After returning from Thunder’s shop, Kei immediately placed the box of books on the table and began reading.
He almost completely immersed himself in researching how to craft new items.
Meanwhile, Kim Sora managed the store downstairs on her own. She took inventory of the goods, wiped down the counters and shelves, greeted customers who stopped by to buy items, and occasionally looked up toward the stairs to check whether Kei was taking a break.
But Kei had no intention of resting at that moment. He was particularly interested in space rings right now.
After successfully repairing Ular’s broken ring, Kei wanted to know whether he could craft a complete ring on his own. So he flipped through each book, searching for methods to craft F-rank space rings.
"The main material is a low-grade space stone, plus a small amount of energy-conducting metal, most notably a silver frame, and then carving various magic patterns that connect the silver frame to the space inside the stone..."
Kei read and jotted down the important information as he went.
He had initially thought crafting a new space ring would be much harder than repairing an old one. However, after studying the process carefully, Kei discovered the exact opposite was true.
Crafting an F-rank space ring was actually simpler than repairing Ular’s broken ring.
All he had to do was process the space stone in the correct sequence, create a stable space inside it, and then use energy to guide the formation of the item by carving magic patterns onto the ring’s silver frame.
The hardest part of ring repair was not creating a new ring, but saving a space that had already begun to collapse, which was why repairing a ring was far more difficult.
Kei sat still in front of the desk for a long time.
"Now I understand why Craftsmen don’t want to take ring repair orders from hunters."
If it was just crafting a new ring, a Craftsman could produce many products in the same amount of time. Repairing a broken ring not only took a lot of effort, but if they slipped up even slightly, the entire space inside would collapse, taking the customer’s belongings with it.
High risk, long time, and the pay wasn’t necessarily worth it.
That was a job almost no one wanted to take. But for Kei, it was precisely that difficulty that made him interested, and helping Ular, that regular hunter customer, was also something that made Kei happy.
After a few days of reading and preparing materials, Kei finally began crafting his first space ring.
He placed the low-grade space stone on the table and carefully ground away the impurities on the outside using tools. Then, Kei heated the energy-conducting metal, shaped it into a simple circle as the ring frame, and set the space stone in the center.
After that, Kei began carving magic patterns onto the ring’s silver frame with a carving knife.
Every step went so smoothly that Kei found it hard to believe.
A hunter’s energy was drawn out from the abdomen, flowing through the blood vessels down to the fingertips. Thin streams of energy entered the item, gradually stabilizing the spatial structure inside the stone.
There was no violent resistance or any explosion. Nor was there any spatial distortion like the time he repaired Ular’s ring.
Just a few days later, a simple F-rank space ring lay quietly on Kei’s table.
He picked it up and examined it closely.
The ring had no special patterns beyond the basic magic runes. It was just a band of silver metal with a small space stone set into the face of the ring.
But this was the first product Kei had crafted with his own hands in this world.
Kei looked at it for a long while, feeling a deep sense of peace inside.
Over the past few days, Kei had continued trying to convert energy into mana.
Every time the energy in his body ran out, he would wait for it to recover and then continue his experiments. As a result, a total of one thousand eight hundred points of energy had been converted into one hundred eighty points of mana.
Kei’s current mana was 180.The hunter’s energy has returned to 0/100.
Kei looked at the numbers floating in his mind and frowned slightly. After his energy ran out, he would need about five hours to fully recover.
"If I have to craft higher-level items, this recovery speed won’t be enough."
Kei rested his chin on his hand, lost in thought.
Perhaps he needed to look for items that could aid energy recovery. If items that sped up energy absorption existed in this world, his research efficiency would definitely increase by a lot.
And of course, the amount of mana Kei could convert would be even greater.
Kei looked down at the rank F space ring in his hand.
One cubic meter.
For an ordinary person, this volume would be enough to store quite a lot of belongings. But for Kei, the ring was just like a toy that had just been successfully crafted.
An idea suddenly popped into his head.
All this time, Kei had been trying to hold himself back, only using hunter energy to support his research and maintain simple experiments. However, now he felt a slight itch in his palms.
His current mana had reached 180 points, and he wanted to try something new.
Kei took a wooden box, placed the ring he had just crafted inside, and closed the lid. Then, he stood up, picked up the box, and left the workshop.
The sound of footsteps echoed on the stairs.
Sora was sitting behind the counter, checking the account books while eating a small cake. Hearing the noise, she immediately looked up.
"Kei? Are you done with your research?"
"Yeah."
Kei placed the box on the counter.
"I want to try some new things with this ring."