CH818

He made a small detour when he got back, the day still earlier enough that he didn’t need to wait for Delair in the shop as he first ran to the church of Myriad, looking under the statue of his god and taking what had been slowly piling up there before going back to work, with all of the stopstone that had been materializing in hand.

Since he’d first turned his god’s church into a stopstone factory, slowly producing grains of the stuff while the days passed, half of a bucket had been filled up and while he didn’t yet have enough to begin all of his ideas, he had more than enough to start experimenting a bit as he created a mold to hold the powder before putting it in the forge and watching as it heated up until it slowly started to melt together.

So a slightly higher melting point than iron, neat. He thought as he let it cool down, wanting it solid enough to work before taking a hammer to it to see how it felt. Surprisingly hard too, all the more so since I can’t do any shaping with magic.

The only material in the world that he had no choice but to work entirely with raw strength, despite the inconvenience of it the fact couldn’t help but bring a smile to his face. It reminded him of the first few years he’d been working as a smith, no magic to help him with the process with the only tool he had to use being his own body.

Still, he was far stronger than he’d been then, no matter how much harder that magic material may have been, each of his strikes had a powerful effect as it was slowly turned into ingots while questions of what to do with it came to his mind when he looked at the final product.

A lot less of it when it’s not in a powdered form. He thought with a sigh seeing how the volume had shrunk once he got it all together. Not really a lot to do anything with. I could make some armour or a shield, both would be the best options for something like this but if I was doing something like that then it would be a lot less wasteful if I made a normal one of either and created a surface layer of stopstone on it but… Hmm, this is going to keep being in small supply and even if I am going to use plenty by the next wave, it wouldn’t hurt to let it build up a bit more to keep my options open and to do that, maybe I should be focusing on making more soul tiles instead so I can convert a few more churches into factories.

<Why are you trying to industrialize everything I own?>

Convenience.

He had a materializer set up to create rainbow mana crystal so he went to gather it, shaping it into tiles with his power as the souls he’d created stopped going to his god and instead went into the crystal, building them up more and more for the power they’d hold and only stopping as he remembered something else he needed to test, making a new one with only a single soul before taking the mana from it, feeling his brow crinkle as he did.

“Weird.”

<What?>

“I’m still making it with half of my total mana supply but I was expecting it to be less since part of what I currently have came from modifying my soul. I didn’t expect the new total to be counted but this means the rules or soul production haven’t changed even though my soul has. With that being the case, that means that I’ll need to modify my soul a second time before I start modifying anyone else’s for them to get the best effect and don’t get me wrong, that’s obviously great, I just wish I understood the rules my skill operates on a little better.”

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Soul source continued to be one of his stranger skills but he had no way to learn more other than to experiment with the countless ones he’d create each day, feeling what worked and what didn’t as he hoped for any sort of breakthrough while finding countless configurations that just didn’t want to exist.

Well, maybe I’ll get some answers eventually. He sighed to himself, just in time for the door to open as everyone arrived, Sonya and Thera showing up and Delair with them, already tugging on Mora’s arm.

“Off to work then?”

“Yeah, back to it,” Thera sighed while looking at him in curiosity. “So, how’d it go this time?”

“Oh, so incredibly good. Small suggestion for everyone present, do your best to finish fifty jobs, the job you unlock for doing that is incredible.”

“How incredible?”