The full details of the request Evan received showed that the client, the alchemist, wasn’t particularly picky – they were fully aware that you get what you pay for, but such a formation was truly expensive, even for the alchemist.

While Mountain Acropolis was thriving now, its growth was contingent on the war happening not far away at the border. Eventually, that border would move, and neither direction was great for the growth of the outpost. Further away, its importance would begin to lessen as it became more distant from the action. Closer, and the lifeblood of the outpost – the civilians – would begin to panic and leave in droves.

The alchemist seemed to understand this and was wary of investing too much into his new home – like many others, he was here to take advantage of the traffic the outpost saw.

Nothing was spelled out so clearly within the request, but Evan could see the hesitation by reading between the lines. He was, after all, here for similar reasons, even if he lacked the freedom the alchemist enjoyed – whether he was part of the military or not, having a cultivation at the third Collapse would bring him freedoms that Evan could only look forward to.

Despite this, the request was domineering in its demands – it asked for more than was reasonable considering what was paid, and while the sum was incredible to Evan, he knew that for this type of work it was barely acceptable.

It was one of the reasons he was able to get his hands on the request – otherwise, the low demands in cultivation and experience would have had many flocking to try their hand at it.

He wondered how much of it was his master’s influence, as even with the low pay he couldn’t understand why others didn’t snatch up the request.

Regardless, Master Isaac had told him that so long as he did his best, he wouldn’t face any reprisal – the full details were reserved for whoever accepted the request, and such demands were unreasonable considering who was allowed to accept the request and the pay given.

Just as Evan wasn’t allowed to overcharge for his goods, so too could others not make unfair requests and underpay him for them.

It was surprisingly fair, but he supposed that even with as corrupt as Starspire was, it required a smooth-running military to defend itself.

That didn’t mean he could not give it his all, but he wouldn’t be expected to do the impossible.

With that in mind, a week quickly passed as he worked with Master Isaac to learn how to actually craft all of these functions for the primary formation. His master assured him that by the time he finished the request, he would know enough to not need any more help – as always, his master was big on having him master the basics, so he could expand from there on his own.

***

The request had told him there were three months before the alchemist arrived, and that was also considered his deadline. It was a little nerve-wracking to work under pressure, but by the time the first week had passed he was mostly over it.

With a rough timetable, things were much less stressful – at least as long as he followed it. He would allow himself the first month and a half to finish the primary formation. All of the planning, design, and execution had to be done within this time.

He allocated so much to this for two reasons; first, the primary formation was the most important in the building. Secondly, he needed this time to build upon the principles he learnt from Master Isaac in the past week.

It was the first time he had done any work on such a scale, so he wanted to ensure he did things right and didn’t pick up any bad habits.

Once that was done, he figured it would only take him a week or two to design and build the lights for the building. It wasn’t something he had done before, but it was far simpler than the primary formation and used principles he already understood.

That would leave him with about a month to figure out the preservation formation.

Master Isaac was leaving the rest of it to him, now that he had the principles down, but he figured it shouldn’t be that difficult. The real trouble was figuring out the specific method he wanted to use.

That would come later, though, so he set his mind to working on the primary formation – something that he quickly found to be an act of maddening frustration.

Laying out the actual design wasn’t that difficult, just time-consuming. With the blueprints of the building in hand, he spent almost a week sketching out the ‘track’ his dynamic imbuement would follow, along with some typical pathways for the lighting formation.

Even without having begun work on it, it was easy to get a good idea of where he would place the lights; he could adjust their brightness and size as needed once he got there.

He placed the ‘core’ of the primary formation in the roof of the first floor, behind the counter. There shouldn’t be much need for any other formations there in the future, so it was a good place – not to mention that it was close to being the center of the building.

The track and the pathways would stretch out all throughout the building, but the core functionality would be inscribed there. It would take up much if not all of the space for formations there, so it could be considered a weakness of the building.

One of the reasons he wouldn’t have as much Substance to work with, after all, was because he couldn’t hog all of it for the primary formation – each meter of the walls could only hold so much, and that space would be needed for any future formations – not much could be dedicated to the pathways, and not all of the primary formation could simply rest in the roof.

He greatly anticipated being allowed to install a reinforcement formation throughout the exterior walls of the building, and that would require lots of space in the Substance.

The blueprints also cleared things up, though he had the right of things anyway. The room with the crates and shelves was intended to store finished products of the alchemist, both for restocking the store and for any shipping he might be doing, such as for the military.

On the other end of the main shopping space, behind the counter, the other door led to where the preservation ward would be installed and stocked with the magical ingredients the alchemist would need for his work. Through the door in that room, the one that was completely empty and bare, was where the alchemist would be concocting his wares – it was empty to allow the alchemist to fill as they pleased.

Most crafters were necessarily picky about setting up their own workstations – they would often have their own tools and methods, and would only feel safe doing things themselves.

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Evan wasn’t at that level yet – most of his tools were still mundane, and those that weren’t like his carving knife weren’t exactly meticulously crafted with any secrets. His master was also an outlier in this, being used to frequently traveling from place to place and spending most of his time teaching instead of practicing his trade.

It made him wonder why the older man didn’t pursue furthering his craft – he was of a high Collapse and seemed to be quite skilled.

He didn’t mention it though – everyone had their secrets, and he was thankful for the tutelage.

***

Another three weeks passed as Evan refined his understanding of the principles of large-sized formation crafting. Half of that was spent using large sheets of wood as he tested his skills and furthered his understanding, spending a sum not insignificant in his efforts to practice.

He didn’t manage the dynamic imbuement until just a few days before the end of his first month on the project passed, frequently requiring help from Master Isaac to point out his flaws.

“It’s just like imbuing without an inscription,” he would say, “You just need to anchor it to a static loop of movement while enabling it to be accessed using a security key, and logging attempts otherwise.” It was frustrating – hearing all of that didn’t seem to help in the slightest, but while comprehension eluded him, he noticed his attempts getting better regardless.

Evan seemed to struggle with it a lot more than most, and he often caught sly glances the others would give while he was working in the workshop with his master. Iliana and Arnav both seemed to take pleasure in his struggle to learn.

Neither bothered him overmuch, though they did increase his frustration, likely much to their amusement. With Iliana, he had come to accept that she just didn’t like him that much – he thought it had to do with him besting her talentwise and remaining ahead of her. She had reached her first Collapse but was consistently improving slower than he was in all respects.

With Arnav, well, ribbing each other had become a cornerstone of their friendship – it was nice to just let go and be less than polite with someone, and none of it was meant to do harm.

It still grated, though.

By the end he was starting to get worried – he only had a few more weeks to get the primary formation inscribed and imbued, and his lacking magical talents meant that he would spend far more time regenerating his mana than anything else.

Thankfully, he eventually managed it. The imbuement was difficult, as it was complex, featured security, and couldn’t be made easier through the use of inscriptions. All of this was further magnified by the way it had to be imbued – his mind seemed to default to static imbuements, as that was what he was used too, and it took deliberate effort in just the right way to make it dynamic.

When he finally managed it, he was working with one of the sheets of wood he used for practicing in the workshop, though one without any inscriptions underneath the surface. It was possible to layer it over inscriptions, active or not, but he didn’t want the added difficulty it would bring.

The path – the track it was to follow – wasn’t anything special, the requirements simply being that the way be made ‘deeper’ – with such a strong, concentrated imbuement moving along the walls, some reinforcement had to be done for easing the path and preventing any disturbances that might result from so much Substance moving about.

Nobody else was with him at the time, so he allowed himself several minutes whooping and laughing at his success regardless.

“Ha! Hahaha! Whoo! I did it! I fucking did it!”

Even now, it brought a smile to his face at his success. It was the largest hurdle to his learning he had faced yet, and as the failures continued to mount, he had begun to feel discouraged.

To finally succeed had felt good.

As the memory played in his mind, he gathered up the things he would need before setting out from the workshop towards the building. With him was the design for the primary formation, the blueprint for the building – he might need it for some reason – and a tied off bag containing several Substance containers.

While the design wasn’t difficult, it was still quite complex and used a variety of different aspects of Substance in its design. Some of them were completely new to him as of a month ago, and he was looking forward to exploring their effects.

One such Substance was mind-aspected. It was incredibly expensive, but thankfully the materials weren’t paid for with his dime. He was given a budget, and as long as he could justify it to his client, was allowed to freely purchase the things he needed.

In addition to the mind-substance, he had a healthy mixing of force-aspected Substance – they would make up the bulk of the formation, as much of the formation involved moving imbuements or would facilitate movement.

He didn’t bring any other types with him – it would be a terrible tragedy if he was robbed – but if he had space, he planned to add in some alerts and reminders. Those would likely use a mix of light and sound aspected Substance, but he would place the order when he had a better idea of how his intent would hold up.

Mind-aspected Substance was incredibly expensive because of its rarity, and he only brought a small amount with him. He wouldn’t need much, but it would take to his dynamic imbuement much better than anything else – while some things could be done with any aspect of Substance, there were always superior options.

In the case of an imbuement dealing with lots of information, like the dynamic ‘courier’, a little mind-aspected Substance would go a long ways to keeping the strain on his intent down.

This was, as his master had said, of critical importance. With his cultivation at the bottom of the first Collapse, making everything fit wouldn’t be easy and required some planning.

Force aspected Substance wasn’t cheap either, but still within his budget – it was a staple of most primary formations, and the client had seemed to put that into his calculations given the budget.

He had worked with it before, but only in small amounts – here it was the primary aspect of the formation. With force being so fundamental, it was useful in a lot of different imbuements, and the primary formation was no different.

Things would be moving around a lot, and not just the courier. Being connected throughout the entirety of the house and being connected to all of its formations, it made for a great way to move Substance around without the need for all the cubes he commonly used.

By now he had arrived at the building, so he once more did a cursory inspection. Master Isaac wasn’t with him this time – he had the others to tend to, and after all of their practice, he had a good understanding of what he was doing.

The design would also stop him from making any mistakes in the inscription, but any possible errors he made in his work.

Once he had circled around the outside of the building, his soul sense active, he headed inside and did the same for the various rooms. Everything was just as he had left it, if a little dustier than before.

He didn’t expect anything to be any different from before, but it was always best to check, and helped reassure himself that he hadn’t made any mistakes – he was still nervous.

Returning to the shops floor, he entered from the storage room that led upstairs and found himself behind the counter. The moment was upon him.

Truthfully, not much would be done today – he would inscribe beneath the surface using his spell until he ran out of mana. Depending on how much he got done, he would either test his work using the Substance he brought with him or head home for the day to make more beams.

He didn’t bring any of his mana potions with him today, though maybe he should have. They were expensive, even for him, and he figured he wouldn’t need them yet – if it looked like he wasn’t going to finish on schedule, he would start drinking them in order to get more work done.

This was the unfortunate reality of his magical talent in practice – when it mattered, he would need to down potions to get his work done on time or be content with the slow pace of his labor.

Perhaps I can ask the alchemist about something to increase my regeneration rate? Is the third Collapse strong enough to make those?

It was something to consider, and it made him almost reconsider his plans to order the Substance for furthering his cultivation. He had enough to advance his strength by the same margin he had before, and had for some time, but couldn’t find the time to cultivate for however long he would need.

This time, he would have a healthy nest egg of money still in the bank after his cultivation in case he needed anything – like more mana potions – for his work. His beams were selling like hotcakes all across the various mines of Starspire.

With how slow the inscribing for the primary formation was going, he would have a few days between each trip after emptying his mana pool while he waited for it to refill. That likely wasn’t long enough to finish his cultivation, but two trips would definitely do it.

He just needed to be careful about slipping into the cultivation trance. Maybe he could get a clock?