"What do you mean! I am Butto. My god, I can't believe I actually listened to you and made such a fool of myself." Rendo replied in anger, he couldn't help but regret listening to Minos.
"See, you still haven't mastered true confidence. Remember, Butto isn't you, rather, Butto is the arrogant genius talisman maker who cares nothing for how the world sees him. He's an eccentric genius."
"Genius?" Rendo replied.
"Exactly, a genius who pays no mind to the world's opinion of him. So tell me, what does Rendo have to do with someone so different?"
"N-nothing, Rendo has nothing to do with him." Rendo replied.
"Bingo. So tell me Rendo, do you want to be Rendo forever. The shamed young master with no home and no esteem? Or do you want to be Butto, the genius the world can't help but approve, no matter how he behaves."
"Naturally I want to be Butto!" Rendo said with a renewed passion.
"Good Butto, then come with me, it's time for stage two. But first and foremost, put something on. Butto is wild, but he isn't that wild." Minos finished with a laugh as he left the room.
It was only at that moment Rendo noticed he was completely butt naked. He wanted to find a hole to bury into, but fortunately Minos had already left and the young lady in the bed was still asleep, so he avoided further embarrassment.
Quickly tossing on his clothes, he ran outside, following Minos onto the streets of Underwood City.
"What are we doing next?" Rendo couldn't help but ask curiously.
"Well Butto, you have the name, but you have yet to completely understand the nature of the Butto character. Have you ever fought in the wilderness?" Minos suddenly asked.
"No, why would I? Strength isn't necessary for a talisman maker, so most of my time was spent learning."
"See, you're still acting like Rendo. While Rendo never fought, Butto had a fierce nature, much like a beast in the wild, and today, Butto can't help but feel some sudden bloodlust, wanting to let out his savageness."
"Uhh, what a minute. Can't we just go back to that club and keep pretending. I think I prefer that." Rendo said.
Minos laughed as he heard that, but quickly responded. "Hey, that's only one side of Butto's character, not the full picture. Don't tell me you suddenly fell in love with one of those girls?" Minos smirked.
"N-no way! Quick, let's go to the forest." Rendo shouted, trying to change the subject.
…
The two soon arrived deep into the forest, right next to the cave Minos had done his experiments in. Naturally he had two purposes for this excursion. One was to continue his research, and the second was to continue to temper Rendo.
Rendo was at the Third Life Lock, the same realm as Minos, so he shouldn't have much difficulty with the beasts in this area.
"Alright, here we are. I'm going to wait here, you can get to work." Minos said as he was about to enter the cave.
"Wait, what do you mean? I thought you were going to help me?"
"What the hell do you take me for? Your personal security. Butto is a beast of a man that requires no help, so naturally you'll have to do things on your own this time."
"Uhh, but I've never even been in the wild before, I don't know what to do. Also, what if I get lost or some powerful demonic beast attacks me, I'll be hopeless." Rendo said with anxiety.
"No need to get worried, I've already checked this area, and all the demonic beasts here are low-leveled. And if you do get lost, just point this Shining Talisman into the sky, with it, I'll be able to find you easily."
Eventually, under Minos's repeated assurances, Rendo could only force down his uneasiness and head deep into the woods.
Minos nodded his head appreciatively as he saw this. Ultimately Rendo would have to rely on himself, so if he builds too much dependance on Minos, it would instead be detrimental to his growth.
Watching as he disappeared among the trees, Minos headed back into the cave. With a tap of his spatial ring, he pulled out the Talisman Stroke Guide book he had gotten from Rendo.
He had been waiting patiently until now, so now that he finally had some free-time again, he couldn't wait to crack open this book.
The book introduced hundreds of different talisman strokes, some that Minos already knew such as the Nux Gathering stroke and the Heat stroke, but the vast majority of them were still brand new.
Minos almost immediately found one that answered his problem, called the 'Trigger' stroke. It was essentially just an advanced version of the Blood Trigger stroke, instead allowing different sources of stimuli to activate the talisman.
For example, one could set the trigger as light. In that case, the moment light touched the talisman, it would activate.
The flexibility of this stroke was far more than the single Blood Trigger stroke, but naturally it was also much more difficult to draw, being nearly 5x as large as a Blood Trigger stroke.
While strokes didn't have gradings in the same sense talisman's did, the more advanced a stroke was, the more difficult it was to actually create it, naturally.
With this new stroke on hand, Minos wasted no time. After about five minutes in the woods, he walked back out with a small Tri-Legged Rabbit in hand.
Tying it down like usual, Minos took his needle like talisman brush and began carving into the rabbits back.
Replacing the Blood Trigger stroke, he instead used a regular Trigger stroke set to activate once the talisman received a certain amount of pressure. That way, a person would only have to press on the talisman hard enough to activate it. Finishing up, Minos used a rag to wipe away excess blood and looked down at his masterpiece.
The talisman didn't activate right away, which was a good sign, however it also meant that it might have failed completely.
With that in mind, Minos pressed down on the talisman marking, trying to activate it. Unfortunately nothing happened, and Minos had to think back on everything he had done.
With two threads of thoughts, Minos could always have one completely focused on the procedure, so it only took a second to realize the mistake he made.
Choosing a new spot on the rabbit, he began the attempt again. Things went smoothly and soon Minos was pressing on the talisman mark once more.
This time however, a light quickly ignited from the talisman mark. With another press, the talisman deactivated.
The rabbit woke up at this time, squirming in its shackles. Minos didn't use any anesthetic to put it back to sleep however, since he needed it awake for the second part of his experiment.
Using a boulder to block off the cave door, he released the rabbit, watching as it ran around the cave in fear. Everytime it got comfortable, Minos would chase after it, forcing it to run some more.
After about 20 minutes, the rabbit was completely exhausted, and it couldn't even limp anymore.
Minos quickly jotted this number down in his brain before tossing a carrot at the rabbit and giving it a few hours to rebuild its stamina.
Once the rabbit was completely reinvigorated, Minos got to chasing after it again, but this time he activated the Shining Talisman on its back.
The two got to running once more, but this time the rabbit got exhausted much faster, only lasting ten minutes before it collapsed.
However this time, the rabbit didn't seem to recover. Instead, as the Shining Talisman continued to glimmer, the rabbit got weaker and weaker, soon falling completely unconscious.
Only after the rabbit was completely knocked out did the Shining Talisman deactivate on its own accord. Minos took note of this all as he pondered.
'The talisman extracts Nux from the body as it is activated, which indirectly causes the creature to lose stamina and an accelerated rate. Furthermore, if the talisman isn't deactivated, it will extract Nux until the organism is completely drained of it, therefore knocking it unconscious.'
'To a human however, this second problem isn't too much of a concern, since they can simply deactivate it once the Nux usage becomes too severe.'
For now, Minos was completely satisfied with the results. Of course there were still plenty of ways to make his Flesh Talisman even better, but for 1.0 it met the minimum standards.
Now he still needed to do further testing to check the limits of the talisman. Such as how many usages until the Flesh Talisman starts degrading, how long until the healing process naturally disrupts the Flesh Talisman's operation, etc.
With that in mind, Minos quickly got to work. Pushing the large boulder that blocked the cave entrance, he ran back into the woods and soon came back with 3 more Tri-Legged Rabbits on hand.
This time, he didn't just carve the Shining Talisman, rather he had one rabbit for each talisman he wanted to test. The Fireball Talisman, Levitation Talisman, and Ice Shard Talisman.
Soon the fireball rabbit was done, and Minos immediately activated the Flesh Talisman. This time however, the results were quite disappointing, and the rabbit's fur just caught on fire with no fireball being summoned at all.
Minos couldn't help but feel grateful that he never attempted to use the Fireball Talisman when it came to his own line of talisman combat skills, or else he would have likely ended up with internal burns.
Minos quickly put out the fire as he began to consider what went wrong. It seemed that the fireball was summoned too close to the body, which not only caused its formation process to be disrupted, but also meant that the rabbit was caught up in the flames. Fortunately, the Talisman Stroke Guide already offered him a solution.