Young had no clue how long he'd been cultivating. Perhaps hours at this point given the amount of qi he'd amassed.
[Qi: 284/284]
"I'm getting tired..and hungry." He remarked as he glanced at his saturation levels.
[Saturation: 5%]
"It's pretty low right now. This should be good for now.." Young said as his stomach growled. Young exited his soul sea and returned to his conscious state and indeed his body felt much heavier and weak. He needed some food and water, it was a miracle he hadn't felt these needs sooner considering he'd spent the last four days in the wilderness according to Spark.
He got to his feet and stretched a bit then set about the task of gathering more spirits. He wasn't sure how many he would need, but he wanted to obtain something that could be useful to crafting in order to increase his chances of success.
After spending some time to think about his strategy, he decided to make his Capture Sphere much larger. The wisps weren't that agile, so he would sacrifice a bit of mobility in order to capture more of them at once. With his new qi limits this was also possible, given that the reason he was using such small constructs were because size affected the amount of mana needed to create them.
He settled on one about the size of his head and easily managed to capture 4 lesser wisps in a single attempt. This cost him roughly 20% of his qi so it was somewhat worth it. He needed to make his next few attempts absolutely worth it-- so he then decided to pour more of his own energy into the "Seeking Spirits" technique. The result was over a hundred spirits of various sizes swarming around before him. Among them was a rather large red spirit, about the size of a child's hand ball. He'd never seen one of this size before and if Young had to guess it just might be rare.
"I've probably only got one shot at catching this one so I guess I'll go all out." He watched the spirit move to a fro for quite some time as he attempted to anticipate it's movements. As Spark suggested Greater Spirits seemed to have basic intelligence. It navigated between some of the spirits and even consumed the smaller ones entirely.
"Let's go for double." Young said to himself as he pushed his Capture Sphere technique to the limit. It grew to roughly one meter in diameter before Young sent it flying. Rather than attempting to catch the large spirit Young simply fired it. Along the way it scooped up nearly a dozen smaller spirits of varying sizes. The red spirit attempted to avoid the trap but it was much too large to go around. The capture sphere then halted its momentum and began to shrink, only ceasing once it had become about the size of a crystal ball.
[Wisp Sphere - Rank 1, Quality 110.
A group of wisp spirits, perfect for beginner's experiments with Spirit Forging.]
"Ah, ha. I did it!" Young shouted in celebration as he pumped his fist. He'd used almost eighty percent of his qi by this point and his body had begun to suffer the effects of qi deprivation once more.
He laid his hand on the large orb and placed it into his storage. He then decided to restore his qi again before moving onto the next phase of his task. Less than five minutes later his qi had been completely refilled and it was time to experiment.
As if it could sense what Young was doing the system displayed more tutorial alerts.
"Spirit Forging [1]. To begin the act of spirit forging visit your Forging Menu. Place the desired materials into the forge slots and configure your seal. For simplicity's sake the system will handle drawing seals--you simply need to configure them to achieve the desired outcome."
"Now we're getting somewhere." After hours of hard work it was now time to reap some benefits for Young Jade.
He quickly opened his Forging menu and was presented with a strange user interface. Before him were four boxes, three of which represented a different type of material and the fourth the Seal used to trigger the forging.
"Let's get started." Young said as he cracked his fingers and began to fiddle with the interface. First he added a Holy Lightning Materia, followed by his Lesser Spirit Orb as a test. He left the final material slot blank and instead moved onto the seal configuration.
He clicked the hovering button before him only to be given two choices, "Weapon" and "Armament". He briefly remembered Spark talking about these, he decided to choose "Weapon" first.
After making his selection the symbol for "Weapon" Seal appeared.
"Choose your augmentations. You currently have 2 to choose from."
Young clicked on a blinking corner of the seal and a second menu dropped down revealing two choices.
"Sword or Spear. Hmm…" Young couldn't make up his mind which would be more beneficial.
"Swords are easier to use..but spears allow me to strike from range. Unfortunately I'm not trained with either." In the end Young decided that it really didn't matter since he would have to learn to use either weapon. With this in mind he chose the easier to use, the Sword.
[The following forging will require 250 qi. Commence Forging? Y/N]
"It's a good thing I restored my qi beforehand. Yes." Young Jade confirmed.
The pair of materials appeared from his dimension storage and hovered in the air before him, soon they began to spin as they were drawn towards one another. The materials then slammed together in a flash of light and began to take the shape of a weapon -- that of a sword.
[Augmentation Variation Unlocked : Shortsword]
After a few moments the new weapon floated towards Young, presumably so that he could claim it.
[Beast Spirit Shortsword
Rank 1
A weapon created by Young Jade. He's just happy he didn't blow anything up.
Element : Lightning (Grade 3)
Effect : Arcing Thunder
Uses 5/5]
"Ha. What a bastard." Young remarked with a chuckle as he read the description of the weapon. He laughed because it was accurate.
"But what is this? Uses? Can this thing only be used five times? That seems pointless…" He said as he grasped the sword. The hilt was covered in leather and fur, the blade was about 1.5 meters in length. He held the blade up to inspect it and realized that the blade itself gave off a faint, pulsing glow.
"Power Of The Spirits Unleashed [1] : You've crafted your first Spirit Item. Spirit Items rely on a supply of energy in order to maintain their function. The weapon you've created uses 'Charges'. Once these charges deplete, the weapon itself will dissipate. To trigger the effects of a spirit item, you need only direct your qi into the item. Once you've applied the required amount, the Spirit Item's effect will activate. Be careful, some Spirit Items can be harmful to the user if not used properly…"
"Ah, so that's how it works. Hmm...well since I only have five uses it makes more sense not to waste them but I do need to see what this weapon can do."
Ultimately curiosity got the better of Young Jade and so he poured his qi into the weapon until the bone blade began to pulse with crackling energy. He then swung the sword causing lightning to arc forth from the blade and strike the opposite ravine wall--well over ten meters in front of him. The lightning hit with such force that a booming clap reverberated throughout the ravine. The force of the blow shattered rock and carved a groove in the ground which glowed faintly with heat for several moments after the attack activated. All in all the technique lasted for three seconds. The blade of the Beast Spirit Shortsword returned to its normal, offwhite color and this was followed by the sound of cracking as well as another alert.
['Beast Spirit Shortsword' 4 / 5 Uses Remaining]
"Holy heck,that was awesome!" Young Jade said as a grin spread across his face.