"Isn't this just knowing how to draw...?" Cronix muttered as he read further into the book

So far everything about formations felt like drawing a certain pattern a certain way. It honestly didn't feel like it was going to be difficult in the slightest.

Cronix didn't even finish the book when he grabbed a pencil and a sheet of paper from his bag, he was going to create his very first formation.

Formations didn't need any specific material to create one, which was one of the reasons why they seemed so simple to create.

Since we're drawing now, let's choose this one. This would be the easiest to sell.

In the book of formations there was one formation that caught his eye. Its name was the Energy Sensing Array.

As its name implied, the energy sensing array sensed energy. This ability could be incredibly useful in the mines, where finding crystals were mostly done by luck.

Cronix couldn't hold back a smile as he entertained the thought of selling these in the mines, imagining all the crystals he could earn that way.

Once I'm rich, I'm leaving Alktarsha to find my memories.

Cronix forcefully pulled himself from his thoughts and put the pencil on the sheet. He drew the formation as the book presented it, it only took a minute.

He then gathered the surrounding elements and infused them inside the formation as a little test. What Cronix expected to happen was for the formation to brighten up and activate.

But reality was cruel, instead of activating, or even brightening up, a high pitch sound appeared for a millisecond and before Cronix could process anything, the formation exploded in his face.

The explosion wasn't powerful, it was small and weak, but it still caught Cronix by surprise, which caused him to jump and tilt his chair back enough for it to fall.

There was naturally a reason why not everyone was trying to create their own formations. Cronix was stupid for not realizing this earlier.

Most people in the world don't create formations because of their difficulty. Formations weren't only about drawing, they were about structure, and how the energy inside worked together.

There was also more to formations than just magic could accomplish, but how could Cronix know anything about this?

The crow flew in from the living room and landed on Cronix's head, between his horns, it pecked at his ear.

Cronix ignored the crow, stood up from the floor, and fixed his chair. He grabbed one of the remaining traces of the exploded paper, and frowned.

So, none of my magic even entered the formation.

From what he could sense, the paper mainly exploded because the paper couldn't stand the magic, nothing else.

He had to admit he severely overestimated himself and underestimated formations.

Cronix maybe would've had a better time if he actually finished the book, he only read the introductory chapter and went to work.

It was like a pianist only reading about a piano, then thinking they were an expert. It was pure stupidity.

Cronix made his first decent move in a while, and grabbed the book, he was going to read it completely.

It took him about an hour to fully read the thin book, and as it turned out, Cronix deeply misunderstood formations.

If you wanted to even think about creating formations, you needed to know how to use mental energy to create the basic structure of any formation or it wouldn't work.

There was also some other information such as what materials should be used to increase the quality of the formation or how some formations are deprived from other formations to create a weaker, cheaper version, and then mass produced, like with magic bags.

But the best thing he found was the way to kind of use mental energy, although it wasn't directly stated, by using the little hints provided when going through some formations, he sorted it out his own method.

It should be like this...

Cronix first put his legs into a criss-cross position so he could be more comfortable, he then closed his eyes and blocked out everything, even the crow, who was pecking at his horns.

He cleared all his thoughts and focused on the inner workings of his body, the sound of his heart, or the rhythmic pattern of his breathing.

As he went through these motions he slowly started to feel a faint energy going through his body, it wasn't magic, but something different.

He followed its movements through his body, and slowly started to direct it.

He didn't do anything drastic like directing it out of his body, but he increased the speed of the cycle.

Every cycle Cronix increased the speed and only when he circled the energy 15 times through his body did he try doing something different.

The reason Cronix increased the speed was for he could create a slingshot effect, so on the 16th cycle instead of turning like it usually did he directed the energy through his fingertips, which were following the motion of the energy the whole time.

When he directed the energy to his fingertips, he extended his arm towards the lantern on the desk, his fingers were also pointed towards the lantern, the energy shot out of his body and through his fingertips as planned.

Its direction was towards the lantern and it quickly collided with it. The fire inside was extinguished and the lantern itself was knocked off the desk, like it was launched.

The crow was startled and let out a croak, the lantern shattered when it hit the ground, and when the energy left through Cronix's fingertips he opened his eyes and saw it all.

"It actually worked!"

Cronix's breathing was heavy, he felt exhausted, but his eyes were bright. He felt proud, this was him creating a foundation for his future.

Unfortunately he overexerted himself, and it didn't take long for his eyes to droop and his mind to wander to other things, as he passed out.

For the next few days Cronix worked on his mental energy. Only stopping to eat, sleep, and use the bathroom.

While my control is still very bad, one use no longer causes me to pass out, I even have the energy to use it up to two to three times.

Cronix also went back to the book, and went back to the energy sensing array. The energy sensing array took 15 strokes to create.

Each stroke has to be filled with mental energy so that's five days of time.

Cronix didn't waste time, he cycled the energy throughout his body and created the slingshot effect, he directed it into the pencil and through the lead, creating the first stroke.

After one stroke he needed to rest, while he could do it multiple times a day, he couldn't do it constructively.

While he rested, he brought out four orbs of different colors from the inside of his body, these orbs were his stars.

Cronix's first star was red, his second star was orange, his third star was yellow, and his fourth star, although not fully completed, but very close, was white.

I've been too focused on my mental energy, I still have to work on my way up the magic path if I don't want what happened last time to happen here as well.

He started absorbing the surrounding magical energy into his stars.

Three hours later he created the second stroke, and the cycle repeated. This cycle was going to last for five days.

The first two days passed quickly, but Cronix started feeling dizzy.

The third day passed soon after, but it felt a lot slower than the first two, his head also began hurting.

The fourth day was the same, but something special did happen, the white fourth star Cronix worked so hard for was finally completed.

A small magic aura was being released by the star. But Cronix didn't get to fully enjoy the feeling of the star being completed, because shortly after his body failed him and he passed out.

On the fifth day, nothing happened, Cronix slept through the entire day.

But as he slept, his mental energy slowly started to recover, and by the end of the day, not only was it fully recovered, but it was stronger too!

It was on the sixth day when he was finally able to finish the formation.

This whole cycle wasn't healthy in the slightest, but I guess it had its benefits.

His control over mental energy had improved over the week, and he only had to cycle for 10 times now, not only that but he could now complete four strokes a day.

He smiled at his completed formation, a week's worth of effort right in front of him. Cronix gathered the water elements and splashed them all over his face to keep him awake.

Cronix then infused his mental energy into the formation, he was eager to see the fruits of his labor, but reality really seemed to hate him.

Instead of the formation activating, it only flickered for a moment before exploding. All the color drained from Cronix's face, and the dark circles under his eyes became more apparent.

"It... it just... it simply..." Cronix couldn't even form a sentence.

He felt like crying, he spent a whole week on this formation only for it to only flicker in the end and it didn't even let him see what was wrong before it killed itself.

Cronix grabbed one of the little shreds of paper left, there was only one bright side that Cronix could find and it came from this shred of paper.

The paper didn't explode because it couldn't handle the power, this meant that the formation really did take all the power, but just couldn't use it in any way, so it collapsed on itself.

Cronix let out a bitter laugh, before he followed the formation's example and collapsed onto his blankets.

There was something about the formation that he knew was missing, but in the end Cronix had to stop.

While he needed time to think, he also needed money. He had spent the last week staying at home, but he still needed to pay for rent and materials.

So the following day, Cronix left his house and walked through town, towards the forest. When he got there he followed the trail to the mountain where the mine was located.

He picked up a pickaxe that was in a bin outside the mine, at the entrance or the adit as it was called.

The mine had five levels, each level had had four tunnels, the north, east, south, and west.

Cronix usually worked at the third level, in the north tunnel and today wasn't any different.

Whenever Cronix was in the mines, he always felt a bit uncomfortable, like he was being restricted.

What made it worse, was he never took off his cloak to hide the 'Demon' features, and it felt like his wings were being restrained.

Compared to the feeling of being free in the sky, being in a mine felt like being in a cage. But at the moment, he didn't even feel any of these feelings at the moment.

In fact he wasn't even entirely aware of his surroundings, he was mostly reliant on his muscle memories to work all the motions. His mind was on the energy sensing array the whole time, trying to understand it.

His mind eventually became focused again after five hours when he found a magic crystal. Cronix dropped off the crystal in the bin and had his findings recorded by the person in charge.

When he got back to the adit, the administrator there gave him 25% of his findings as payment.

As he passed through the adit, he looked at the security formation. It kept people from stealing any magic crystals they've mined.

He stopped to observe the formation, it was a rather basic formation, and Cronix could understand a bit of it.

He saw the way the energy flowed through each line, connecting the lines and giving the formation purpose.

The thing was the more Cronix looked at the formation he realized what he's been doing wrong.

It seems like I subconsciously still have the same mindset I had when I created the first formation, or how else would I forget about structure?

The way the lines connected and overlapped each other was important for how the formation worked, and if he didn't the energy wouldn't have anywhere to travel, so like his formation did, it would collapse on itself.

Cronix seemed to lose track of time as he studied the formation and the ways everything worked, "Hello, are you okay?" A voice awakened him from his stupor.

Cronix looked up, it was just an average miner, he began to nod his head and voice out his welfare, when a young voice interrupted him.

"Father!"

It was a young boy who ran up to the miner and hugged him. There was a woman behind the boy. Cronix can tell by a glance that this was the miner's family.

The miner completely forgot about his worry for Cronix when his family came into sight, but Cronix didn't mind or even notice.

A peculiar light flash in his eyes, as he watched this family and a soft but bitter chuckle came out of his mouth. Cronix slowly retreated from this scene, he didn't want to see it any longer.

Cronix didn't rush home like he usually did, instead he was slow, after seeing that family an inexplicable feeling was rushing into his body and filling his mind.

He usually didn't have these feelings, but his mind had been drained, there was nothing guarding him from these emotions.

From an outsider's perspective he was absorbing the scenery as he walked and looked around, but his mind was flooded with thoughts, and his body was in auto-pilot.

He only came back to reality when he stopped in the front door of his shack-like house. He sighed and opened the door.

The first thing Cronix saw was the crow plucking its feathers near a window. Cronix slowly made his way towards it. The crow looked up from its feathers and at Cronix; it didn't move.

When Cronix was right in front of the crow, he quickly wrapped his arms around its body. The crow didn't struggle, it let itself be hugged.

While it was being hugged, it suddenly felt its wings become wet. At first it was only one small spot but it quickly increased to two, then four, then six.

Cronix didn't notice when, but he realized that he started crying. This resulted in him hugging the crow tighter, right now the warmth of the crow's body was the only thing bringing him comfort.