For the next couple of days, Red completely isolated himself from the outside world. The sound of moving furniture could be heard constantly inside the house, but no one came close enough to examine what was happening. This included the usual scouts posted outside the manor.
They might have been brave enough to spy on him from afar, but none of them dared to risk being found while the youth was inside the house. Red, however, wasn’t doing anything he hadn’t announced to others already.
He was drawing talismans.
“Bring me the Icewind Flower.”
“Y-Yes, master!”
“Now the Firesnake roots.”
“A-Ah, which one is that again?”
This type of conversation rang over the living room regularly over the past few days, though Red made sure it was not heard from outside. As it turned out, having an imp for a servant was as useful as Aurelia made it out to be.
The demon waddled around the boxes of materials with surprising nimbleness, picking out the items as Red called out and without making the same mistake twice. This eliminated a large inconvenience from his work and let the youth focus on what actually mattered in his work. It even made him wonder how much easier his job would be if he had even more imps to help him.
This idea went by the wayside when he observed the changes happening to Emer, though.
“A-Ahahaha! A grand success again, master!”
“Look at that pretty thing! I bet it could go skewer multiple people in a single blow!”
“C-Can I try it, please, master?”
Such kinds of strange comments became more commonplace over time. It was clear that this new form of the merchant was starting to twist his personality in strange ways, and he found as days went on, the imp resembled a devilish child with a penchant for chaos and mischief more and more.
The youth was starting to miss the cowardly merchant from before, but since the imp never tampered with his actual work, he couldn’t justify getting rid of the demon.
“W-What does this one do?”
“Don’t touch it.” Red slapped the demon’s hand away from a talisman.
“A-Ah sorry, sorry!”
As he sent Emer skittering away, Red looked back at the result of his hard work. Fifteen basic talismans, ranging from offensive spells like Fireball to simple shields like Omnidirectional Barrier. Even though each of them took a rather short amount of time to finish, doing them back to back over the course of two days was still enough to drain the youth mentally and physically, even after breaking through.
When he noticed his arms trembling and his mind having a hard time focusing, he could only stop to recover his strength.
He hadn’t used up all the materials yet. In fact, there was still enough to produce ten more such basic talismans, and five more advanced ones. However, Red didn’t want to waste any materials, so he didn’t risk committing a mistake by powering through his exhaustion.
This was not to mention the fact that the advanced talismans he wanted to draw would be far more complicated than the basic ones, and the risk of failure in his first tries would already be pretty high. He only dared to attempt the feat once he was in peak condition.
‘Still, twenty basic talismans without a single mistake…’
It was an impressive feat, considering he was drawing most of those for the first time. In fact, Red could feel his skills improving as he drew, his movements with the brush getting swifter and more precise, spending less focus and effort to draw a single sigil.
His improvement was so substantial that he couldn’t help but ask Aurelia about it.
“Well, you do have great talent for Arcane Scripture, but the explanation is much simpler.” She said. “You basically built a good foundation over seven years, but you never really had the resources to experiment as you wished. Now that you have the money, you can draw as many talismans as you want, which is something only rich cultivators can do, so it’s obvious you will improve rather quickly. It’s like a kid who trained their entire lives with weights only to remove them years later and trying to run for the first time. The difference will be obvious.”
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“Does that mean I’m close to achieving mastery?”
“How should I know?” Aurelia shrugged. “Mastery over crafting arts is not as easily quantified as something like mastery over the elements, so it’s hard to judge someone’s skills with that. I can only tell you that your improvement will definitely slow down, and before you can become a master, you will definitely face a bottleneck. Still, with your good progress, I can see you achieving that in some five years.”
Red was rather unwilling to accept the woman’s estimates, but as he continued practicing, he saw the truth in her words.
His improvement slowed down over the next couple of days, basically plateauing on the fourth day. The youth, who felt rather intoxicated with the constant feeling of improvement, could not help but feel disappointed once that happened.
‘It doesn’t matter. Cultivation is a matter of accumulation.’
By then, the rest of the material Marina promised had arrived, and he was done making the basic talismans. Before moving on to the advanced ones, however, Red decided to focus on the formations.
The act of setting up formation was more complex than talisman drawing. This was not to say one was better than the other, as they both served their unique purposes, but while one might draw ten talismans in a determinate amount of time, they could draw a single formation in the same interval. They contained far more arcane sigils and calculations than a single talisman, and as such, it wasn’t the kind of work one could complete in a hurry.
In fact, the idea of selling formations in a store was not too common. Formations masters made their formations to specific standards to fit a place and purpose, and as such, they were more like contract workers than the kind that displayed their products in stores. As such, Red didn’t intend to put more than a few formations for sale, each one used for a simple purpose such as alerting of intruders while camping.
Before he did that, however, he was keen on setting up such formations for his own use.
…
It took him three more days of constant work before he completed the Spiritual Alarm Formation for his manor.
This was a simple formation, whose main purpose was to alert the owner of any entering entities carrying Spiritual Energy within its domains. It wasn’t capable of distinguishing between said entities, but that wasn’t really its purpose in any case.
Red handed over the controlling tablet to the imp. “Here, you carry it.”
“I can carry it?!” Emer seemed happy. “How does it work?”
“It detects the presence of any individuals emitting Spiritual Energy within the manor.”
“Ah, there are three dots already!” The imp pointed out. “Do these belong to us?”
“They do.” Red nodded. “If you notice any such dots appear while I’m out and you’re sure they don’t belong to me, make sure to report it once you are back.”
The youth had no use for such a formation simply because his crimson sense served the same purpose, and probably much more efficiently. If someone wanted to break into his manor, though, they probably wouldn’t do it while he was around, which was why he gave the tablet to the imp.
There were, of course, ways to trick such a formation. However, Red already did the best he could with his resources, and if such an experienced rogue sneaked into his house, there was not much he could do.
He looked around at the formation plates, all hidden beneath furnitures and other decorations to not attract attention. This took a lot more work than Red was expecting, and drawing the sigils itself was the easy part. The hard part was actually calculating where to place this formation and which sigils he needed to add to the plates so they could work properly.
There were countless measurements and geometrical calculations he needed to take into account, and it made the youth understand how difficult setting a proper formation was. In fact, he couldn’t help but sigh in wonder at his past self in being able to set up the Parting Storm Formation in such a short amount of time with little to no mistakes.
The threat of death was indeed a powerful motivator.
‘There are still other formations I want to do, but…’
He was exhausted.
When he first bought the materials, he actually intended to stay in his house to craft everything he needed, even if it took weeks. Now, however, he understood how foolish he had been.
Red wasn’t afraid of boring work, but even he, with his resolute mind and little need for preparation, wasn’t exempt from the drain most Arcane Scripture masters suffered. A constant week of meticulous work with very little time for rest was enough to tire him physically and mentally, even after breaking through.
He previously thought only a few hours of rest would be enough to be reinvigorated, but he was wrong. It was easy for one to think once they broke through to the Lesser Ring Realm that they would be inexhaustible, able to recover from any wound or fatigue in an instant. Yet, as the youth found out, there was no such thing as limitless in the cultivation world. As one’s power improved, so did the difficulty of the tasks they dealt with. They would require superhuman tenacity and strength, and as such, they would be enough to exhaust cultivators the same way some arduous physical tasks could exhaust mortals.
Red was suffering from such exhaustion, and he knew that if he kept going, he would only tire himself further.
‘I need to do something else.’
He called out to the imp.
“Emer.”
“Y-Yes, master!” The imp came running from another room, his face full of crumbles from raiding the kitchen.
“Find me an ornate box and put the finished talismans inside it.” Red said.
The imp smiled. “M-Master, do you mean…?”
“Yes.” Red nodded. “It’s time to open my store.”