Arriving in his base, Archie took out the Totem of Spring’s Ascent and placed it beside the Miniature of Primal Wrath. Within monts, the cave was now filled with very potent nature mana, and surprisingly relieving so tension Archie didn’t know he had.
Looking to his right he saw the remaining half of the tortoise corpse still in his base, and starting to rot, going by the sll around it. To say that it needed to go was an understatent.
“While I enjoy the natural creature deterrent my base has, of which I don’t know how it ca to be, I wish that it would turn off at tis,” Archie sighed.
Taking out his forging equipnt and placing them beside the Miniature of Primal Wrath, Archie took out his Silver Carving Knife and carefully skinned the two other gorillas, making sure to not damage the sigils engraved on their fur.
Afterwards, he dragged them to where the hole in the ceiling of his base looked to be the least covered by branches. Once he found a good angle and all four corpses were piled beside him, he hurled them out of the cave, ignoring the thuds they made and the notifications of creatures the corpses crushed…Sorry stone chicken, Archie thought as he dismissed the most recent kill notification.
Now with their rotting corpses gone, the previous underlying rancid scent that was in the base was now replaced with the scent of fresh grass and apples. Hm, looks like filling the area around it with nature mana isn’t all that it can do. It’s also an air freshener, Archie chuckled.
Taking a look at the Group Tutorial screen once more, he saw that he had almost eleven and a half days left until the Tutorial would end and he would be back on Earth.
Group Tutorial
The 72nd cycle has begun; thus, a tutorial is needed to increase the survivability of the newly integrated myriad races. The Ernigan Isle is filled with various creatures from across the universe, each providing Tutorial Points upon their death to their killer. Tutorial Points can be exchanged between individuals, as a form of currency. Tutorial Points will be used to gain rewards after the full tutorial is completed.
Completion Criteria: Survive for 60 days
Number of Survivors: 527/1250
Ti Remaining: 11 days & 11:31:58
Now all he had left to do was clear the last Sigil Dungeon which he had about six-ish days to do before the Final Boss would be released. Which was more than enough ti for him to beat the dungeon.
But after jumping from dungeon to dungeon, he wanted to take a break and get back to forging. Afterall he now had what he needed to create the engine of his bike and had more than enough mana guns to figure out how the whole mana charging and holding chanism worked within them.
Before anything else, he needed to ask Bralmir if what he was doing would cause any…issues. After all, he was pretty sure a god wouldn’t appreciate the idea of their statue—crafted to symbolize their might—being recycled into an engine for a bike and especially so if the god is called the Primal Wrath of Dragons.
While asking for forgiveness is easier than asking for permission…in this case, it’d be wiser to ask for permission instead.
“Hey, Bralmir,” Archie called out while staring at the miniature. Not a mont later the familiar weight of Bralmir’s presence fell atop his shoulder.
“No, you won’t beco part star if you eat Starforge Steel,” Bralmir replied. “The amount of tis I’ve had to say that…” he mumbled.
“What?” Archie said, caught off guard by what Bralmir said. Why the hell would you eat steel? Archie thought. Why would you even think that it would give you power?...never mind stupid question.
“No, I was wondering if there would be an issue with using this statue for my engine,” Archie continued. “Or would Primal Tyrannous be upset?...I don’t wanna do sothing as stupid as this and piss off the guy called the Primal Wrath of Dragons. Cause I think reforging a statue of a god is a pretty sacrilegious thing to do.”
“No, you’re fine,” Bralmir answered, as he seared shut two pieces of tal together, with his finger. Wordlessly the tal within Bralmir’s hands shrunk, barely even visible to mortal eyes. Without giving it a second glance he tossed it over his shoulder as they joined a mountainous pile of similarly sized bits of tal. “Do whatever you want with it.”
“It’s a hunk of tal now that it's without his presence,” Bralmir continued as he took out a vat of silverish liquid and placed it beside him. “Though I do appreciate your recently gained understanding about not wanting to piss off gods.”
Archie could feel Bralmir’s pointed look at him with those words, making him awkwardly smile and scratch the back of his neck. Yeah, probably not a good idea to piss off a demon goddess…but she had it coming, I ain’t no one’s toy.
“Just do what you want to do, and forge what you want to forge. And if any god has a problem with that, then they deal with ,” Bralmir finished.
“Alright,” Archie replied but before Bralmir left he said one last thing. “When I beco a god, I’ll start paying you back for all the help you’ve given !”
Bralmir rolled his eyes as he turned to look at the mountainous piles of microscopic tal that lay behind him. The sheer audacity in Archie’s words would make any denizen of the multiverse scoff in response. To claim that it was simply a matter of ti before you would beco a god when you were not even a two-month-old E-Grade was nothing but laughable.
“And I believe that wholeheartedly,” Bralmir smiled before he activated every piece of tal behind him. The mountainous pile of tal behind him glowed molten red before they rose and started to assemble themselves.
Well now that that’s out of the way, I can go back to forging, Archie thought as he sat down in front of the table and took out a Mana-Pistol of Undeath.
While it was held in his hands, he knew no matter how hard he pressed the trigger, or how much mana he channeled into it, the most that would co out of the gun would do as much damage as a water gun to a rock.
But that did not an he couldn’t take it apart.
Grabbing his Thermal Carver, Archie carefully analyzed the outside fra of the pistol, running his fingers along the edges of the fra, feeling around for an opening or a lock of so sort.
Popping open the cylinder, Archie found them empty, which wasn’t surprising, to say the least as they hadn’t been filled with undeath mana. However, he did find faint, inactive runic etchings along the insides of each of the chambers.
Activating Gaze of the Forgefather, Archie saw the runic etchings transform into runic script, glowing a neon black color. He quickly placed down his Thermal Carver and grabbed a steel sheet and his Runic Scriber.
Quickly etching the runic script onto the steel sheet, Archie quickly noticed the incomplete form of the script as he etched. Concentrating on the chamber, Archie strained his eyes trying to see what he had missed.
Flipping to a different chamber, Archie found the sa runic script etched within…but it was still incomplete.
How the hell does that work? Archie wondered; brows furrowed in concentration. When etching a rune or runic script, if it's etched in an incomplete way it would fizzle off the tal or explode if you do sothing stupid…but it was still etched onto the cylinder perfectly, if not a bit faded, but perfectly functional; he’d been shot by it a few days ago.
Is my Perception stat too low? Archie questioned as he stared at the stat. He had 300 Perception with his 10% amplifier from his Legendary Innovator title. Eyeing his Free Points, he saw that he had 100 points stockpiled up.
Mulling over the decision to just dump the points into his Perception stat, Archie decided to just say, “Fuck it,” and dumped all his Free Points into Perception. The only downside was that he didn’t have an ergency Stat Stash anymore, but since he was about to go on a forging and researching grind, it would make up for itself.
Sucking in a breath, Archie felt his body tense up, instinctively closing his eyes.
The mont Archie added the points into his Perception everything around him felt…more. Even with his eyes closed he could feel everything…but better.
He could feel that when the wind brushed across the back of his head. He felt every strand of hair on his head that was not covered by his mask, sway to the direction of the wind.
He could hear the nurous creatures above him, each going on about their lives. He heard the soft squeaking of a rat as it scurried through the jungle, but suddenly a creature of so sort pounced atop the rat.
After a mont of silence, its attacker produced clucking noises… “Was that a fucking chicken assassin?” Archie muttered in disbelief.
Opening his eyes Archie realized two things: the ceiling of his cave base was filled with tiny, small hundred-legged bugs that for so reason evolved themselves over ti to develop eyes that decorated their entire bodies in between bits of bits of short, bushy hair, and that previously he’d been living life through 144p vision.
Swallowing a wad of saliva stuck in his throat, Archie turned his focus away from the thousands of hairy, hundred-legged eye-covered bugs and back toward the runic etchings within the mana pistol’s chambers.
Concentrating on the mana pathways of the runic script, he noticed their pathways had beco much thicker and far more prominent.
Following the mana pathways, Archie noticed an incredibly small mana pathway branch off from a seemingly random resistor that led to nowhere.
Flooding more mana into Gaze of the Forgefather, Archie saw the mana pathway beco slightly more prominent, around the size of a needle at best. But to Archie’s newly enhanced sight, it was as though he was looking through a microscope.
He saw the mana pathway travel out of the chamber and reach the middle of the ratchet before it split off in five other directions. Okay, so they’re all connected to each other, Archie noted before placing down the cylinder and tilting the pistol to look at its firing pin.
Normally where the firing pin was on a revolver, which this pistol took after, there was a square-shaped indent that looked very hollow, with its face covered in a runic script.
As Archie hunched over the table, eyes glued onto the new runic script in front of him, he took off his satchel and placed it by the foot of the table.
Okay…I get that, Archie murmured as he furrowed his brows in confusion. But why even do that? Why would you make loops that cycle from the chambers and back into the ‘firing pin’?
Etching the runic scripts on the firing pin was atop a steel sheet and the runic scripts he found within the chamber on another steel sheet, Archie was glad to see that they were wholly independent from each other like he understood.
The mana pathways on the ratchet would distribute the mana to each chamber at a very irregular rate; one chamber would have a ratio of 1:2, another would have a ratio of 3:9, and so on. But once the mana enters into the chambers, the mana will be ford into the shape of a manabolt.
"But therein lies the issue," Archie muttered, his embered eyes narrowing as he studied the two runic scripts before him. The script etched atop the hollowed square 'firing pin' simultaneously pushed and pulled the mana flowing through it. At least that’s what he understood.
That alone was weird…unless there’s a container inside the grip that stores and collects the mana, Archie reasoned, it would explain part of the runic script.
But even if it was the case, it still didn’t make complete sense to Archie. With the irregular rate at which mana was funneled into the chambers, any chamber that filled at a faster rate than the others would start to push mana back up the mana pathway, through the hollow square ‘firing pin’, and into the assud mana container that stores and collects the mana.
“Why would it just push it back into the container and not towards the other chambers?” Archie glared. “Hell, why not just keep the ratio of mana that gets sent to each chamber the sa, so they all fill at the sa ti?”
Clicking his tongue, Archie grabbed his Thermal Carver, carefully injecting enough mana into the Volthrinite tip for it to easily slice through the bottom of the grip, and carefully split the pistol in two.
Stopping the flow of mana into the Thermal Carver, Archie placed it atop the table, ignoring the faint sizzling and thin whisps of smoke that arose as the Volthrinite tip.
Now holding both halves of the mana pistol, Archie took a look at the inside of the gun that was hidden from him.
“Fuck,” Archie sighed as he stared at the cut in half runic scripts across the inside of the barrel and grip. Of course, they place it in a way where it fucks up the script if anyone opens it in that way.
But just because the rune was cut in two didn’t an it was useless.
One thing Archie had learned through his runic experints was that once he placed a complete rune or runic script on an item—be it a sword, dagger, or anything that he was able to etch on—it would make the rune beco a part of the item’s identity. "Probably due to the additive records the rune imparts onto the item," Archie mused. It was sothing he would need to research once the tutorial ended; be it from raiding Bralmir’s library if he had one, or seeing if he could buy so from the system aspect with his Tutorial points.
Once this was done, even breaking the item in two wouldn’t cause the rune to disappear, regardless of whether the item had a Self-Repair rune or not. The rune might be rendered unusable in its broken state, but it would still remain embedded in the fragnts.
The only way to fully destroy the rune, as far as Archie knew, was to completely lt down the item—and ensure it didn’t have a Self-Repair rune. Only then could the rune be obliterated.
Perhaps the Runic nding skill he’d been offered before might be capable of fixing such a broken rune, but Archie wasn’t willing to bet on it. After all, he didn’t know if the skill could repair the material the rune was attached to or only the rune itself.
But if that was the case, how would that work? Archie wondered. Maybe that would be the limitation of the skill?
Nevertheless, Archie attempted to analyze as much as he could from the runic scripts he could before grabbing another Mana-Pistol of Undeath from his spatial storage.
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