As soon as Hector returned to the sect, he gathered the other members of the sect within the hall to share the results of the meeting. As Red already knew all the information, he wasn’t required to stay, but the elder did ask the boy to sense around the sect grounds for any hidden presences. He found no one, to Hector’s relief.

Eiwin told him she would bring him up to speed on what they settled later, so the boy saw no reason to stay, either. Now that he knew about the challenges that awaited him over the next few days, he needed to attend to a certain matter.

He walked into Goulth’s workshop. The blacksmith wasn’t here at the moment, but he had given Red permission to use the building even when he wasn’t present.

The boy opened the door and walked to the forge. He considered getting it running, but then decided against it.

‘I don’t know how long Goulth will be in the meeting.’

Instead, Red decided to focus on something else. He walked over to a closed door on the back of the workshop. The blacksmith set aside a room for the boy that used to serve as a storage where Red could study and practice sensitive matters in peace.

When he opened the door, a strong scent of paper and ink hit him. The room was an absolute mess of drawings and stacks of papers, as well as all kinds of ink bottles strewn about. Countless complex symbols and diagrams were affixed to the stone walls, with notes and references written alongside them. One could barely walk through the room without stumbling into something.

Yet Red knew where everything was in here. This was where he had been practicing Arcane Scripture over the last six months, after all.

‘Everything seems to be in order.’

The boy could even tell that no one messed with the room while he was gone, either. With Goulth’s help, he was able to keep this practice of his a secret from his fellow sect members. This wasn’t because this was a dangerous matter like his demonification, but rather because he didn’t want to give them any false hopes about his skills in that area.

Indeed, after six months passed, he was happy he had kept it secret.

Out of the 496 basic symbols, Red could barely say to have mastered around a hundred of them. Goulth was impressed by this, since he claimed a cultivator on average would require four years of study to memorize and master all of them, and this was in a proper learning environment. Red, on the other hand, seemed to be on track to accomplish this in half the time, and this was while practicing by himself in the back of a workshop.

The boy, however, couldn’t be happy about it.

‘It’s still too slow.’

With so many dangers around him, how could he be satisfied with such a speed? Not to mention, what he was studying right now was barely the beginning. It didn’t cover applications, and Red could only imagine how hard that would become, not to mention how much it would cost him to practice and experiment at that point.

This all drew him to a single conclusion.

‘There’s no way I can prepare the Parting Storm Formation in time for Narcha.’

The woman only had a handful of years left to breakthrough, while Red felt that it would take him at least five years before he was comfortable to even try experimenting with that special formation. That, too, was only if he had the materials in hand, which didn’t seem likely as yet.

Red did his research with Goulth’s help. Overall, the basic construction materials would cost around twenty spirit stones, which was a lot, but was still in the realm of possibility for him with enough time. The hardest and most essential material, though, was what troubled him.

‘Aspected Spirit Stones.’

As the name implied, these were Spirit Stones that contained a specific type of Spiritual Energy. They could cost upwards of dozens of times the price of common spirit stones, depending on how rare the type of energy they contained was, and Red needed three of them. One containing lightning energy, one containing water energy, and one containing wind energy.

The water and wind ones would cost him around 7 spirit stones each, while the lightning one could cost him more than 15 spirit stones, as it was rarer than the others. Of course, these prices assumed he could find someone willing to sell them to him, which would also prove to a hard task.

Aspected Spirit Stones were specialty goods, something high-level cultivators and factions used by the hundreds as he came to learn. As such, any such items were very quickly bought from the market, and that was if they appeared in the market at all. Most of the time, suppliers would just directly sell them to clients.

Suffice it to say, it wouldn’t be easy for Red to acquire them. Thus, he wouldn’t be able to help Narcha so soon, either.

‘I wonder what she will do.’

Red frowned, as he had such thoughts. Every day that went by, he could feel Narcha’s desperation growing stronger. She was trying to hold it in, but the woman never was good at hiding her emotions. What happened at the trial was still affecting her too, as she sought information about Reinhardt at every opportunity, to no avail.

‘I have to worry about myself right now.’

It might sound cold to others, but Red was ever the realist. He had his own problems to worry about too, and if he couldn’t help Narcha right now, there was nothing more he could do. He could only hope some miracle happened soon to change her fate.

Red stepped over stacks of paper and equipment towards the center of the room. Right there, in the middle of everything, was free ground space that he used to work. The boy sat down in that spot and crossed his legs.

He was preparing to meditate.

Red could say to have some talent in Arcane Scripture, a work that required a calm and meticulous mind. However, it wasn’t to the degree where he could be two times faster than most students of these arts. In truth, his secret to success lay elsewhere.

Very early in his training, Red sought to understand where the difficulty of this practice lay in. It took little investigating. Even the basic arcane symbols were extremely complex and took hours of single-minded focus to draw at first, and a simple mistake meant you needed to start again from scratch. Under such strains, even cultivators would suffer from stress and be prone to commit mistakes.

Red, however, had a special method to eliminate - the Radiant Current meditation technique.

It could be used to inspect and control one’s own inner body. It was perfect for calming Red’s anxieties and worries, and it allowed him to work at complete serenity. Of course, that didn’t mean he was immune to mistakes, but it certainly meant he committed far less of them.

After six months of practice, Red didn’t even need to repeat the mantras and mudras to enter this meditative state. Merely repeating the word and symbols in his mind was enough.

When Eiwin learned of this, she was shocked. Apparently, only monks with dozens of years of training could achieve such a state back in her temple, and not even the woman herself could do it right now. She told Red that he had a lot of aptitude in these arts, and this would make him a once-in-a-lifetime talent back in her temple.

The boy didn’t let himself get any ideas, though. He wanted to be a cultivator, not a monk. Eiwin told him then that a monk could still be a cultivator, but the boy also knew that a monk had many other responsibilities other than just cultivating. How could Red allow himself to be bound as such?

He focused back on his body. There was nothing out of the ordinary from what he could feel. The crimson mist also seemed calm, which confused Red. He thought this being would be distressed after what happened yesterday, but there was nothing to indicate it.

As soon as Red thought back on it, he felt a headache. The boy shifted his thoughts away from the subject in a hurry.

After he calmed himself down, he opened his eyes. He was ready to work.

He looked around for his stack of clean paper, picking out a page from it. Then he set it on top of a smooth wooden board that was in front of him and picked up his ink and brush. Since he was still just practicing this symbol, there was no need to use the expensive material yet.

With no other immediate concerns, Red set about his task.

…

Almost two hours passed by before he was finished. To his surprise, he managed to draw the symbol successfully in one go.

This wasn’t entirely uncommon. Sometimes an easy symbol could be done in one go, while the harder ones might take the boy a few days and multiple tries. Of course, replicating it was just the initial success. Now Red needed to commit the image to mind with a few more attempts.

However, he didn’t continue his training. It was just about time for the meeting to be over, and Red knew Goulth was about to come back. He got out of his training room and entered the forge, sitting down to wait.

Sure enough, ten minutes later, he felt the fluctuations in the meeting hall disperse. The blacksmith, in particular, seemed to be nervous about something and was going back to his workshop in a hurry.

When Goulth entered the building and saw the boy waiting for him there like a ghost, he jumped in fright.

The man glared at him. “Agh, you fucking brat! Why are you trying to scare me?!”

Red frowned. “I’m not. You’re the one that’s nervous about something.”

“Of course I’m nervous!” Goulth massaged his temples. “Imagine hearing from your boss that you need to be prepared to evacuate your entire workshop and the sect’s treasury in a matter of days! How would that make you feel?”

“So he already told you about it?”

“He did.” the blacksmith nodded. “He also told us about the… Visitor at the Baron’s castle.”

“You can talk about it.” Red shook his head. “No one is around.”

Goulth frowned. “Can you be sure?”

The boy hesitated. “… I suppose not.”

“Then it’s best not to mention it.” the blacksmith shook his head. “Anyway, what do you want?”

Red was confused by the question. “How do you know I want something?”

Goulth smiled. “I told you already, I’m your master! Your emotionless expression might fool others, but I have my ways to tell what you’re feeling or thinking about.”

Red frowned.

‘Could it be that he has a crimson sense too?’

Upon further thought, the boy thought that was a ridiculous idea. He must have some different type of power.

“I do want something.” Red nodded. “I want to make my weapon.”