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Alex stepped into the blue portal, and instantly felt an odd… dragging?
It felt like something was pulling at his mind, smothering specifics, while highlighting the generalities.
Runa was ahead of him, explaining that this space would make it difficult to notice small things, allowing his mind to skate through the accelerated time required while absorbing the needed information and leaving aside that which did not matter.
She then expressed that she wanted him to focus.
It was really important that he actually focused.
Runa snapped her fingers before his face, causing him to jerk. “Alex!”
Alex shook his head, his eyes twitching. “Gah!”
“You’re already falling into a fugue state. Faster than I’d hoped, but not unexpectedly so. You are only E tier after all. Listen carefully. This will feel like a memory as it’s happening. The result will be twofold. First, your runic skill will be lifted to at least Epic.”
He frowned. “Wait, the training said Legendary.”
“That it did, hence the second piece. Legendary skills at E tier are… problematic. The weight that they have on the mind is hard to convey. For most, a Legendary skill is the result of hundreds of years—if not millennia—of study.”
“Most?”
She nodded in approval. “Good, you’re paying attention. For others, they have innate giftings, natural understanding that allows their skill to rise beyond their tier’s normal restrictions. This can be accomplished via titles… occasionally, but that is a fleeting thing. Any title I could grant you would be all but useless as you wouldn’t have truly earned it. It would be mine, while just happening to be on your status sheet.” She considered. “Like if I conquered a world and made you king, with my backing. Sure you would be called king, but the title would—in truth—be mine.”
He nodded, that made sense. “So, what’s the solution?”
“I will be altering your mind at a base level. This will grant you a racial attribute. I will also be training you in the language of runes and magical symbology. That will become a secondary skill alongside the one we are truly training. It will rest alongside your runic creation skill and bolster it.”
Alex frowned. “This all seems… too easy?”
She cackled. “These are but building blocks, boy. Can everyone who knows your language and who is capable of writing it create persuasive texts?”
He shook his head. “No, not by a long shot.”
“Exactly. We will be forging your basic skills, but you will have to take them from there.”
He felt his mind fading again and asked a question to maintain focus. “Why is the System so interested in this? This doesn’t sound like anything too unique.”
Runa gave him a long, long look. “You have some understanding of magical symbology, correct?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“So you know it’s a language of sorts. I also just told you that it’s a language.”
“That’s right.”
She hesitated, but clearly she noticed something in his expression. She sighed. “Has the System ever translated a magical symbol for you?”
Alex’s eyes widened. “No.”
“Exactly. It is beyond the System’s comprehension.” She held up a finger. “Make no mistake, it can replicate, iterate, and improve, and there is almost no consciousness in all creation that can do so better, but it doesn’t understand the language.” She frowned, her eyes flashing, almost seeming to have text scroll across them with incredible speed. “It is like your pre-System artificial intelligences. They could provide answers, create images, music, even videos, but did the AIs really understand what they were creating? Maybe a more accurate example would be when they were asked to make code for other programs. They could provide beautiful compilations of other programs—other strings of code—generating functionality out of the collected knowledge available to it, but did they understand?”
Alex shook his head slowly. “I think that was actually a rather heated debate, but I’m thinking no.”
“No, at least not yet.” Her eyes twinkled. “Magical symbology is infinitely more complex, even though it doesn’t seem like it should be. The skill I will train you in is one of true understanding. When you die, that knowledge will return to the System.”
Alex immediately paled.
Runa chuckled. “Never fear. The System has long since moved past destroying potential for quick gains. If you die, it will gain something, but if you grow, then when you eventually pass on, it will gain far more.” She straightened slightly. “It gambled on me as well, but I have endured. My returns have mollified it to the point that it seems willing to take another gamble. In its perspective, there is no way it can lose.”
He gave a slow nod. “Die soon, it gets the basic information and can build upon it. Die later, and it gets a more developed information set. Never die, and I will have grown to the point that I provide something else that it wants as much?”
Runa waggled her hand back and forth. “As much? That’s arguable. Potentially true, depending on your path, but it is old. It is patient. Individuals and the span of mortal lives is nothing. Fear not, young Alex. I am not fattening you for the slaughter.”
He did not like the gleam in her eyes as she said that, but he supposed that he really didn’t have much room for argument. “Alright… Where do we start?”
She smiled. “Good. Here.”
Her hand rose into the air.
“Intend to draw a line, and you will. Copy this.” She drew a simple vertical line of blue light, matching their stark surroundings.
Alex lifted his hand and tried to copy her, his line coming out red.
She slapped his hand, stopping him mid-stroke. “No, boy! Not with your health. Are you daft? With mana.”
Alex tried again, this time focusing on using mana. His line was a blue-green, near hers in color, but not quite.
She grunted. “Better, but you have energy bleed, and I’ve seen children draw straighter lines. You also didn’t match the length or orientation. Did you even notice that mine was slanted a degree away from me? Pay attention! I started at the bottom, would you say a sentence in reverse and assume it meant the same thing? Are you thinking of drawing the line, or is your mind focused on the energy? That matters, boy. Again.”
Alex reeled under the torrent of words, feeling his mind slipping back toward the fugue state.
He nodded, lifting his hand to try again.
And again.
And again.
He lost count somewhere around two thousand attempts, and it was long, long after that before she finally acknowledged that his two-and-five-sixteenth inch line was drawn properly, with properly pure power.
His higher consciousness surfaced for just an instant as she gave an almost manic smile. “Good. Now, we can truly begin.”
Time began to blur as she explained how everything affected the meaning of magical symbology and runes.
It didn’t all matter in many applications, just like a baby could communicate well enough, and a toddler even better despite them violating most linguistic rules, but it helped in precision, efficiency, and results. It also ensured that something that was simply obeying, not understanding, would actually do what you wanted.
Alex’s mind ached.
It was like learning a language that incorporated not only tonality, body language, and facial expression, but also changed based on the time of day, season, and ambient temperature, just to name a few factors. From what he was starting to grasp, his own thoughts—not his expressed thoughts but the ones moving through the back of his mind as he worked—altered what he should be doing as well.
The overarching notion that he latched onto was that every layer that he got ‘right’ would increase the potency and reduce the cost of any working. It would also secure it against counter-workings or others undoing what he’d set in place, and things of that nature.
His simple iteration of symbols with his Shaped Force Blast had effectively been the equivalent of a carpenter using a thousand nails to join two boards lengthwise. Sure, it worked but no one would say it was the best means when used in isolation. It wasn’t even really a good way of doing it.
He learned that most symbolic constructions were like spells. They only existed until their energy ran out, then they vanished.
He learned how to see the remnants of those patterns in the magic of an area with his Basic Mana sense, his mind glossing over the notifications that came with that expanded understanding.
He learned that longer lasting magics had to draw from the ambient mana or some other source of power, making them incredibly problematic on new or frontier worlds.
System made items or magics were backed by the System itself, so they worked everywhere, but mortal—or even immortal—crafted gear or defenses didn’t function that way, unless they were linked to an individual, which was generally impossible—or at least inadvisable—even for personal gear.
After all, who wanted a mana regeneration ring that pulled that mana from themselves, or a health regeneration ring that was constantly draining their own mana pool. That was assuming that it could be properly calibrated so that the incoming mana from the individual didn’t clash with or disrupt that of the maker within the item to begin with.
And when the user’s mana fully replaced the maker’s? Well, that would change how the magical construction should have been made, so at the very least, the item would become less efficient.
It was still effective in some cases, but they were far more limited.
On established worlds, the ambient magic was stabilized and so things could be created to draw on local power, but if those items were taken to areas of higher density, they could overload to catastrophic results. Areas of lower power? They would self-cannabalize, the magics being lost sooner rather than later.
That was actually one of ancillary protections on newer worlds. Only System-granted items could effectively be used against such new worlds, and world-scope items—whatever those were—were vanishingly rare, with their use often quite restricted even when the System did give them.
Alex found a bit of humor in watching his own actions. He continued to try using his own health in the creation of the symbology, much to Runa’s vexation.
It actually happened enough that the woman finally snapped, showing him that the use of health instead of mana required a shift in the creation of rune-set, which actually shouldn’t have been a surprise to Alex.
When he’d then asked what to do for Life usage, she’d slapped him.
He was unsure how long it had taken for him to wake up, but it hadn’t been quick.
She’d been calmer then, but still, she’d only said that what the lines were made of didn’t matter, it was what they used that mattered.
She then held out one of his few remaining wooden shingles, and Alex felt the fugue pull back from his mind momentarily.
“We need to talk about your… previous work. And your annoyingly persistent questions are as good a lead in as any.” She held out the wood for him to take. “What do you think of this, now?”
He took the shingle to analyze it more closely. Immediately, he winced. “It’s crude, utterly uncaring of orientation or many other nuances of the art.”
She waved that off. “Of course, of course, but what does it do?”
Alex arched an eyebrow and looked down. It simply said, ‘Strengthen.’ By itself, that would… He barked a laugh. “It’s strengthening the mana, not the wood. The wood is basically a tray and convenient handle for the magic.”
Runa quirked a wry smile and nodded before motioning for him to continue.
“It is obviously temporary. Outside of a time-locked inventory of some kind, it would likely only last a few hours. Under stress? Far less.” He frowned, examining it further. “It is the mana of the rune that was resisting destruction.”
Runa nodded, turning away. “It is one of the least efficient applications of power that I have ever seen. Congratulations.”
Alex winced. “Yeah…”
“Come, come, we’ve only just begun, though we’re reaching the edge of what you will remember before advancing.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Oh? I thought you were going to grant me an Attribute.”
She cackled. “Boy, I did that years ago.”
“Years?” He frowned. “How long…?”
Suddenly, the weight of far too long began to press down on his mind.
He tried to count the meals he’d eaten. I’ve eaten? I don’t recall…
He had eaten, and he couldn’t count the meals. He recalled that they changed types of food every month or so, and he couldn’t even recall how many times they’d changed food types.
He now knew that he’d slept, but had no hope of figuring out how many times.
He remembered his hair growing until it was interfering with his vision, so Runa had shaved him bald. He remembered it happening more than once… more times than he could count.
He felt like he was going to vomit, but the feeling originated in his mind, not his gut.
He couldn’t understand what was happening. He couldn’t comprehend how this was possible.
And he—
Runa snapped her fingers.
“None of that now. Your mind can’t take the time compression the System has imposed upon it. If you try to comprehend the magnitude of our time together, you will cease to exist, and that would make me rather cross.”
He swayed on his feet, her snap having carried something more than mere sound. “Yes, teacher.”
“Good, good. Now, you have shown that you understand the basics. You have officially graduated from kindergarten. Welcome to Primary School.”
Without further delay, the fugue descended once again and the promised training—the reward he had selected—continued.