The winds of change kept blowing away the sands of time, and though the weather remained mercilessly arid, and any traces of a journey disappeared, a white being pressed on.

The white being was not just some random being however, they were.. tall and looked rather sturdy. But that was odd considering they were light when it came to mass.

That may or may not have something to do with the obvious lack of vital organs. Still, although they couldn't compete with the heavy weights, with their build and their intimidating tusks they weren't lacking in spook factor.

The being was an orc skeleton.

Ed had successfully created an orc skeleton.

Of course, due to the limitations of the assessment skill, or maybe just his own laziness, this orc skeleton was made by wiping out the consciousness of a lizardman and inserting it into the orc skeleton.

This was standard procedure and there was nothing new to be learned from it. If he did learn one thing it was how to skin an orc as he didn't have any actual skeletons.

Anyway, the standard procedure was a conscious choice as there was much else to find out about, Ed did not want to remain idle. This was why he also created another undead creature.

A lizardman skeleton.

This one was also skinned.

While Ed considered making a fashionable coat to sell in Sanctuary with the scales, on account of the future lizard tourists he decided against it. But there wasn't much lost, his morbid skinning brought a separate benefit in terms of look.

The lizardmen skeleton and the orc skeleton both looked a pristine white. They were unblemished, at least until Ed took them outside.

'Ah... There goes that benefit' He should have added some black dye at the least, then no one would see the dirt!

Then again there was a reason Ed did not add any metals into their composition. It would be hard to compare the benefits and disadvantages of these skeletons if they received any sort of compositional change. Without applying fancy techniques there was still something to be learned from them.

The first Ed did after creating these two unnamed entities was to relay some instructions.

'Venture out into the wasteland, do not return until you find something new' This was the command Ed left with the skeletons. He made sure to give them a spirit mark as well.

Although he hadn't considered it before, using the spirit mark to relay commands was definitely a possible way to bypass the range limitations this sub-skill brought with it. This was good since Ed didn't want to have to link with the two skeletons.

Linking required mind power which was renewable. Nevertheless, what it meant made it too valuable.

Through link, he could help others by sharing some of his power but that was at the expense of said power. He would be left vulnerable if he used it too often.

This was all in the past though, what was Ed doing currently?

The answer was obviously studying up on elven formations.

[<Formationist lvl. 0> Acquired]

His meticulous study quickly delivered results too. He managed to get many level ups following the acquisition.

[Formationist has leveled up]

[Formationist has leveled...]

p [Formationist has...]

[Formationist..]

The weird part however was that this speedy acquisition was not done over a matter of months. It didn't even take a week for Ed to level up a total of 4 times.

'I should have expected this' The act of making arrays did bring practical experience but the field of formations was more theoretical than practical. One had to learn the principles of magic and then the principles of the runic language.

Using the foundation of theories one could then tackle making various formations and devices.

In conclusion, researching formations brought Ed more benefits than making them. He speculated that the main reason why it was taking so long for the formation skill to level up previously was precisely this.

Noted, he wasn't always dealing with formations, but his assimilation skill was close to advancing so it could be said that played a large role.

'All of these skills are so troublesome' They all had specific rules to them when it came to level ups. The system never told him what those rules were leaving it to his assumption.

'Damn it!' Ed cursed feeling exasperated. Even these rules weren't entirely reliable.

He was stuck. He found the formation he was currently studying in an adjacent room. It was responsible for managing the drainage of the city. The entire formation was pretty complicated, however.

'I've reached a bottleneck' It had been days since Ed last leveled up his formationist skill. Figuring out that successful research helped speed up the progress of this skill was good but the key was that the research had to be successful.

Ed was having no such luck. When he was finally at the verge of giving up, Ed heard a message.historical

'Hungry' It was a call for help, Ed had to divert his focus from the fruitless research to the baby potentially thousand-year-old tree.

"You are pretty needy.." Ed thought as he entered the tree's chamber, or also known as the baby's bedroom.

Once in here, Ed took out some mushrooms from his system space and started littering them around the divine tree. He made sure to kill them first, however. These mushrooms were just serving as nutrients.

The divine tree's roots went into the ground of the palace and also into the walls of the deep water pool beneath it. The problem was that while the roots could draw water, the roots on land could not draw many nutrients from arid soil.

The mushrooms were supposed to alleviate this and at least for now, Ed did not want to grow any mushrooms in the place. He wanted to observe the development of the divine tree without any obstructions.

'It should be about time I get some sap' The divine tree still looked a little under the weather but budding green could be seen on some branches. These budding green sprouts were leaves which were yet to grow.

After giving nutrients in the form of dead mushrooms to the soil, Ed activated his link skill.

[Link is on cooldown]

After feeding, he would pass down some vitality to the tree in order to aid its consumption of the nutrients.

'Happy! Happy!' The tree was in a state of exuberance and Ed was able to leave the room with a faint smile. The tree remained in his thoughts until he was once again face to face with the complicated elven formation.

Finally, after being at a stalemate for another hour, Ed decided to look at things from a different perspective.

'Hm...' The formation's material didn't appear to be any different from the normal floor and wall tiles. That left only the ink to be studied.

A close look would quickly reveal that the ink was not blood, or at least not in its entirety. The color was a semi-clear brown. If there was any blood in the elven ink it had to be in small amounts.

'But if it's not the blood of a high-ranked mob then..' The only other option was a high-ranked material.

'The divine tree is the key, isn't it?' This thought dawned on Ed and his hazy mind immediately cleared. While this simple epiphany did not change the status quo in any form, it did give Ed a new research direction.

'Maybe the weird complexity comes from a rare effect of the tree sap' The array had some incomprehensible functions as Ed had previously taken note of.

'I never really considered the materials of an array before' Ed only thought that better ink would provide better power but it seemed that some rarer ink could contain rare effects. The canvas it was drawn on might share this feature.

Thinking along these lines Ed started to become expectant, what would the sap allow him to do when he finally grabbed hold of it? This expectation left him with a great yearning that eventually fueled another epiphany.

'Wait.. why am I sitting around growing my own supply?' He could just steal the supply instead!

The sap covered leaves outside the city were sad but if he used the extraction machine in the system space he could divide the sap from the leaves. The process tended to be slow but reversing near permanent changes to materials needed at least that much hassle.

'Hm? That reminds me..' Could the skill inks be used to draw arrays? Ed never considered this question before. It wasn't that he didn't think about it, well, actually it was that he didn't think about it but still, that wasn't the point.

The point was that he didn't think about it for a reason.

'The skill inks exist within the system space' If they were brought out chances were they would disappear assuming it worked in the first place. That was to say Ed had no real chance to use skill inks as a substitute to blood.

'But that's only when following conventional thinking' As it turns out, his skeleton body had a skill to materialize things that existed elsewhere. Whenever it was that Ed returned to the crypt, he might be able to try this out.

Consolidating his thoughts, Ed rushed out of the city ignoring the protest of the divine tree who could feel their distance becoming greater.

'Nooo!' It wailed but Ed ignored it and trudged forward.

He ran down the city from its center to its walls and after climbing past said walls started to collect the fake trees outside. He wasn't going to take the leaves individually so Ed just took everything with area store.

After doing so he returned to the system space where he asked the system a question.

'Can I buy more conveyor belts?' Ed prompted the system.

[Acquiring 'Conveyor line' costs 500 CP Offer? Y/N]

'What about spirit workers? Can I buy more spirit workers?' Ed followed up.

[No Available Spirit Workers]

'Aw man' Ed was hoping he could industrialize the conversion of sap from leaves. Once he set the precedent for automated extraction he could expand it to other combined materials in need of separation.

Not at all put down by the disappointment, Ed prepared to manually acquire the sap. As manual as using a tool to do all the work could get anyway.