I take the orichalcum nugget the size of my thumb and carefully probe it with my spirit sense. The thing I’m trying to refine it into needs a lot of attention and care, so I don’t dare to begin inscribing anything onto the nugget before mapping all of the veins out, no matter how small they are.

I can’t have fine control over my magic but my senses are good enough to detect even the smallest veins and the revival formation, as I called the enchantment that allows me to reincarnate with all of my memories indefinitely, provides me with perfect memory that could even be called eidetic. This kind of mapping will let me increase the efficiency of the enchantments to the limits.

After mapping them out I proceed to slowly inject mana with slight amounts of miasma inside the veins through my own mana channels. You can always find those arcane energies in the atmosphere if you look carefully, so getting my hands on a little poses no problem.

As the veins get filled up with the energies they begin expelling whatever they had inside before, so the piece of metal starts emitting a warm yellow glow. The complex web of veins begins distorting due to the changes, some veins are moving erratically and come close to snapping on several occasions. I can’t afford to have it, so I slow down the process and the veins settle down.

And if you are wondering, the mana-veins don’t manifest physically, they exist on a layer above the material world, so they can move in many unnatural ways.

When the movements calm down, I can see that the veins have enough miasma inside to establish the core formation but the mana is still insufficient, so I pump more of mana inside, while carefully pushing the miasma towards on side of the nugget and after a few minutes I got all of the energies I needed inside but the veins have distorted yet again and now the whole structure is very unstable.

The web consisting of veins now looks very feeble, as if a slight breeze will cause it to collapse and I can’t have that. So I inject a bit of controlled mana inside, trying to forcefully relocate some of the veins to make a more stable structure. It’s very hard as the veins will begin to snap if I concentrate on a single point and if I try to push the entire vein it will take far too much willpower. So I have to give little pushes, slowly coaxing the veins to slide away and settle down where I need them to be.

A good hour in accelerated perception mode later and I have untangled it to a barely acceptable level and I very soon will be too mentally drained to continue. I float above the floor, using my internal energy and begin to spin to relieve some stress and fatique.

After fooling around for a bit I descend and return all of my attention to the nugget, this time cutting off all of the interference from the outside. I can feel the way the veins are interacting with each other and determine the most stable position for them.

I can’t tell how much time has passed but it feels like months. It was probably a few hours in the real world, but my mind has allowed me to accelerate to that degree. Anyway, I have successfully pulled all of the veins in their proper places while distributing mana and miasma to where I needed it.

I then return to the real world and take a small metal needle, also made out of orichalcum. I infuse it with a ridiculous amount of mana, enough to make the air around it vibrate and bring it down to the piece of metal I’ve been working on. It’s too early to lay the foundation for the core enchantment, so I inscribe the lines that will give an amplification effect to the magic I’m going to use.

The veins are so small that even the thin needle can hardly leave a trace that would be comparable to the size of a vein, which makes the process exceedingly frustrating. With each brief stroke of the needle that leaves a faint scratch on the surface I also send a little wave of mana towards the veins that easily penetrates the metal and reaches the destination. Expecting it to be precise is foolish and only completely laughable portions actually do their job. My method of inscribing prioritizes the safety of the veins over efficiency, so only an insignificant amount of mana messes with the veins.

I slowly get the hang of it, as it’s really been a while since I last did an enchantment manually and my hands of a six-years-old child aren’t even close to making anything too exquisite. As I get the hang of it, I also accelerate my perception yet again and use my will to try and guide the mana towards the veins. It’s a little less precise but I have to hurry as otherwise, I would spend literally a decade just finishing all the side enchantments.

The vein I’m working on now is slowly expanding in some places, while becoming thinner in others. It’s also bending under the mad barrage of tiny mana lumps, but some deviation is still acceptable. After I’m done with this vein I repeat the process with the next and continue doing it.

Every now and again a vein shatters so I have to guide the mana and miasma to different veins nearby, shaping them. The good thing about orichalcum is that it has a lot of veins and I don’t really have to worry about them breaking too much, though I would still prefer for them not to.

An entire day of objective time is being spent and I’m using my ability to accelerate my perception to the fullest. This body of mine handles physical stress a lot better than I expected and I’m not feeling too sleepy and the need to eat is non-existent.

At last, I have finished the amplification formations!

The nugget in my hand now is constantly shining because too much mana has been stuffed into some parts of it and it’s greatly irritating me, as I find magic with visible effects both distasteful and wasteful at the same type. Still, I’m feeling quite proud as the formation could be considered exemplary.

Now, to the tougher part. The core formation. The reason I find this one tough is because the formation wasn’t invented by me but by another sorcerer and it will not be executed properly as only the original sorcerer can understand their craft fully. Magic requires understanding of underlying principles behind it and without the familiarity with the concepts using a branch of magic on an acceptable level is impossible.

The branch of magic that the formation came from belongs to the high wizard Lucifer, the Lord of Sin. He’s a very ancient fella, probably even older than me and legend has it he used to be an angel that rebelled against the laws binding him to his plane and god.

You see, just as gods are created by the plane they live in and their powers and personalities are to an extent dependent on the plane, angels are created because of gods and they are bound to their gods. In exchange for their loyalty and affinity with their god they can get powers from their lords. So, it’s basically like that: Plane gives power to god, god gives power to angel, gods serve to protect the plane, angels exist to serve gods. Pretty horrible, right? Especially with the weaker gods as no matter how hard you try you can only get so much power. So, it seems Lucifer was able to somehow overcome his angelic nature and rebel and forcefully take all the power from the god he served and then he understood something and found ways to harness power from a plane without any responsibilities that come with it. He then went on to developed his own branch of magic that deals with plains and their laws and labeled it as “Sin Magic”. It contains the most ways to strip a god of their might, kill a god and control the rules of a plane.

Do not expect me to explain how it works, as I’ve already mentioned, it’s a sorcery and only Lucifer truly knows what really is going on. I read a few grimoires that I bought from him for a few formations and have only primitive understanding at best.

Anyway, the core formation I’m going to inscribe is one I find most suitable for me as it doesn’t rely too much on the sorcery and mostly uses its basics to help to create magic. It will require understanding of the general concepts of existence, the ones all mages have to understand, however, not that it poses a problem to me. I’m just not that confident in the way I’m going to combine those concepts with the ones from the Sin branch.

I inhale deeply and steel my resolve. I’ve already come this far and can’t back down now, so I’ll just have to do it.

I grab a strand of miasma in the core area of the web of veins and slowly shape it into what’s called “Pride’s lock”. It’s, as you can guess, is a set of runes from the Sin branch and from what I can understand it will weaken the effects of the plane’s interference, weakening a god’s power. The effective range is laughable but I’m not going to use it head on, it’s all a part of the formation I’m creating.

Pride’s lock is quite complicated in nature and requires me to use my will yet again to guide the strands individually, which takes a toll on my mind. Guiding them along the flow of the vein I slowly spin them into tiny vortexes at fixed intervals and wrap them according to the manual. Following the instructions blindly like that is very irritating and I’m not sure if it’s even going to work, but the manual said that such a way of weaving the miasma should cause some kind of interference and it’s supposed to weaken the effects of the plane. To me it doesn’t seem to make any sense, but I guess some of my soul spells wouldn’t make sense to others too, as they have no idea about the nature of souls, so I have no other choice but to trust Old Lucifer and hope that the devil will not let me down.

The pride’s lock took me three days to complete in objective time, during which mother has been standing next to me, observing what I’ve been doing. When I asked her if it was boring she shook her head and said that watching me doing something so seriously is the best and cutest thing she’s ever seen with a most satisfied expression on her face.

I think I have found a new level of respect for parental love.

Anyway, enough chit-chat, after I’ve finished the Pride’s lock I had to begin making Wrath’s lock and after that was lock of Gluttony and then lock of Sloth… In the end, I had to complete whole seven locks. As I didn’t quite understand the effects the process was fairly automatic and took me three weeks.

If you’re wondering about servant’s reaction to it, well, we didn’t bother to hide what we were doing and in the end, all of my personal maids as well as around ten or so people would regularly come and watch me… From their point of view, I might as well had been just staring at a shiny metal shard for whole three weeks. Surprisingly, none have found it strange and none of them showed any signs of ridicule. As I have very good hearing, I would sometimes hear them talking about me doing something incredibly profound and they seemed to have found my pose very gallant.

I can’t understand these people.

And what's up with the nonchalant attitude? I appreciate you don't try to bother me and all but I haven't eaten or slept this whole time! Show some concern, would ya!

Anyway, with the seven locks complete, so was the foundation for the “Clutches of Sin”, as Old Lucifer called it. And don’t laugh at the names of his formations and sets of runes, all wizards are like that. Even me and Stella. Well, I usually don’t give names to my creations but Stella forces me to and she makes me give them over exaggerated names to “flare up the customer’s interest in my products”, though the effects are doubtful and with my fame I don’t really have to advertise them that much and I suspect she just likes coming up with those names, but she’s the boss, she takes care of all the annoying things I don’t want to deal with and I don’t mind indulging her a bit every now and again.

But the foundation for the “Clutches of Sin” has been complete and with that toy #1 was also done. It’s for my personal use and its good point is supposed to be the flexibility of functions.

And let’s give it a name for good measure, why not? Umm, I’ll call you… “God’s Asylum”!