[NR] Proper Accrediting - Chapter 617

Jason was fine with this limitation. He hadn’t intended his book to be the equivalent of a movie. It was meant to be a book that you read. The projection and animation were useful for displaying certain principles and processes, but he wasn’t going to go crazy with it. After all, he wants to simplify things, not make it complex. If a graph can’t be displayed in two dimensions, the first step shouldn’t be to add a third dimension, but to figure out why.

And even if you do need to add depth to an infographic, a lot can be done with simple drawing techniques. No need to reach for a hologram projector. If anything, going 3d should be reserved for when it simplifies what is to be learned instead of adding complexity.

An example that Jason whipped up as a test being that of displaying the sides of a six-sided die. The normal folded out cross works fine, but having a projection of the cube that is slowly spinning next to it provides a simplified look at how the sides fit together and what they look like when they do. After all, it is one thing to know that the sides with one pip and six pips are opposite one another, but quite another to actually hold a die in your hand and be able to flip it over.

So that just left Jason to figure out the layout and design. Though there isn’t much there for him to mess around with. As much as Courtney had told him to go his own way while paying attention to tradition, a bit contradictory, but that’s life. Jason couldn’t really do much of either, which for most anyone else would be impossible as it would seem those two choices cover everything that is possible.

Except Jason had his last life to draw on, which was neither “his own way” nor was it following any of the known traditions. Which, of course means that in theory Jason would get credit for all this. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen.

This might be a whole new universe and maybe there was a “Heaven’s Will” above watching, but his original life had very much pushed the idea of accrediting those who developed things. Even if it was a demonic cultivator who discovered something, if you knew they had done so, you admitted that.

No one knows why the Heavens would care about such things, but the rumor was that some weak genius had once had all his discoveries stolen. Then, after what in Jason’s new life would be called a classic Xianxia cultivation story, he ascended and forced all to acknowledge his past work while ensuring such things would not happen in the future. Though whether that was true, had been lost in the mists of time, even accounting for the extended lifespan that cultivators gained with power.

So Jason was going to credit the schema he was using to layout the creation process of wondrous devices to the Autumn Banner Sage, Creator of Wonders, Ancestor Protector of the Iron Peak sect, and disciple of an unnamed Ascendant. It might not be the absolute best method, however, it had been one of the most widely applicable and once someone learns to use it, is actually pretty simple to understand. Jason for a moment considered releasing the method itself as well, but figured with how item creation seemed to work in NeoRealm, it wouldn’t have quite as much value as it might have elsewhere.

After all, most magic items are created with only a general guide to what effects they’ll have. Very few are like an immovable rod and even then, without doing what Jason had done, they wouldn’t be set in stone, anyway. And so he had the book laid out and ready. Maybe a few tweaks? But for the most part, it was now the challenge of transcribing it in NeoRealm.

That was going to require some money. Though thankfully, the nearby settlement was actually the best place to buy the supplies. Sure, they didn’t have vellum, fancy inks, or what have you. What they did have was some of the best base ingredients Jason could ask for.

Near unlimited hides of whatever the current giant monster had brought along, strange plants and minerals, as well as rare woods. The Deep Wilds provided everything if you looked in the right place and thankfully, the settlement would have already done the looking for him. Will this mean dipping into his gold a bit deeper than just buying some regular paper and ink? No questions about it, but Jason figured if he was going to get a skill for making a book, he was going to get as inclusive of a skill as possible.

The trick would be in figuring it all out. For instance, in theory, vellum specifically meant the skin of a calf, but Jason didn’t care about that and strange beasts would provide some extra magic to the book. More of a worry for him was getting the inks right, because this was going to require multiple colors no matter how he looked at it.

Then there was the problem of where he lived. Being so far into the Deep Wilds meant the humidity could change wildly. A problem when traditional vellum was highly susceptible to such things. Sure, when kept at a constant temperature and humidity, it preserved better than regular paper, but there was a reason beyond keeping the book closed that a lot of old books had a clasp. That was there to hold the wooden boards of the cover tightly together so the pages wouldn’t warp.

Despite all of this, Jason figured he could manage. Not because he trusted himself to suddenly become an expert or anything. Rather, he was going to cheat.

Vellum normally can not deal with humidity? Source hides from a creature with a natural resistance to water. Not having high-quality tools? His Energy could be used to sub in for those tools, all while giving a more direct feel for what he was working on. Worried about the inks fading? Hook them into the books Energy so they’re maintained as well. In fact, the equivalent of a dust repelling formation from his last life wouldn’t be out of line either. Allow the book to fully take advantage of being a Tome and using Energy.