I’m exhausted to the bone but I keep pushing. Just three hours later, we continue after hours. A thread of Aether and Qi as my skill Create starts to make a little more sense.

The literal meaning of making something come from nothing may be impressive and even useful, but it is also far too expensive to use regularly and the short lived nature of the material makes it all but useless in its current form. Perhaps as it grew in level and I learned more tricks to improve it further, that would change, but for now, it is all but useless.

As my perception was pushing ever forward and I continued to try and understand this new skill, an advantage of it becomes clear.

Tying multiple pieces of a single work together. Not in the physical sense, but in the metaphysical one, which like it or not, is extremely important. Especially when talking about something like a suit of armor. If it was made factory style, with a dozen different people riveting something together in a rush it could never be just as good as one handcrafted with specific measurements in mind. It would have no chance to come alive and become more than the sum of its parts.

I channel the skill with Greg in mind and my memories of him inside the perception field which causes the very world to shift. Each of the pieces that the duo makes fits like gloves, in that narrow sense are even better than what the system allows Blackwood to make, though by a narrow margin.

As the last sheet of metal is near the end, I know there will be no adjustments, no cuts or repounding of metal as a part came in too large or too small even if they haven’t stope dot measure it once. Their work not only increased in quality, but they also had to stop much less often to check how the pieces were coming together simply increasing the workflow.

Something that would have taken half a day normally with all the stops to carefully measure up and all the rework for everything to fit together perfectly simply comes into place on the first try in little more than two hours. It is like they had been doing this for years.

All that didn’t come without a cost. Create, I learn is a misnomer. It is a skill based on transformation, to take from somewhere and transmute it into another form, hopefully, a more useful form.

I could feel as each of their thoughts about measurements came and went draining my stamina. I try to only affect the work before me, but even the others nearby got the edges of my ‘field ‘ occasionally.

They didn’t have direct access to my thoughts or my perception field but simply standing in my ‘creation field’ for lack of a better way to describe it, let them unconsciously tap into information normally only I had.

The only problem is that my brain is only supposed to comport a single person…me. Adding two other unconscious minds constantly retrieving information drains me in a way I haven’t felt in a long time.

I take the piece so I can finish inlaying the runic working with a silver and gold alloy. The last drags of my Qi help me to fix it all in place with heat and pressure. I deliver it back to Li Wei that expertly rivets the shoulder piece and I poke the hundredth hole in my Life container just as the last drop of Qi finishes the internal runic formation.

The roots, the strongest I could make meld with strips of HLZ beast leather. At least the strongest roots without spending months going over every single cell. With an underlayer of supple and comfortable roots, covered by thin plates of lightweight wood and thick plates of the best abyssal steel, it is done.

It is finally done.

Abyssal steel had come down to its normal price after I helped Blackwood make the first +10 weapons, but a gold per ingot is far too expensive for me to stomach often.

It was also a poor choice for weapons given the fact it didn't hold a better edge than deep steel which is cheaper, a LOT cheaper.

For armor, however, its toughness and damage resistance against blunt weapons is definitely worth that extra cost.

Its main drawback is the fact that it can’t be alloyed into anything else given that is already a carefully balanced metal.

As my Qi exhausts itself I hold my creation, OUR creation. Or rather a transformation, but I don’t let the semantics drag me down.

I feel like the very gaze of the system seems to take a quick snapshot of the finished product, something that has my very mind imbued in it and my life flowing in the root's veins. One of the greatest works I have brought into reality alongside Alex’s spear, though that is not exactly repeatable any time soon.

Mithril is expensive, very expensive.

Even without me opening the prompt, a simple glance is interpreted as me inspecting it and each line of the blue screen just lifts all our grins a little further.

Living abyssal Armor.

A creation that is rare in the early integration of the system. An expensive piece of armor that takes the best aspects of Leather, Abyssal steel and living wood and draws them out.

The active defenses, the capability of partially healing itself at a slow pace coupled with enormous durability make the armor suitable for sustained medium-level encounters and even high-level encounters if spaced apart.

The lightweight addition of wood and leather creates the strongest possible defense for this armor class.

Defense +6

Weapon Dulling effect.

By the end of the explanation I’m dumbfounded, It can heal… It is talking about just the wooden parts, isn’t it? I imparted the armor with life so that is can connect to the seed that Greg carries, but regenerating the steel wouldn’t make any sense.

I’m grateful for the +6 achievement. A recognition of our work, though even matching the +5 of Blackwood’s best armor works continues to be a struggle without anything better than deep steel. At least soon we will have a nigh unlimited supply of the metal.

The very last line, however, doesn’t really surprise me. Adding effects like that take a lot of work but they are definitely worth it if a little circumstantial in usefulness. Backwood’s help and teachings as we unlock higher levels or weapons have been invaluable in figuring a lot of it out. At least it is better than a poorly slapped together +1 or at most +2 attributes to a single stat that the basic weapons usually got.

The active shielding is just a simple mana shield that won’t be all that useful in HLZ beast encounters, but for anything without mana disruption capabilities, it will be a powerful defensive layer they will need to repeatedly get through.

Even as we are finished I let the tiredness catch up to me and I move to my little hut. Walking seems to be too much of an effort so I simply connect my battery to the runes in my body and levitate pushing my body forward kicking the ground like I’m cruising on a skate.

Passing in front of the inn, I stop myself. It has been a while since I last slept in one of their rooms. I need to figure out if there is anything that I could get from it. With that in mind, I step inside, pay the innkeeper perfunctorily and quickly head upstairs to collapse on top of the thick mattress. It may look closer to what you find in medieval times on a cursory glance, but feels and acts just like a proper mattress from back on Earth.

I let go of everything and fade into the darkness without even caring about my experiments and figuring out if there is anything beyond the placebo of a proper room and bed.

-----------

Innkeepers POV

Nash already spent his 8 hours. He should be getting up any time now, he usually sleeps just two or three hours when he stops by. I’m gonna charge him extra for making me walk upstairs.

“Well, that is it, I’m waking you up. This is not your mother's house.” I turn around to walk up the stairs.

“What?” someone interrupts me.

Ghaaah, can’t you just let me work in peace. You all flaunt the rules of the place.

“Nash has slept too long. Eight hours already, that is all he paid for. I’m going up to wake him up.”

“Ahh, don’t do that.”

“I said….”

“Ahh, here, I will pay for him.” The sitting craftsman, a low level adventurer then tilts his head and asks: “Wait, you know his name…?”

“Of course, I know his name,” I say like he is a mentally challenged person. “It is harder not to know the name of someone as prominent as him in the village. What? Do you think I’m just a dumb NPC?” I huff.

He just shrugs as I count the coins as absentmindedly given that I know exactly how many he put in my hand. Enough for both his food and the room. Now I just have to wait for this Nash that is occupying MY room to take a hike.

“Bloody humans,” I curse under my breath.

***********

I wake like never before. Pando is going to be happy about my mood.

The world is just so bright as I stretch in bed even before opening my eyes. My muscles feel powerful like I can lift a truck and not even feel the strain and my limbs seem more flexible than rubber.

I feel amazing and I let everything come back t me slowly.

Did I get a new comfy mattress?

I open my eyes to find myself in a wholly unfamiliar place and suddenly I can feel the blood pressure pushing like my arms and head are ballons being filled with each heartbeat.

Memories flash by. The inner world, the system, my powers and the dozens of things that I stopped doing tonight that I usually kept a track of even during my sleep.

I start going through my mental list, starting with the miniature runic formation data storage in the inner world all the way to the very gravity and air replacement in the inner world.

The largest smile this week comes to my face.

I have finally done it.

Gravity, air and light are running fully on automatic. My autonomous system has simply taken over and I finally prove: my brain is my own to mold as I please. Keeping this minimum is as natural as breathing, with self-regulating mechanisms just like any other normal body function.

I don’t know how my gut knows all that, but I don’t care. One thing that is not automated is my Qi pool just surrounding me all around. And I although I don’t want to give up my restfulness, I add the Qi cycling back to my docket.

It is like I just formated my computer, but instead of leaving things well enough alone, I’m about to manually add all the bloatware that made it slow in the first place.

No. No, no, NO.

No bloatware. I need to take my time and make all my actions purposeful. If I fall into an automated rhythm again, I’m liable to just repeat the whole enchilada. I will always let other concerns become small drag chutes that I’m carrying even as I try to win the tour of France.

I should be eliminating all that I don’t need with ruthless abandon and possibly setting time apart for a few purposeful actions instead of trying to do everything at once. One day I learn to actually split my mind into two or something, but it is not here yet. I can probably find better solutions to half of the stuff that I have been doing myself if I simply look at them while the other half need a long and hard look at how important they actually are.

I sit in the middle of the bed and start a light meditation session.

The inner world is a beautiful orangy color quickly giving way to yellow lights. I finally have at least a few things on automatic.

Holly shit, light. Light is entering the inner world. I rush to the wooden window and throw the rough sack cloth curtain aside.

The shallow angle that I expect just after sunrise hits my face. I slept a whole 10 hours in a single stretch. I was probably accumulating a lot more exhaustion than I thought.

I should be even more diligent with my plans to eliminate everything I don’t need.