Chapter 417 Found One!

It was not the best solution but hiring a blacksmith for a whole month, a small workshop with a smithy and enough workspace to engrave runic constellations and to store runic solutions properly, followed by all necessary materials was a lot cheaper than creating a temporary group with a blacksmith and an Alchemist.

The blacksmith he hired was not as good as Beran, otherwise, he would belong to the Forging Association, but he was still much better than Nial.

As for the runic solutions Nial bought, most of them were rather common, and there were only a few unique runic constellations he would require for special runic constellations.

Nial accepted a total of 30 C-rank Runicier Missions. Most of them were about the creation of a single customized runic weapon, which made things very easy for Nial.

As long as he paid attention to the requirements of the client, he could finish forging a single customized runic weapon within a few hours. In exchange, his pay would be extraordinarily high.

Nial had calculated how much profit he would make by completing each of the 30 C-Rank Runicier Missions, and the result was quite satisfying.

Some custom weapons required Nial to learn new runic constellations but that was not really difficult because he was given permission to the library of the Runicier association as a certified Master Runicier.

He read various books, engraved the runic constellations he had to learn in his mind and he studied them for a few hours after engraving them numerous times on a piece of paper.

When he reached a perfection grade of more than 85%, he would start engraving them on the custom runic armaments and complete the missions one after another.

Meanwhile, Nial studied a lot and he got to know a bunch of new ingredients as well. It was quite helpful, especially since he got to know several things about new runic constellations.

Until now, Nial had only gotten to know Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced runic constellations but the library of the Runicier association had also books related to Superior and Ancient runic constellations.

The difficulty of learning them was enormous and Nial didn't dare to attempt engraving them yet, whether it was on a piece of paper or somewhere else.

He wanted to become more proficient in engraving complex Advanced runic constellations before he would dare to engrave Superior runic constellations, let alone Ancient runic constellations.

Many of the runic constellations he found seemed to be made out of several layers of miniature runic constellations that had been morphed into a single giant runic constellation.

Their power was manyfold higher than anything Nial had created on his own by combining runic constellations, which was easy to tell according to the complexity and layers of lines the higher-ranked runic constellations required.

'So basically...Superior and Ancient runic constellations are a chaotic mess of Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced runic constellations?' Nial concluded when he finished the last of the 30 C-rank Runicier Missions he had accepted.

He received the contributions points for completing the missions and ended up becoming even richer than before.

Afterward, it was time for him to continue refining his body using parts of the massive amount of contribution points he had accumulated. As for the lovely wingless Gryphon Ryu, he was granted special permission that allowed him to fly around and complete missions just like others.

Ryu had been bored to death. Thus, he learned how to read and write in the universal language. By using his darkness affinity, he learned how to communicate with others.

Nial was impressed by his companion's intelligence which had increased by leaps and bounds. He was pretty sure that the wingless Gryphon hadn't been as intelligent before meeting him as he was right now. Ryu had never been stupid but there was still a difference between being an intelligent monster to find prey and survive and having the capability to learn how to communicate using letters.

If Ryu would overcome the obstacle of being able to make only a select set of sounds and go beyond that, he would definitely be able to speak in the future, and that was what impressed Nial the most.

His partner was basically better than some beings of another race, whether it was combat, the use of his affinity, or the ability to communicate with others.

That was also why Nial was seldom worried whenever Ryu left him every now and then to finish some Guild missions, which helped him to learn how to control his darkness affinity better.

Funnily enough, everyone who saw Ryu would automatically connect him to Nial. Thus, Nial was rewarded with the contribution points his wingless Gryphon would usually earn when completing missions.

When Ryu needed something, Nial would buy his companion whatever was required but it looked like Ryu completed missions because it was fun not to earn anything other than a higher proficiency with the darkness affinity.

Ryu was already fully matured and he had yet to master what made him special; his mutation through which he gained the darkness affinity seed.

If not for the darkness affinity seed, Ryu would have to attempt challenging his limits to further mutate or to evolve his bloodline and become a higher existence.

Nial wanted to help Ryu to evolve because it would be helpful for everyone but it was certainly not easy to help evolve a unique existence such as a darkness-type mutated and wingless Gryphon.

There were too many uncertain variables and Nial's knowledge about how to evolve monsters was not exactly profound either. Thus, he was doing his research whenever he had time, which was not often.

He was troubled with the Refinements of Imperfectia and searching for new abilities to bind to his Mana core.

The wide variety of abilities to choose from was shocking and there were many abilities that attracted Nial's interest but he didn't want to be forced to focus on advancing his abilities after advancing to the Deux rank.

It would consume too much of the time he would rather spend advancing in his ranks, studying or engraving runic constellations.

That was also why Nial didn't rush binding abilities to his mana core just to advance in the ranks. He wanted to receive long-term benefits, which is why he accepted advancing at a slower pace to amass long-term gains.

And it was not as if he did nothing either. Completing the 10,000 Refinements of Imperfectia before advancing to the Deux rank would be his preferable goal, especially since the size of the Mana sea that was created at the Deux rank was directly proportional to the potential of the host, the bigger the size the higher the potential and vice versa.

This should include his physique's condition and future potential. Thus, Nial had all the time in the world to improve and create the best possible foundation.

Despite the time he was given it was not as if Nial would dare to slack off. On the contrary, he worked as hard as possible to improve as quickly as he could to make sure that he would never be pressured by the most threatening curse in existence; time crunch.

In the following three months, Nial completed 150 Refinements of Imperfectia, he improved his work as a Runicier, earned lots of contribution points, and also made a habit to browse through all the shops in the Alliance city every two weeks when the ability crystals were restocked.

Nial had yet to find anything even though his Mana Core had often reacted when he passed through the shops. He just never found the reason for his Mana Core to react like this.

As such, he could be considered to be fortunate when his Mana Core began to wreak havoc the moment his fingers closed around a specific ability crystal in his hands.

It was a small ability crystal and didn't seem to be special.

Out of all the ability crystals he had inspected until now, the ability crystal he was holding right now was quite ordinary.

[Mental Control] was the name of the ability stored inside the crystal. It sounded both meaningful and plain, especially if one considered that the ability crystal originated from a dungeon at the Origin rank.

Everyone could conquer the dungeon, no matter what rank they were at and it was easy to conquer it.

"How much for the [Mental Control] ability crystal?" Nial thus asked, not expecting that he would have to pay too much.

It was just a low-ranked ability crystal that could be easily procured as long as one found the correct Origin-rank dungeon.

"Are you sure that you want to learn [Mental Control]? It may not seem like a powerful ability at first but after upgrading it will be extremely powerful. That's why many desire it as one of their abilities, just to end up miserable when they find out how difficult it is to actually upgrade this ability!" The merchant cautioned the blind youth. He chose to speak facts instead of trying to lure a potential customer to make easy money.

Nial frowned when he heard what the merchant said but it was not as if the man's words would change his opinion.

"How much would it cost?" He repeated his question, just for his breath to hitch in his throat when the merchant answered with a sigh.

"..."

"What did you say??"

**

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