Instead of staying in his confused state, he unfurled the scroll in order to see what consolation prize he had obtained. The truetext was as simple as the text informing him about the translation technique, but he was more confused about what this technique even did. Another thought that floated into his mind was that the scroll managed to convey the depth of truetext while being ink on paper, or whatever material this was.

After a few re-readings of the scroll he gave up trying to glean more from it and walked up to the entrance of the final trial. Nervousness was building in him again but he couldn’t even try to calm himself down or he would likely try to procrastinate, moving the threat to another time. What he saw when the doorway descended spread more fear in him than anything else in this situation… There was a veritable horde of insect creatures in the next room.

He did the only thing that seemed smart at the time and immediately retreated from the entrance, glad that none of the insects either noticed him or bothered as the entrance moved back into place. “O-okay, so the path has been chosen for me. I need to start preparing.” he thought out loud and immediately ran down the stairs to the other room. In his panic, he even managed to stumble rather than fall due to his advanced stats.

When he reached the translation room he rushed right into the room he had opened first and had an internal debate. The gold was stronger but there was so little of it that it would be a risk… But copper also had lesser effects than gold… He grabbed the metal and immediately rushed down to the garden and arrived at the Cyan soul. Despite his panic, he still had the mind to think about how he should extract the cyan soul… Taking out his sword, he began digging around it, hoping to get the plant's roots so he could make sure he didn’t cut off anything important before the procedure.

Once that was complete, he sat down to meditate. He tried to feed all the energy he had into the spot where his sword was kept and found that the area had pre-programmed functions like his internal technique. Deciding to trust the only gift that bastard had given him, he funnelled all his energy through that system and eventually, another core like the one that became the sword appeared.

The amount of time that it took to form the core finally caused Noah to calm down and think about things with a more critical eye. He had everything he needed on the physical side, but the god had said that everything was combined with a skill… and none of his skills really fit what he wanted the herb to become. It would become a good healing potion but he had no alchemy skills to pull it down that path…

Shaking his head he got to the task of making his new… hopefully healing item. The guide stated that grand forge could only make weapons. But considering what he knew about it, he was hoping it was more accurate to say tools and he was just thinking in a shallow way before. The task of creating the item was easier than the last time, with the core taking to the materials easily, and when he fed his death-defying skill into the item, it practically ran everything for him. Even his desire for the item to help him survive long-term flowed into the core without issue.

The light died down about half a minute after the process started, leaving him with a copper-lined vial, which when he opened up the stopper, displayed a green-tinged liquid while the information was displayed in front of him

[Survivors potion flask

A trusty vial of whatever you need to keep yourself alive. Everyone should carry one.

Item strength: 1 potion use

Maximum Potion types: 1

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Potion of healing: Restore 6 constitution worth of health

Bonus stats: CON+1

Feed the flask alchemy ingredients to manipulate the potion effects

Boost the potion’s energy supply to increase potion uses, number of potion types, and strength of potion types

Path boon: Constitution boosts by 1 per death-defying level]

Looking at the end result, it was better than he expected. While he hadn’t managed to make the path what he planned, the potion flask itself was exactly what he wanted going forwards. Instead of being purely for the use of healing and survival, he could turn it into potential elixirs for situations in the future.

However, now that he had finished this task, he was stuck waiting for his energy to refill again. He wouldn’t take from the dwindling reserves of energy in his main room… though thinking about it, he hadn’t checked how much was taken to form his core.

Quickly walking over to the bonfire room, he didn’t need the notification to tell him the truth. There were hardly wisps of energy left in the room, leaving him without anything to push him forward when it came to… cultivation? Should he consider it cultivation at this point?

He shook his head, the concept of progression through cultivation intrigued him, but if he focused entirely on that then he would be wasting time, time he didn’t have to waste especially with the amount he would waste due to bad habits. Bringing his sword back out, his internal… self? Something strained and popped out. He no longer held the potion in his hand.

Checking inside, he took a good look at his grand forge skill, and with his new knowledge about the formations, he could identify some parts of it. There appeared to be a slot for the core to be placed into which his sword core was currently residing. He could also see the energy moving through the formation. It was interesting to see the energy structures were more like electrical cords than esoteric functions, and with that understanding he could see that the formation was at its limit… meaning that his forge was more limited than he expected. He could only be able to use one item at a time, and anything beyond tier 2 would be unable to be slotted in at all.

“So one more task to work on.” This was becoming more and more like cultivation, tons of differing potential ways forward that you both had to discern which to stay away from and balance so that you had enough variety to keep walking forwards. He just hoped he’d have the peaceful years of meditation and improvement if it was a cultivation world, because he would sure need it.

Taking a deep breath, because every time he thought he was calm, he managed to stress himself out once again. He decided to just meditate in the plant room. Force all worrying thoughts from his mind and just learn how to manipulate his energy in a more efficient fashion. Obviously he sucked at it, but when he had little to no energy to work on himself, all he could do was try his best to train any skill that didn’t require large energy reserves.

Once he felt like he was full again, he started thinking about what to do next when it comes to his energy production. It was far too inefficient to be able to carry him through, it may take him years without help with his current energy output. The time he spent meditating helped him come up with the solution. If this was like cultivation, then he could take from standard cultivation methods to improve.

A few minutes more and he decided to see if he could do qi condensation. He thought first of qi refinement, but the concept of making it better in some way seemed like something he needed to learn about or find a superior energy before he could do.

So he began to force the energy in his container together and form a strand like seen in many cultivation stories. To say it was hard was an understatement. He hadn’t had a headache this bad since he first tried to manipulate energy. But eventually a strand of condensed energy sat near his core… curiously, it seemed like part of the lattice he formed the core out of. Without losing his focus and having the strand dissipate, he moved to weave the strand into his core like he had done the first time he forged it. And to his surprise, his core seemed to shine a bit more after it was done.

“Heh, so condensing energy to make a more condensed core is a path forward, good to know.”