Awakened: SSS Ranked Soul king

Chapter 50 Infinite Reserves

"That makes it four days they've been in there, you lost," outside the Old Devil's office, the middle-aged man Willy's voice resounded. His eyes were glued to the door in front of him.

The old man was known to chase away all his apprentices with his rigorous training sessions. Several times they had to step in and make a more relaxed schedule for training for the old man, but even then they still ran away.

This time was different though; Guilliman and the old man had been in there for four days, yet they saw no signs of disagreement from him.

In fact, it seemed like he was the one pushing the old man since even they hadn't seen him in four days.

"You can keep the money, I just can't believe he forgot about the funding thing," the man next to Willy said, feeling relief.

If Guilliman were here, he would recognize him as the attendant who was hiding from the old man that time. It seemed like they didn't have beef with anyone down here other than the old man.

"Ehhh, yeah, what's up with that? How are we going to pay bills without funding?" one of the other inscribers called out from behind, causing the administrator to freeze.

Yeah, he forgot that the lack of funding would affect these guys too. That was his mistake.

"Well, there's really nothing we can do right now; the shelter lord is more concerned about the gate and supplying the slayers with enough resources to clear it. It'll take a while before funding gets back to normal," the administrator explained, feeling a bit bad—he too had his funding cut, but not as much as these guys.

Although inscribing was a very lucrative job, mass inscribing was regulated by the shelter. Becoming private would be hard for low-level inscribers if they took one job at a time.

The mood of the room became a bit gloomy as everyone looked around with dismay; most of them had families to feed. Cutting back on these things would be hard. But... they could handle it for a while.

"Cheer up though; if the gate is bountiful, we'd be expecting lots of material from within—a pay rise afterward is a sure thing... though don't tell anyone I said that," the administrator said before slowly pulling back and walking away casually.

"Keep me posted, I want my money if I win," he waved, leaving the workshop as he headed up the staircase.

Inside the Old Devil's office.

"Focus," the old man nearly slapped himself as he turned to a workbench behind him and started his own project.

About 30 minutes later, he turned to Guilliman and walked towards him.

"You can stop now," he said with a sigh, then stretched his hand out and presented a metallic brush with a beast crystal at its head.

Inscribers needed a way to create inscriptions on their targets. Just drawing on the surface didn't cut it; it could always be cleaned. They needed a tool to burn the inscriptions onto the surface of their targets.

This specialized inscription pen could do just that and in fact helped concentrate energy into more precise points.

"Ahh, this is...," Guilliman had seen the guys outside use something similar, though it felt a bit different.

"This is an Arcane Inscription Pen. Do not inject anything else into it, or else you'll destroy it," the old man explained.

Arcane energy didn't work like the others; on a normal day, people with the affinity would never even use it until they died, unless they had a teacher. So its do's and don'ts sounded strange.

So yes, it couldn't be used at the same time or even in the same runic inscription as any other element.

"Okay," Guilliman nodded, collecting the pen and observing it. It was made from a strange metallic substance that felt hard to the touch. It was also quite heavy, but manageable for someone like him.

"Let's start with the basics, you'll learn energy flow first."

At Guilliman's level, energy couldn't be controlled with beast echoes or similar tools; his other two apprentices were the same, so it took a lot of time before he allowed them to transition to energy flow training.

However, Guilliman had surprised him; his ability to constantly draw arcane inscriptions without feeling drained cut out a large chunk of the time needed between sessions to rest. This forced him to advance his training in a measly four days.

Maybe they truly could finish his training on time for their departure.