Infinite Potential System

Less than an hour later, William had finished drafting the designs for a set of shoulder guards when the System announced its final evaluation.

-Finished evaluating Artifact quality...

-Invented a new Artifact: +25 PP

-Invented your first Artifact: +100 PP

-Invented a Legendary Artifact: +250 PP

-Invented your first Legendary Artifact: +500 PP

-Unlocked Title: +25 PP

-Artificer (Epic): You have created your first Artifact using rare materials and multiple trade skills, causing its qualities to greatly exceed the desired purpose of the item. Quality of forged items +10%, Quality of tailored items +10%, Quality of Arrays +10%.

William was briefly overwhelmed by a wave of Potential Points. He scrolled through the list of System Messages until he came across the Artificer Title, whose effects were much more exaggerated than the usual Epic Title.

Not only did the Epic Title provide benefits involving his Trade skills, but it also included multiple at once! Since he hadn't received a title for tailoring or forging items specifically, and only received a few Potential Points as a reward for the created items, this was a much-needed bonus.

If William didn't have a finite supply of Starmetal, he would have been tempted to recreate his Artifacts from scratch at the cost of a few weeks of time. With a ten percent increase to all three trade skills involved in their creation process, they were bound to be even stronger than before.

That's a waste of time, it's better to just Cultivate.

The Illusionist's Cloak was completed, so William chose to appraise the item immediately.

———

Illusionist's Cloak (Legendary Cloak): A Magic cloak weaved of cotton cloth by an Apprentice Tailor, Forged of Starmetal by a Master Blacksmith, and improved by a powerful Array Master. Created to cover many weaknesses, this cloak has the ability to conceal one's identity while also providing decent defense and has impressive detection capabilities.

Effects while worn:

-50km detection range: Detects Forbidden Arrays, hostile creatures, non-hostile creatures, traps, toxic environments, natural disasters, Spirit Qi refinement...(+51 More)

-Aura Concealment: Mimics Cultivation at the Golden Core Realm, C-Rank Space and Life Magic Affinity, and eliminates one's Soul Aura.

-Defensive abilities: 100% resists tearing, cutting, piercing, slicing up to the Soul Formation Realm. Fireproof, waterproof, freezeproof, shockproof, crushproof, anti-corrosive up to the Soul Formation Realm. Above the Soul Formation Realm, these effects are reduced in strength by 20% per Realm at the cost of 3x Mana consumption.

-Automatic Repair: Automatically repairs damaged Arrays and material at the cost of 5 Mana per second spent repairing. If hood is destroyed, repair function takes twice as long.

-Mana Consumption: Uses 2 Mana per second while out of combat. Uses 10 Mana per second while in combat.

Mana Storage: 6480/6500

Durability: 800/800

———

William's eyes went wide at the detailed statistics of the Illusionist's Cloak. While he knew the effects of the Cloak would be good because of how many Arrays he used in the process, William didn't expect them to be so exaggerated.

The Arrays were designed to improve the defense of the Cloak to the Soul Formation Realm, but William was pleasantly surprised to find that even against the Tribulation Transcendence Realm the effects were still good.

William queued up the Starmetal Batteries to be evaluated by the System, then activated them to keep the cloak's Arrays healthy before working on the shoulder guards he had drafted out. These would be entirely devoted to his defense and were designed to replicate his Forcefield Talent.

He wanted to reduce the stress on his Mana Reserves as much as possible, replacing his Talents with an Artifact equivalent that could both explain his unusual prowess and use the ambient Mana rather than his own.

The shoulder guards would be linked to the Starmetal Batteries, whose Mana absorption was more than enough to keep up.

Once the Mana in the shoulder guards was expended, the Arrays would deactivate while the Starmetal Batteries prioritized the Illusionist's Cloak. Only the excess Mana would slowly refill the shoulder guards.

He spent four Starmetal creating these two identical Artifacts, then ripped off the sleeves of his robes to provide space for the shoulder guards.

William found that the white robes looked somewhat goofy with the silvery shoulder guards and the grey Cloak, so he dyed the Starmetal grey and the robes a greenish black that would match with the rest of his equipment.

I'm done with the defenses, now I need speed.

Once William left the Gravitas Ruins, he would need to cross a long distance in a short amount of time. While the Space Element would be very useful in traversing rough terrain, he couldn't create a long-distance portal to a place he hadn't visited before.

Even with the coordinates, there was too much risk in teleporting so far. The old Space Mage that died in the Livingwood Forest was a great example of this, who had accidentally teleported into the den of Wind Wolves while escaping from his pursuers.

-Finished evaluating Artifact quality...

-Invented a new Artifact: +25 PP

-Invented an Epic Artifact: +50 PP

-Invented your first Epic Artifact: +100 PP

-Duplicate Artifact x4. No Points awarded...

-Title upgraded: +50 PP

-Artificer (Epic --> Legendary): You have created five Artifacts using rare materials and multiple trade skills, causing its qualities to greatly exceed the desired purpose of the items. Quality of forged items +25%, Quality of tailored items +25%, Quality of Arrays +25%.

-System detected an unintended feature. Host will no longer earn progression towards the Artificer Title when creating Artifacts that are identical or more than 80% similar.

William was pleasantly surprised to find his Artificer Title upgraded already, but disappointed the next second when he saw the System message that eliminated any chances of him pushing the Talent to Celestial Rank quickly.

Oh well, at least I got some benefits.

He didn't think about this too much and appraised one of the five Starmetal Batteries.

———

Starmetal Battery (Epic Artifact): An Artifact designed by a powerful Array Master with the inclusion of other trades. Stores a set amount of Mana and distributes it to other Artifacts in close proximity.

Effects while active:

-Mana Absorption: Select one of four settings to absorb Mana at different rates.

--Silent Mode: +1 Mana per second

--Normal Mode: +5 Mana per second

--Recovery Mode: +20 Mana per second

--Battle Mode: +30 Mana per second. -1 Durability per second.

Mana Storage: 55/200000

Durability: 1000/1000

———

Shit, that's a combined one million Mana!

Since each Starmetal Battery stored two hundred thousand Mana, the combined storage would turn William into a Mana millionaire. Better yet, the batteries could each fully recover their Mana in under three hours in Recovery Mode!

William was overjoyed and immediately turned on Recovery Mode to start filling the Starmetal Batteries. It seemed his plan to store liquid Mana in a container made completely of Starmetal was a good idea after all, as long as the Artifact didn't explode when it was full.

Not only could he store a large amount of Mana, but it was portable!

With the combined Mana recovery of all the Starmetal Batteries, even Normal Mode could maintain the Illusionist's Cloak's functions while in combat. Unless the Repair Function was activated, this was all he needed to offset the Mana cost.