[Congratulations! Host]

A month was enough for them to understand that one of their greatest weaknesses was air combat. They had plenty of team members, but none of them had wings or the ability to fly, only Tuatha could float to a certain height in his wisp form. But it wasn't enough to engage in aerial combat. Some of his worst losses were against these opponents.

And so a month passed quickly, they accumulated a lot of experience and went up many levels, the amount of experience offered by a long fight against people was much greater than fighting beasts. Their arrival in Uglitch didn't change Nicola's focus on the project at hand, he simply continued for another two months before finding success in his first item using the new technique.

The hexagonal shield was on the table and was the size of a manhole cover. It had a grayish color and a green glow on its surface, at each of its tips was a silver level magical beast core forming an arrangement of opposing elements, air, light and water were on one side while earth, shadows and fire were at the opposite vertices, and right in the middle of the shield was the lightning core.

Nicola activated his elemental irises and looked again at the shield and found three pseudo-cores aligned with the energy sources that surrounded them. All of this was connected with an intricate rune matrix that united the whole ensemble as one piece.

Nicola dripped blood onto the shield and used his mental strength to float it into the air. The shield spun in several directions before stopping in midair in front of him. It was an artifact at the peak of the silver star level, if it weren't for its materials that kept it from reaching the gold level it would have skipped that difference.

Nicola embedded seven elemental cores in it to grant him the ability to lead any of the elements at his will. With a thought the shield changed the outward appearance between the seven elements before returning to normal.

With that he could use elemental advantages to decrease the damage of enemy attacks against him. The shield's reaction speed was magnificent and didn't lag behind its defensive capabilities.

The four AIs flew around the shield analyzing and cataloging all of their stats at the same time. Somehow they had learned through Nicola's memoirs about wears and spent the entire forging process wearing traditional blacksmith clothing, with black aprons and dark glasses. And now they were in character as scientists dressed in lab coats and seriously jotting down data on clipboards made of light. Nicola chuckled to himself at the scene in front of him.

[Host has mastered all of his professions to peak silver level]

[Host created unique path]

[Host merged all his professions into a new field without the help of the system]

[Congratulations! Host created high-level creation technique]

[Congratulations! Host has unlocked gold level profession before requirements are complete, special permission granted, seal raised]

[Host demanded a lot of effort in their professions]

[Notice!!! All of the above conditions are rewarded as cultivation experience by calculating experience....]

Many notifications flashed in front of him at the same time, but Nicola wasn't scared and quickly read them. Wasting no time he sat down on the floor and stimulated his dantian. Inside the empty space was its elemental core surrounded by three planets, one formed by shadows and surrounded by seven black moons, the second was a living rock with many ores and living plants, the third was a little smaller and still in development, the new Fire Heavenly Essence that had been fed by Nicola with his soul fire and presented, in addition to red and orange flames, a slight bluish tinge in some flames. And within that larger core was Nicola's soul, a multi-elemental dagger surrounded by a haze of negative energy.

"Initiate sudden disruption emergency procedure" The transmission was passed to their AIs, and with control over the space artifact they possessed, the four teleported dozens of special pills Nicola had prepared for a moment like this.

He didn't know when he could receive system rewards, but he had found that system rewards boosted the cultivator's level without causing any instability in his dantian's foundations, so he would take that moment to push his cultivation further with the medicinal pills. Since he developed the technique of alchemy fusion and arrays formation he secretly developed pills for this purpose and kept them under the surveillance of his AI for that time.