Drawing talismans

Gerald cleared a flat space on the stone workbench and poured the cinnabar powder into a silver dish.

Then he took out a glass vial filled with dragon blood, pulled out the stopper, and poured it in.

That single vial of dragon blood had cost twenty Galleons. He would be lying if he said it did not hurt, but he could not skimp on necessary expenses.

Once the dragon blood had thoroughly soaked the cinnabar, Gerald stirred it with a glass rod.

The cinnabar and dragon blood soon blended completely into a dark red ink, its surface shimmering with tiny golden specks beneath the light of the nightglow stones.

He took some yellow paper and a rather crude writing brush from his cloth bag.

The yellow paper was ordinary stationery he had bought from Scrivenshaft's Quill Shop. After cutting it to the standard size for talismans, Gerald had fumigated it with sulfur.

As for the brush, he had made it himself from rabbit fur in Nameless Town when he was ten.

When he first finished it, he had dipped it in water and practiced writing a few times. It had worked fairly smoothly.

He had been preparing for this day for years.

More than once, he had imagined himself riding a streak of sword light, forming hand seals, and scattering handfuls of talismans to churn rivers and overturn seas.

Now, everything he had imagined finally had a chance of becoming reality.

Gerald dipped the brush into the ink and waited until its tip was saturated with dark red liquid.

He drew a deep breath, his wrist hovering over the first sheet of yellow paper, but did not rush to make the first stroke.

The rune structure of the Object-Storing Talisman had been etched into his mind the moment he succeeded in Refining Essence into Qi, but only by trying could he discover the gap between knowing the structure and drawing it himself.

When he laid down the first stroke, the rune line was fifty percent thicker than he had intended.

The dragon-blood ink seeped into the yellow paper extremely quickly. As primordial qi flowed through the brush tip into the rune, the paper trembled slightly. Then, with a faint hiss, a charred hole burned through the sheet at the rune's center.

On the second sheet, the ink suddenly stopped flowing when his brush reached the third turn, and the rune collapsed into a blurry dark red stain.

On the third sheet, he injected primordial qi too quickly. The paper could not withstand it and split straight in half.

The fourth and fifth sheets were ruined as well.

Clearly, actually drawing the talismans was far harder than he had imagined.

Gerald was not discouraged, however. Failure on this scale was hardly worth mentioning.

He was like a starving man who had spotted fruit hanging from a tree.

No matter how many times he had to shake it or climb it, he would never give up.

"Again!"

After another seven or eight consecutive failures, Gerald set down his brush.

He had been drawing for nearly half an hour, and more than a dozen ruined sheets of yellow paper lay scattered across the floor.

Brush in hand, Gerald walked a few laps around the workbench, trying to calm himself.

The causes of his failures were largely the same: his brushwork was not decisive enough, and his infusion of primordial qi was uneven.

Perhaps I could try using spiritual awareness.

A little later, he dipped his brush into the ink again and began drawing.

Using spiritual awareness drained him more, but it did give him much better control over the finer details.

This time, his brush tip moved steadily. He completed the rune lines in one uninterrupted flow, from the first stroke to the last, feeding primordial qi evenly through the brush tip into the rune structure. As the dragon-blood ink set on the yellow paper, a very faint dark golden sheen spread across its surface.

[Successfully drawn low-tier talisman: Object-Storing Talisman. Quality: average. Storage capacity: 0.5 cubic meters. Number of uses: ten.]

Gerald froze for a moment, then could not help breaking into a grin.

It worked!

A talisman like this would not even make the grade in a cultivation novel.

But so what?

In any case, he was probably the only person in this world with a cultivation method. No one else could draw talismans like these.

He carefully placed the Object-Storing Talisman at the corner of the table and laid out another sheet of yellow paper.

With his first success under his belt, the subsequent attempts went much more smoothly.

Although his success rate remained low, Gerald had gained considerable confidence.

The second successful Object-Storing Talisman was of good quality. Its storage capacity increased to one and a half cubic meters, and its number of uses rose to thirty.

Over the course of a little more than an hour, Gerald successfully drew three Object-Storing Talismans, with dozens of failed attempts.

His success rate was less than ten percent, but he could accept that.

After all, this was his first time drawing talismans. Succeeding at all was already quite an achievement.

He picked up the highest-quality Object-Storing Talisman and activated it with a wisp of primordial qi.

The runes on the talisman paper glowed pale blue. He casually brought several alchemy books and Transfiguration textbooks from the table against the talisman, and the books vanished into thin air.

He sensed inside it. The books and notes were neatly stacked together within the talisman's internal space, which measured roughly one and a half cubic meters.

"Now this feels like cultivation!"

Gerald examined the little yellow paper talisman, unable to stop the corners of his mouth from rising.

A storage ring was out of the question for now, but with an Object-Storing Talisman in hand, at least he would no longer need to carry a large cloth bag when gathering herbs in the Forbidden Forest, or stuff his clothes full of bottles when selling potions at the Hog's Head.

Unfortunately, it could only be activated with primordial qi. No one but him could use these talismans.

Even if wizards bought them, they would not be able to use them.

Otherwise, if he took them to Diagon Alley, charging several dozen Galleons each for their storage function alone would hardly be unreasonable.

Then another thought occurred to him: what if he used alchemy to reproduce a magical storage item powered by magical power?

Carrying a sheet of paper or a card would be more convenient than carrying a suitcase or a bag.

That has potential. It definitely has potential.

Gerald did not dwell on the question. Putting any of that into practice certainly would not be easy.

For now, he needed to deal with what was in front of him.

He looked at the silver dish, still more than half full of ink, then at the remaining yellow paper, and decided to try drawing Lightness Talismans and Mist Talismans.

These two types of talisman were much easier to draw than Object-Storing Talismans.

The rune structures of Lightness Talismans and Mist Talismans were simple, with only a dozen or so nodes. The main challenge lay in varying the weight of the ink strokes.

These two types also consumed far less primordial qi. Gerald drew more than thirty in one stretch, only stopping when the ink ran out.

In total, he successfully made eight Lightness Talismans and nine Mist Talismans, almost all of good quality.

The combined success rate for the Lightness Talismans and Mist Talismans actually exceeded fifty percent.

Gerald picked up the silver dish and inspected it. The ink made from one vial of dragon blood had lasted roughly seventy attempts, yielding twenty successful talismans for an overall success rate of around thirty percent.

Considering that the low success rate of the Object-Storing Talismans had dragged down

the overall figures, this was already a very good result.

Getting this many talismans from twenty Galleons' worth of dragon blood was actually quite cost-effective.

But dragon blood was a consumable. Every attempt used up a little more.

Still, these talismans would be enough for now. He would save the other two vials for next time.

He picked up a Lightness Talisman and pressed it against the inside of his school robes.

The talisman paper stuck the instant it touched the fabric, just like an ordinary label.

Gerald fed a trace of primordial qi into the talisman. His body suddenly felt lighter, as though an invisible hand were supporting him.

He ran around the room and discovered that he was nearly twice as fast as usual.

The Lightness Talisman's effect would last about an hour. The next time he encountered an Acromantula, he would be able to handle it with much greater ease.

He did not test the Mist Talismans for now. Releasing a cloud of mist inside the Room of Requirement would only create trouble for himself.

Gerald gathered the ruined sheets of yellow paper into a pile, picked up his wand, and burned them to ashes with a Fire-Making Spell.

With that done, he turned his gaze to the alchemy materials on the table.

"Next, it's time to start working on alchemy."