Warlock Apprentice

Time flew by.

Two days later, Angor exited his basement lab while rubbing his swollen eyes. The space storage had moved to the top of his task list. During these days, he carefully went over everything, including materials and detailed crafting steps.

After making sure everything was correct, he rested in his bedroom. When he woke up, he went to check the plan again before finally getting to work.

This one was different compared to everything he made before. It was easy in terms of mana management. He only needed to create a covenant rune in the end. However, the requirement for pacing and detail maintenance was the hardest one he had ever seen.

He had to ensure the correct time length for each step, down to every second, and the weight of materials in each spoon, down to micrograms. Also, he needed to maintain the right temperatures and moisture…

He left the camera of his tablet switched on so that he could check his moves later.

The first try failed.

From the video, he saw his spoon moving one second slower than the instruction of his book, which caused an unstable addition to the greyspace microbes in the cauldron.

The second one failed again.

Another problem with his movement speed.

The third, the fourth… and the eighth.

When the moon was already high in the sky, he finally managed to create the infrastructure of his space storage after spending thirty percent of his microbes.

He stretched his spirit feelers into the lump of mud and felt the extra, unstable space in it. According to the book, the space would turn solid in two minutes, by which he could consider his work successful.

But he only had two minutes to shape the “mud” into the final form and complete the other steps. He planned to make a finger ring out of it. Yet he had spent most of his mana and stamina during the day, and he still needed to apply the covenant rune on the item. He no longer had time to spare to follow the original plan.

In the end, he simply rubbed the “mud” into an orb and added some ocean waves as decoration.

Something that looked like a child’s toy marble shined and landed in his hand.

The marble was pure black with several random lines drawn on it. However, a stable inner space already existed inside.

Angor sighed in relief. The Condense step went in more of a hustle than he imagined, but the final outcome was fine.

Well, maybe not. The water motif he added was kind of a terrible choice.

Putting that aside, he was very satisfied with the storage space.

He had not established the covenant yet, but he could already inspect the inner storage, which was only possible for the item’s owner once the covenant was set. Without the master’s consent, no one else could take items from the storage.

“Three square meters… yes, the max possible amount.”

To prevent waste of materials, he had been using the least amount possible, which was expected to grant him a storage space of 1 to 3 square meters.

But by using the core of a Black Dense Stone which pushed the estimated outcome to its max, Angor successfully attained the upper limit for his product.

He was going to sell the black marble instead of keeping it. He would make something better for himself later.

He feared that the poor design of the marble would hinder its price. Besides, the marble object wasn’t easy to handle, so he thought about that problem for a moment. He then found several metal parts from his box and forged them into a pair of butterfly wings. Once he was done, he slotted the marble inside a socket between the wings and made the whole item into a necklace.

He named the necklace “Dusk Butterfly” and put it aside.

The Rainbow Beads he saw during the grand auction, which was also a space storage, had 10 square meters inside, which was the largest possible volume for low-tier space storage items.

That rainbow necklace was sold at 50 thousand magic crystals.

Considering this, Angor believed that his “Dusk Butterfly” could at least earn him ten thousand or so.

He didn’t need much time to make this item. A space storage was expensive only because of the lack of greyspace microbes, as well as the difficulty of actually finding an alchemist who could craft a space storage.

The microbes Angor used were already pretty costly, if sold to others. Besides, he had enough books that told him how to do his work.

With the experience, he could craft more of the items with much more ease.

Following the recorded video of his first success, he did it again while referring to the video and swiftly created his second space storage.

To make his work more convenient, he still shaped the item into a marble; a gray one this time.

Again, he embedded the marble into a necklace shaped like a pair of butterfly wings and named it “Silvery Butterfly”.

The Silvery Butterfly had 5 cubic meters inside, which was the best he could do using the microbes he was willing to spend. He estimated that this one would get him 20 to 30 thousand magic crystals.

…

Three days later, at the end of Month of Soothing Wind.

Angor had created five space storage items in different colors: black, gray, white, orange, and pink.

The Dusk Butterfly only had 3 cubic meters, while the other four all had 5.

The success meant he no longer had to worry about his debt, and he felt greatly relieved. The five items were surely enough to pay his debt. He might even sell them at an auction, which would get him more than 100,000 crystals.

As for the other 150,000 crystals for Sunders… he originally planned to delay it as much as he could. Now that he had such an easy way to make money, he changed his mind.

Besides, he wasn’t going to spend his own microbes. As he recalled, Sunders collected tons of them when constructing the Sorcerer’s Garden.

Angor finally realized that alchemy was a giant money-making machine, first-hand.

After resting for a day, he returned to his lab to make a final space storage for himself.

Naturally, he would want to make the best one for his own use. Moreover, he wished to make something more than a space storage, something that possessed multiple effects.

There was a lot of room to add stuff beside the covenant rune. With the help of an Energy Stabilizer, he could even apply a magic array on it.

He had to do something to bypass the two-minute restriction though. Considering the time needed to use Condense and shape the item, he had less than two minutes to draw his runes.

Any alchemist would consider it impossible to craft a multi-purpose space storage. However, Angor could find many example cases from his alchemy books which could help him. He couldn’t read them before due to his lack of experience. But now, he could finally put them to use.

There was one such example that explained how to add new effects to a space storage by attuning inserted runes synchronously.

For example, when Angor was applying a rune to his ring, he could cast two Hands of Spell, where one would keep working on the rune while the other one began to craft a space gem.

During the finishing touch of the rune, he had to have the extra gem ready. He would then embed the gem onto the ring. Thereafter, he should land the last line of the rune on the gem and apply the covenant rune on the gem instead, before condensing the completed item lodged with a gem.

There were many conditions to finish such a job.

First, a large amount of mana, which was easily manageable using an Energy Stabilizer. However, this meant burning money.

The second was multitasking. He had to maintain two Hands of Spell and ensure both hands performed flawless jobs. It wasn’t hard either; any wizard who could do deep meditation could split his or her logic into two. Angor only needed some practice beforehand.

The third requirement was time management. He had to proceed with two tasks at the same time while ending them both at the same time. It was just a math problem—he might set up an alert in his tablet which kept him informed of the progression of his tasks at all times.

All in all, the problems only looked complicated. If he tackled them one by one… he didn’t actually need much effort.

An ordinary alchemist might back off at the challenge, but Angor wouldn’t. After all, he had all the available textbooks and the hologram tablet for help.

With his great ambition in mind, he started making plans for his invention.