He got halfway back to his own rooms before he stopped dead in his tracks and turned around. He was just at a library that contained books on just about everything he could think of, there was even a section on crafting that he could have looked through to find actual information on monster cores. He went back to the library at twice the speed that he had left it and when he arrived again Eric and Gabe were gone.
He went straight to the section on crafting and started looking through each subsection until he found one relating to crafting with monster parts. Pulling out a few books he found that they were appropriately labelled from more basic uses to more advanced. Considering the cores didn’t come from monsters until the D grade he went straight to the most advanced sections and started pulling those books out.
It took him some time to sort through the books in the advanced section and he came across some interesting topics surrounding the benefits of using parts from the same breed of monsters on more than one linked item, the benefits of reducing down higher tiered monster parts into concentrated essence as well as an interesting book on using materials from monsters that relate to a persons natural affinity.
It took a while before he found a book on the use of monster cores in crafting and when he did he flipped through the first few pages and when he was confident that he had found what he wanted he moved to one of the desks and sat down to read.
The first section detailed what a monster core was, and like his inspection, it went through the idea that a monster core, otherwise known as a mana core, was the condensed version of a persons mana channel. The effectiveness of a monster core in crafting was dependant on the grade as well as what it was being used for.
Like most people a monster had a natural attunement to an element at a certain grade and that attunement was contained within the core and could be harvested or used in crafting. The cores attunement, known as its aspect, was best used in conjunction with the other loot from the monster, increasing the impact on the crafted item if used together by around 50% compared to if used on another item.
Interestingly the book detailed that monster cores were generally mor valuable than any other loot however it took a specialised profession to be able to use them with a high chance of success. It was a well known fact that those that specialised with core crafting would hoard cores of the same type and use many of them in the crafting of an item.
As he continued to read he found that the cores were very similar to his own elemental storage skill, on top of that the skills needed to utilise cores were also very similar to his own skills which gave him a good understanding of the methods that crafters used when working with cores.
He spent a good few hours skimming through the book and the more he learnt the more confident he was in being able to use the cores to peak effect. When he finally reached the end of the book he felt more ready to continue on in his crafting plans, especially when it came to using the cores.
He was tempted to take out a core and use it right there in the library but thought better of it. Instead he got up from his desk, but the book away and made his way back towards his rooms. As he went he thought about what he had planned to craft, there was nothing he wanted for himself, as right now his armour was doing its job and he had no materials that would be better than what he already used. That left him to make things for others. Eric and Gabe were already fitted out and needed nothing further which left him with Eli and maybe some of his team.
For the most part he was just trying to increase his last remaining levels before pushing himself to D grade, something he planned to do nearly immediately after his profession was maxed out. Before that he would run the D grade dungeon on max level and afterwards he would be about ready to leave.
When he made it to his room he moved directly into the crafting area and laid out everything he had in his inventory which he planned to use in the coming days. For cores he had plenty aspected to darkness, electricity and sand, only one was aspected the Arctic.
He took one of the sand cores and flaring his skills he tried to pull all of the power from it with elemental storage. When he did he found that he could pull some of the power from it, the parts that were related to elemental power, but not the mana part that was left behind. He did the same thing with one darkness and one electricity, but so he had a collection of these elements for future use.
He didn’t take from the Arctic Wyrm core as he had bigger plans for that and only had the one. He was about to start crafting until he remembered that he had stored the elemental power from Jason in his storage. He had yet to test it or see what it was, having gotten sidetracked doing other things, but he now had plenty of time and was more than ready to do some tests.
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Dropping into creators domain as he would be able to do tests without actually wasting anything here, he started pulling out some of the elemental power form his storage and pushed it out into the area around him.
Like he had felt before he got a feeling of air and water, also a tinge of what he could now easily recognise as electricity. Pushing it onto the air around him he could spend some time holding control over it and seeing how all the different elements interacted.
The three elements were all separate yet connected in some way. Testing a theory he pulled all of the elemental power from around him and what he had left in storage and then took out a gemstone and pushed all of it inside of it with his skills, binding the elemental power to it.
As his domain wasn’t a real craft he only got a probability of what would be made by doing this but that was enough for this purpose. There was a high probability that if he did this for real that them unaspected gem would turn into an advanced grade storm gem.
So Jason has a very weak storm affinity, but why advanced? Just like all the Charlo, they had what should be powerful affinity that shouldn’t be seen till epic level yet they all had it downgraded to a lower grade.
He knew that this had to have something to do with Earth being a Nexus planet as well as some other family secret, but he would have liked to know every detail. Turning to some more experiments he pulled out another gem he had and pushed his own affinity into it, water, air and lightning, but he had no success in forming the affinity himself.
His lightning affinity took over the other two, which made him wonder, he now knew that you would upgrade grades of affinity with practice, it took time and a lot of energy but it could be done. If he managed to upgrade his air and water affinity to advanced then he wondered if he could then successfully form the storm affinity, probably at epic. It wasn’t something he could do at the moment, but in the future it was something he wanted to test.
Having gotten the answers he wanted he stayed in his domain and started doing other tests. The first being with the cores and materials. Pulling out the webbing from the Arachne and the cores he had also gotten form them he tested what he had read in the book and stared using his skills to pull everything from one of the cores and pushing it into the webbing, which really was just like silk thread.
The first core he used disintegrated before he had any success, either he put to much pressure or power into it or he did something wrong which he couldn’t see. This turned into him going through every core he had, with each failure he improved, until he managed success a majority of the time. Then he restarted form the beginning, resummoning the cores into his domain and doing it again and again until he could successfully infuse the webbing with the energy from the core without fail.
The end results were always predictable, the webbing had gained a lot of power through the process, most noticeably it darkened in colour and seemed to want to blend into any shadows nearby. He tested the same process on the harpy feathers and then again on the naga skins and finally the Wyrm leather.
Each time there was a large jump in the materials power, but apart from that there wasn’t much else. Still he could see the benefit of using cores on corresponding monster parts. Curious, he took out the shadow attuned materials and tried to push the darkness cores power into it. There was the slightest bit of pushback but eventually he got it to work.
The shadow material got a boost of power, but closer to 25% than a 50%. The two aspects bonded well though, shadow and darkness should be in the same group of elements so it wasn’t a jump to think that they would work well.
With no further testing needed he left his domain and got to actually crafting things. Through all of his testing he knew he wanted to start with the shadow and darkness combo, he wouldn’t be overly upset if he ruined it and it was good practice for him before he got to the main items he wanted to craft. Settling in, he got started on his projects, no one would bother him here and unless he left he would be in complete seclusion, just like he wanted.
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The settlement has grown, now more than double its original size. But we have no way to continue building. Our TE has run dry and our coin is being used to keep what we have running. After the mass changes to the settlement Viv had done what she should and spoke to Xavier around what she should do.
Leave it be for now, in a few months we shall send some of our clans to help fully secure the world and help with building. What of Shaun, has he made any appearance from his castle?
We haven’t heard anything about the rewards he has chosen and no explanation around people obtaining affinities outside of what was originally said. She had been informed that after the event many people, both human and elf, manifested affinities, all of them were with Shaun during the attack on the compound.
That is disappointing, you must keep digging, learn his secrets. You were supposed to stay close to him yet you have done the complete opposite. This idea that he bonded to so many people and that his class helped unlock others natural affinity is troubling, if even true. You are lucky that he won that event for us, without him you would have failed. Yet still you pushed against what he wanted widening the gap between you both. You were told, bring him into The Empire, instead you push him away. Fix it, before the year is up.
She didn’t get to say anymore, Xavier broke the connection and left her with her own thoughts. It seemed that she would need to make a trip to the D grade area on foot. She had been blocked out of the teleporter for that area and she was now going to have to waste weeks getting to him. With a sigh she called from her office “Li, we are going on a trip.”