Evan figured he would spend a little more than two hours painstakingly inscribing the stone floor above him, moving slowly in order to ensure no mistakes were made – there would be no do-overs. He had lined his design up where he wanted it and went to great lengths to make sure everything would fit.

The spell itself looked more magical than most of his spells, and more properly fulfilled what he imagined spell casting was like.

Upon a successful cast, the spell would manifest as a thin plane of light in the shape of a square, about thirty centimeters to a side, with its center being the point upon which the spell was cast.

This plane would only emit enough light to make itself distinct from its surroundings and was quite dim. For his purposes, inside the rather dark building – the only light coming from the windows at the front – this was fine.

He could then press down onto the plane with his fingers, and it would offer some slight resistance. It would feel like pressing into a sort of viscous, gel-like substance.

All of this was purposeful – engineered to make using the spell for its intended purpose as easy as possible, though it came with a relatively high mana cost to compensate.

The distance from the surface of the plane to where he moved his fingers was how he controlled the depth at which he was carving, and any horizontal movements he made would be carved beneath the stone at the same depth.

He could only make two-dimensional inscriptions this way, as the spell purposefully ignored any vertical movements, assuming he was simply adjusting his depth.

There was also some manner of insensitivity to this, so any slight deviations he made wouldn’t alter the depth at which he was carving.

All of this could be modified by changing some parts of the spell, but it wasn’t easy. These features also made the spell more costly, as it required many more components, but Evan found this made his carving much neater and more precise after he made these adjustments.

That was the purpose of the slight resistance as well – it allowed for more care in his movements, as inscriptions were quite finicky.

In this way, he was able to use his bare hands to precisely carve into the stone underneath the surface. He couldn’t maintain the spell for long, but Evan had decided that it was better to go slowly and make no mistakes than use a cheaper, simpler spell and waste time trying to fix mistakes.

His experience with ruining his first few beams had taught him that while he was designing the ‘weight redistributor’ – his errors had greatly decreased in frequency when he made these changes to the spell for carving wood, so he brought them along to his metal carving spell.

Of course, he was no great genius capable of adding entirely new components to a spell with so little experience – these changes were detailed alterations he was taught in order to change the spell to better suit his needs.

Crafters needed many tools.

With his carefully modified spell, making the inscriptions still required his utmost, but it wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as it might have been otherwise – his current nervousness had more to do with the pressure of the request than anything else.

His only trouble was comfortably reaching the roof of the first floor, though that was quickly remedied by asking the nearby stores for something like a small ladder or stepping stool. As he was in his uniform, nobody viewed him with suspicion.

Some of them even had a few questions for him, having seen that he was working on a nice stone building and wondering who was moving in. No doubt, they were worried about their potential competition if the owner could afford such a nice place to be built along with formations inscribed and imbued by a formations master.

Even if they could tell that he was only at his first Collapse – which they could – it was expensive to have formations laid down, even from someone at his level. They were all just as aware as he was that the prosperity of the outpost was hinged on the battles happening at the border, and that most weren’t willing to truly lay down roots here.

All of them wanted to needle information out of him, and he found the amount of respect they held for him simply due to his uniform strange. This made getting a small ladder easy, even without giving out any information he shouldn’t.

“Of course, you can borrow the ladder, Formation Master Evan – that’s no problem at all. I’m surprised you don’t already have one with you – the building you’re working on looks quite expensive, and of course there’s your own cost for adding the formations. What Collapse is the owner at?”

“Did the owner happen to mention what wares he’ll be selling? My son is a hunter, and he might be interested in what they’re selling. The step stool…”

“…what formations are you working on over there, Formation Master Evan? It must be quite something for you to take an interest.”

Evan received all sorts of responses and he was always respectfully addressed as a fully fledged formations master, even though his uniform clearly painted him as an apprentice – a clear attempt at brown-nosing if he ever saw one, which he frequently did these days.

He didn’t like it.

When I was younger- wait… no, not even when I was that much younger, just a little more than a year ago. …Time sure does fly, sometimes.

He used to think it would be nice to be the one being fawned over instead of doing the fawning himself, but having now experienced it, he realized it just made him uncomfortable. It was one the reasons he increasingly kept to himself and those he already knew fairly well.

Being addressed as a formation master was fine – he had worked hard to earn that title, and being addressed respectfully didn’t bother him. He even enjoyed it, compared to the way he was treated as just another orphan.

The problem was that everyone seemed to want something. Had he been this way as a kid? No wonder it often took a few drinks for him to get any meaningful advice out of the crafters he pestered.

He shook his head to clear his thoughts and brought the small ladder – he didn’t think the stepping stool would do it, unfortunately – back to the building.

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After about three hours had passed, he had a crick in his neck, his arms were burning, and he was summarily miserable. It had taken longer than expected, as he ended up needing a few breaks. Working from the ladder while he needed to be precise with his hand movements and maintaining the spell at the same time was incredibly draining, and somewhat difficult.

It also made apparent that he was no longer in as good shape as he used to be – spending more than a year mostly sitting or standing at a table could do that, he supposed, even if he was always quite active with his hands.

Maybe Arnav was onto something with the exercises he did. He’d ask him about it later – it would be a good way to chat some more and get back into shape. Their time together was coming to a close with his self-imposed deadline quickly coming up, and only now was Arnav reaching his first Collapse.

He worried that at this rate, he would end up so far ahead of him their relationship would take on an awkward angle.

There was nothing for it, though. He refused to slow down so Arnav could keep up, as neither of them would accept that, and Arnav refused to speed up – he was determined to do things “right”, and that apparently meant taking his time.

Evan had no idea how he could advance at such a relaxed pace considering how competitive he was. Skill and experience were important, and he understood that – he tried to do things in such a way that he could get as much experience and skill as possible, but he wouldn’t slow down for it.

It was something to worry about another time, he decided, as he made his way back towards the workshop. He first returned the small ladder to its owner and thanked them before hurrying on his way, of course.

The streets were busy as always, especially in the market area where he was, and he found himself having to press against others as he tried to make his way home. It seemed the outpost was full to bursting, and he even spotted some kids moving through the crowd, likely looking for a mark.

One of them caught his eye, and they exchanged glances until the kid broke it. It was all too easy to have your pockets cleaned out in a thick crowd, and Evan knew how he must look – these days, his clothes were new, his hair slightly brushed, and his face and hands clean.

There was also the matter of the bulky objects strapped to his sides, obviously magical in purpose. He looked rich, and being quite young, an easy mark.

He had been in their shoes, once, but he still had to make it clear it was best not to approach him. Even he wasn’t sure how he would handle it if they tried something.

Other than that short interaction, the trip was uneventful, though it was getting cold enough recently that he activated his portable AC. Not that it did much good, considering how densely packed the crowds were. He was glad it could warm him up as well as cooling him down.

After he returned to the workshop, he spent the rest of the day working on his beams while he considered the inscriptions he had done today, and the question of whether he could spare some time to cultivate.

He was fairly happy with his inscriptions – with his altered spell, mistakes were quite hard to make so long as he was slow and methodical, and from the few tests he was able to do, they worked just fine.

The question of his cultivation was a different matter. If he went through with it, he would need to aim for two sessions, and it would be a little risky for a couple different reasons, though he could probably solve at least the first.

He would have to ensure he didn’t get too caught up in his cultivation, entering the cultivation trance and letting time get away from him. This issue could be easily solved by only taking enough Substance into the chamber to last for a couple days, though that would take some guesswork.

There was also the matter of his current project. Any time spent cultivating was time he couldn’t spend ensuring the success of his inscriptions, and while there was relatively little he could do at the moment but wait for his mana to regenerate, there was always the chance he’d missed something and would only realize it after having worked on the design for the inscriptions some more.

If he was cultivating, he wouldn’t be doing that. He felt pretty confident, but it was his first time building a primary formation, so he wanted to take extra precautions. There was a second aspect to this, too.

His savings. If he bought as much Substance as he wanted, it would cost most of his current fortune, which left him with less to spend on mana potions if he happened to need it. It would be terrible if he realized he would miss the deadline simply because he didn’t have enough mana, and it would leave a bad mark on his record.

Evan spent the rest of the morning working on some more beams, deliberating on whether he should go through with increasing his cultivation. It would make the job that much easier, and allow him to do a better job, but none of that mattered if he couldn’t get the inscription work done.

A stronger cultivation wouldn’t help with that, either – diluting his cultivation with some Substance to enhance his magical abilities, or at least his regeneration, never even occurred to him. He was at the beginning of his path to power, and every speck of capacity his soul possessed was reserved for becoming better at his chosen vocation, even if that made the inscriptions more difficult.

If only he had some kind of device that could do that for him…

For a moment, clarity struck.

That’s exactly what I should do! …But do I even have the power to do it? It’s probably not something I could buy, and just the complexity would be immense.

His thoughts took a turn, investigating how he might bring something like that to fruition. It would, in his mind, work just as his spell did, only instead of a magically created pane of light, it would be a physical object.

It would have to be thick, so he had a proper amount of depth to work with, but it also couldn’t be heavy. Or rather, he would need some way to secure it to the surface he was working on – the roof.

These considerations continued as he worked on his beams, working slowly and even making a few mistakes as he got distracted. It wasn’t like him to be this way – he usually had a single-minded focus on his work, to the point where even time got away from him, but the thought of such a device captured his thoughts almost entirely and wouldn’t let go.

Enraptured, part of him wanted to put off his work on the beams and pull out some pen and paper so he could start charting things out – the flows, the distribution of intent, the channels for information, the different imbuements he would need or want. It all wanted to just pour out of him-

Or rather, it was pouring out of him – he just wasn’t in a position to write any of it down. He glanced at the beam he was working on and noticed the clumsy mistakes he had made.

To hell with it. This is more important! He tried to justify to himself – inspiration didn’t come on demand!

He hurried away from the floor where he was working on the beam and slung open the drawer containing the writing materials.

Pulling out a thick stack of paper, he grabbed several pens – a marvelous device that far surpassed pencils – and hastily sat down at the table, words and demonstrations already spilling across the page. So caught up was he in his revelation, he even forgot to close the drawer full of paper and pens.

He had learnt from the last time he did this and grabbed plenty of paper and pens to start with, but this time, the fugue didn’t last, and he was successfully interrupted by Arnav, followed by Iliana, entering the workshop.

The reason his feverish pace didn’t last was that eventually, he started to get stuck. Unlike with the beams, he didn’t have plenty of space to make use of, and it required far more care for its structure – it was he himself who would be using it, after all, and he didn’t want a repeat of today if he could help it.

Everything needed to fit into what he currently imagined as a small box that was quite lengthy, and most of the interior space would need to be free for him to use as a three-dimensional pad to draw with.

This made it incredibly difficult to figure out without ballooning the size, and he could already tell it would be like his personal shield or AC – weak, due to the sheer amount of inscriptions he would have to work without.

Still, part of him was glad it wasn’t so easy – that would have made him quite the fool and it showed him that the idea held great promise. He liked to think he was fairly good at design, so if he found it difficult, it couldn’t be easy.

Tearing his attention away from the paper sat before him, he glanced over at Arnav and Illiana. He instantly noticed they were holding hands, and seemed quite surprised to see him, and even more so at the paper and pens sprawled out before him.

Suddenly, he felt quite awkward. A thought had come to him unbidden, and now it dominated his mind. He hastily – almost stumbling over himself – shuffled all the papers together, stuffed some pens into his pockets – though he hated to do that – and hurried past them, getting away as soon as possible.