The Place Where Everything Begins

Four hours later, inside Jeremy's house basement...

After finished eating dinner, also dealing with a phone call from Charlotte and chat messages from his 'subordinates' in a group chat.

Jeremy came down into his basement and started to inscribe the planned diagram right away.

The diagram's name was 'Enchantment 2-633', of which number 2 was derived from stage 2, and number 633 was the number of series of the diagram, which had more than 3,000 diagrams for stage 2 alone.

Right now, it was around 9 p.m., and Jeremy was almost done with the diagram inscription that spanned the entire doormat.

It was filled with strange lines here and there circling around the 'staff' at the center of the doormat. At the same time, it also left many interior areas empty.

Those empty areas would be filled later with the 900 or so runes he had recalled from his sea of consciousness.

In a simple explanation, the diagram would act akin to a layout of a house which was consisted of countless empty rooms inside. Meanwhile, the runes would act as furnishings that would be filled inside those rooms later on.

Soon...

Instantly, right after Jeremy had connected one end to another end of the last line of the diagram. The whole diagram, which looked like a mess yet orderly at the same time with countless weird curves and sharp angles, suddenly lighted up in a glowing white light.

The whole basement got brightened up with the white light constantly.

After Jeremy had completed the diagram on the doormat, he looked at the now white lines with complex patterns altogether with different sizes that were composed of using various diagram inscription techniques.

When Jeremy saw that nothing went awry, he nodded his head in satisfaction of his own accomplishment.

Now, he had just finished setting up the layout, and the next step was to fill in the corresponding runes from his memory into the empty areas inside the diagram according to the process and sequence of the Enchantment 2-633 for it to work up and combine the materials of the staff together.

Not wanting to waste any more time for fear that he might have to go to bed late tonight, he went on to inscribe the runes right away.

Still, the process of runes inscription from now on would really pose a real challenge for him, for he couldn't use his own mana to inscribe those runes.

Because...

His mana was insufficient to inscribe even 50 runes, not to mention that he had to inscribe more than 900 runes within 4 hours before the diagram went out of energy and changed itself back into wandering mana particles in the air.

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Then where the required mana used to inscribe the runes came from?

The answer was simple...

Jeremy brought out a small glass bottle from his backpack. It was actually a bottle of leftover mana fluid collected from the ancient trees around the world.

That's right...

He would use the mana from those trees to create a 'staff' of which its materials were derived from those same ancient trees.

To be accurate, this was quite a common yet ingenious method to enchant an item.

Reasons?

Because Jeremy didn't have enough mana to enchant a staff, he decided to collect the external mana to enchant it instead. However, he was currently inside a 'supposed' mana-less world; the problems about materials arose after that.

That caused him to think more about the materials used to create the staff. He had to think about many things, and one of the most important factors of them all was 'synchronization rates' of materials, mana, and runes.

Consequently, he decided to use one of the most orthodox ways of mages on Ortus.

That was... using both materials and mana from the ancient trees. At the same time, he would also use the rune sets that gave out the highest synchronization rates with the materials and mana.

As a result, Jeremy had finally come up with this strategy...

The mana was extracted from the trees...

The materials were also bits and pieces of the trees...

The elemental-less runescripts were also closely related to the trees...

Currently, the bottle contained around 45 mL of mana fluid due to him combining the two bottles altogether. While one bottle was from when he used it to create the 'gloves' for his subordinates, another one was the primary storage of mana fluid that was kept carefully to make this 'staff' especially.

'Even with this 45 mL of mana fluid. Still... a total of 933 low-tier runes and 4 middle-tier runes. This is gonna shake my sea of consciousness so badly. If I slipped up for even a single moment, my house is gone for real...'

*Sigh*

Jeremy sighed tiredly at his fate...

After bringing out the bottle, Jeremy sat cross-legged nearby the doormat at the same place as when he had tried to enter his sea of consciousness.

Then he opened the lit of the glass bottle. Unsurprisingly, the mana fluid, which should have evaporated instantaneously into the atmosphere after it met with the air, stayed at its place with only some movements left and right from Jeremy's jerking.

That was actually a result of Enchantment...

In fact, the bottle was enchanted with a simple stage 1 Enchantment method, 'Enhance'. In this case, it enhanced the property of 'containment' of the glass, causing it to be able to hold the mana fluid within.

Also, if stage 1 was called 'Enhance', then the upgraded stage 2 that Jeremy would implement to create the staff would be called 'Render'. As for what it could do or what it was, that was a topic for later discussions...

After Jeremy had opened the lit, he raised his left and right index fingers and pointed them in front of him. Then he started writing some strange characters in the air, or it should be said that he started inscribing the low-tier runes in the air of which, in each hand, they were inscribing different runes.

That's the case... Jeremy was actually drawing two different runes at the same time!

Meanwhile, he was using his mana techniques together with a mild help of mind power from his sea of consciousness to draw out the mana from the bottle as fuel for his rune inscription process that was commencing at both hands index fingers.

Not even more than 15 seconds later, Jeremy finished his first two runes at 'almost' the same time. Then with some manipulations of his mana and mind, the glowing white light runes floating in the air started to drift onto an empty area of the doormat.

Right after it had stuck on the doormat, its light was suddenly getting slightly dimmer but still shining the light out, signifying that those two runes were working properly.

Concurrently, Jeremy, who was focusing on drawing the runes in the air, didn't even glance at the doormat, but he started to inscribe another two low-tier runes right away.

The above procedures kept on repeating and repeating.

Simultaneously, the time was also ticking by slowly.

Second by second...

Minute by minute...

Hour by hour...

Still, the runes kept increasing more and more with the passing time. Also, the mana fluid within the bottle was being depleted, bit by bit, with the increasing number of runes.

...

Until 2 hours later...

Jeremy was now sweating profusely, and presently, he was using only his right index finger to draw the rune in the air.

The rune he was drawing was currently shining brighter than those low-tier runes that he had written before. Its light was slightly more luminous with a more complex shape and angle amounts of its character.

This was the last rune...

And it was actually a middle-tier rune at that...

Jeremy had spent a hell-like 2 hours inscribing 933 low-tier runes and 3 middle-tier runes successfully.

The leather doormat right now depicted and portrayed various shining runes in different shapes and sizes. Some were connected with one another by the diagram, while some were only being contained within the 'rooms'.

At the moment, the Enchantment layout was looking more beautiful than ever, with all those lines and runes acting as a solid core.

Right now, Jeremy's body was shaking nonstop like a leaf being pushed away left and right by a gusting wind.

He was feeling fatigued mentally...

Still...

Jeremy was already at the last stroke of the rune inscription process. Suddenly, he raised his index finger upward by a tiny margin. Then the rune simultaneously came to life with its shining bright light.

*Fwuuu...*

'Finally, done!' Jeremy thought to himself after exhaling a long breath of cold air.

Afterward, he carefully observed the last rune floating onto the doormat's top center, which was the only place left empty until now.

Right after the rune had stuck on the place, a super bright white light was suddenly being produced, causing the entire basement to lighten up like a flashbang grenade exploded there.

It was so bright that Jeremy had to close his eyes to avoid eye injuries.

A moment later, the white light had started to dim down and was changing its color into a light blue color, the color of mana when it was releasing its latent energy.

Meanwhile, the materials' bits and pieces situating silently at the center of the doormat until now had suddenly floated up into the air, and they began to piece themselves with one another, piece by piece.

The sight was so spectacular and mesmerizing that it would be able to captivate anyone seeing it.

On the air, a piece of random wood suddenly attached itself with another piece. Then another piece, and another piece, and so on...

It kept going on like this for a while...

Soon, the shape of the combined materials started to be formed with a clearer picture of a staff, a wooden staff to be exact.

Not long after, the wooden staff was becoming almost complete, with only the exception of the golden orb.

Soon after, the golden orb, which was silently floating still in the air, swiftly moved to the 'staff' and attached itself at the top center of the 'staff'.

Then the wooden opening that had let the golden orb went inside a moment ago began to close in by itself like a safety lock that would keep the golden globe attached to the staff permanently.

And...

The glowing blue light started to fade away into nothingness until only a floating staff and the now-empty leather doormat underneath it remained.

'My staff is done!' Jeremy thought ecstatically.

Even a legendary sage of magic would feel excited at this moment.

He had created a rare magical staff within a supposed mana-less world after all...

Concurrently, Jeremy looked fascinatingly at the graceful and awesome staff that he had been spending more than ten days of hard work to create, the Forsaken Branch.

That's the name that Jeremy had prepared for it...

A 'Forsaken Branch' from a forsaken world...