The whole thing exploded in a flash of blue light and energy.
He wasn't able to get away fast enough so the explosion occurred some distance from his face. He truly got a face full of the flash. However, he was fine.
The explosion wasn't enough to harm him even if it had struck him in the face. The worst that it could have done was burn all of his hair and make him bald.
He had experienced that before, which was why he had activated an energy barrier once he sensed the brewing violent energy. So even if he hadn't stepped back, his long green hair would have been safe.
To top things off, even if he had been injured, he would have healed it easily as seen by the rapid healing of the injuries in the palm of his hand from when he was pierced by the roots of the armament. Very soon, no one would be able to tell that he was ever injured.
He stood where he was, scratching his chin. He was thinking about what went wrong and how to solve it.
He had put every part of the array into compartments, so it is easy to figure out where something went wrong. And since he was so close and saw when exactly something went wrong, he can point to exactly what went wrong.
He was able to come to a conclusion quickly. That conclusion was to try again, but this time try the failed compartment alone until it is perfected before he puts it into an armament.
He said to himself, "The theory is sound. So I will surely get it in time."
He is not talking about how to build an armament. He learned that two months ago.
It took him three months to learn how to build an armament. That is an incredibly short time to learn how to build an armament. Most people take six months.
How to build an armament is both difficult and easy to do. It is easy to do because there is a textbook detailing every step. As long as one understands the steps, can execute them, is diligent, and practices, they will learn how to build armaments.
The armaments they build will be the low-grade ones and might even just be level 1 armaments made from the corpses of beasts at the first transformation of the first mortal coil, like rats. It still counts as success.
So following instructions is easy. The difficulty lies in mastering the art. That takes years.
Arthur hasn't mastered the art. But he can aim to forge a top-grade armament because he took a shortcut. This shortcut is breaking every part into sections.
Breaking the part into sections made him capable of pursuing top-grade quality, but it comes with its own set of disadvantages.
First of all, separating the various parts into the sections is not easy at all. It required a deep understanding of expressions. It is not like following the steps in a textbook, which only require the understanding of rules.
Secondly, it makes the different sections far apart from each other. This increases energy requirement and increases energy loss.
Fortunately, he came up with a solution to this problem. This solution was to transform the lightning from a low-voltage form into a high-voltage form.
He wanted to use the principle of electromagnetic induction used in the transformers of his past life to reduce energy loss and increase the speed of lightning.
It was a good idea. Unfortunately, it isn't in the textbook, so he had to innovate. Innovation meant a lot of trials and errors. This explosion is an outcome of his trials.
Actually, he thought he had worked out the major problems. That's why he had the confidence to use it in the top-grade armament.
He had tried it in a low-grade armament, and it worked. But now that he was using it in a top-grade armament, the high voltage of the energy going through the transformer made the lightning overcome the insulation in the transformer.
Once the lightning overcame the insulation, it began to react with the lightning in the neighboring circuits. They pooled together and then exploded.
He thought about it and said, "There are two problems. The first problem is that lightning is too violent. The second problem is that mana is too reactive."
"I'm sure that the engineers of my past life didn't have to wrestle with mana trying to get into their circuit boards. So I need to find something that can insulate both lightning and mana. What a drag."
"Maybe that's why they scattered the sections in the book. So that similar arrays won't be able to resonate."
He was muttering to himself, so his quiet voice was the only thing in the room. But something else caught his eye.
He looked to the side and saw his identity card. It was glowing where he had placed it.
This meant that it had a notification for him. He hadn't heard it because he muted the sound of the identity card. So he went over to pick it up.
When he reached the identity card, he saw that he had received many requests for communication from his mother, and the current notification was for a request for communication from his mother.
So he accepted the request and said, "What's going on?"
Lady Vena sighed in relief when she heard his voice. "Finally you answer. I thought that you were dead. I was already contemplating liquidating your dojos and running away with the remaining money."
He rolled his eyes and asked, "Wasn't the money I paid you for your work enough?"
She replied shamelessly, "No, it was not enough. Nothing will ever be enough if there is more to be had."
Her reply made him chuckle. He admitted to her, "That's true. If little is good, more will be better."
She said, "Exactly. Anyway, we have another problem. It is the usual, but it is bigger than normal."