mana from his mana pool and directed it not to a spell, but the air.
He couldn’t see it directly, but he watched the runes light up as they absorbed his mana. 2,560 MPS drained from his body and was absorbed by the formation plate, all being drawn in at the edges, then sent through each smaller circle, eventually coalescing at the center of his design.
When they reached the center circle, the final rune pushed it up exactly five feet.
And kept going.
Cursing, Matt destroyed the plate of metal with his mind and started on a new one. This one stopped the mana at the designated distance and held it there, as he intended.
Watching as millions of mana poured into the formation, Matt smiled as he started to see visible mana condensing.
It started as mist, but slowly solidified until it looked like a liquid.
After what seemed like mere moments to him but was actually hours, a single, pinhead-sized drop of light blue mana was hovering in the air.
Seeing that his test was a success, Matt built a dozen more copies of the plates and a frame to hold them together in a rough sphere.
After inspecting and reworking his design to make sure that the mana was always condensed at the same spot with each formation plate, Matt moved on to creating talismans.
Hundreds, then thousands of talismans, all with a single purpose.
To hold as much mana as possible.
Talismans could hold massive amounts of mana. More so than a refillable mana stone of a similar Tier, but they couldn’t be drained in a controlled manner afterwards.
Each talisman needed to have its mana consumed through the use of a spell, and that spell needed to be cast all at once.
Matt intended to use that flaw to his advantage.
With his talismans created, he started to paste them all on the inside of his formation plates.
Activating a few of them, he watched as his spherical formation was encased in a ball of blue light.
The protective barrier wasn’t to feed the formation, but rather to isolate it from the surroundings.
- Writer
