Aster bursts through the final mirror like a man late to his own funeral—again.

  Now, breathless and slightly glowing, he staggers through the Artificing classroom door just as the second bell rings. Victory.

  Or at least, not immediate execution.

  The room looks the same as it has for the past month: a fantasy chemistry lab where glass vessels hum with liquid light, runes pulse like alien fireflies, and you can never be too sure which piece of equipment will kill you if you put your hand too close.

  He spots Yani waving him over from their usual station, surrounded by bubbling tubes and the kind of delicate, vicious-looking tools he’s learned not to touch under any circumstance. He trudges over, still trying to match the cheerful destructiveness of a girl who could fold a grown man in half and then lecture you about particle metaphysics.

  “Alright,” Yani says, clapping her hands like this is kindergarten and not a college where magic murder is part of the syllabus. “Today we’re working on actual practical. You’ve gone through a month of spirit theory, ideal form lectures, sentimental wax-poetry—time to actually build your first artifact from scratch.”

  Aster raises a brow. “Right. You do remember I almost set the Bloodforge on fire inserting spirit threads backwards.”

  “You’ve grown since then,” she says. “Emotionally, if not intellectually.”

  She turns toward the chaos of equipment covering their worktable. “As you’ve already learned, an artifact is more than just a weapon—it’s an entity. Something that lives between the physical and metaphysical. And when it’s forged right, it becomes a seamless extension of your combat scripture. Short term? Artifacts are the fastest way to close the power gap. Long term? They’re the reason Spirit Typing isn’t laughed off the battlefield.”

  “So, what's the catch?” Aster asks.

  “They don’t grow with you. Unless you’re lucky enough to own a self-cultivating artifact, which is rarer than a phoenix feather in a chicken coop, you’ll need to keep upgrading and refining new ones. That’s where we’ll start.”

  She taps the table. “Artifacts are built from four components: the spirit, the material, the script, and the core.”

  Aster’s eyes move to the table, where each component is laid out: a shimmering, mist-like dagger; a jagged obsidian-black claw that flickers with heat; a blank parchment tinged with gold; and a burnt-orange sphere no larger than a plum.

  “Each of these has a thousand preparation methods, and everyone changes the final outcome,” Yani says. “Today, we’re doing the basic three: material prep, spirit inscription, and core fusion. Followed by the most important part, the actual fusion of the three into a finished artifact. Most students underestimate the spirit. But you're not most students, are you?”

  Aster glances at the components of his first official artifact, then back at her. “One month ago I asked if the Nootropic Tether was a brand of vitamin water.”

  “And one month later,” she shoots back, “you’re about to perform live spirit inscription in a multi-phasic containment chamber, so I’d say we made some progress.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  She picks up the mist-dagger and holds it aloft like a priest lifting sacrament. “Here’s what really matters: most people focus on materials, since they’re expensive and flashy. Spirits can be bought cheaply, so they get overlooked. But without understanding spirit, you’ll never break past B-grade artifacts. A spirit is not just a concept. It's an entity. When we craft artifacts, we’re not just building weapons—we’re forming relationships. The spirit is the weapon. Everything else is just... bones and blood.”

  Aster blinks. “Weapon relationships. So you’re basically saying this thing needs therapy.”

  “That’s called spirit refinement,” Yani deadpans. “And it’s not a joke. Over time, if nourished, these spirits develop proto-consciousness. They remember how they were forged. Who wielded them. What they killed.”

  Aster nods. He’s heard this lecture before—but now, today, it starts to stick. After a month of being spoon-fed lessons that could make a cult shake their head, something in Aster finally starts shifting, like he’s finally seeing the spoon. Realizing it is an entity called Richard.

  She pauses, making sure he’s following. He nods.

  “You ever hear of Plato’s Realm of Forms?”

  Aster tilts his head. “The idea that everything we see is just a shadow of some perfect ideal version?”

  “Exactly,” she says, her tone softening with reverence. “Now imagine that idea wasn’t metaphor—it was infrastructure. A conceptual archive. A Node inside the Nootropic Tether.”

  Aster’s brow furrows. “You mean where Blenskop is stored?”

  “Kinda,” Yani continues, ignoring Aster’s sudden face change. “The NII space is only one of many nodes that form there. It’s like a psychic internet,” she says, “a cloud of human thought and memory that overlays both the Astral and Material planes. Every object, every concept, has an ‘ideal’ there. A template. When we create something, it naturally connects to that Form, pulled toward it by instinct.”

  She holds up the mist-blade between her fingers. “That pull is what sparks the birth of a spirit.”

  Aster stares at the blade. “So, if I make a dagger, it tries to become the perfect dagger?”

  “Yes, but not just that. The connection forms a tether, and that tether doesn’t just copy. It evolves. This dagger is striving to become its best self. Not a copy of the Form, but a contender to it. Its own version of perfection. And over time, as it’s used, it can develop its own personality. A kind of proto-consciousness.”

  Aster lets out a slow breath. “So… we don’t just make weapons. We need to also raise them?”

  “Exactly. And everything you do to that spirit, from the material you pair it with, to the wielder’s intent, shapes that resulting spirit core.”

  Yani picks up the talon next—a claw that looks like it has been ripped off a fire elemental mid-attack. “This came from a Lesser F-grade Magma Lizard. Nasty thing. Powerful magma slash technique that we’ll be imprinting into the artifact using this parchment.”

  She gestures to the blank scroll. “This is where the script comes in. Do you remember our previous lessons?”

  Aster nods. “Harvesting them from monsters, storing them in the Mind Palace. I remember.”

  “Good. This is a low-grade harvesting spell. We’ll use it to extract the Glyph embedded in this talon. Once we’ve captured it, we’ll imprint it into the spirit, allowing it to be activated by whoever wields the artifact. Low-grade stuff only holds one or two attacks, but higher grades can contain entire libraries of functions. Like my Rock Fortress.”

  She moves to the final piece: the core. The orange orb shimmers faintly in her hand.

  “The core is the heart. Harvested from a Magma Toad, bigger energy reserve, stable elemental alignment. It’s the crystallized will and power of the creature. When we embed it in the artifact, it becomes the power source. Without the core, the script can’t activate, and the spirit can’t grow.”

  Aster draws a slow, steady breath. “And the point of this is to craft a Lesser E grade dagger?”

  “Close. Greater E, if we’re lucky. Which would sell for a near-month's’ worth of Faith. A decent start for a baby artificer like yourself.”