Kaden continued studying the journal. Considering its strange size, reading it entirely would take a lot of time. The earliest notes about formations and diagrams were not too complex, even if he didn’t really understand how they worked. Then some later pages had things in it that Kaden couldn’t even beging to make sense. Angis had clearly grown in ability and progressed to more complex things over the century.

While studying the earlier pages more carefully, Kaden wondered if he could learn to craft formations just from what he had. No one would teach him either, but perhaps to some extent Angis’s notes could act as one.

“I guess there is no harm trying”, Kaden said to himself. “Even, if I can’t do it, my understanding should increase. It would at least be a good starting point. I’m a smith, but right now I lack tools so I might as well look for something else to do.”

He felt like he should be doing something more than just prowl the forest, hunt, eat and shit. That was something a simple beast would do. While Kaden was aware of his beastlike attributes, he still felt quite human and that part was not agreeing with being pushed to sidelines. He wanted to do human things too.

With that in mind, he decided to try the general idea he got from the journal and its notes. Formation wasn’t much different from mana channels. There was likely some historical connection between formations and Formation stage. Obviously. Perhaps the whole craft of formations had been invented when someone wanted to imitate naturally formed formations of Formation stage in their body.

To put it simply, you needed to create mana paths and have them interact in some way to create desired effect. Convert mana to some other type. Transfer mana. Store mana. Anything you could think of. Technically you could create formations anywhere you wanted. Even in air, but there was nothing to hold it together by itself. Better materials would allow stronger formations or allow them to last longer.

Generally speaking someone needed only to create these channels and put them in correct arragement. Yet the formation had to be carefully made, too thick, deep or wrong shape could cause formation to not function or in bad case, explode. It also required strong enough mana to be embedded so that it acted like a mana channel and not just a pretty scratch.

“Doesn’t seem too complex”, Kaden thought. He decided to try.

He extended his claw on a stone and pushed some mana out to embed it in the stone. The stone exploded immediately.

Kaden picked another stone. It exploded too.

It was due to his lack of control. He tried diverting some of the core mana and more of this calm human type of mana in its place. The stone lasted only a bit longer than before until it exploded.

He reduced even more output. This time he was able to barely cratch a line on the rock. Yet, it was just a scratch, whatever mana he had tried to embed into it, did not stay in it. He had found from the journal that, it meant the mana being embedded was either too weak or formation faulty and leaking.

Kaden assumed it was both.

He kept trying over and over. After a while, he had to go pick more rocks to practice on. He tried wood at some point, but it broke apart even quicker than the rock. Not that rock was good material, but at least it was hard enough to keep form, if you carved something in it succesfully.

One would often have to craft a formation outside and not on some specially prepared surface. This itself required some preparation. A good formation master might even be able to create formation wherever they wanted, but without preparation end result would be much lower quality.

After failing for most of the day and almost giving up in rage, Kaden finally managed to draw a small line on a rock that seemed to retain the mana he embedded on it. Most of it had leaked out immediately, but some did stay.

“I did it!” Kaden rejoiced and almost danced around his failed rock pile, which was relatively large.

Still, it was just a line. Could it even be called a seal? Kaden wanted to think so, it would be able to transfer mana from its starting point to its end point. That had to count for something, right? Kaden observed as he injected mana at the starting point of the line and it came out at the other end. Then the rock exploded right on Kaden’s face.

“Damn it!” Kaden cursed and took a moment to calm down. He had at least found the correct method. First of all, his claw wasn’t really that good. It only appeared when he used his core mana enough. There had been the tools he had found, but they worked oddly. They needed mana to use and their effect depended on the said mana use. His control of mana made tool use almost impossible. In the end his own claw was better.

There was also the matter of mana density. His core mana was denser than the human type mana.

All in all, what was the key point was to be steady. The straighter and more uniform the line was in all its dimensions, width and depth, and the strength of embeded mana, the better. He eventually managed to keep his hand and mana output steady enough that he drew the fine line. It was his first success.

The most important thing he had found out, that had allowed him the required control was his material inspection ability learned all the way back in Dashire. At Channel Opening he had become able to see all the way inside of materials directly. Full awareness of material structure allowed him to observe the quality of his work too. He was happy to find out his old skills helped him to learn new ones.

“Nothing is learned in a day!” Kaden told to himself. It was the first step!

By that time he found himself quite exhausted. He had, after all, been trying to work with precision all day. He decided he would continue later. There were other things to do too. Such as the core he collected from the cougar.

Should he just eat it? Use it the most direct way to feed his own core or absorb it carefully for his mana channels?

He finally decided to eat it. It was his core that was greatest benefit so far. He also wanted to see just how much would a core, perhaps only slightly larger than his, benefit him once consumed. He also expected that his own core would be repaired from any remaining damage since all it needed was to gather mana.

Cores were pretty hard and became denser and tougher as they grew, but the core from cougar shattered within Kaden’s mouth with relative ease. It was only slightly stronger than some bones he had chewed on before or at least thats how Kaden felt.

Eating the core was an interesting feeling. Once pieces shattered and were crushed into smaller parts within his mouth, Kaden could feel prickling bursts of mana be released. One might think that eating a core would be like eating a rock, but it was entirely different thing.

His body easily absorbed all of it. He swallowed the parts and could feel a warm glow within his belly that spread across his body. While this continued, his own core pulsed. This process lasted for some time until it ended. Kaden was not sure what he should have expected, but it seemed pretty ordinary.

He inspected his core and he could tell it was slightly larger and was not quite as dim as it was before. It had more lighter color to it. Kaden assumed this was normal and showed clear growth. Also all damage was gone like it never existed.

There had been no problems and it seemed reliable way to grow stronger. The only hard part was that dire beasts would not just let Kaden take their cores. Still, he now had an idea just how strong dire beasts were compared to him. With some prepartion and effort he might be able to hunt them relatively safely.

After confirming again that there were no hidden problems, Kaden proceeded to continue his studies again. Absorbing the core had refreshed him completely.

Formations were interesting. The more Kaden thought about it, the more he felt formations were everywhere. Mana acted in some way, predictable way. Was this not a natural formation? Wasn’t his mana channel basically the same as his first formation that was a straight line? Connection between outside and inside of his body?

If that was the case, why were not formation masters everywhere? Was it just the difficulty of achieving anything complex? Kaden thought about the difficulties he had had simply to create that single small line. Quite possibly. He knew he lacked control, but perhaps learning to create formations was a way to get rid of that problem.

Kaden wanted to be able to use spells and techniques some day. He was already at Channel Opening and technically he should have the minimum requirement. He had never learned any, but he knew they required precise control. How otherwise was he going to butcher all those people that just had to die and had no right to exist?! Some of them were very powerful!

Even, if he would not get far in actual creation of formations, he would still use it as training! In Kaden’s opinion, it was critical! What good was strength if you only could flail about in pointless manner?

To continue his studies, Kaden decided to give a look at the books that had been stored in the pouch. They appeared to be different from the journal. It even had seemed Angis had carried the book outside of the pouch for some reason. The books inside were mostly some kind of research. There was very little for Kaden to comprehend. What was ‘tangential mana polarity swirl’ or what did ‘gathering of external structural essence to internal switch junction’ mean? The books were far too complex where the journal was just some of Angis’s personal notes.

Despite containing the journal containing general information of the learning process, it wasn’t much. Kaden wondered, if he could find more learning material elsewhere. He wasn’t sure, if he would be able to become a formation master’s apprentice or if he even wanted to. He might have to kill that person at some point.

Kaden decided he would continue with basics. That was what his father, Aden, had always said. Basics was foundation of everything. Be it smithing or constructing formations. Therefore he continued to draw more of those lines, but this time he did it slowly, carefully, maintaining its quality as well as he could with the help of his inspection ability. There was no progressing anywhere until he got that part right.

He had done it already once, to some extent, but he knew he would have to do it right always and better. Otherwise his attempts at creating seals for his formations, would be faulty and thus making all of his work faulty. Kaden had not found any notes about fixing a faulty part so he was not sure, if such a thing was even possible. So as far as he knew he had always had only one chance to get it right.

In truth, if anyone had been around to observe Kaden, that person would have thought Kaden was some kind of lunatic. A dirty, barely clothed, person crawling on the ground, picking up rocks and then proceeding to scratch lines on them and an occassional shouts of joy due to some success.

Luckily for Kaden, there was no one watching.