I bring the pink abomination to the clerk and spend 5 gold. Fortunately, the worker is too disinterested in her job to notice that there's a man with a scared face buying a device painted an annoyingly retina-destroying pink color.

I return to my dorm and begin disassembling the item. The insides are made of nice metal that I will likely use later, and also the thing I've been searching for, mana-tempered wires. Looking at them, the amount in the item is barely enough for me to use, which means I can't make a mistake. Otherwise, another 5 gold will go down the drain along with my dignity.

But for now, I should just start with the iron parts.

And so, a whole week passed with me bending iron pieces into shape, carving in the runes I had planned to use, and infusing the rune carvings with mana-infused ink. Thank goodness for the trick the artificing teacher taught us in the first lesson, Otherwise, I presume I would have broken my arms trying to permanently bend the things into shape with my hands.

Finally done with the first part, now I have to thread these mana-tempered wires through the right places.

First, I divide the wires into five equal pieces, each for one of my fingers. Then, I connect the battery of the future magic item to the fingertips that will hold the mana shells in place.

After an annoying amount of time, I'm finally finished with the task. At least it didn't take as long as bending the iron into shape.

Now, with the shell of the item complete, I take a pair of gloves out of my special ring. I designed the whole item around this pair of gloves, specifically the one for the left hand. The item should slide into it and remain inconspicuous.

Fortunately, it all turns out perfectly, sliding in and not looking odd in any way, which isn't very surprising, of course, considering my genius intellect and all.

But now comes the most annoying part of the process: removing a chunk of Ustos's soul to put into the magic item. I've already acquired the necessary items to pull off such an operation. Now all that's left to do is actually do it.

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I approach Ustos's chair, which is ctually looking a bit worse for wear, likely from Ustos moving around and struggling so much. Whatever, such annoying actions don't warrant punishment. The real times I need to actually punish him is when he starts getting ideas.

Anyway, Ustos will be awake for this, but I doubt he'll feel a thing. Besides, I'm not wasting money on buying sedatives just to make Ustos more comfortable. Actually, this could be viewed as a form of torture too, which could deter him from trying something stupid.

I put on the goggles, enchanted with perceiving mana. I actually borrowed these from the academy. I told the mana theory teacher that I wanted to do an experiment with a mana structure, which, well, I suppose this could be counted as an experiment. I also put on gloves that can touch and move around mana structures, which I made myself using some public designs. Finally, I pick up a soul carver, also made by yours truly.

I approach Ustos, and I try to decide where I'm going to make the incision. The head wouldn't be a good place because if atmospheric mana makes it into his empty noggin, it will probably tear it apart. Thinking about it, the dissection should be near the mana core, because I'm pretty sure the mana core is in charge of regenerating the soul after it loses a part of itself. That means the arms and legs are out, which only leaves the torso.

It shouldn't touch the digestive tract because the soul needs calories to generate new imprint elements to then heal the mana breach. Obviously, I'm not doing it near the heart or lungs. So that leaves the upper spine or shoulders. In the end, I decide to go with the upper spine because it's closer and probably more connected to the mana core than the shoulders.

Done with the contemplation, I approach Ustos from the back and get ready. The dissection should return a rectangular-shaped chunk, with dimensions of 11:4:3. I take a deep breath and start the operation.

The moment I put the invisible tip of the soul carver onto Ustos's soul, I see the soul being carved like butter through my goggles. It seems whoever created the blueprint for this soul carver had a semblance of an idea of what they were doing.

Ustos starts moving around a bit frantically, which is odd. He shouldn't be able to sense what's going on, maybe it's because of my enchantments being a bit off on the soul carver, I don't know. But it doesn't really matter. The removal process is swift and fast, his frantic restrained movements dont do much to deter me, I slice the soul open and take out the chunk that I need.