The cave was in a terrible state, its floor littered with wood, stones, and bone fragments. In the middle of the mess, a young boy sat with his attention fixed on the work before him.
"Damn it!"
Lican muttered and threw the piece in his hand aside. He had been at this for days, hunting beasts for their blood and cores while experimenting with his inscriptions. He had already carved the bone beads, but not a single one had been successfully engraved. Every experiment had ended in failure.
The worst part was that he was practically creating this item blindly. He had never attempted anything like it before, and every rune required extreme concentration to engrave properly. One careless movement could ruin the entire piece.
The bracelet he envisioned would consist of fifteen beads, with the last one being slightly larger than the others. This larger bead would serve as the central vessel, containing the Essence Reservoir Seal.
Even preparing the beads had been a nightmare. Shaping the bones into smooth, rounded beads had cost him hundreds of bone fragments before he finally managed to produce fifteen that met his standards. Now that he had the beads ready, the real challenge had only just begun.
His goal wasn't simply to engrave a different rune onto each bead. He wanted every bead to accommodate at least four different inscriptions, allowing him to store and use several runes without carrying talisman papers everywhere.
However, that was only part of the design. He also needed to create a spiritual channel connecting the beads to the larger one, which he had named the mother bead. This channel would allow the energy stored within the Essence Reservoir Seal to reach the other inscriptions, supplying them with the power they needed to function.
But how was he supposed to create such a channel?
He picked up another bead and continued carving the rune into its surface. After days of repeated failures, he had finally begun to improve. The countless attempts at drawing a single rune had gradually sharpened his skills, allowing him to carve the patterns with greater precision.
Once he finished, he gently blew away the remaining bone dust covering the surface and examined his work. The smooth, intricate carvings caught his attention, their patterns almost mesmerizing to behold.
A small smile crept across his face. At least, he was finally getting somewhere.
After so many ups and downs, today was finally the day of assembly. Lican arranged his tools before picking up the white paper and the round bone pieces. He aligned the fourteen beads with the mother bead.
Let's draw the Essence Reservoir Rune first.
Picking up the slightly larger bead, he took a deep breath and got to work. He began the engraving, slowly moving his fingers as he guided each stroke, carefully pausing at every intersection to ensure the lines connected properly.
His brows furrowed as a drop of sweat trickled down his neckline. After about thirty minutes of continuous precision, his brows still furrowed with concentration, he finally lifted his fingers. They trembled with relief.
Blowing away the bone dust, he lifted the bead and tilted it, allowing the light to reflect off the carving. The engraving was extremely shallow in some places and deeper in others.
Lican breathed in. He wasn't sure whether it would work yet, but he trusted his handiwork. He checked the carving again, knowing this wasn't the only rune that would go into the bead. He still needed to add an Armor Reinforcement Rune, along with other runes on the remaining beads.
He turned to look at the fourteen beads still waiting to be engraved.
And he hadn't even finished one yet.
Dusting his hands, Lican continued with the engraving. The Armor Reinforcement Rune was a special type of rune that reinforced objects by drawing energy from different sources. However, like other runes, it had its own levels, and each level had its limitations.
The one he was engraving was only capable of containing Level One runes. If he attempted to use a Level Two rune on it, the entire structure could break down in a terrifying manner, potentially damaging the object or even harming its user.
After an hour of repeatedly engraving the fourteen beads, Lican finally selected four secondary runes that he had become proficient at inscribing: the Windstride Seal, the Mountain-Breaking Seal, the Hidden-Sky Seal, and the Blackmist Seal.
The Windstride Seal enhanced movement speed and agility, while the Mountain-Breaking Seal increased physical strength. The Hidden-Sky Seal concealed one's presence, making it more difficult for others to detect them, while the Blackmist Seal released a dense mist that obstructed vision.
These were the four runes Lican was most confident in inscribing. He engraved them across two beads, carefully distributing the runes to ensure their lines did not interfere with one another.
Each bead could contain a maximum of four runes. With the mother bead and the two engraved beads accounted for, he still had twelve beads without any secondary runes.
Lican picked up the clean, white cord, which resembled a thin tendon, and began assembling the bracelet. He threaded the beads together, carefully arranging them before positioning the larger mother bead at the center.
Finally, he secured the cord and examined his work.
The fifteen ivory-white bone beads rested in a circular arrangement, their surfaces polished to a faint sheen. Each bead was round and uniform in shape, except for the slightly larger mother bead at the center. A white cord bound them together, holding the bracelet in place. Though it appeared ordinary at first glance, every bead had been carefully engraved, its delicate markings giving the bracelet the appearance of an ancient treasure.
The only difference was that this particular treasure had been made by Lican himself.
Now came the activation.
He had engraved the runes directly onto the beads without using any materials to assist the process. Under normal circumstances, he would have used his rune brush to trace the engravings and activate the materials. This time, however, he intended to use the Essence Reservoir Rune to absorb and contain the energy released by the materials he would be using: beast blood and Beast Cores.
Carrying the bracelet, he walked towards the spot where he had mixed the beast blood. Several crushed pieces of Beast Cores lay nearby, each possessing different properties. Among them were the cores of beasts known for their defensive abilities, which he had specifically selected to strengthen the bracelet's protective qualities.
After examining the residue left behind by the mixture, Lican nodded in satisfaction. He cleared the surrounding area before picking up his brush, dipping it into the blood, and beginning to draw a formation on the ground.
As the formation took shape, the ground began to emit wisps of smoke at the intersections of the lines. Lican continued drawing until the final stroke connected with the first, completing the diagram.
He placed the jar in the center of the formation.
The reaction was immediate.
The blood inside the jar began to stir. Its surface rippled, and the liquid seemed to boil, yet it did not produce the usual signs of heat. It was as though something within the blood was stirring it from the inside.
Lican nodded at the reaction before carefully dropping the bracelet into the jar.
Instead of sinking beneath the liquid, the bracelet floated on the surface. It began to spin, slowly at first, then continued turning in a steady circle.
Lican's brows furrowed.
This was his first attempt at creating something like this. He had never studied the art of treasure refinement, nor did he possess any proper instructions on how to combine engraved runes with external materials to produce a functional treasure.
However, he had seen a similar method in one of the books he had read. The technique was originally intended to create a curse hex, but rather than following the method for its intended purpose, Lican had borrowed the principle behind it and adapted it to his own needs.
Instead of creating a curse hex, he was using the method to refine a bracelet, combining rune engraving with curse seals in the hope of creating something entirely different.
Whether it would work or not remained to be seen.