Laurence rushed back to the tavern and up to the shared room as soon as Jonas left to bar. He did not have much time but needed to create an item of Saint tier for his party to continue to travel through the floor. Sitting down on his bed, he emptied out all of the materials from his little bag. At some point in the third floor he had discovered that the bag was actually in the Book of Creation. It was called a bag of holding or a portable dimension there, so he began calling it the former.

Laurence could not get enough from the Book of Creation. It seemed to have some sort of inbuilt safety mechanism which stopped any person reading it from absorbing too much information in one sitting, so every time he re-read the book he would come across a new item or a new technique for creating. It was not until his sixth re-reading that he had discovered the concept of array making and a lot of the issues that people came up against when crafting using trueforming as a base.

The act of trueforming cut down the process steps of making a tool, but it also meant that a key component of the process was missing. Creation of any tool could be shown as having several steps. First one would find their materials and design the object, then one would go about crafting its physical form. Once the form is complete the creator would inscribe the necessary glyphs upon the tool that give it power with mana injection. After this they would insert socketable gems, which Laurence discovered were used for two things: Law masquerading and as an array battery. An array would often contain a power that could be formed in the glyph laying stage but was self sustaining rather than requiring an injection of mana. This meant that as tools for supporting a challenger they were far superior to a simple glyphed object, but for all offensive objects or powerful defensive objects they were far inferior.

The reason why trueforming was a useful tool and not the entire process of creation was actually a rather simple one; within creating something you would inject a portion of a power that every person had but only done could activate. When a person embarks on the path to ascension they gain two powers, mana and spirit. Mana gives form to the laws of your path, the elements of the world that you explore to gain longevity. Spirit however, governs your control over the aspects of the laws you are using. Unlike mana spirit is not represented in the reservoir of a challenger’s body, but rather is shown in the aura that a person exudes. When doing anything the small amount of aura that is injected into the action shows people that you performed it, and the more skilled the action the more aura is injected. Once an object is infused with enough of its creator’s aura it takes on that will, that intention, and begins to develop it into its own. The reason why Laurence had to follow so many steps to create something was because just trueforming an object into the final shape, with all the glyphs inside it, did not give the tool a will of its own and self will was what separated the initial grade of any ranked weapon from the advanced grade.

Laurence did not realise that most of his early works were actually arrays, lacking a battery they would absorb the essence from the object they were part of until they decayed and crumbled to dust. He did not intend for that to be the case ever again.

After weeks of practice and trials Laurence had finally managed to set up several arrays. Today would be the culmination of his work so far, today he would create his first advanced grade Saint artifact. He spent an hour studying the materials in front of him and separated them into three groups.

The biggest group was the pile that was going back into his bag. The second biggest pile was that of materials that Laurence intended to trueform together into similar but higher grade materials. They were of a quality that was below the Saint tier that Laurence was searching for, but through combination and fusion they would be raised in quality to the point where they would fit with his intention. This pile contained ten objects: a few kinds of wood, some metal and three of the gemstones that Laurence had found on the cavernous third floor. The third pile was that of the materials already good enough for processing and building into what Laurence had in mind. He had spent the last four weeks trying to pin down how to make the perfect storage unit, one that would run with a time dilation within it, have a self contained dimension inside and also be compact enough to easily carry. It was the perfect thing to get a trader like Jonas on his side, but he would have to construct it first.

He put the largest pile back into his bag of holding and quickly refined the ten objects into three sets of metal, wood and gemstone. All three masses of material were extremely high quality composites but could not be considered a true Saint tier material. The fact that he had to trueform them into existence would give them a small amount of aura but not as much compared to the aura level that Saint tier materials naturally contained. The other materials were a small amount of leather from Garral, the Orik that he killed when he first arrived in Babel, and the black gemstone he got from the third floor.

Now that Laurence had amassed the materials he needed he began to shape the wood, whittling it all into a form that he desired. He made the wood into two small boxes then sanded and polished them, setting them aside once he was finished. The next part was the casing and the mount for the gem which would involve the metal used. Laurence summoned his hammer and ignited it, extending the flame and wrapping it around the metal until it was soft and malleable, then he shrank his hammer into a manageable sized and beat the metal until it was the shape he desired. He cut the metal into four separate sections, two for the frames of the boxes, one for the hinges, lock and mount, and one for an idea that he had just before he began the process. Once the metal was shaped he quenched everything by cutting it off from the world around it with a bubble of mana, rapidly cooling the metal and solidifying its general shape. He formed a file out of mana and began to shave down the rough edges of things until everything was as smooth and sharp as he needed it to be, then assembled the metal and wooden parts together. Once he had done that he used some of the lesser gems to add colour to the boxes, while finally finishing with the black gems mounted in the center of the boxes.

The two boxes were set up, but not complete. Before they were, Laurence had to add all the glyphs onto the two boxes and complete the array for each one.

The array took the shortest time of all the processes, but the entire task to make the two portable dimension boxes took three hours. Laurence was doing the finishing touches when Yun and Louisa both arrived back at their room. They both looked dejected after an entire day of failure but when they saw Laurence sitting on his bed, item cut offs strewn all around him and a big grin spread across his face.

“Did you have any luck guys?” He said to his despondent friends.

“No we didn’t.” Growled Yun. “But I know that smug grin of yours. You found one didn’t you?” He jumped on his bed, kicking off his boots that he reluctantly wore and got comfortable.

“I did. I fixed a captain’s nose and just finished making the payment for him. We have to be at the eighth dock before midday tomorrow and we can get to the stele!”

“Well then, we’d better get rested up for the journey. It’s going to be a rocky ride.” Said Louisa.