SSS-Rank Engineer: Only I Can Create Legendary Weapons

Percy traced the lines from the circles. Aetherite lines. Good for conducting spirit energy towards another circle.

This place was a generating house that leads to circles scattered around the building. In the walls or perhaps just the structure of how the building was made.

If the stones were specially made to channel earth magic, then you could build the temple like a circle itself. That was what he suspected happened with the city of Dema.

The whole city was one giant circle.

Therefore, this was the Spellcore of the circle, providing a controlled measure of mana to all the circles that worked in the place.

There was a powerhouse in the Fortress of Dema that performed a function similar to this, but he hadn't found it yet.

While he tried to understand the differences between the two circles, the one here and the one in Dema, he kept glancing back at Ramona's writhing body on the ground.

Her entire being was vibrating with a blue glow, falling apart and reforming. Her brown hair freed itself from the braid, turning to sand.

The disabling shot seemed to work better against her than it did with Sebas. So he had a couple more minutes before he had to shoot her again.

Right now, he needed to quickly figure out what the difference between his Spellcore and this circle was.

Unfortunately, it was a tangled mess though, not separated into layers like his Spellcore.

It was a single drawing using different materials, a massive multi-layered circle that twisted and turned in directions that wouldn't make sense to any normal person.

How do they keep misalignment from not blowing up this place?

Percy had simple formulas that helped him trace circle lines by calculating how much spirit energy was in each line and using that to guess how each individual circle would look outside the multi-layer.

He stretched out a hand and a bright flash illuminated the room. It was him recreating the bare parts of his version 2 Spellcore.

The first part was the tap, which was made with a Mythril-silver mix that Terra had come up with; the dynamic between the two metals allowed for a large amount of spirit energy to be absorbed.

The next portion was the circle, or casing that surrounded the device. This was made from aetherite and salt, funnily enough.

Percy had tried other metals, but they degraded quickly when a large amount of spirit energy was channeled or needed to be gigantic to work.

Aetherite was a fluid conductor of spirit energy, one he used in nearly all his magic tools. While salt disrupted and repelled spirit energy.

So what he did was study how the spirit energy kept trying to escape his first Spellcore prototypes and use that to build a special container.

This container used salt to disrupt the pressure that spirit energy put on the container, then used aetherite to give a path of least resistance for the spirit energy to travel back into the core.

Lastly was the core for the device. It was copied from circles like this. It used four layers of rectification to make sure that an evil spirit couldn't form in the Spellcore. Each layer was a complex circle that Percy had spent months making.

Then at the end was a limiter that Terra designed, something that would stop anything from drawing too much power from the Spellcore to prevent explosions caused by misalignment in complex circles.

But now that he had a moment to look at the circle Gaia's temple used, he had come to a new conclusion on how to prevent misalignment but also how to use more power from the Spellcore when needed.

"Not just that, the charging…" he murmured to himself.

A sense of dread ran through him, likely a warning from his spirit, so Percy turned.

Ramona was recovering from the disabling shot. He raised the Spellbolt and shot her without a moment of hesitation.

CRACK!

The sound of its discharge and the blue light filled the small cave, slamming into Ramona's chest. Another wave of pain washed through her as the blue spirit energy vibrated through her body.

One disabling shot would normally put a man out of commission for hours. It was made to injure a person to the point that they couldn't fight again.

Two shots would send hairline fractures through your bones and cause internal bleeding.

But the Baskers didn't seem to find it to be more than a simple discomfort. That got him thinking about how she planned to perform the theurgic ritual to summon Python without any totems or air purification.

You had to use air purification to set the environment, then totems were spirit gates—the points that the spirit would use to enter the circle and stay. But she had none of that on her.

Maybe the temple doesn't need purification. It might be the perfect place for summoning spirits related to Gaia. But where are the totems?

He searched the ground for any sign of disturbance, and he found them soon after. She had buried the totems into the ground when he first entered the room to protect them from the fight.

He dug out one of them: a woman with empty holes where her eyes ought to be, surrounded by little snakes.

Before he could crush it, though, Ramona's voice interrupted him.

"Stop!" she screamed from the bottom of her belly. Her eyes were a hazy mess of blue light and vibrating sand. "Please don't do this, don't take my brother from me. I'll take everything, all the pain, disgrace, and your hatred. But just let me bring my brother back."

Percy stared at her for a moment, the shaking arm that reached towards him and the totem, the sand falling from her body.

His heart twisted with both pity for her and hatred for Sebas.

"You can't bring him back. He's already in the underworld. Hopefully, he'll be forgiven for what your family forced him into. Even then, he was still worried about you, he wanted me to save you. But I'm not doing a very good job, am I?"

"You still can! You can save us both," she pleaded. "I know you, the patriarch mentioned you personally. Perseus Amphene, you're the future. Please forgive me for raising my hand against you—"

"Ramona, stop." He brought his hand to his face.

"Am I lying? They say you'll change the world," she forced herself to her feet, walking even as her body fell apart. "You can still save Philip. Do you think anything is impossible?"

Percy grew quiet for a moment. Was it really impossible? When did he start thinking it was impossible for him to do anything?

This generator circle sat on a Leyline; there was enormous power here.

Endless possibilities.

He could very well start a plan to find and save Philip from the underworld.

But it still left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he felt sick to his stomach just thinking about it. He looked into Ramona's eyes as she staggered towards him.

"I lost a brother too. For a long time, I wondered what it would be like to travel back in time and save him."

Ramona's eyes widened.

"Exactly, I knew you would understand. Please, we just have to—"

"But Philip didn't want to come back, and he wouldn't want to come back even more if it meant you'd die."

She stopped, shaking, eyes open like she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Percy raised the totem again, his eyes shifting from a bright purple to a steely grey.

"Wait," Ramona said as she sensed his decision.

But he didn't stop. With one sharp snap, the totem was crushed beneath his fingers, its wooden pieces falling to the ground.

Ramona just stood there for a long time. Her chest was heaving like she couldn't breathe.

Then she let out a pained howl, hot with anger.

The blue haze of the disabling shot was dispelled from her body, and she lunged at Percy to rip him apart.

But he was already prepared for something like this and shot her again, his black and white hair swayed slightly from the force of the shot.

"I'm sorry, but I still have some work to do. It's time to turn the tides of this battle."