In the next two hours, Lev had a lot more things than he knew what to do with. All of them shared the property of providing basic runes used in daily life, so they retained a lot of value. Absorbing the runes wouldn't diminish it too much either, as the various creations used ideal models that had been marginally improved over centuries. There was a lot to learn from those.

He found his team on a higher floor than he was, gathered around a powered armor. It was dark purple, designed for a specific affinity.

Gravity, Lev noted, taking in its grand appearance. Like Stargazer, the armor also radiated a presence, though even a thousand of them still wouldn't compare to his glaive's passive aura. She was just the best.

"You guys like it?" he asked after they were done inspecting.

"Of course," Kayla answered, already moving to the next Epic item. "What's there not to like?"

"The cost," Jack pointed out, avoiding a slow finger jab from the healer. "Requirements, too. It's not like any of us will be able to use it even after Master."

"It's the wrong color," Amelia added, the least interested from the start. "Nothing fiery in there."

Lev stayed quiet. He liked the color— it looked unique. The enchantments were also denser than the few other models he had seen, courtesy of gravity mana's ability to enhance certain properties, such as weight, to extreme heights. The armor was designed to capitalize on those.

"What is this?" Kayla asked, bringing his attention to a small glass case that held… an eyeball.

"Ah," Lev smiled. "It's my first time seeing a body construct. That is most likely an eye replacement that operates on light mana. You can imagine the uses."

"And that's only epic?"

"It would need something truly exotic to reach Superior," Lev shrugged. "Such as the ability to link it to one's mind and add lasers or something."

"That's rather impossible," Umbrina's voice reached them. Turning around with a smile, Lev bowed his head, his teammates following suit. "The latter, that is. Controlling it with one's mind is already a part of the eyeball."

"Impossible for now," Lev corrected cheekily. "And I'm assuming you mean willpower, not directly connected to the brain through nerves and whatever else is needed."

"Everything is only impossible until proven otherwise," she smiled back, the expression kind and warm. "And what you speak of is already possible, just…"

"Dangerous?" Lev finished for her.

"Dangerous, and pointless," she nodded. "What purpose would it serve when your willpower eventually gets even or surpasses brain power. Not to mention that the reduced effectiveness of your class's passive skills on the eye can be replicated by enchantments already," she explained and turned to his team. "I see you've found yourself some rather unique friends."

Her eyes lingered on Amelia, who was also staring back. It took some mental jogging for the swordwoman's eyes to widen, probably remembering who the rogue was. That was probably what Umbrina was waiting for, and she stepped forward to grab Amelia in a gentle hug.

"Are you well, firebug?" she asked in a tone one would expect from one's mother.

The swordswoman's hands clenched, before they relaxed and hugged her back. "I am, Aunt Umbrina."

Neither spoke, savoring the embrace after a long while.

"I'm sorry," Umbrina voiced quietly, but Amelia was already shaking her head.

"Don't be. Life is just that fleeting on Monarch. I understand better now," she smiled, no trace of sadness or bitterness on her face.

"Forcing you to stay with Orianna was truly the best decision we could've made," the older woman caressed her face before moving back a step. "It's good to see you again, especially with Lev."

Amelia nodded, though not quite understanding. "He has been a fantastic teammate so far."

Umbrina just gave her a tender smile. Less than a minute of further interaction later, she vanished without a trace, even though Lev tried his best to pierce through her invisibility.

****

"Who was that?" Kayla questioned after they returned home, now back in the couple's room.

Other than Lev, nobody had bought anything substantial, which made sense. Everything they needed, he would provide without batting an eye. His teammates only needed to limit themselves to not resorting to too strong combat equipment, and Lev even had plans to skirt that as much as possible. It was bound to be dangerous, but he was determined to give them the best possible evolutions.

"A friend of my parents," Amelia shrugged, leaving it at that.

"So," Lev changed the topic. "What did you guys buy?"

"Clothes and skin-care products," Kayla answered. "The staff gave us plenty of weird looks because, you know, someone left us with a single platinum coin to spend."

Lev didn't bother hiding his amusement, the harmless joke most certainly intended. "What else?"

"Nothing," Jack shrugged. "There wasn't much else to look for except stuff to pass time, and none of us knew which hobbies or profession to look into. Except her, I guess," he finished with a glance at Kayla.

"I already told you mine," Amelia added.

"That's not a hobby," Lev commented. "If things work out like I expect them to, we will be slotted into leading positions anyway. You need something more relaxing."

"… What can I even do?"

"How would I know?" Lev gave her a look. "Given the recent addition in my arsenal, I've even considered barrier knitting. Fire has a smaller scope, but there is still a lot you can do if you put your mind to it. It's not like you lack any physical strength to go along with the more taxing professions."

"Smithing?" Amelia considered, only to be interrupted by an incredulous Kayla.

"Knitting!?"

Instead of explaining, Lev formed a long barrier thread, as thick as his finger. One moment, it was completely rigid. He demonstrated that by flicking it hard with his finger, producing a ringing sound. Then, with a mental nudge, it became flexible, behaving like a somewhat hard thread, not dissimilar to a rope.

"There's still a lot I need to work on," he mused, spinning it in a circle, "but this can already resist the attacks of most first-threshold monsters. Neat, isn't it?"

"Wait, can't you-"

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"Yep. I plan to make my own clothes whenever I get my hands on suitable enchantments."

Jack wanted to hold the thread, so he gave it to the big guy. The Shield's face observed the thread with mild curiosity. That lasted only until Jack grabbed it from both ends and started to pull.

Nothing happened. He exerted more and more strength, and before long, he was using his body enhancement at full strength to try and break the thread.

It didn't even show any signs of strain.

"Yeah," Jack smiled, not at all disheartened by the lack of results. "A great crafting material."

Lev nodded too. "And one has to consider that this is in its base form. Plenty of treatments to improve it even further, though I have only found one of them."

"Back to professions," Amelia began once they were done. "What else can I do?"

"Teach?" Jack suggested. "Honestly seems like a worthy cause to me."

"No," the girl didn't even think before shooting the idea down. "What else?"

"Reading?" Lev suggested this time. "Or perhaps writing? You know, publish our journey or something."

"That sounds fun," Kayla piped up, a grin already on his face. "Saintess Kayla and her lackies."

"Woah, woah," Lev pretended to be offended. "First of all, give me some credit. There's no way I'm a mere lackey. At least make me a knight or something."

"Hmm," she tapped her cheek, 'deep in thought.' "Sure. You will be Lev, the Ruinous Puppet. How does that sound?"

"Puppet," he gave her a flat stare. "How exactly will you turn me into a puppet?"

She happily pointed at Jack. "With my first, meatier puppet, of course!"

****

Needless to say, Jack was red in the face after that, refusing to meet anyone's eyes, primarily because of the very long facepalm that followed.

Lev didn't stay for long, knowing his teammates were going to sleep soon. Instead, he found himself in yet another park, this one just as empty as WhiteFall's. It helped that the area was gigantic, and few remained at night.

Practice isn't cutting it. He leaned against a small tree. No progress for my general skill in ages. I clearly need to lean into more complex stuff to give it a push.

There was a lot on his mind, and most of it was still far from viable. His plan of focusing on maximum speed for Barrier Carving's evolution was now pretty much impossible if the current state of the skill was anything to go by. To combat that, he needed to do some actual enchanting for once and not copy the most convenient formations.

Fortunately, he had plenty of tools to do just that. Where everyone had received expensive powered armors or other rewards, Lev had been awarded a minor treasure. So far, he had limited himself to the pre-prepared formations for the sake of practice and experience.

It was time to move on.

Bringing out a notebook of his own, he started creating a list of all the possible avenues for creating his own formations.

Lightning and Fire converters from Dennis, which give me an efficient rune to produce both those elements, and some simple conversion runes.

Weight Increase.

Material Hardening.

Fire Shaping.

Lightning Shaping, though not as potent as the fire ones.

Controlled Enhancement and all the associated runes. A simple formation for enhancing movement with all the basic elements, as well as lightning.

Amazing connector runes.

Kinetic energy production runes and a decent formation for controlling that.

Fortress of Resilience.

Shroud of Darkness.

Flamebreath.

Flameforged Constitution.

Arcane Barriers.

Speed and Acceleration runes.

Sharpness and Piercing Runes. Spinning included.

Minor temperature control runes and other similar formations.

The options… were too numerous, which was an issue in itself. Lev didn't even know what he needed at this point, let alone what could be adjusted into his arsenal without bloating it too much.

Fortunately, he was doing pretty well as he was. Most of the planning session was for the sake of his teammates. They were going to start delving into an iron dungeon from tomorrow, the monster levels ranging from 75 to 100. The boss was also likely going to be a first-threshold monster, which would be good training.

So, Amelia's sword is already coming along nicely, and Jack's shield will also be prepared by tomorrow. Nothing for aura mages still, though I have other ideas for Kayla now. She will make good use of my new barrier rune.

Aura mages were always targeted by monsters first, mostly because their souls were the most noticeable. At least, that was the leading theory. Nobody knew for sure.

Which meant that Kayla's biggest weakness was defense. She was going to be targeted, and Lev planned to capitalize on that. With barriers that didn't shatter immediately, and he totally wasn't thinking of her Mana Barrier skill, she would be able to control the battlefield more effectively.

Jack and Amelia's job was both simple and more difficult, which was no doubt going to put more pressure on Kayla to pull her weight. Granted, none of them would blame her for letting the other three fight in her stead, but knowing the healer, she was going to want to be more active during combat. That would require more than just two basic general skills.

The first item on his mind was a simple bracer for the healer. Its shape was straightforward, having bought a few samples to observe that, and the design of the enchantment was also basic in theory.

Putting that into practice, he quickly formed a barrier bracer and started practicing carving the Arcane Barrier rune. It wasn't that difficult, and he knew that, unlike other fixed runes, he could alter this one's shape to some extent based on his understanding. How he was supposed to know which tweak did what, Lev didn't know, and neither was he interested in going down that path currently.

The rune was relatively simple. Once it was carved, he used three of his best connector runes to create three branches, each giving her access to a single round barrier without making it too easy.

Lev's goal was severalfold. The tool was meant to tax her mind in different ways, including her mastery of mana manipulation. By giving her access to three barriers instead of one, it was going to force her to use all three of them concurrently and also train her Skills in the meantime. Rapidly assessing the battlefield to make full use of their durability was also going to be necessary, a skill she needed to develop, too.

He thought about making it easier on her and reducing the number of possible barriers to two, but that didn't sit right with him. No doubt, if Kayla knew, she would ask for the maximum number of barriers. Regardless, he was going to leave the final number up to her anyway, based on how much mana she channeled and used from the slotted core.

For the core itself, he used a troll shaman core. It had a serviceable conductivity and decent reserves, though he wasn't going to let her use all of the latter freely.

Bringing the bracer closer to his eyes, he started carving. The first thing he did was create an ambient mana absorption function, which was easy. Next, the output formed, and along with it, a drain.

The drain's job was to make sure that the regeneration was much lower than the rune's full potential by leaking a major portion of it, forcing Kayla to use the formations as efficiently as possible. At the start, it was likely going to be extremely difficult, though he hoped it would count for progress towards her Mana Barrier skill.

Then came the actual formations. Arcane Barrier was a willpower rune, and luckily, he had a lot of supportive runes to control it. The first task was to set the barrier formation itself.

As was usual with such runes, the first locked 'blueprint' would be used every time mana was cycled through it. Meaning, Lev needed to lock it to only create barriers that wouldn't be too strong for a Classer. Consequently, he needed to pause the crafting to test how to make that happen.

I roughly remember how hard Amelia can hit based on the testing with her sword, he mused, summoning the longsword prototype from his ring. A lot of smashing around his weakened barriers later, he decided on a model that fit his needs.

Reaching the desired durability was easier than expected. Lev only had to reduce the mana density and mentally will it to be weaker. It was that simple.

For the next step, he carved the three control formations, taken from his armor's enhancement formation, along the bracer's length and connected them to the Arcane Barrier rune. They were responsible for controlling the movement of the barriers, providing a large range of flight despite the simplicity of the runes.

To finish things off, he also threw in a mana limiter. The final rune wasn't strictly necessary. He just wanted Kayla to struggle with filling up the barrier runes and slowly improve her control and willpower, however negligible the difference may be for the latter. It would add up.

Lev held up the now enchanted bracer and focused on recreating the runes until they were the smoothest he could manage. The need for improvement was apparent at first glance, but his mind was currently divided.

Repeatedly carving the formation was the task of the first part of his mind, the smaller of the two. The second part was focused on cycling through all the runes in his repository, noting which runes could be used in the future for more advanced versions. Nothing stood out for immediate changes, so he brought all of his attention back to the bracer.

The rune carving lasted for several minutes. Not every iteration brought any noticeable improvement, but the speed and practice were worth it. Lev knew that from experience.

In the end, an unassuming bracer with no visible runes floated in front of him. The enchantments were carved intricately inside the solidified mana, too thin to be visible unless one focused deeper. Just to fix that, Lev changed the construct's color to bright blue by adding another simple formation and created a simple feather on top of it in memory of the leafweaver eagle. Such a badass creature.

[

Tri-shield Bracer - Uncommon

]

Shields? Lev smiled. The System had apparently recognized the name he used for his round barriers and assigned it to the item.

He was quite happy with the end result.

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