Evan rushed home, holding his papers close to his chest. It wasn’t raining or anything of the sort – he just felt very protective of them.

Once he had realized that even his master hadn’t mentioned creating such a device, he realized it must be quite precious, or some sort of rite of passage or something – he was sure it was nothing unique, but that didn’t change the fact that it couldn’t be common. Not even his master had given him hints about it, and at his core, he wasn’t a generous person.

No – once Arnav and Illiana had entered, he realized he couldn’t let them see his work. It was too valuable, even as unfinished as it was. A core facet of his personality had shined through – at the end of the day, he was selfish, and had no wish to help others without good reason.

Even if it would cost him ‘nothing’, the mindset of a crafter had already long ago pervaded his mind. Knowledge was power, and power wasn’t to be lightly shared.

The matter of them holding hands was nothing of consequence to him – he wasn’t blind, and he had already noticed in the past that they seemed closer than before, and that Arnav didn’t like it when he complained about Illiana.

He also understood how his rushing about had looked but saw no reason to correct it. It would serve as a good guise for his true reason at rushing away.

As he made his way back to their communal home, he realized he’d left the beam unfinished on the floor, and that they could try and steal the secrets from it should they desire.

That… wasn’t good, but he didn’t think they could truly figure out the whole of the design from what little work was complete on that one, and of course the finished ones had security measures.

He thought it unlikely they would try, anyway. While they were envious of the income the beams brought him, neither of them seemed to like working on bulky, large formations – and this was in spite of it being their master’s specialty.

It was a wonder they were assigned to Master Isaac, but he liked to think it had something to do with their families pulling some strings. Neither of them had a background like he did, after all – they had one, even if it wasn’t much to still be part of the military.

Learning and working with smaller formations was always meant to be a transitional period before they could take on bigger projects, but they both seemed to find their calling in the work. He didn’t know what Illiana liked working on, really, but he knew it wasn’t the large things he took an interest in – his master had often lamented at that.

Once he got back to the communal home, his papers safe in hand, he retreated to his room to continue his work.

***

In the end, he held off on increasing his cultivation, deciding to spend his time working on his new device for carving out inscriptions. This took him far more time than he actually expected – the spell, while complex, made it look far easier than it was, especially in comparison to the healing spell he had been working on – something that still had seen no progress.

He eventually attributed that to the great but subtle differences between spells and imbuements. First and foremost, spells only used mana, which could be used universally and – taking advantage of its intimate connection to its owner – had no concerns on limits like the transfer of information.

After all, mana could hold an infinite amount of intent, and so spells could simply bulk up the parts required as needed without concern – the only issue was the difficulty of learning and enacting the spell.

In his device, the movements he made inside the box needed to be communicated beyond the boundaries of the box, and then translated into a magical effect. This was nothing new to him – he had made his shield and portable AC, after all, but those were simple in comparison to his current project.

They also dealt with far less raw power than he would need now – it wasn’t easy to carve through solid stone, and that wasn’t even getting into the complicated control scheme.

Ultimately, even by the time he had finished painfully inscribing the inscriptions of the primary formation, he was still mired by the ridiculous complexity the device required, and increasingly realized he would need a stronger cultivation base in order to bring the idea intro reality, completed design or not.

Evan wasn’t too hard on himself – he hadn’t given the project his all, still determined to ensure his current work stood out as exemplary, and the current difficulty would only make success that much sweeter.

This determination was how he found himself once more inspecting the building now that the primary formation was installed and fully imbued. He had been cutting his self-imposed deadline quite close, only finishing a day earlier than the deadline, and was worried that at the end he was cutting corners and getting sloppy.

Everything had certainly felt that way towards the end – a week before the deadline, he had realized that he wouldn’t make it and spent a handsome sum on mana potions, consuming them one after another in order to work longer each day and finish on time.

He could still taste the overly sweet liquid on his tongue.

So caught up in his frantic labor, he didn’t even realize the way his actions made him look to those doing business on the street. On the days when they ate out – most days, as it were – he had even heard a few not-so-quiet jokes about how hardworking he was.

Damned hunters! They just don’t know what hard work looks like!

It was more than a little embarrassing – he wasn’t immune to the thoughts of others – but he tried to salve his pride by thinking of it as a good thing. Who didn’t want to hire someone as hardworking as him?

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Even to himself, the words rang hollow. It didn’t help the way the others – even his master! – smirked at him while they ate.

With these distracting thoughts on his mind, he took special care not to seem too frantic as he walked around the building. Before, looking around outside had contributed little to his thoughts on the project, but now, they served as one of the most important aspects of his work.

Using his soul sense, he listened to the phantasmal hum of the active formations produced inside the walls, trying to think of how he would go about spoofing the security. With his soul no bigger than before, this would be difficult if wasn’t intimately familiar with the formation – his soul sense could only view a small portion of the wall at a time, and a good understanding of the whole was required.

This was a good thing – it acted as just one more layer of security, and if the attacker had a soul sense strong enough to encompass the entire building, there was little to be done anyway.

Even with his deep understanding of the formation, it was difficult for him to consider how he would go about attaching foreign formations, at least without using his critically informed understandings of the way the mechanisms worked – things such as how long a full cycle took, or how much information it could transport.

None of those things should be easy to figure out without being explicitly told, so he didn’t use those in his considerations.

After an hour of this, and still unable to find any flaws, he moved on to something less important for the client, but critical for him – the look of it.

This wasn’t to say that weren’t any flaws – there almost certainly were, he simply lacked the skill and experience required to figure them out. If he could truly spot a flaw in the formation from an hour of simple inspection, he would have utterly failed at this assignment. That he didn’t greatly reassured him, even though he knew it probably shouldn’t.

Back to admiring his own work, he took in the beauty of it, and found it rather lacking. It didn’t look bad per say, but it was a far cry from good. That was on him, and while he grumbled about it, in his heart there were no complaints.

It was his first time working on such a large imbuement, and figuring out to make everything fit and work reasonably well required his full focus.

Yes, the lines aren’t even, straight, or make much sense, but what matters is that it works. It’s a security feature!

Not having found the reassurance he was looking for, he moved inside – few would be looking at the imbuements anyway, and even fewer with benign purposes.

Inside was much the same as outside, with only a few select differences. For one, most of the added formations he could think of would be inside, minus a select few such as reinforcement. This meant that, in accordance with the idea of mixing the schools of thought on primary formations, the inside had several static pathways running through key areas.

Here, once more, he had to be careful not to overdo it. Nothing helped teach him that more than the limited capacity he was forced to work under – near the end, things were getting quite tight, and he ended up scraping some of his ideas – he just didn’t have enough space to fit everything into his intent.

For that reason, there were far fewer static pathways than he had initially planned. There were some than ran under and around the counter, several in the alchemists concocting room, along with some simple ones in both the storage rooms.

He figured that for the storage rooms, the reminders and alerts would be best served live – they would contain incredibly valuable ingredients, finished products, and Substance. All of those things were not something anyone wanted to be taking chances with.

No matter how wealthy the alchemist was, it was inevitable that he would be working with ingredients and Substance worthy of his cultivation, and that meant expensive. If anything was stolen or degraded because of the long cycle time of the track, it would look bad on him, even if there was nothing he could have done.

And that was… it. Only those static pathways had reminders, either. The dynamic imbuement only had security alerts, and even then, it was rather simple.

Evan walked behind the counter and laid his eyes on where he knew the security alert would go off. It was just under the counter, out of sight of the customers, but clearly visible to anyone walking or working behind the counter.

It was a simple light that would begin to flash red if any unauthorized formations were detected on the premises. The flashing was the best he could do – there was no way to narrow down the location, or record the time it was detected, that Evan knew of, and he wouldn’t have had the space for it anyway.

The project had, just as his master said, become a matter of careful balancing. It was quite exhausting, and he hated how weak he was.

At even at the second Collapse, his options would expand manyfold, and the things he could create would truly start to seem supernatural.

Until then, though, he was stuck with his mediocre beams, boring weapons, and subpar devices.

He sighed and continued his inspection of the interior. There were a few cringes as he inspected the tightly bunched inscriptions that supported most of the primary formation, but considering it was his first time and the expectations weren’t that high, he decided he would have to just suck it up and live with it.

Of course, he wouldn’t explicitly mention any of this to the client, as there was no need to drag his mistakes out into the light, and who knew if that would get him trouble? Admitting to being at fault was different from simple speculation.

By the time he finished his inspection of the second floor, he was exhausted. It had been a long couple of weeks, and his stomach was still feeling a little queasy from all the mana potions he drank.

It was also tiring to use his soul sense for so long and with so much focus. The soul seemed to drink in information without any regard for how he should frame it or process it, and he could feel the strain of the information on his mind.

He left the building and headed home. Today, he decided he would treat himself and try to relax a little – he had eventually broken down and spoke with his master about his constant dread and was told he might just be a tad paranoid and overly cautious.

Apparently, it wasn’t all that uncommon in those new to the military, and especially so in someone like himself – someone with seemingly little ability to protect themselves.

“It could also very well have something to do with how hard you push yourself, Evan.” His master had said at the time, which he remembered vividly. At the time, when he caught his master’s gaze, he remembered seeing the… pity in his old eyes.

It had unsettled him – he was used to pity, but not the kind that had briefly been directed at him. A pity that seemed to lament not his past, but his future. The kind that he would feel for the other kids, so determined to become hunters and die in a blaze of glory, drunk off the wealth and power they would briefly enjoy.

Evidently, Master Isaac thought he was working himself down to the bone, and while he was right, Evan found he genuinely enjoyed it. While the past few weeks had been rough, especially the pain of having to dip into his savings for the mana potions, most of the time he didn’t feel so fed-up with his work.

He truly loved crafting, and not just formations, either. The longer he worked on the primary formation, the more he found himself wondering about how alchemy truly worked.

The thought of how he could make a better device for inscribing than his box with an array also flashed across his mind more than once.

One day, he hoped to get the chance to explore all of that, but that would be in the future – the point was, crafting brought him a joy he had rarely experienced, and he was good at it. Was that not enough of a reason to throw his everything into it?

If he wanted to go places, he needed to put in the work – his above-average talent and progress weren’t enough. Surely, his master understood that?

But then why the look of pity? What was he missing?