Evan stared at the thick stack of paper sitting before him, his eyes bloodshot from a lack of sleep. The project was sound but had taken far more work than he had expected. He still wasn’t done, not even sixteen hours later, but lacked the mental resources to continue.

It would have to be completed tomorrow.

He wasn’t even aware of anyone entering or exiting the workshop, though looking around now, he could tell that the others had come and gone. Thankfully, they hadn’t interrupted his work, though maybe he had simply ignored them in his fervor.

Regardless, nobody was here now, and he leaned back into his chair. Now he understood why back in Fool’s Hope, the bedrooms were attached to the workshop – he really didn’t want to make the trek home.

Surely it would be fine if he just took a nap here in the workshop? The chair wasn’t comfortable, but it would serve. He laid his head down adjacent to the thick stack of inscriptions, math, and general ramblings before instantly falling asleep.

***

The project, which he had titled The Weight Redistributor, took far longer than just the next day. It wasn’t until almost a month later he managed to bring it to a satisfying conclusion, having finally poured over the countless inscriptions one last time.

In the beginning, just after he had left the cultivation chamber, part of him wondered why such a design didn’t already exist if it was possible – surely, he wasn’t the first person to come up with the idea of a safety net? Unless, of course, it just wasn’t possible – or rather, feasible. He didn’t believe anything was actually impossible to do with Substance.

Well, except to make more Substance, he supposed.

Regardless, the seed of doubt was there in the beginning, but after having spent a month on the project he knew the true answer – it was doable, but it wasn’t easy. The idea was simple in practice: allow the beam to be anchored somewhere upright, with a switch that would project a field that manipulated the weight of the surrounding rock and ore, such that the weight would rest on the beam, stabilizing the rock and preventing a cave-in, as though the field was properly supported.

Alone, this approach wasn’t particularly difficult, but given any amount of thought the idea would quickly fall apart. That was a lot of weight, and while the beams were strong, he wouldn’t be able to reinforce it enough to support that much weight with even his increased capacity.

Refinement of the idea proved necessary, and this was where things had gotten more complex. Instead of unilaterally transferring the weight onto the beam, a better idea was to only transfer the weight when it proved necessary to prevent cave-ins. But how would he do that? The answer was lots and lots of inscriptions – at one point, he ran out of space on the surface of the beam and needed to seek out assistance to have more carved underneath the surface.

Master Isaac approved of his project, and beneath the envious glares of Iliana and Arnav, announced that he would start teaching them their first crafting spell – one that could be used to carve wood beneath the surface. He would teach them all, but only Evan would have any hope of mastering the spell – it was far more complex than anything else up to that point, as it incorporated elements that would allow for a measure of control in the carving, as well as another component he learned was called a ‘binding’.

Bindings were found in virtually all advanced forms of magic and were essentially highly refined ‘parts’ of a spell that were designed to be used in many different applications.

In other words, bindings were a little like premade building blocks that could be used in spells, to simplify both the learning of the spell and the creation of it while achieving superior results to any homebrew solution. The only problem was that being ultra complex and refined, it took a lot of time and effort to learn them in the first place.

The spell was added to his daily practice, and Iliana worked on it when she could, but it was pushed to the back burner for Evan – while he was learning the spell, he convinced Master Isaac to help him by casting it for him. He didn’t want to go to a stranger.

If the design worked well and took off, it could make him a lot of money. He eventually asked if there was some way to put his name on it, so that others couldn’t just steal his finished design, but Master Isaac had sadly told him it just didn’t work – there had been attempts in the past, but any kind of knowledge relating to crafting had to be kept to oneself or it would inevitably end up being stolen or taken advantage of.

Only large institutions like the military of Starspire had any hope of keeping things secret, and even then, the knowledge had to be heavily restricted. Master Isaac explained as such while he was working away in the workshop, preparing his first finished prototype.

“Tell me truthfully, Evan. When you leave the military, are you going to lock away all that you have learned here? Obviously, you won’t blatantly make and sell the designs you have learnt, but there is no question that you will modify them just enough that Starspire won’t come knocking on your door.”

Evan made to tell him that of course he would keep everything secret, as he wasn’t a fool – master or not, he would not just carelessly admit that he would take advantage of everything he was being taught. The way he saw it, it was his just reward for his service, the secrets of the military be damned.

His master didn’t give him the chance.

“Don’t bother – we both know anything you say is just lip service. That’s my point – even the guild doesn’t bother to try establishing some sort of copyright. It is well understood that if you don’t protect your products, their designs will be stolen, copied, and sold.

“It’s also one the biggest reasons it is so useful to be able to do all of this work yourself,” He waved at the beam sat across the floor, too heavy and long to sit on any of the tables. “If I wasn’t here to help you, you would have to find someone else to do this for you until you managed the carving spell, and if this idea took off, it would be all too easy to slip whoever did the inscription work a pile of gold for a copy of the design they would assuredly keep.”

Evan had understood this back when it was originally explained to him, but it only really sunk in now, after sharing his design with his master, that working without magic – without the ability to easily inscribe – made it a lot more difficult to keep secrets. It was no wonder that Iliana was so down these days, and why their grudge had grown from mere annoyance to shattering what he thought was a budding friendship.

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Arnav seemed to handle it better, understanding his lack of magic had nothing to do with Evan, but even he had been increasingly distant – in part, he understood, because Evan just wasn’t a particularly social person.

He much preferred quiet companionship, and his old friends – few they were – were used to his on and off nature of socialization. Only just now, more than half a year later, was he beginning to miss them.

Will they even still draw breath by the time I’m back in Starspire?

It was a sobering thought, but as Master Isaac had once told him – cultivation is a pyramid, and it only gets worse with time. He made a decision – once he was finished with this project, he would write some letters for the orphanage. Evan wasn’t the type of person to drag others up with him, but maybe he should send some money back for the orphanage – Grace had always looked after him, and his situation was truly different these days.

Earning enough money to reach his first Collapse in not even a year? Even a hunter would find it difficult to boast the same. If his idea worked out, the second one might not be too far away, either.

He shook his head – now wasn’t the time for such thoughts. Instead, he once more poured over his design as he waited for his master to finish inscribing the beam. A complete redesign had been required when he ran out of space on the surface in order to allow everything to flow correctly – the checks required to keep the weight on the beam to a minimum were dizzying, involving all sorts of conditions.

Especially since he had needed to include good security measures to prevent snooping. It wasn’t taught in the books, but after pestering Master Isaac, he had begrudgingly taught him some techniques to both harm any other crafter that tried to look too closely at his work and initiate a self-destructive imbuement, essentially bypassing some of the inscriptions to activate the main function without any of the checks or reinforcement – something that was sure to destroy the device.

It might even cause some damage to the area it happened in – but it wasn’t his problem, and nobody could blame him. Not even the military.

He wouldn’t be playing nicely. If they wanted his work, it would have to come from him or not at all. Anyone who tried to steal his work deserved what they got.

It was an amazing imbuement, the most complex he had ever looked at to date, and it was one he had made! He was determined to make a hefty profit off it, even if he was restricted from outright price gouging, given that his deal would still be through the military, at least for the miners at Iron Guard.

Part of him felt a little bad at the thought of engaging in profiteering against the miners, but it was fairly easy to get over it once he thought of the money he could make. The miners weren’t exactly roughing it either – the job was dangerous, inconvenient, and required moving to the middle of nowhere where monsters could continuously assault the walls. Starspire wasn’t a great place to live, but they knew how to properly motivate people.

Lots of money, with bonuses on top. He now realized that was exactly what they had done to him – only Starspire was allowed to give out loans, and the military just so happened to be such a great deal he couldn’t help but accept.

Then they gave him a pittance for a wage, heaped him with dangerous work, and restricted his ability to make money on his own – there was no doubt in his mind that by the time began to approach the end of his service, Starspire will have saved a fortune by buying his work without the markup an independent crafter would charge.

Not to mention the ridiculousness of his exit clauses – to stay on the front lines, for potentially six years? He wasn’t that lucky, and it just wouldn’t happen. Or he could just give them what they would have loaned to him if he stayed in Starspire.

Incoherent rage began to well up in him, but that wasn’t productive, so he changed tracks and stared at his design, thinking of the benefits other than money it brought him.

Figuring out the design was the hardest thing he had ever done, unused to such mental tasks even as an apprentice, but was glad he had stuck with it to the end. The month of labor had required tons of experimentation, and he even had some books arrive that detailed some of the mechanics of building his own design.

Evan now knew much better than before how imbued objects worked and felt like he had elevated his abilities to another level. Had he known what he knew now, figuring the blueprint out wouldn’t have been so difficult or frustrating – he had lost count of the times he had expected one result and gotten another, lesser one, or the tedium of making sure each part worked both alone and together with everything else.

Master Isaac had told him countless times that the more he did this, the easier it would get as he refined his own “mental model” of how imbuements and inscriptions should work, letting him better predict how things should turn out before he did them.

The experience also now taught him why Master Isaac had always seemed so patient – it was basically a required mindset for crafting, as failure after failure mounted.

At least it hadn’t been too expensive – what Master Isaac had said was right, using his own tools was for the best with how quickly he was wearing them out. It also helped that since the imbuements were his own and they weren’t permanent, he could remove the almost automatic aspect of his intent that would resist the Substance being stripped from its home, allowing him to recycle most of the Substance he used.

This was the answer to an unasked question of his of why all imbuements weren’t simply scrapped and recycled instead of repaired – while the crafter could remove the intent that stopped the recycling, there was no reason for them to do so, and plenty of reasons to leave it in – not all of them greedy.

First, it was important so that any random person with a tiny bit of ability to imbue couldn’t simple come along and ruin the item, stealing the Substance. This was especially the case when it came to large formations with lots of Substance in static, public places – such as the wall.

Not just large important formations, either. Lanterns that ran on Substance were a good example, as they were commonly used for their steady glows inside and around all sorts of establishments – it would be all too easy to simply steal the Substance inside if not for this method.

After all, Substance was not actually visible without soul sense, something was incredibly restrictive in the lower Collapses. Even after reaching his first, Evan’s soul sense could only reach about three meters away from him in any particular direction, and it was rare that someone had it active without needing it for something.

The next reason was even more important – equipment made up a large portion of most combatants’ strength. If this measure wasn’t left inside the imbuement, there was a chance that someone could simply pull the Substance out of the equipment during a fight, given they had the talent for it. Without this measure, the imbuement wouldn’t resist.

It was also a great way to prevent the enemy from excessively profiting off the equipment of their own soldiers. While they could still use it, they couldn’t recycle it for other purposes.

Finally, there was simply greed. By leaving this as a part of the imbuement, only the original crafter would be able to properly repair the imbuement or carefully recycle it. It was a great way to have customers return, all while protecting the imbuement from being prematurely destroyed.

As an addendum to this, if the Substance wasn’t protected inside the imbuement, it would be much easier for a rival crafter to take apart and learn how it was made.

If a crafter truly set their mind to it, they could recycle imbuements they had made with enough time. Similar to mana, crafters had an intimate connection with their own imbuements, and could leave behind exemptions to their potential security measures – different from the anti-stripping intent – that would respond to them alone. In this way, a crafter could modify the imbuement, allowing them to recycle the Substance.

Doing that took more effort than simply leaving it out in the first place though, and any lock could be picked. Best practice was to make sure the imbuement was fully finished and leave no gaps in the security at all.

None of that mattered to Evan at the moment though, as Master Isaac had finally finished inscribing his beam. It wasn’t the original, as trying to fix the physical marks of the failed inscriptions was another matter entirely, but he was excited to draw the project to a close.

Even if all this work wasn’t exceptionally expensive, it wasn’t cheap, either! He sat a chair next to the beam and sat down, multiple Substance containers in hand as he forged several connections.

It was time to begin!