With that done, Minos continued his journey, constantly killing any beast that got in his way, further refining his fighting skills.
It seemed the test got more difficult as one got closer to the light pillar. Originally Minos only had to face low-level demonic beasts of the First Life Lock, but soon enough, beasts of the Second Life Lock layer started appearing as well.
While he could still maintain himself at the moment, he was worried that he wouldn't be able to reach the goal. Since he couldn't make it through with pure strength, he needed something else.
Minos's brain started racing as he came up with different ideas. It was only when he looked up and noticed a bird flying by, that he had an idea.
'There doesn't seem to actually be any demonic beasts in the sky, only regular mortal birds. The person who created this secret realm may have forgotten to get any flying demonic beasts, or maybe they had somehow gone extinct by the time I got here. Either way, I can make use of this.'
Of course while he thought that, Minos didn't actually know how to fly, but he had an idea, one that had actually been in his head for a long time, but he never had a chance to put into action.
'Why don't I make my own custom talisman? Both the Fireball and Ice Shard Talisman have the levitate stroke, allowing them to fly forwards. If I make that stroke the core, and combine it with a few others, could I not theoretically make a Levitation Talisman?'
If any other talisman master heard Minos's thoughts, they'd likely laugh their heads off. A newbie who had only mastered three talismans already wanted to make a new one? What an absolute joke.
Even advanced talisman masters who mastered hundreds, if not thousands of talismans, would struggle making a new one,
The way talisman strokes flowed followed incomparably strict rules, each stroke interacted with other strokes differently, and naturally required different means to connect them.
This was already hard enough to do on a stroke to stroke basis, but when one took in the dozens of strokes required for a talisman, it became incredibly difficult.
As strokes connected, the energy they created would become different. To explain in simple terms, imagine the "Nux Gathering" stroke combined with the "Heat" stroke created an energy index of 1.
If one wanted to connect another stroke, then the new stroke also had to have an energy index of 1. This had to be exact, if the energy index was even 1.0000000000001 the talisman would fail to activate. The laws of the heavens were incredibly strict, and they left no room for mistake.
As more strokes connected, the energy index would constantly raise, this was similarly the reason why talisman's with more strokes had more power, of course that wasn't always the case.
And depending on which strokes you connected, you would always get a different energy index. For example, "Nux Gathering" and "Heat" will have an energy index of one, but "Illuminate" and "Heat" would instead have an index of 0.97
Yet "Heat" and "Illuminate" would actually have an energy index of 0.96, changing again. "Nux Gathering," "Heat," and "Illuminate" would have an energy index of 1.12, but "Illuminate," "Heat," and "Nux Gathering" would have 1.09
As more strokes connected, the energy index would increase to infinitely larger possibilities, and require more and more precision, meaning that each stroke literally became more difficult then the last.
Of course this wasn't exactly how it worked, but it summarized things quite precisely, giving a good idea at how hard the talisman profession is, despite how easy it may seem.
All the reasons listed above were exactly why making an original talisman was such an incredibly difficult task, even low-level ones.
Not only does it require tremendous amounts of talent, but more importantly, it requires patience, the patience to test hundreds of thousands of different strokes until you finally manage to get the right energy index.
Of course, Minos still knew far too little of the talisman occupation to realize the difficulties of what he was about to attempt, but even if he did, he would still try anyway. After all, difficulties never stopped him, if anything, they made him more excited.