"You should accept her invitation," Mai said, making him smile.
"Look who decided to grace me with her rare presence," he smiled. "Why do you say that?"
"In this dangerous world, some companionship is good," she said. "And I'm caring about my Kouhai as well."
"Is she really not doing it with Yuuma?" He asked curiously.
"What do you take me for?"
"Someone with the most powerful stealth and subterfuge capabilities on the planet?"
She gave him a cold, side-eyed glance and disappeared again.
"I don't yet trust her not to stab me in my sleep, so I'll pass," he said before glancing down at his crotch and recalling the continued difficulties that he had to face every morning. "For now..."
Before trying anything like that, I need the inspection rune. I just hope it can help me identify whether she is friendly or not. If not, I'll probably have to spend time improving its grade. Thankfully, it's an Aspected Rune and would only need me to infuse my Runic Energy into it.
Back home, he bid Mai a good night and went into his house, deciding to spend some time watching another of Mai's movies. This time, he picked an action genre movie that had been released only a year before the apocalypse, just after she had fully returned to the industry. As he started playing it, he was curious to see how the Ice Block acted in such a movie.
Lying comfortably on the reclining couch, he had a glass of the most delicious icy water in his hand as he watched the movie with relish, enjoying it immensely.
Barely ten minutes of the movie had passed before the TV turned off, making Orion pause mid-sip.
"Is the diesel out?" He mumbled with a confused expression. "I thought she said there was still plenty…of…it… Don't tell me."
He unlocked the door and immediately saw lights coming out from under the door to Mai's apartment.
"Such ruthlessness… I didn't repay her immediately the same day, so she directly cut off my power without a word," Orion mumbled with an annoyed expression. Still, he understood that he was the one in the wrong. He'd said that he would look for supplies, but instead completely got immersed in killing the zombies. "Pretty efficient way to deal with freeloaders, I guess."
He shook his head and went back into the apartment, giving one last reluctant look at the black TV, sad that he couldn't finish such an enjoyable movie in one sitting.
To distract himself, he communicated with his gear and spent five hundred units of Origin Energy to learn the Compendium of Elemental Runes. He hoped that a twenty-five-year-long dream would be enough to make him forget about the movie's plot. He wanted to go into it fresh when he watched it again.
In the dream, he found himself in a similar classroom as before, with a different teacher in front of him.
"You wanna learn about elemental runes, huh?" he asked.
Orion had a feeling of déjà vu that reminded him of the previous teacher. "I do," he said with a nod.
"Then let's start. We will first understand the types of runes that you will learn. First are the primaries, the four primary elements, namely, Fire, Water, Earth, and Wind. Then come the derivative elements such as Lightning, Ice, Lava, Metal, and so on. They are more complex and require more effort to condense. Keep in mind that they are still Grade 1 runes and are modified at their base to incorporate the composition of different elements and their states. Finally, we have the Ethereal elements that start to touch upon the abstract concepts such as Light, Darkness, Spirit, Void, and more. Out of these, we will only be learning the rune of light and the rune of dark. The others do not have Grade 1 variants."
With a basic introduction to what he would be learning, within the hour, Orion was being taught to draw the Fire rune. First, he was supposed to draw it with a simple pen and paper to draw the perfect shape, down to the most minute details. Then, he was told to use his self-drawn rune as a stencil to create the rune with his Runic Energy. For every attempt, he had to draw the rune on paper again, which still took a few attempts for a while. Eventually, by the time he had perfectly gotten the second step down, he could draw the rune perfectly with a single attempt. Unfortunately, that left him with the most difficult step. Mentally condensing the rune from memory without any stensil. Even worse, he had to repeat the previous two steps before he could try the third step, so every attempt resulted in him having to do everything. By the end, he was proficient enough to hand-draw the rune perfectly with his eyes closed, and even condensing the rune without any stencil was perfectly done. That took him one month. With three more primary elements, four months had gone by.
Next came ten secondary elements— Lightning, Ice, Lava, Steam, Metal, Wood, Sand, Crystal, Smoke, and Storm. That took him a whole ten years to master, with each element taking a whole year.
Finally came the last two runes—Light and Dark. These took him fourteen years to learn successfully, with seven for each rune.
As for the remaining eight months. Those were reserved for testing. He was extensively tested and grilled on his knowledge and mastery of all sixteen runes that he had been taught.
When he opened his eyes, his first emotion was perplexity.
It took me twenty-five years to learn sixteen runes in a dream where I didn't take a single break…For others, this might be equivalent to a century. Is everyone in the world from which the Runic System stems an immortal or something? Either that, or they are a really scholarly civilization with longer lifespans and completely depend on the recording method. I can record these runes on a piece of paper, and anyone can copy them with ease, but to create one from scratch requires this kind of intense study.
Unsure what to make of this time-consuming and difficult to learn skill, Orion decided to focus on his present as he got a response from his Gear.
Dream concluded successfully.
Alert: Physique sufficient to maintain the integrity of gained knowledge, but requires real-world reference points.
Recommendation: Record all learned runes in a physical form.
"Understandable," he nodded. In the introductory class, he had been taught how the Runic System touched upon the literal fabric of reality and was a very precarious path. The universe itself made runes an extremely complex concept, with each one requiring a physical anchor. He couldn't just keep the knowledge of runes in his mind without recording them somewhere—whether it be his own soul or a piece of paper, there had to be some kind of physical record made by the person who had the knowledge of the specific rune. Without a qualitative improvement to his mind, his knowledge would eventually lose integrity.
Already aware that he would have to do something about the runes that he learned, he communicated with his gear about his needs.
Blueprint: Rune Compendium Binder
Origin Energy Cost: 50 Units
Blueprint: Rune Compendium Pages
Origin Energy Cost: 1 Unit
"Fifty units for a binder is such a scam," he said, but spent the required fifty-one units of origin energy without any hesitation. With his current reserves, fifty-one was barely anything. Still, that made him curious why these pages cost him a single unit while simple ice cubes cost him ten units of Origin Energy. Without dwelling too much on it, he spent eighty units to increase his mass limit up to a hundred kilograms. Including the previous cost of five hundred units for the sixteen runes, he was left with exactly 1,704.43 units from his previous 2335.43 units.
Just as the information of the blueprint appeared in his mind, he directly allocated ten kilograms to the compendium and its pages, not interested in expending that one unit of energy to create more pages later on. With the binder taking a hundred grams, he formed nine hundred ninety A5-sized pages that were thick enough to weigh ten grams individually. These weren't made of normal paper, but instead had a lot more complex proteins and miscellaneous materials invested in them that made Orion assume that these might be made from the hide of some animal.
"Makes sense for it to cost so much for such a simple item if it's more than just paper."
He summoned the binder with almost a thousand pages in his hand and opened it to the first page before pausing.
"I should go to the roof before burning something down..."
He went out, doing his best to ignore the aromatic dinner that Mai had made for herself and her sister, as he came up to the roof.
"To think a zombie is getting better food than me. Then again, it seems that I don't really need food. I haven't eaten anything since yesterday and don't feel the need in the slightest."
Shaking away the miscellaneous thoughts, he first tested things by inscribing the light rune directly in his soul as it took up the first slot. With the endless practice that he'd had in his dream, it was an almost seamless process as he recorded the perfect rune completely, consuming ten units of origin energy in the process. Since it was so seamless, he chose water for the second storm for his second slot. He was torn between water and storm, but the latter would allow him to stay clean, fill up reservoirs, and give him some combat benefit.
With those two recorded in his soul, he had ninety units of Runic Energy remaining and consumed all of them to record the four primary runes and five derivative runes on the book. That left him with seven out of his hundred and seventeen units of Runic Energy.
"I'll do the remaining seven tomorrow night…" he said, looking at the snail's pace of recovery of his Runic Energy. While there were techniques to improve their regeneration, both passive and active, he would have to learn them by spending more Origin Energy.
He put the compendium inside the gear's internal space and decided to use up those seven points of origin energy for the sake of testing. The first thing he did was to invoke the Storm Rune to make it rain over his designated area with its full effect. Immediately, the rune consumed exactly one unit of Runic Energy, as it was a perfect rune with a hundred percent efficiency, and a dark cloud appeared over half of the rooftop—around fifty by fifty meters. That seemed to be the limit of the rune's area of effect.
Orion nodded with satisfaction as the cloud immediately started raining heavily.
"Mai should be happy, the water reservoir is going to be filled to the brim after all this water goes through the harvesting system," he chuckled. "This should last about ten minutes… Now that I have an idea of its maximum power, I should be able to fine-tune its uses and make it work with smaller amounts of Runic Energy.
Next came the light rune. This was equivalent to an enhanced version of the fire rune without the low control of fire. He came up to the edge of the roof and activated it at its full power, consuming one unit of Runic Energy. Immediately, a searingly bright beam of light with a diameter of twenty-five centimeters emerged from in front of him and shot forward.
Just as the beam was released, he received three notifications.
[Origin Energy + 0.01]
[Origin Energy + 0.01]
[Origin Energy + 0.01]
The beam died out after five seconds, but the aftereffects left Orion with wide eyes as he looked down at the scorched street. While only three zombies had died immediately, more than ten were on fire.
"Yeah, this is going to be very useful…" he smiled. "This beam should have travelled at least a mile to reach those zombies."
With his testing concluded, Orion went back down and went to sleep, for once, not passing out from the pain and actually sleeping.
***
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