Due to big sister Nissi help in my basic understanding in late tier seven arrays, I was able to satisfy the requirements to start working on late tier eight artificing arrays. However what is interesting is that one of the new late tier seven arrays is called Stronghold, which basically allows me to build small defensive building about the size of a three bedroom two story house with a basement.

So I decided I create a square two story building with extra thick walls, and thin horizonal windows on the second floor. The only entrance is the main iron door that has been inset one feet deep so as to allow a iron bar gate to serve as first line of physical defense. I then covered the outer and inner surfaces with layers upon layers of protective restrictions and basically used every type I knew and their variants to create two separate defensive restriction barriers.

Next I raise a late tier seven formation barrier one foot from the house's surface to serve as the first line of defense against qi attacks. I use seven power layers to give the barrier the energy reserves needed for a long siege. A final layer to purify the air for toxins thus insuring I always have clean air to breath. With that in mind I toss a few more purification restrictions on the building, you can never be to careful when dealing with toxic attacks.

I then craft four killing arrays on the four roof corners and gave each a protective barrier to make it even more difficult to disable them. On each outside wall I place two array generators and refine a stage eight demonbeast cores, the generators would read the recorded data from the cores and replicate the demonbeasts so serve as guardians. I could link them all to a single profile, but I decided that a variety of guardians was better than a troop of a single type. So I made sure each had a different elemental affinity and a few cores I had even had dual elements. Each generator uses eight power layers just to create each guardian and provide them enough qi to fight immediately.

Then I crafted a house spirit formation and tailor it as a butler to provide round the clock security to warn me of any guest or intruders nearby. After that I spend the next few days interior decorating using the basement as a workshop and storage. I turn the first floor for entertaining guests I design the room to look like a ledge on a side of a mountain with a hotspring in the corner where you can soak and look out over the vista. The appearance restriction show a grand vista of the mountain ledge over looking a lake surrounded by an ancient forest. The upper floor I put in two bedrooms and a master suite in the back.

Once satisfied I put it all into a large formation crystal so I have a permanent tool to summon a mobile base and called it 'Tower.' Then I went ahead and made a copy for Mara and then I made an extra using only stage seven demonbeast cores to see what it could sell for.

Since I'm stuck in Karvallus for another month, even though the city has been good to me. I find my wonderlust starting to kick in, so I solve this be deciding to work on upgrading my flying chair. First of all I want a structure around me that has some intelligence to grasp simple flight instructions I give it. So that means an advance spirit formation and I'll even use a peak eight flying demonbeast Helldrake core that was used to win one of my auctions to serve as base starting profile for the spirit's mental abilities with dual fire and wind affinity.

Since the core retains the demonbeast inherit knowledge gain from it's living host body, the spirit formation I'm creating will have all of it's living experience at it's disposal and completely loyal to me. Now I just need to build it's physical body, add in a workshop and some guest rooms, a kitchen and staff quarters, and finally an armory and storage area.

Scratched that, I just remembered I learn Subspace Formation and I'll just toss the entire living area of the ship in subspace of a slice of any world I can think of to impress any guest that I may end up escorting somewhere. Which mean I just need a small craft to house this chair and an area for the formation portal to the subspace. Plus a kitchen for my spiritual cooking and a cargo hold.

Something came to mind right away, it was in one of the chambers inside the Alchemist Tomb. I had stumbled upon an underground hotsprings where the light filtered down though roof from a giant crystal. The top of this crystal extend though hundreds of meter though solid rock to the surface above. Sunlight is past though the crystal to illuminate this hidden hotspring. There is even a small water fall directly ahead where the water splash on a rocky ledge and filter down to pour into the hotspring to cool the right side of the hotsprings to manageable level to be able to soak in. Then excess water leaks to my right where I see a crack in the floor allowing the water to drain away.

So I created that memory of the underground hotsprings with a illusion formation. To the right of the hotsprings I see a shallow cave about the size of a large courtyard. I step into the cave looking around I see there is room to put about ten doors. I walk to the very back of the cave and extend the illusion to create a door and I step though. As my thoughts expand to the type of room I wanted, the illusion follows my wishful thinking and create a variety of rooms.

I dismiss many until I come up with a three step room, basically the ledges of space where the first half of the room is to form by two triangles. Third ledge is the last half the of rectangler room is where I'll put a bed. I make the entrance the right corner of the two triagles, if I step down I enter the entertaining area. I continue forward creating the rough outline of the room as I head toward the third square ledge.

As I enter and step up into the bedroom I finalize it's dimensions. Then I turn around to look into my room and watch the square lines morph into natural stone seen from the hotspring area. I even allow the giant crystal to extend into room from a small expose crystal in the cealing to light the center of the first area up but allow streaks of expose crystal on wall to my right and some of the cealing.

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I give the room a final appraisal, changing the surface to look more natural and rounded the edges of the ledges more. Once satisfied with the over all look of the cave room, I finalize the formation and link it to the hotsprings formation. After that I step out of my bedroom and I see I can put four doors to my right and six doors my left without looking too crowded. So I went ahead and built ten guest rooms simular to my bedroom in having a natural stone look but each with different dimensions.

The small area directly facing my bedroom I install a kitchen area for my spiritual cooking and in the couryard I create two long dining tables. I make the tables look like water carved them into long slabs still connected to the floor near the guest rooms. The long slabs extend towards the hotspring like a horizonally growing stalagmites trying to reach the hotspring, then I shave off the top halves to make tables out of them.

I give all the new formations one final check before finalizing them and linking them to the hotspring formation. Then I took out a high quality formation crystal and carefully instill the formation into it to create an artifact tool to replicate the formation without me needing to do it all from scratch again. I gave it the simple name 'Underground Hotsprings' to avoid searching though my growing stock of formation crystals to find the right tool because I gave it a stupidly good name. To that end I started rename old tools when ever I have a use for them to make my life easier down the line.

At first I used something like my tower to fly in, but I found that the square tower would shake do to the wind shear. But discovered that if I controlled the flying Tower from one of the corners, the shaking would be reduced. So I need something like a ship bow to cut through the wind drag and that takes me to a small sailing ship.

However the top of the ship create another form of wind drag, sure I could place a barrier around it to solve that problem. But I wanted a flying craft that can actually fly well in a combat situation where the barrier may be down. So I decided to do a ground up approach and make a prototype of my new flying craft able to at least fly decently well.

So I cut the top off the two ships and upend one on top of the other, then I used a formation to fuze the two hulls together. I force a door to appear in the back end and entered, as I move forward I use a formation to recyle the wood except the hull which I made smooth on both sided to make it easier to inscribe certain protective formations. Then I begin laying a simple floor and made a pair cabins on the sides. I add stair going up for to lead to a kitchen and the subspace portal and stairs down for a storage area.

I then encapsulate the entire project in a formation to refine it into a solid fused mass with out any joints or seams. Then refined it a second time to make it into a more robust air tight non flamable material and lighter weight. Then I add in all the protective formations and restrictions I knew to give the craft a well rounded dual defense that the tower had. With an emphasis on air and lightning affinity defense. I put in an array to provide fresh clean air inside the craft.

For offense I install six killing arrays to provide me a spherical killing field, two pairs on the lower sides and a pair on top. Then I install four generators on top and used an armored aerial early stage eight demonbeast core of a Thisselesion Skywing and had all four generators link to the recorded profile.

After that I did the customary outer defense barrier for the first line of qi defense and anti corrosion restriction coating. I look at my bland creation and put up an illusionary formation to make it look like a small floating island. A dozen revelers dance and sing on top while leaving a rainbow trail, then I create a restriction to produce sword hymms while moving. This should be good for a laugh or two, I'll make something better after running this prototype into the ground.

I created a formation to allow me to see outside of the ship and use a copy of the comfortable large ornate chair I used for my flying sword chair to sit on when viewing the outside world. With an after thought I link the view of the floating island with the inside appearance restriction so I can turn the first and second floors invisible to see the outside world.

Time to do the heavy work and I start working on the main restrictions to get this craft flying. First thing I do is put a levitation restriction to lift the craft off the ground, and the best I can do is lift it barely off the ground by two meters. Since it is too heavy so I put in a reverse gravity array on the hull that gave it the lift I wanted when I max out the layers for extra lift power. Now that I solved the vertical issue, I put in a flying formation to move the craft in any direction with access to the gravity restriction to control height.

Finally I gave the Helldrake craft spirit access to the flying formation and gave it flying and landing instructions which included rules for offense and defense. Once link it to the killing arrays and formation generators, I had the spirit activate them to make sure all the connections are solid.

To satisify my wonderlust, I take a quick flight every day to hunt aerial demonbeasts. I was satisfied with my spirit assisted flying craft prototype. With an after thought I put in a security restriction to protect access to the craft spirit and keyed in me and Mara as it's masters.

I pull out an expensive high quality formation crystal and put in a void restriction and use all the extra layers for space expansion to to make it big enough to store my new flying ride and enough room for three more. I named the crystal 'Flying Thrones' because of the favorite big compfy chair I molded near the front that I can sit when I want to manual fly the craft. It's not that I want to fly, but you never know when I have guests that I don't want to mingle with and can pretend the craft spirit's connection the the flight restriction was damaged.

Options, always leave yourself options, especially when dealing with people you don't like. That is what I learned from playing with Mara, she keeps me on my toes. I would normally just ignore people I don't care for, but that not good all the time. So options are a better ploy to use to avoid dealing with troublesome people.

Of course my flying island became the talk of Karvallus, since few artificers have the spiritual force neccessary to build enough formation layers to get even a small craft aloft. So I ended up having a new list of stage eight customers asking me to build them a flying craft.

I am beginning to regret my curiosity leading me to create useful tools from myself since I ended up getting neck deep in customers every time. Mara just laughs at me and adorably hugs me and ask when she will get a copy of the new flying toy...