Late in the evening, Emily drops her head on the desk, growling in frustration.

  “Wrong again,” she whines into the hard wood.

  Her attempts so far to create a sealing array have proven pletely fruitless. Having begun by testing with a fire crystal and two attributed streams of her own mana to figure out the bance of light, fire, and lightning o best restrain the baleful aura of the tooth, she used the result to try to weave together a tri-element seal. However, the first twenty-five binations all failed, even though they each required over twenty minutes of painstakingly carving tiny, intricate runes aric shapes onto a test pte of white iron.

  “You know what they say, twenty-sixth time's the charm,” Emily grumbles as she sits up, staring at the test pte, covered in faintly glowing lines filled with crystal dust.

  She frowns as she pulses mana through the pte, f the crystal dust to dislodge so she brush it off.

  “Tsk,” she clicks her tongue. “I already o use The Clod it’s only my first day back,” she mutters, frustrated at the materials she’s wasted with her experiments.

  Shaking her head, she starts iial mana into the white iron, forcibly pushing mass bato the empty space created by the engravings. The small pte of metal soourns to being a bnk ste, so Emily picks up her engraving tool again, pressing the poiip into the metal. She pours a steady stream of unattributed mana into the tool and starts the slow process of drawing another array.

  Her steady hand flows through the motions, ging the bal pte into a miniature work of art. After she’s happy with the engraving, Emily pces dowool and reaches for three ramekins filled with fire, light, and lightning crystal dust. Carefully, she sprihe dust into the els oal, filliain runes with certais, mixing the powders at some points and keeping them separated at others.

  The st particles of crystal dust fall into pce, pleting the test pied releasing a small pulse of warm mana. Pushing aside the tainers of dust, Emily takes a deep breath to calm her expectations and lifts the ovoid of metal and tooth above the pte.

  “The moment of truth,” she mutters as she pces it down in a prepared groove at the tre of the array.

  The moment the two white iron surfaces make tact, the bd red mana leaking from the Mensacus is pulled downwards into the array and small streams of multicoloured mana reach up. The warm glow of fire meets the miasma first, biting at it and f it to halt its advahe bright wave of light behind draws in the miasma, pulling some of it past the fire’s line of defend sm it. Then, the cold crackle of lightning assaults the miasma, ripping it apart and mixing with it, pulling it helplessly into the array.

  “Yes!” Emily cheers with delight when she sees the corrupted mana successfully blend into her design.

  Finally, it worked! Now I have a sealing array that fuels itself using the object it’s sealing!

  Grinning madly, she leans ba her chair, satisfied. After enjoying her achievement for a few minutes, Emily calms down and siders how to save resources.

  I o reset to save all the crystals I wasted testing, but I don’t really want to have to remake the metal shell for the seal. I’ll wait till tomorrow before I reset then. I use the rest of today to look at how the corrupted mana affected bck iron.

  She pushes the sealed Mensacus aside and pulls the ks of decayed bck iron out of the drawer, preparing to study them.

  “Ah.” She pauses. “I should probably spend some time with Jules, or she’ll be knog on my door and I’ll have to deal with a grumpy girlfriend for the rest of this loop.”

  ***

  The day Emily resets with a notebook full of extra information on sealing arrays and corrupted mana. She returns to the moment the white iron shell around the Mensacus finishes cooling.

  “Right, time to do this for real.”

  She grabs her engraving tool again, along with three empty ramekins and three mana crystals of different elements. She quickly destabilises and disies all three before setting about the gruelling task of carving her array design onto the glistening white ovoid before her.

  She pulls up the design in her notes, pulling the shape and stretg it from a ft po perfectly the egg of metal, then starts trag the lines with extreme precision. Slowly and carefully, she forms the dizzying matrix of angles and shapes into the metal, without making a single mistake, her steady hand never slipping and her focus uing. After forty minutes of careful engraving, she pulls bad is the patter time befiving a satisfied nod.

  Finally, she fills the engravings with crystal powders, bringing the seal to life and trapping the cursed tooth’s influence. She smiles ohe seal is plete, pig up the warm-to-the-touch metal egg and cheg her stats. Her intelligence remains the same, signalling her success.

  “One cursed object dealt with!” she says proudly before a greedy grin slips onto her lips. “Now, time to learn about spatial entments!”

  While looking in the library for sealing spells, Emily also checked for information on spatial ste items, seeing if she could make one for herself. However, she found none of the books in the B-grade se held any information on the runes and arrays o actually make spatial items. So, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

  Cheg the time so she won’t reset to before pleting the seal again, Emily pulls her market token out of the desk drawer. Browsing through the options, she selects a few different types of ste items and pces orders for them, draining her points quickly. Her points fall below two hundred after buying five spatial items of varying prices, so she stands up and leaves her room, heading to the hub to collect them.

  The clerk that serves her gives her a look of fusion mixed with envy as she collects her purchases, and she sooles ba her room to ihe items. Rubbing her hands together iement, she pces the most plicated ste item in the tre of the desk. It’s a thick bracelet with a body made from a mix of bd white iron, simir to Jenny’s but far less artistic. Also, unlike Jenny’s, it has four lesser space crystals embedded around it, allowing for a rge space within.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  [Spatial Ste Bracelet]

  [Rank:] D

  [Description:] A bracelet taining a holder-locked pocket dimension.

  [Effect:] Allows the user to freely access a severe cubed pocket dimension.

  _____

  “Hmmm, it’s the same rank as Oscar’s temporary bags. I guess the size of ste space is what determines rank?” Emily mumbles, gng at the other items on her desk and finding all of them only ranked E.

  “Yeah, thought so.”

  Turning her focus back to the bly named bracelet, she closes her eyes and probes it with her magical senses. She follows the mana flow from the crystals through the surrounding runes, the strawisting of spad mana. However, as she is the spell, she starts feeling a burning pain in her cortex and her perception is forced back.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  User has taken damage from intense mental strain.

  -20 hp

  _____

  A trickle of blood runs down her , which she quickly wipes while frowning at the bracelet.

  “Damn, I was hoping that wouldn’t happen,” she mutters with a sigh, pushing the bracelet aside. “I hope these aren’t all above sed circle.”

  Emily tries the ste item, a D rank holder-locked ring, and receives another backsh.

  “Ah, fuck!” She csps her head as a splitting pain runs through it and blood drips from her eyes.

  It takes ten minutes for the pain to fade, and she decides not to try aem without healing first. She moves away from her desk, settling down on her bed aating for a few hours, letting the flow of mana and maa slowly soothe her damaged cortex. Her health rises quickly, much faster than when rec from physical injuries, and soourns to her desk tain.

  Let’s work from the bottom up instead.

  Emily grabs a small silken pouch with a glistening purple crystal attached at the drawstring, and threads stitched around it to form runes.

  Well that’s an iing alternative to engraving.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  [Small Ste Pouch]

  [Rank:] E

  [Description:] A drawstring pouch taining an expanded space.

  [Effect:] Holds a freely accessible, ore cubed pocket dimension.

  _____

  She focuses on her magical senses, falling into the inner ws of the twisted space within the bag. She receives ance from the item this time, and fortably falls into a trance of observation, trag the weavings of the spell and filling her notes with fresh data and runes.

  After extrag every piece of useful information from the bag in a passive state, she starts it while passing items in and removing them, analysing the process iail. It takes a full hour for Emily to be satisfied with her notes from the poud to toss it aside. , she tries the lowest rank item, an E-rank holder-locked neckce with ore squared of space.

  As she starts iigating it, she starts to feel pushback, although not as forceful as with the others, but she still ’t fully analyse the spell’s ws. She clicks her tongue in frustration, but still spends an hour trying to skirt around the backsh.

  Emily’s fasated by the ges in rune form that binds the item to a single user. She extracts as muformation, about the runes involved and the ges made to them, from the neckce as possible. After finishing with it, she g the st item on her desk, a D ranked pouch.

  I think this is gonna hurt, but only one way to firm.

  She closes her eyes and pushes her magical senses into the bag, but feels immediate, violent pushback. Instantly, she withdraws her senses, opening her eyes to a slight ache in her head, but only a few points of damage.

  “Okay. So, anything D ranked and above is too advanced for me to analyse right now. At least I know I pull out before receiving the full backsh even on higher ranked ss. I just have the signs of it happening quickly,” she mutters to herself disappointedly. “There go my pns for making expensive spatial items. I guess I’ll have to move on to spells soohan expected.”

  Emily’s disappoi doesn’t st long, as the moment she thinks about colleg more free spells, she quickly bounces back. She spends the rest of the reset designing aing spells for a spatial ste item. She activates The Clock again the day, returning to a few seds after finishing the Mensacus’ seal.

  She leaves her room, making her way back to the hub.

  “Hello, how I help you?” the clerk behind the ter asks as she approaches.

  “How many first and sed circle fire spells do you sell?” Emily asks back with aed grin.

  ***

  The m, after finishing her business in frozen time, Emily joins her friends for breakfast. They eat as Emily tells them about the expedition iail, and as they’re all getting up to leave, Emily stops Ivor.

  “Hey, big guy. Are you free to look at the shadow boa today?” she asks excitedly.

  “Sure!” he signs back with a smile. “Should I book a b for us to use for a few days?”

  “Ah, you do that?” Emily asks in surprise.

  “Yeah. The bs are open for private research for a small daily fee.”

  “Oh, cool. Let me know how much it costs, and I’ll pay half. Shall we go after lunch?”

  “Sounds good. See you ter,” Ivns before stepping into a transportation room.

  Emily waits for a few seds before entering the empty room herself.

  I guess I work on my creations for the m then! Actually… I should probably look at my css schedule again and work out which lessons I still want to go to.

  “Urgh,” she groans at the thought as she s through space.

  ***

  Once again back at her desk, Emily pulls out her css list token and is some mana, opening the menu in her mind to browse. She navigates to the current css tab and reviews her timetable.

  I think I’ll skip today’s magibat. I want a little more time to process which of these new spells I actually want to ie into my fighting. I’m not too sure the css will be very helpful for me from now on. I think sparring with Agnes would be a better way to spend my time. I should find a way to get her to give me a few hours a week again, then drop magibat.

  She sits back, bitihumb as she ptes and taps the fingers of her other hand rhythmically on the desk.

  My lesson with her is tomorrow, so I try to talk to her then. I’m sure she’ll want a spar after my return from The Gde to see if I’ve improved, and I have a lot of oys to try out.

  She smirks at the thought of her newly filled spellbook and navigates to the avaible courses tab .

  Let’s see… Artefact crafting sounds iing: an intermediate or advanced css that requires engraving, magic theory, a studies. It could be useful for messing with the Mensacus. I’m signing up.

  She registers for the css straight away and he lesson will be in a week.

  Alright, is arrays. I should probably go to at least one lesson to see if it's different from my individual research, but I don’t think it will be that helpful. Spell creation... Hmmm… Yeah, that could be useful to see their method.

  The two csses are added to her list, and she closes out the course list, satisfied for now.

  “Nothing else looks iing,” she mutters to herself, turning around and staring at the damaged equipment on her workbench. “Now, let’s get some repairs done so I be at my best fomorrow!”