"Why is this not working!?" Darrick said loudly as he threw the piece of junk in his hand to the ground with force. It broke apart as it hit the ground with a lot of momentum and scattered across the room. Darrick bent down and started collecting them as he realized what he had done.

Currently, Darrick was in the lab making artifacts, or more like trying to make some artifacts with the look of how the process was going. After the memorable sigil studies class he ditched his friends and came straight here as the maths class next period was cancelled.

Now he was angry at the failed artifacts because all his tries had failed him and a lot of materials were wasted but the biggest turn-off was that he couldn't even make a common artifact right now.

I made an artifact that was almost at the rare level before and now I can't even make a common artifact. Why is this happening to me? I thought I was good enough to not have system assistance for common artifacts but now that doesn't seem to be the case. Haa.

Darrick sighed. It was his fourth attempt at making a wand today but the three attempts had gone terribly, the process was not going as well as he expected it to. Since he created the Fulminar, he was confident in his ability to make a functional common artifact but now that confidence was slowly crumbling.

Now the question was can he make a common artifact completely from scratch without system assistance?

Nope, not yet. I became too overconfident because of Fulminar but no one can blame me though. Who would be able to make anything close to Fulminar in their second attempt? I had a little system assistance but that was given since I didn't know anything at all.

Darrick had gotten a lot of system assistance in making Fulminar, not just a little assistance. He would have made one on his first attempt only if he wasn't so distracted and confused by what was happening to him. Now that he was trying to make his second functional artifact with the help of a blueprint he declined the system assistance to see what he could do.

Even now I can make a single gesture and system assistance will become available again but would that help me in the long run? I don't think so. Even if it turns mediocre, I will do it with my own expertise after getting the components with the help of the system. I can't make those yet, only one step at a time.

However cocky or overconfident he may be, he knew full well that this particular work was beyond his abilities for now so like any smart person he took advantage of every resource he could get his hands on when they were needed. Now he required only partial functions of the system so he only used that

He restarted the process so that he could avoid any mistakes he had made unknowingly in his earlier trials. He scanned the wand's blueprint with the help of the system and it showed everything about the artifact in a panel in front of him.

Mana concentrator(Wand) Blueprint

Common blueprint

Level 3

This is the blueprint of the artifact called the mana concentrator or simply wand. It helps the

mage to gather mana faster than usual speed for a spell by 1.09x.

Materials required:

1. Mithril

2. Silver

3. Polymers

4. A gem

Haa. Working with mithril isn't the problem and adding silver coatings to those mithril components is also not a problem. Don't even talk about polymers, they aren't even worth mentioning in the difficulty but this fucking gem! You are the biggest bane of my existence right now.

Darrick had connected all six silver-coated mithril parts with one another and made a stick-like object of around 25 cm in his previous three attempts. Even without system assistance, he was perfectly capable of doing everything by himself as he followed the blueprint closely but the last part about embedding the gem at the bottom of the wand was where he was facing the difficulties truly.

"Is the process this difficult because of the gem I bought? After all, it was the cheapest one I could get so can't dismiss the possibilities but still it should be doing something. I carved the runes on the gem with my own hand but they are still not working at all. So that's also a problem. Ugh." Darrick said as he pulled his hair in confusion and anger.

According to the blueprint, the gem should glow after carving the rune otherwise it would be deemed as a failure, Darrick couldn't make it glow but that didn't show what was the problem. It was a headache and he hoped he could find out about it in this try.

He initiated the process of creating components through the system. He was observing it all with heavy concentration to not miss out on anything. The system had put his body on autopilot and was using telekinesis to float the materials in front of him.

His hands were generating white flames which melted the materials slowly bit by bit. The liquified metals floated just beside each other as they took the shape of an unstable sphere. With the simple gesture of hand, the liquid mithril was called upon to the front.

They were divided into six uneven parts, then the parts started to move chaotically and then came to a halt. For the last three attempts it was not like this, the parts had taken the shape of needed components in a little over a second and then started to cool off to harden but this time it

was different.

Is the system slowing down the process to help me understand it better? Is it doing it because of my complaints? If it is then I may have to reevaluate my opinion about the system.

Darrick would have thought more about the system but he couldn't, if only he had more time. The ongoing process was a very important part that he couldn't understand before but now that it was going slowly it was what he should be focusing on and he did just that.

The liquid metals were gaining their form very slowly, it was taking their shape one by one, step by step. It looked like something was trying to force its way out of the liquid part, the parts that protruded were slowly gaining the shape it needed.

It was all going normal and natural when Darrick noticed one tiny little detail. The first part that was being made which was the bottommost piece of this six had a lot of marks on them. Very tiny, too small for the naked eye but not tiny enough to evade Darrick's enhanced eyes.

What in the actual fuck am I seeing right now? There is no way the parts being made are carved with tiny runes. But that's what it looks like! I can't be seeing things, I'm too well for me to hallucinate.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Darrick would have scratched his head or rubbed his chin if he wasn't on autopilot. This was a discovery he made about the artifact-making through a system. Although all of his artifact-making knowledge comes from the system, this was something that was not put into his brain

for some reason.

But for now, he had to focus on the task at hand because whatever he may be contemplating, the process was not waiting for him. The bottom piece was the first to be done which was where the gem goes. It was called a power holder. The second and fourth parts were more complex in their creation as they were the ones who were going to bear the most runes.

They were called stabilizers as their purpose was to connect the wand with the wielder so the heavy enforcement and defence were laid out on the wand in the form of runes to protect the wielder and the wand from each other. In-between them was another part as important as them if not more important.

The third part in-between the two was meant to be made purely of mithril without silver coating as it was a pure channelling part that connected the gem at the bottom and pointed tip at the top connect with each other. It was named after its work so Connecter was its name.

Then came the fifth part which had the most simple design and only carried a single rune but still was the most crucial part of the whole setup. It was the mana gathering part and the only rune it had was the mana gathering rune as written in the blueprint. Surprisingly it didn't have a name at all but they were commonly referred to as runic part.

The last part was a transmitter. It held the mana however it was commanded to before shooting out the spell. This was the reason why most people above Tier 1 used wands.

Well, that's what that book told me. I haven't really seen anyone using that anyway. It doesn't matter if others don't use it, I definitely will since I'm gonna be a Tier 2 in a few days, hehe. But the names of the parts are so silly. It looks like someone lazily slapped some names and was done with it.

The six parts were done and the silver liquid was called forth. It was shaping up to be a sheet and that one big sheet had runes drawn all over it. The sheets were torn into five different shapes and forms then they started coating themselves on the five parts. The rune-marked side was hidden from inside.

Wait! The silver sheets also have rune marking? Seriously? So what else did I miss for me to make this whole process go wrong?

Darrick thought about where could he have made a mistake and seeing the coating was done he dropped system assistance to take over the process. Now that he had taken over very early there wasn't any resistance so it went smoothly and he was also free from autopilot.

"If you don't turn out right this time then I'm going to burn you and melt you in those white flames of mine..." Darrick realized a thing as he was threatening the soon-to-be wand just above his hand floating with the help of the strings from Darrick's hands.

Why didn't I realize this earlier? It was always right in front of me and I didn't even give a second thought. These flames, this telekinesis and these strings. All of this should be a sigil abilities but I had them just because. It was never limited to just crafting but I never tried accessing whatever the sigil this was.

"Hahah! The Unknown in the sigil section of my profile! It was always there and I was somehow not even curious about it. That just feels so wrong like how I was so calm in the dungeon. I, who was a modern citizen a few days ago suddenly became proficient in being able to deal with monsters and emotions. What kind of bullshit is this?"

Darrick would have stopped the whole thing if he could but the thing was it was a loss for him and also he was very close to figuring out how to do all the things he missed in his previous tries. Now it was time to carve the runes on the parts.

He was about to pick up the sharp nail-like thing he used for the last four attempts but then he placed it back down and only kept staring at his mana threads like they could kill someone.

"That was it! I should have carved the runes with these mana threads. That was how it was done when I made Fulminar. It was such a simple and stupid mistake that I didn't even realize I was doing it. This blueprint also doesn't say how to do that, how useless." Darrick looked at the blueprint with contempt but was focused back on his task in a second.

The runes were going above the silver coating but it had become significantly more tough now since he had to draw it with the mana threads which he had never done before. He was barely maintaining the connection with the components through those mana threads but they had to do some multitask now.

"All right! I can do it." Darrick toughened his resolve with an imaginary chest pound with his imaginary fists since his real hands were full to do that.

He started with the transmitter, then slowly descended from there. One after other, rune after rune. Some were complex but some were easy. Some looked good and some others looked a bit crooked but it was working fine. He could tell from the mana the lines were emitting.

All six parts were done with rune marking. Now he had to choose whether to combine the pieces first and then draw the runes on Gem or the other way around.

"I think the first method is better. I can combine them then I will have left all the threads to do the thing. yeah, that's only logical."

So he did. The six pieces were pulled towards each other. The runes on them connected with each other in a bright, blinding glow. The threads were now all out of the power holder wriggling to do something and when Darrick moved the wand towards the gem, these threads snatched it up.

Following the blueprint Darrick carved three runes on the gem. None was perfect or even good but still workable so he proceeded to the next step. He pulled the gem and the light exploded in all directions, blinding Darrick for a few seconds but when he opened his hand he was met with his creation.

The wand. He could feel its mana flow, it was an actual authentic magical artifact. Darrick was filled with glee.

"Hell yeah! Let's go, baby!" Darrick celebrated as he jumped around the room and now he wanted to see what it had become.

"Apprai-"

His whole mana-sensitive body was assaulted with the stench. The same stench he associated with the danger and end. Maybe something more but now that didn't matter as it was just on his doorsteps. The doors of the lab opened and a man stepped inside and before Darrick could see the man's features the man asked,

"What's wrong?"