"Are you sure this is going to work, Chris?" Austin questioned from beside me.

We were both standing next to each other admiring the pinnacle of my creation. A marvel of magic and engineering combined together flawlessly. The system couldn't have done better if it tried.

"As sure as I can be," I answered.

"I'm not questioning your... masterpiece, but it doesn't look like it's going to work." Austin tried his best not to sound skeptical but I could hear it in his tone.

How could I not hear it when I was skeptical myself?

"Are you doubting me?" I said with false seriousness.

"Certainly not. I'm just saying that this looks like a horribly thrown-together shack that has magic lines running all over it that could be confused for a toddler who got too creative with a crayon." He said before adding, "Not to mention the mana stones sticking out of it at seemingly random places."

"Damn, tell me how you really feel. Well... it may not look the best... or look good at all... or show any semblance of the bare minimum of certainty, but it will work. I can feel it!" My words declined in confidence before rising back with my final statement.

"How likely do your feelings say this will end in an explosion?" I could hear the air quotes the jackass was using.

"Oh, ye of little faith, my friend. You'll see. After the wave is over, it will work to perfection, I guarantee it." I announced patting him on the back.

"Sure, Christopher, sure. Let's hope so." He mumbled.

It had been a hectic finish but I managed to complete the 'Wind Chamber' with a few hours to spare. The sun was on its way up on day 85 and it would soon be noon. The 29th wave was almost here and after fighting the beasties off, this marvelous creation and I had a date.

No one who had laid eyes on it thought it was going to work. Not even Austin, who was usually the least critical of my family members. Abigail threw a fit when she saw it saying there was no way in hell this was going to work.

All of them could shove it.

The experience I got from building it was enormous and pulled me to level 44, getting me another skill from my profession.

Being a Runic Blacksmith, I felt I was a little light on the blacksmithing skills but I could always get those later. There was still room in my spirit for a few bought blacksmithing skills and skimping now wouldn't hurt.

For my level 40 skill, I went similar to [Warding(Un)] and went with [Formation Mana Flow(Uncommon)]. There wasn't an overreaching [Formations] skill, sadly, so I went for the next best thing.

It didn't give intimate knowledge about formations, or even a little knowledge, but what it did do helped a ton after getting it.

It let me test out the mana flows inside a formation without having to turn it on. Like a test run of sorts to see where it went wrong. It was a great diagnostic skill to find the flaws in my patchwork formation and help fix them. Like a helpful debugger.

I used the skill religiously as the final run-through before giving it the first test. Everything held up fine and looked to be stable enough to do what it needed to.

If it would still function afterward was another story. At no point in the construction process did I consider longevity in the equation.

It would last the few days it needed to, fingers crossed, but it wouldn't last much longer after that.

Trying to make it reliable and something that would last was an extra complication I didn't need to worry myself with. All I needed it for was to Refine my Body.

It could burst into flames afterward for all I cared.

With my job done, and the wave encroaching, I made my trip back up north. Where the air was lighter and didn't smother you with humidity and the temperature didn't make you dread living.

My preparations for the wave were nonexistent. I didn't even feel a hint of worry about what was to come now that I had my Anchor. It was like the monsters lost what made them threatening and turned into walking bags of experience.

Well, if I could level that was.

I did wonder where all the experience was going. Essence, I supposed. Everything we read and learned called it essence instead of experience.

It didn't matter what it was called, I had to wonder where it was going. Upon killing something, essence would flow from the deceased to the one who killed it and level them up.

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I knew I wasn't at my 'cap' or something like that so my soul well wasn't full. Was it being banked for when I could use it again? Somehow I doubted that.

My leading theory was that my body was at its limit for the essence it could hold. It needed to evolve up a rank for more essence to be applied to it.

That theory had some holes in it, but it was the best I could come up with. The different rarities didn't make sense and training skewed things if I thought about it too hard.

If I was at my limit, I shouldn't have been able to gain stats through training like I had. Now, it wasn't a lot, only one or two in a few stats. Particularly my low ones but I still got a few.

I wasn't as concerned about it as Abigail was. Controlling as she was, she wanted- no- needed to know how it all worked. It was killing her to not know how something like this worked.

I held onto the belief that I would find out in time. It would eventually come up and I would know how it all worked. It wasn't something that I needed to concern myself with right now.

That was my attitude about a lot of things really. Growing up with Abigail instilled that in me. Gabriel too, he wasn't as bad as her but there were certain subjects where he was unnaturally knowledgeable.

Abigail would deep dive into things to figure it out and she wasn't shy about sharing it. More like incessant with letting other people know.

Some of that attitude had rubbed off on me but it was far less pronounced. I only did that for things I really cared about. Mostly a few games that I liked. Diving deep into the mechanics of it and figuring out the best way to do something.

I did not doubt that she would find out eventually and I would know soon after. Anyway, that was a matter for a different time. A time when hundreds of monsters weren't charging at me.

Describing the fight that transpired could be done in a few words.

The monsters rushed in and they died.

The monsters rushed in and they died quickly if you wished for the longer and more specific description.

During the wave was one of the few times being level-capped frustrated me. Being max level wasn't that big of a deal when I had other things to focus on. My Anchor last wave and my Law before that.

Now, though, there was nothing to strive toward during the wave to keep me occupied. Only how fast I could kill them was what filled my mind.

It gave me time to experiment with skill usage but nothing totally new came out of it. Only new uses for a few skills here and there.

The main one I tried was the incessant thorn in my side, [Sweeping Slash(C)]. That skill had been the bane of my existence recently and I just couldn't force it into submission.

If it only worked on the weapon I was holding, then that was how I would use it. I changed my approach to the skill and created my snowflakes of death in my hand before giving them a mighty toss.

The skill flowed into the snowflake and did something I didn't expect it to. One, it took a lot more mana, and two, it started shooting out mana blades from all sides.

I had assumed it would pick one edge and run with it, creating a lopsided snowflake with one really long mana bade. That assumption was wrong.

It turned the already sharp and spiky snowflake into an even bigger sharp and spiky circle of death. Extending out mana blades in every which way, taking extra mana to go with it.

I packed the skill full and then put a little extra in the ice before letting it fly. While testing, I only had one snowflake active which made controlling it with [Ice Manipulation(Un)] a breeze.

It flew through the air spinning this way and that. The weak mana blades didn't have the strength needed to dismember the monsters but they left cuts here and there. Small cuts but they were still cuts.

If I pumped my Law into it that would change.

I didn't want to do that yet though. I wanted to refine the technique a bit before I went that far.

The reason for that was because of the feeling that it gave off. I felt if I pushed it with my Law right now, it would have upgraded in rarity and maybe fixed some of the things wrong with it.

I had the time to spare and I didn't want to muck this up. If it evolved with the same stringent requirements as it had now I was going to throw it away. Upgrading it to Uncommon had been enough of a headache as it was.

I could have easily upgraded it earlier, but that wouldn't have fixed the things in the skill I needed to. Probably only making the mana blade stronger or longer. A base upgrade like I had with [Power Strike(C)].

Pushing the skill to activate on something I wasn't touching was still out of the question, but making it last wasn't. My first attempt stalled out and ran out of mana not long after being thrown and that was what I tried to fix.

[Ice Manipulation(Un)] on only one object made it easy to control every aspect of that one object. If I was trying to do this for twenty different snowflakes it would have been impossible.

The way I went about it came from the insight I gained recently. Just like formations, skills needed mana to activate. The way I was using it now took a bunch at activation, then chewed through it quickly after it left my hand.

What I needed to do was build a reservoir of sorts inside the ice to store mana to keep the skill going. Every attempt at pumping mana into it from afar ended the same as trying to activate the skill from afar.

It was a nice thought experiment and a test of the rudimentary skills I picked up from the project that I just completed.

Creating what were essentially mana capacitors inside the ice to hold extra mana to keep the skill going was difficult at first, but with [Ice Manipulation(Un)] solely focused on the task, it didn't take long to finish what I needed it to. The runes to do so were still fresh in my mind from my creation and study.

My rate of killing slowed but that didn't bother me. Fixing this frustrating skill was more important to me right now.

Fixing it the best I was able to, I pumped my Law into both the skill and ice. Feeling that it wasn't enough, I channeled my spirit into it to add to the destructiveness with my new Spirit Anchor.

The spinning snowflake arced out, carrying with it a bright glow of everything I had pushed into it. Wherever it went, blood flew. Chopping deep gouges out of the monsters while occasionally cutting off limbs if the angle was right.

Nothing could hold up to the combined powers filling the ice and it carved through the bodies surrounding me in a wide sweep. It wouldn't have been possible without my Law and spirit but with it, the beasts couldn't hold up.

The shape of the arc was deliberate and it was flying in wide sweeps for a reason. A reason that came true when a chime sounded out.

Finally.

That infernal skill finally figured itself out.