Five whole levels, Lev shook his head a little. Waking up to several notifications and a name in his mind was certainly a unique experience, but he got over it quickly nonetheless. Drakys had mentioned in his notes that the rune would change his perception of runes forever, and sadly, Lev was inclined to agree.

Just mentally observing the rune stored in his general skill was akin to staring at the king of its kind, a superior existence that went beyond all rhyme or reason. Its name only gave more credit to that line of thought, and the rune immediately jumped to the second spot on his to-do list. Empowering his soul remained the priority, but somehow utilizing Arcane Supremacy was a close second now.

Taking care of his morning routine barely took seconds. Evolving to Master removed any and all excrements, which meant he just needed to wash his face and do his hair. Both of them happened at once. A barrier comb fixed his hair, and he splashed water onto his face.

Before leaving, Lev summoned his armor into its active state, one that was constantly powered even when he was asleep. His body felt marginally sore because of the consistent mana usage, which he handled by cycling healing mana through it. The move also reminded him of replacing the skinsuit, which was pretty much running on hopes and dreams at that point.

The lightning bolt and fireball formations were present on the underside of his arms, and the enhancement formation was carved on his armor's chest. His legs and the back of his torso were entirely free, which he made use of immediately.

Mana Concealment and Invisibility formations gradually appeared on his back, just below the shoulders. Powering them up, Lev and his armor both vanished from both sight and mana perception, unless someone specialized in the latter.

Finding no flaws in the enchantments after looking at himself in the mirror, where he could actually see himself to some extent as light behaved oddly around his form's edges, he set out.

A full night had passed in his tired rest, and the suns were still rising as he flew out of Sherron's mansion and made his way to the park. Nobody was there right now, which was fine by him. Conjuring the bubble and enchanting him with the same stealth enchantments, Lev created a barrier chair for himself as the armor settled into its passive state again.

Summoning a large meal, consisting of chicken, toast, soup, fruit salad, and a jug of chocolate milk, he settled in for a few hours of steady eating just to test how well his stomach worked now.

Bite after bite vanished into his mouth, chewed thoroughly before being hurled down his throat. No signs of overeating presented themselves after he finished half of the food, but thirst remained a constant need. Cold water took care of that, as tasty as ever despite being tasteless.

Lev finished it quickly after that and gazed at the two rising suns. They always rose without fail, giving sunlight to the frail humans who survived off it. That wasn't necessarily true after being empowered by mana, classes, and Constitution, but it was still required to some extent. Negative natural effects were bound to show up in time without sunlight, primarily paler skin and the like.

Beatrice entered the park after half an hour, curiously peering around the tree they usually sat under. Nobody else was anywhere near them, which allowed Lev to prank her harmlessly.

When she had just sat down and leaned against the tree, he unleashed his full aura from a few meters to her side, all of it aimed at her. It was meant to give her a light scare, but he certainly wasn't expecting the shrill scream that tore out of her throat as five barriers took form in between them.

Lev immediately pulled it all back and dropped the illusion covering his bubble. Hands raised into the air and mouth slightly ajar, he just stared at her as Beatrice heaved great breaths.

It took long moments to calm herself before anger visibly overtook her. All of her barriers shot at Lev and thudded into his stomach, not at full strength but enough to slightly hurt. Or, it would've, had Lev not evolved and improved his constitution recently.

"You… fucking… DUMBASS," she spoke with every hit before slumping down with a final sigh. Then she shot upright. "YOU EVOLVED!?"

"Yeah," Lev answered with a grin and took a single step forward. Seeing he was in the clear, he walked up to her before taking his normal seat against the trunk, to her right. "The day before yesterday."

"And you're only telling me now?"

Lev shrugged. "I didn't even know if I was still alive before waking up that day."

Beatrice stilled, eyes going wide. "What? Why?"

"It's… a depressingly short story."

Explaining the events took all of five minutes. There wasn't much to say, anyway. Lev just told her how the warg had ambushed him, and the only way he had survived was by sacrificing his limbs one by one. That only Sherron's timely intervention saved him, at which point she was covering her mouth with her hand.

"… But…" she trailed off, unable to find the words. Lev gave her time. She wasn't always the best with words, though that had probably changed in-

She leaned forward and hugged him. Lev was caught entirely by surprise, unable to react as her arms timidly wrapped around him. In the years they had known each other, it was the first time she had ever made physical contact with him, albeit he could feel her hesitation.

"There, there," Lev said and gently patted her on the back twice. She quickly parted after that, not uncomfortable but not exactly looking for more, either.

"Don't die," she voiced quietly afterwards. "You're one of the few people I enjoy spending time with."

Lev coughed, caught flat-footed once again. "I- thank you. It is the same for me," he finished, the best he could come up with.

Beatrice giggled from his side. "I've improved quite a lot, haven't I? You stumbling over simple words used to be relatable before. Now it's just adorable."

"Har har," Lev rolled his eyes as embarrassment slowly vanished. "How's life treating you these days?"

"Same old, same old," she answered, her experience showing in her casualness. "Rounds take up most of the time, sometimes up to weeks. I wanted to keep this a surprise, but you may be leaving even sooner than I."

"Leaving?" he asked with a small frown.

"Mhm," Beatrice nodded. "I've been offered a promotion and a position in Timberhold's food management and distribution department. Didn't know how to break it to you…"

Lev waited for her to say something else, speaking once she didn't. "What? Congratulations! Why do you sound sad about that?"

"Don't try to be coy with me," she said forlornly, cutting through his semi-forced enthusiasm. "Aura mages specialize in feeling auras and emotions by extension. I'm sorry. I know you often waited for days when I didn't show up here on the agreed day. It's not hard to guess how few people you meet regularly besides me and Lady Sherron."

"… Stop calling me out so bluntly," Lev huffed with a slight smile. None of what she had just said was false. "I don't think I was going to leave anytime soon. The world of crafting has just opened up to me. The thousands of cores in my ring are also waiting to be used."

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"Oh," her face fell. "Shit. I already agreed."

Lev chuckled. "How long do you have?"

"Two days, I think."

"That's quite fast," he wondered out loud. "Any reason in particular?"

"Not much beyond the batch of staff and workers we are sending there this year. They fit me in with them at the very end."

"Ooh, tough luck. Doubt you were prepared for that, either."

"Not at all," she breathed out and hugged her knees. "Monarch knows I was finally becoming completely comfortable with my hectic routine."

"That bad?"

"No," she chuckled. "Just feels slightly insulting that most of my worth comes from my class. I was starting to get used to that, only to be surrounded by entirely new faces in a few months now."

"I see," Lev voiced and thought for a few seconds. "When does your group leave?"

She raised a brow. "You don't have to."

"But it'll give me some peace of mind to see you safely reach the city. I insist."

"Three days, at dawn," she answered with a genuine smile.

They lapsed into silence after that, lost in their own strings of thoughts.

"Say," Lev broke the quiet. "Was my aura really that scary?"

"I was waiting for you to bring that up," she answered with a small scowl. "My heart nearly burst on the spot. Please don't do that to any poor soul again. It felt like getting ambushed by two dozen platinum bosses at once."

"… Seriously?"

"Even worse than that, if anything."

****

A few hours of casual chatting later, Lev returned to the mansion while the newest rune kept coming up in his mind. It remained just as terrifyingly complex as he remembered, proving that merely having it stored in his general skill didn't help with understanding it at all.

A body enhancement rune, Lev thought to himself, enjoying the feeling of walking on the stone road with his Perception held back. Now that he was pretty much fully grown and an adult in age too, people stared less, though his eyes still got some looks. Girls liked blue eyes, apparently.

One that will most likely work on my armor. I don't see how it can be negative to try and gather a full formation for it, even if it will eat through my pool rather quickly once activated. Has to be worth the cost, then.

A rune that complicated and potent had to be something extremely strong. Lev didn't doubt for a single second that the moment he found the ability to use it, the rune would become the strongest tool in his arsenal. It was just that miraculous.

No one was in the building by the time he returned. He knew Alec and Orianna were going to leave soon, which made their absence slightly odd. Still, people like Hakim were present in the city, so a meeting was the likely explanation.

Lev found himself with a lot of free time, which was increased even further as he stopped holding back his Perception. The world noticeably slowed down as his mind was primed for some crafting.

Firearms were the first priority. Lev had a fuck ton of cores in his ring, all of which could be used and recharged in a limited cycle until their durability gave out. Except for one of them, which he wasn't going to touch. Killing monsters better remained the most important, something that would probably never change in his case.

To do that, he wanted to create… guns. More specifically, revolvers that fired wind bullets. The chosen form wasn't actually important, but he remembered the cylinder being round and the overall weapon looking quite cool. It could be scaled even further to slot in cores and give him ample space to enchant the construct.

Jogging his memory, Lev recalled all the times he had seen the gun on the internet. Models and other such details were beyond him, as he had never cared for them in his past life either, which left the revolver's general form only. The mechanism for the rotating cylinder was unnecessary as well, since he only needed to put a core inside that.

Starting with that circular part, Lev went to work. Both his mana manipulation and barrier manipulation were heightened to amazing heights by the evolution, meaning the shape taking form in front of him was completely flawless, at least when compared to the vision in his mind.

Seconds passed before a barrel came into being, made nearly as long as his arm to fit the overall size. Underneath the barrel, a grip meant for four fingers was created, allowing someone to aim with better precision and remove the already minimal recoil completely with attribute-enhanced strength.

Then the revolver's actual grip was dealt with, finishing the smooth, blue, and transparent form. Lev ignored the trigger, for it wasn't necessary. People had better control over their minds than their bodies, and letting the former be responsible for firing sounded like a better idea.

With a breath, he leaned back and gazed at the finished product. It was a revolver, no doubt, but the whole thing felt incomplete. That wasn't a surprise because Lev didn't put any designs or decorations on it. Those things could be dealt with after the weapon was functioning. He took out a core that fit the weapon.

[

Galeworm Core

Useful in crafting. Shows minor properties of wind.

]

Galeworms were rather common in several different locations Lev had been stationed to help with waves. Dealing with them netted him a lot of their cores. Opening up the cylinder's side, he shoved the round thing inside and sealed it.

Going by the mental feedback, he filled in the cylinder's shape further until its edges tightly hugged the core without leaving any empty space. Shaking the revolver to verify that, he nodded and went ahead with enchanting when the core firmly remained in place.

Any apprentice enchanter knew the importance of cores. They acted as a refillable mana battery and were a staple in all forms of enchanting. The highest tier of items even required a steady supply of expensive cores to keep them powered. Lev didn't know how to increase the lifetime of the cores while furthering their effectiveness beyond the use of paints, so he used the galeworm core without bothering with improving it.

A simple input formation formed above the cylinder, taking the fuel from the core to the closed end of the barrel. Another similarly uncomplicated recharging formation formed below the cylinder, slowly charging the core's reserves at the cost of its durability.

Instead of proceeding to the next step, Lev waited. It wasn't hard to make the input rune dump some mana into air, letting him test the effectiveness of the recharge formation. Observing the enchantments for a few minutes was enough to deduce that they worked fine and that the core was filling up slowly. Very slowly. Pretty much at a glacial pace compared to his own regeneration.

Putting the rate out of his mind, he continued with the rest of the formations. Three of them were combined together, all simple in their usage but quite complex in their creation.

The first was a formation that used willpower to shape wind bullets by compressing air and not requiring any wind mana. It recorded the first 'creation' of a bullet to remember the shape and keep it held in place. Lev used the standard shape from his past life before moving on to the next one.

Firing the formed projectile, and accelerating it as much as possible were the tasks of the other two formations. Neither used willpower because no complex measures were involved.

In less than a minute, Lev was holding the finished firearm. The barrel's entire length was enchanted by the long acceleration formation, one that could be linked to a projectile, whereas the closed end of the barrel had the formations responsible for forming and shooting the wind bullet.

Now that his barriers were permanent, and the revolver was created with the intention of crafting an item, The System had likely assigned it a description. Still, he held off from Identifying it before checking its usefulness.

Now then, my lovely class, Lev thought to himself, and conjured his bubble around him to not accidentally damage the bedroom. An enchanted shield formed a few meters away from him, the chosen testing dummy. Do not disappoint me and count these bullets as projectiles for your skills, please. That would be amazing.

It would raise the revolver's lethality exponentially. Piercing power and speed were the main factors behind that, after all, and both of them were empowered by his class for barrier projectiles.

With a deep, steadying breath, Lev mentally powered the bullet formation rune. Mana automatically left the nearly full core and was grabbed by the second formation, which formed a wind bullet and kept it under control. The whole process took only two seconds, and all he needed to do now was to fire the bullet. Metaphorically pulling the trigger was also a part of the second formation, something that demanded him to take action before the wind mana dissipated.

Straining his Perception to the limit, the world around him slowed down even further as Lev fired. Acceleration formation on the barrel came alive, triggered by the shot. It enhanced the bullet's speed severalfold in the split second it remained in the barrel, after which it burst out of the revolver with a loud boom.

Lev had to tightly keep his hands on the grip as the gun recoiled much more than expected, causing a big smile to bloom on his face. The bullet flew straight ahead faster than he could track, digging several inches into the enchanted shield as cracks spread through its entirety.

His smile widened even further as the shield deteriorated even further before shattering, all by the power of a single wind bullet that had already dissipated. Barrier chunks clinked onto the floor, proof of the newly created weapon's sheer might and the fact that his class skills empowered the projectile.

I love my class so much, Lev breathed out, trying to keep his excitement in check. He then Identified the revolver.

[

Galeshot - Uncommon

]

For his first-ever permanent item? That was a massive success.

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