When Shaun finally got back to the school he stopped in and spoke to Jo, he had missed the class but they continued without him and focused on getting practice in on their rune work. He was impressed with the dedication of everyone in the class, they were making good progress and he hoped that when it came time to actually power their first rune fully that they were offered a profession around it.
Rather than go back to meditating on the Dragon Core he moved to the next phase of his plan. He had been thinking on what he wanted to do with his gauntlet for a while now and had made the decision to disassemble it. There was two reasons for this. The first being that he had decided that he was going to forge another sword, one that would rival if not exceed the one he already had. He wanted to move to a dual wielding sword fighter. So many of his skills revolved around the blade and his gauntlet just wasn’t making the cut.
The second reason was that the orbs in the gauntlet would be better used elsewhere. This school would be his legacy here on Earth. When he left he wanted to leave behind his mark. The chances of him ever returning were slim and it may be egotistical of him but he wanted to leave the world better than how he had entered it.
Rather than get distracted at the school he moved to the Settlement Crystal straight away. When he got there, he pulled up the terraforming screen and got to work. He needed 5 areas, one each for the basic elements and he needed the area to reflect the element.
The nature element was easiest, he picked an area and simply moved around some trees to form a barrier in a large circle. He wanted these areas to be closed off for the most part as he knew that when they were used you would need full concentration and a peaceful environment.
For the Earth element he created a tunnel that went underground and ended in a large cavern. For Air he created a spiral tower that went up way into the sky and ended on a large circular platform. For water he created a dome of earth and inside of it was a large lake full of water. And finally for Fire he made a temple like structure that had plenty of areas for him to imbue the fire element into.
Overall, the TE usage was minimal and it would only take a few hours for most of them to be fully completed. Some like the nature one would be done by the time he got to the area. He had put each of these area in a line bordering between the school and the E grade area, preferring it to be away from the wall and closer to the internal of the settlement.
Moving his way to the area he had chosen to place the nature orb he considered the best way to go about making the area as potent as he could with the nature element. He already had the ritual mapped out and planned but he wanted to push it further than just relying on the orb.
It took only minutes for him to fly to the area, and from his view in the air he could see a clear circle of large trees blocking entry into the area, all except for a small opening that was only large enough for two people to walk through. He landed in the middle of the area and immediately dropped to the ground in a meditative position.
He could easily form the ritual circle using the earth or any other number of things, but that would be doing this half assed and not truly giving it his all. He though about it for a while, sending out his senses and trying to think of the best way he could do this. Nature was all about life and growth. So using something that was living for the ritual was likely to be the best option, but what?
Using bushes would be cumbersome, moving through the area would become painful, the same idea applied to trees. He sent his mind at the closest tree and with both his enhanced mind and echo skill he fully mapped he area both above ground and below. The roots of the trees!
He tested out if his idea would work, he tapped into his nature element like he never had before and started trying to coax the trees into moving their roots into a position that he wanted. It was slow progress but it worked.
Fully sinking into a trance he connected with every tree in the area and embraced his nature affinity to the limit. He had his plan for the ritual and now he just needed to join with the trees and help them move their roots until they were all formed together and in the shape he desired.
He gave himself fully to the project, he felt calm when he fully let the nature element take over. It was intoxicating, but he still kept his mind on the task at hand. He didn’t know how long he spent sitting there but when he finally finished he felt completely refreshed. He had finished his work with the roots, going so far as to turn them from sperate living trees to one combined organism. He had yet to power the ritual but he wasn’t quite ready for that yet.
He stood up and took the first orb out of his gauntlet, he didn’t feel sad about it, not exactly, it was just a weapon that he had out grown. But he did acknowledge the amount of work he had put into making it, gathering the orbs, doing his first dungeons. Almost dying multiple times. Those were the easy days.
Moving into the centre of the ritual he had the roots move up from out of the ground and take hold of the orb. It was to be the centre of the ritual were all the power flowed through. All that was left was to now power up the ritual, usually he would use unattuned mana for this, but again, he wanted to really push it further.
The first thing he did was flex his nature affinity while pushing mana into the orb but that didn’t work the way he wanted, it wasn’t as potent in nature as he knew it could be. So instead he pulled the nature mana out of the orb using his elemental storage skill and repeated the process. He hadn’t use the elemental storage ability much but in times like these it really came in handy.
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Once he had stored enough nature mana he pulled out the Life natural treasure he had and pulled some of the attunment from it. Not a lot, as he didn’t want to use much of what it had, but enough that he hoped it would simply boost the nature affinity a bit.
Now that all of his preparations were ready he started pulling the attunement from his storage and moving it with the mana through the orbs and down into the ritual. Every few minutes he pushed through a tiny bit of life and the ritual blazed with power. The nature affinity was more prominent though and absorbed the life element to boost its own power.
It was a decent sized ritual and took some time to complete, but when he felt the ritual come to its peak after hours of work he knew he had done something incredible. The whole area emitted the power of nature, it was even more dense than that of the dungeons.
**Successful New Creation – Bonus Experience provided**
**[Epic] Pseudo Nature Attuned Natural Treasure – A Pseudo Natural Treasure that has been created through a complex ritual using nothing but the Nature element, boosted by the presence of life.**
**Profession: Elemental Creator has levelled up by 5 levels. [Advanced] Elemental Creator has reached Level 91. +25 Int, +10 Wil, +15 Per, +25 Soul**
**Race: Human has levelled up by +2 levels. Human (E) has reached Level 104. +32 Ap gained**
He just looked at the message dumbstruck for a minute. He did not mean to create a Pseudo anything, especially not some kind of natural treasure. It was just supposed to be a ritual, nothing more. The description wasn’t a lot to go on, although he had noticed that with most natural treasures. You had to figure out what to do with them on your own.
**World Alert**
A Pseudo Natural treasure has been created on your planet. Natural Treasures are a rare and powerful resource that can boost the power of both an empire and an individual. Whenever a Natural treasure is created on a planet a world alert will be sent to encourage all who seek power to claim it.
Note: This Pseudo Natural Treasure has already been claimed.
That’s not good. He could get over the fact he made this thing, but to have it broadcasted to the world? It was just an annoyance that he could have done without. The only good thing here was that it didn’t say who created it or who had claimed it. That would have made this situation just so much worse.
He didn’t bother sticking around after that, he took to the air and moved on to his next element. He wasn’t going to stop what he was doing just because of some stupid message. He had committed to his course of action, and he was planning on seeing it through. Besides the levels were good and this was a good way to train his elements.
He quickly moved to the earth tunnel and went right in without bothering to shift back into his physical form until he was in the large cavern. It was exactly how he had expected it to look, at the moment it was an empty cavern, but that would change soon.
This one was going to be much easier than the last, moving earth around and into shape was much easier than living roots. He didn’t have anything special to really add it to though outside replicating much of what he had done previously, outside of the added addition of life.
The thing with these rituals was that he added in an extra step where the ritual would pull ambient mana from the area and pull it through the orb to attune it and then push it back through the ritual to increase the efficiency of feeling the earth element. It added complexity to it and wouldn’t have been possible without the orbs, potentially why the last ritual was called a Pseudo natural treasure, as with everything he did combined it would have the ability to endlessly create earth attuned mana.
He spent several hours moving the stone of the cavern around until he was happy with everything, he had included some extras in this one as he could utilise the walls to add in and expand the ritual. It wasn’t much to look at at first, but when he started to power the ritual with pure earth mana the rocks started to let out a faint glow that lit the cavern up and made it much more impressive to look at.
He spent many hours focusing on his task until he felt everything click into place. Shaun smiled when he felt the amount of earth in the area, again it was much denser than the dungeon and it felt as if the earth itself was baring down on you, it was oppressive and strong, unyielding.
**Successful New Creation – Bonus Experience provided**
**[Epic] Pseudo Earth Attuned Natural Treasure – A Pseudo Natural Treasure that has been created through a complex ritual using nothing but the earth.**
**Profession: Elemental Creator has levelled up by 3 levels. [Advanced] Elemental Creator has reached Level 94. +15 Int, +6 Wil, +9 Per, +15 Soul**
**Race: Human has levelled up by +2 levels. Human (E) has reached Level 106. +32 Ap gained**
He was disappointed that he only got 3 levels instead of the original 5 but even than 3 levels was nothing to scoff at. Just like last time a world alert went out and he knew he was going to have to deal with some kind of fallout from this eventually, or he could just push it on Viv and tell her to deal with it.
He was going to put some rule sin place for using these areas, predominantly his school and those that worked there got first dibs on usage, Viv would get a set amount of time for others and she could figure it out from there.
With two down he only had three to go. The next three were also going to be more difficult to get right but he was determined to make them just as incredible as these two. But first he chose to rest and recover, these rituals were taking a lot out of him and he needed to be at his peak for the rest of them.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
“Where is he Eric.” This was the third time Viv had asked him where Shaun was and his answer was the same every time, he didn’t know, but when he was ready he would reappear, as usual.
Shaun had been missing for several days, which wasn’t that shocking given that he was the kind of person to just get lost in something and lose track of time. When the world alert appeared He had a strong suspicion as to what Shaun had been doing.
Viv had shown up then as well but left as soon as she realised Shaun wasn’t there. As soon as the second alert appeared though Viv came back with a vengeance.
She had been questioning him for a while and he had had enough. His relationship with Viv had changed recently, he respected her and what she was doing but she should know by now that she couldn’t control Shaun, nor him.
“Listen Viv, when he shows up, I will let him know you are looking for him. But you know as well as I do, he will only come back when he is ready. Don’t look for him, that will only annoy him. If you want any part of what he is doing then its best you keep him happy.”
Although dealing with the fallout of Shaun’s plans was never enjoyable he did know that what he did always helped. He only had to look at the school, the way he had willingly taught others what only he knew, the ward and so much more. That was why he was more than happy to do the work he did, he would have preferred to spend more time with his friend but he was meant for bigger things. He refused to hold him back.