The mystical energy proved too mesmerizing, and before he had etched out even half of the design, he got confused and accidentally crossed out his handiwork, ruining it. Once again the unfinished rune fizzled out, the system still making no comment.

  Avery clicked his tongue out of frustration, fruitlessly attempting to estimate how much time his failure had cost him. Since he had arrived here, he had walked around for long enough to feel hungry, before reading a list of millions of system products. After that, he had failed to shape and engrave a spearhead until he was feeling hungry again. All of this must surely have taken many hours, but the daylight level had never changed.

  In such a deep and narrow canyon, there should have been a great difference in the amount of sunlight arriving to the bottom in accordance with the time of day. The higher up in the sky the sun was, the more direct sunlight could travel to Avery’s position, but the bleak dimness had remained constant throughout the day, with only a eerie ambient gray light that cast no shadows permitting him to see anything.

  He concluded that the light did not come from the sun, another disturbing peculiarity of this god forsaken place, but the point was he probably couldn't use the day/night cycle to keep track of time.

  He instinctively patted his pockets, wanting to take out his phone and check the time, and glanced at his wrist where he used to have his watch, before he recalled nothing from earth had accompanied him here. Besides, he was wearing a flowing brown robe fitting his status in the sect with the pockets in the sleeves, not below the waist. It had taken some time to get used to wearing an oversized dress, but overall he found it quite comfortable, if slightly cumbersome.

  Looking around and finding nothing he could improvise into a time keeping device, he snooped around the system options making sure he had not missed a clock feature. There was none, but his purchases were logged, so he could view the number of time wraps used and calculate the time passed, with a precision of a few hours.

  The problem was that he did not know how much time had passed since his last rewind, so he did not know how much time his body had gone without eating. This meant he did not know how many time warps he needed to return to just after the meal, and risked returning to before it happened, forcing him to waste time warps returning to the meal before that.

  Avery took a few time warps until he felt full of energy again, and then he made a small cut in his arm. This was meant to help him keep track of time, as when he used the time warps, he could survey how fresh the injury looked. It would be somewhat more precise than just a vague sensation of “I am a bit less hungry”, and hopefully avoid rewinding before the meal, when he would be hungry again.

  Once he had settled on this rudimentary time keeping system, he stopped dilly-dallying and got back to work.

  He did his best to concentrate on the inscription this time, but the elusive flow of power was simply too intriguing and he wasn’t able to stay fixated on his hands.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Subconsciously, he was exceedingly interested in studying the abstruse energy, and he couldn’t help getting engrossed in it each time it appeared. If he was still safe in the sect, he would never have ignored this phenomenon, and instead explored a way to perform magic before the system even unlocked his ability to cultivate. Now, in an environment where Qi was forbidden, it was even more tempting. Unfortunately, he needed to make sure he would survive before he could think of becoming a magician, and while the prospect of dying of thirst in a month's time was tremendously stressful, it wasn’t particularly helpful to his concentration.

  More than a dozen attempts were foiled in this manner, getting captivated and forgetting to complete the rune, but at least he was progressing. He was getting familiar with the design, each time he persevered for longer, learning to keep going with half of his mind occupied. He would stop from time to time and try to work on the shaping of the spearhead, but these attempts all failed miserably. He didn't even feel like he was improving, so he decided to stick to engraving for now.

  Finally, after more than 40 hours of consecutive failures, he managed to shakily complete his first rune.

  Ding, Congratulations, you have completed an inferior rune. +1 Points

  Before Avery could be relieved to see his idea to gain points was viable, The glyph he had just etched dimmed and shattered, turning into specs of light that were absorbed by the misshapen spearhead. The spearhead showed no obvious change, and the way the rune was destroyed led Avery to believe the rune had failed to empower the spearhead, despite the system notification. After considering carefully, he accepted four possibilities.

  First, his intuition was wrong and this was how it was supposed to happen, evidenced by the points gained by the system and the fact the metal absorbed the shattered glyph.

  It was also plausible that the rune was a success, but the spearhead was so grotesque it was not capable of receiving the rune, causing it to dissipate.

  Another explanation would be that he had failed altogether. There was no doubt he had messed up a few times while drawing, and it was absolutely believable he had not reached the necessary standard for success. It only seemed weird as he considered the system had a harsh but fair evaluation, and was not one to reward failure, but perhaps it was lenient for his first try?

  The fourth hypothesis, and the one Avery was the most convinced by, was that the engraving was successful, but the dragon power in the air interfered with the rune and destroyed it. This conclusion was supported by the system message announcing success, the way the rune burst being similar to the previous spiritual plant, and there being no difference to the spearhead before or after the rune.

  He couldn't determine with certainty which assumption was correct, but he supposed it didn’t really matter if he got the points either way. Anything but the fourth option would mean that as he improved, he would be able to use the tools he had made. This would lead to a possible escape, but he doubted he would be so lucky.

  There was something else he was curious about, which was if it was possible to engrave the same rune on the spearhead multiple times, and grind points this way. If not, he would need to either find a way to “unmake '' the weapon, or buy more material regularly, making his profit suffer immensely.

  Things had not gone his way so far, but as long as his work just now wasn’t a complete success, any other option should allow him repeated tries. The worst case scenario would be option 1, as he thought being able to engrave the same weapon multiple times would be overpowered. Otherwise he should be good to go, even if he had to intentionally control the quality of his work to make sure the rune would fail so that he could redo it.