The Runic Artist

Nate watched Kiri walk forward and vanish into the spatial fold that was the entrance to the Dungeon. He’d known what she would want to do ever since she’d thrown out the idea of getting the Achievement for entering a Dungeon before level one. She wasn’t the type of person to settle for doing ‘less’. She’d challenge herself at every opportunity. He’d seen it on her face when she had first learned about his Class, then again as they’d trained in the forest and the last time was when she’d stared up at the chaos in the sky as they’d gone to rescue her Mother, Rania. She’d seen the sky painted in fire and lightning and instead of fear, he’d seen desire. As her friend, her best friend, how could he do less than support her.

The runes he had made for her had been simple. It hadn’t taken much time or effort to rework his old Earthen Projectile rune into one with a set function, enforced with his Imbue Intent. He’d done the same to his Barrier rune. Kiri had already had the Shadowskin rune, and he’d finally come around to that name. It was better, after all. The Fire and Light runes he had made were simple things. He hadn’t even bothered advancing the materials beyond Rare quality.

As the five minute timer elapsed he both saw, through Eyes of the Runic Artist and felt, through Spatial Sensitivity, the Dungeon lock itself. That was the best word to describe what he was seeing and feeling. The mana, which had been flowing into this chamber mostly through the earth itself, seemed to change its flow. It was no longer drawn here, to the aperture that led to the Dungeon. Space on the other hand had felt fluid, reminiscent of water flowing back and forth through a small gap in a wall. Now, he could still feel an oddity, but only because he was so close to it. It reminded him of a closed tap. Like if someone twisted hard enough they could force the water to flow again, or space, he supposed. That made him a little more comfortable with leaving here. He’d cover it up with a loose layer of dirt so Kiri could blast or dig her way out.

He had debated sleeping here but Kiri had convinced him that she could handle herself and she had the light rune to signal if she came out at night. Frick would be watching. So with more than a little trepidation, he climbed out of the hole and made his way back towards Helmfirth. As he walked he thought about what he was going to do while Kiri was gone. If she was anything like him she’d be gone at least a week. Maybe longer. His Dungeon had covered a relatively small area. In the minute he was inside this new Dungeon, he hadn’t been able to see where the Dungeon ended across the grassy plains.

Focusing on his own problems he began planning. It was time to work on his Skills some more. When Kiri returned – when, not if – they would start working on levelling. In the meantime, he’d develop his Skills further. Runic Knowledge was close to evolving and he was keen to see what directions he could take it as it had in many ways, been his least tangible Skill. At first, it had given him what he needed to survive the Dungeon he’d found himself in, but since then it had mostly been used to confirm the theories he worked out himself. Kind of like a Professor looking over his shoulder and telling him when he got something right, but otherwise remaining silent and letting him muddle through the problem himself.

Eyes of the Runic Artist was on his list as well. It was already level fifteen due to the levels he got from combining it with his Identification Skill. He had only gained four more levels in it since then, but that was already breakneck pace considering he’d had the Skill for less than a week. Skills below level twenty did level fast though. Once he hit that hump and passed his first evolution, it would likely slow down considerably, just like his Imbue Intent had. One level in two weeks. At that pace he might get it to the low thirties before the Tournament. And that was his highest levelled Skill. That didn’t paint a great picture for his Skill development by the time the Tournament started. Kiri’s would be even worse, most likely.

Was he spreading himself too thin? Should he pick a few Skills and just focus on getting those to a high enough level to be competitive. Enhanced Magic Power could be a big one, but only if he started investing his Free Stats at each level into Magic Power. He’d noted the multiplier didn’t work on the twenty Magic Power he got from his robe. That meant that even with his current bonus of nine percent, he was only actually getting one extra Magic Power from it. He thought that at best, he could hope to get another four or five levels in his Classes before the Tournament.

That meant, regardless of whether he put those levels towards Wandering Runic Artist or Wandering Realmwalker, he could manage an extra twenty four to thirty in Magic Power. Sure he could get the Enhanced Magic Power Skill to level twenty five, but what would that net him? An extra twenty nine percent? Doing the maths in his head felt like a breeze with his Intellect stat. He came out at around a total of eighty nine in Magic Power after all the extra Stats and the bonus from the Skill was factored in. That was a decent amount of Magic Power. Backed by his runes empowered with Imbue Intent and he could see himself being fairly strong.

Then again, his path so far had not been about choosing strength. He’d mostly chosen skills that would assist him in creating art while also making him adaptable and flexible in his approach to fighting. It was a Tournament, so he’d likely get to see his competitors fight more than once. For certain, they would all have their hidden aces, but how hidden could they be from his eyes? If he could see their Classes he could guess, or better yet, research their likely Skills and approaches. He could exploit their weaknesses with preparation and planning. With crafting. After all, wasn’t that his path? A path that Saw the patterns and truths of the universe? That was the path he wanted to walk. Thinking about it like that, Enhanced Magic Power had been a mistake. He’d made the choice for the right reasons, given the situation at the time. But the Skill was all wrong for him.

Frick was flying above, scouting for anything unusual. That didn’t matter though. His Familiar was always just a thought away after all.

“Frick, is there a way to alter a Skill once you have it without evolving it?” he sent mentally to the Spirit.

“Only other way I know of is Skill Synergy, Boss man,” the thought came back instantly.

Nate thought on the idea of Skill Synergy as he continued to stroll through the forest. He was still highly cautious as he wandered among the trees, so he had a Barrier rune active, centred on him that moved with him as he walked. The only place he was vulnerable was from directly above, which was what Frick was supposed to be handling.

Thinking more on his options for Enhanced Magic Power, Skill Synergy seemed a more challenging path forward than simply levelling the Skill and trying to force it to evolve down a different path. That was a problem for later though. Maybe after he got into the Royal University. That made him sound overconfident, but he thought he could do it. His next six months had to be focused on putting himself in a strong position for the Tournament and that meant playing to his strengths. His strengths and desires, he corrected himself.

Five of his ten Skills came to mind. Eyes of the Runic Artist, so that he could assess his competition, detect any sneak attacks, he hoped, and to help him improve his runes. Imbue Intent, to give him greater control and power over the runes he had. Runic Creation was actually, to his mind, the most important Skill to raise. Increasing it would ultimately make his ability to create and test runes cheaper and given the biggest barrier to his development was the mana he had access to, this one Skill could accelerate the other two by making more mana available for them.

Finally, there were his two spatial skills, From Me, To You and No Steps Necessary. The first would let him set up traps with stationary runes if he could simply teleport them around the field. The second was his means of escape and avoidance. Melee combat was the last place he wanted to be as a mage type combatant. He was sure there were melee mages out there. Aisling seemed to be something of a hybrid from what little he’d seen. He, on the other hand, was distinctly not capable of competing in close combat. Maybe he could come up with some runes one day to surmount his lack of physical stats. As it stood, with his Perception, even if his eyes could follow their movements, his body just couldn’t keep up with a skilled melee fighter. Torian had proven that. He’d only had an Uncommon Class and that had been enough to knock Nate around an area. No, distance was key. That was how he intended to fight, if he had to do so.

He knew what he had to do, now he just needed to do it. The gates of Helmfirth came into view a few minutes later and he hurried back to the Oaken Ring, partially to get started, but mostly to make sure his gold hadn’t been stolen while he was away. He’d given Kiri his spatial storage ring because he thought it would give her a better chance at surviving the Dungeon. It had certainly helped him, if only by allowing him to ferry food around with him. But he hadn’t been sure if he’d be able to go in and get it if the worst came to pass. If she didn’t survive. Even just thinking about it made him sick. He hated, hated and feared, the idea of losing someone he cared about. Hadn’t he lost enough already?

Shaking himself to break his train of thought, he quickly made his way up stairs, ignoring Valeria and chiding himself for it. He didn’t mean to be rude but he didn’t want to talk to anyone right now. He wanted to bury himself in his work until Kiri returned safely. That thought calmed him enough to focus as he unlocked the chest at the end of his bed. All his gold was still there. Nineteen bars of mana imbued gold. Enough to buy him comfort and safety in this new world. Closing the lid he checked his Mana Gathering runes and the mana gems sitting on top of them. He had plenty of mana to get some work done. After that maybe he could unwind with some food downstairs in the taproom and some drawing.

Sitting down, he started thinking over some runes that he could make that might be generally useful in combat. The first question was, what sort of enemies were they likely to face? The list was a long one. Mages of all the common elements and a few of the uncommon ones. Melee combatants with swords, spears, daggers, axes, knives, clubs, hammers and weapons he probably didn’t even know the name for. Ranged combatants with throwing daggers, bows, spears again, maybe crossbows he thought with a twist of his mouth. That last one seemed difficult to pull off in a tournament setting, but he could be wrong. The last category were the wildcards. Summoners and anything else he couldn’t figure out how to fit into the other three categories.

Looking for patterns in the opponents he quickly found a couple of runes he wanted to try. The first one was for ranged opponents. Luring melee opponents into a trap seemed a lot easier than getting someone with a bow or throwing daggers to move where you wanted them to. After all, a melee opponent ultimately had to come to him. Activating Eyes of the Runic Artist and Runic Creation he spun up a basic circle pattern. It was simple and really it was just meant as a scaffold. As he added sigils he’d change the geometric shapes to fit the form of what he wanted. His idea was something to draw away missiles.

He’d seen in their battles against Torian’s crew how powerful a skilled Archer could be. Kiri had run rings around them and taken the twins two on one, purely based on her mobility and ability to fight at range. An archer in the Tournament could harass him, wearing down his Barriers and draining his mana till he was left defenceless. That wasn’t to say he’d just sit there and take it, but thinking back on it, he would’ve struggled against Kiri. She could evade most of his runes and she would’ve even forced him to do a fully enclosed shield as she could ‘bend’ arrows around targets. So that was what he was going to interfere with.

He had four Sigils in mind. Strongest, Gather, Projectile and Sphere. The ultimate goal was to create a sphere within which projectiles were ultimately drawn towards the rune. If he used Conceptual Material to bring it to Epic, or even Legendary tier, then it was unlikely to be damaged too badly as it sucked arrows and anything else it could classify as a projectile, towards it. Best case, they were drawn right towards the rune. Worst case, they were pulled enough off their trajectory that he wasn’t getting peppered with the things constantly.

Working away at the rune he missed lunch again, too focused on getting the format and mana dispersions just right. He’d gotten a couple of notifications already that he’d chosen to ignore. Didn’t the System know better than to interrupt an artist while they were inspired? The thought made him smirk as he held a mana gem to recharge his mana reserve. Frick had been draining his Mana Reserve as his Familiar had spent the time using Conceptual Material to raise his last Mana Gathering rune to Epic.

Looking over the rune he was working on, there was something about it that kept bothering him. He was confident by now that it would work, or at least work insofar as it would achieve the worst case scenario. His eyes kept being drawn back to the Projectile Sigil. He’d used it in a few different places in the rune and while it made sense, there was something wrong about it. It just didn’t fit the way it should considering the purpose of the rune. He’d started to think this ‘bothering’ was his Runic Knowledge skill nudging him that something was off and so choosing to trust it, he imprinted the rune in its current form in some common wood. He could always modify it later with Runic Creation.

Leaning forward he started drawing. The Projectile Sigil looked like a series of three stretched out isosceles triangles in a row, enclosed in an equilateral triangle. Thinking about it, his Earthen Projectiles had looked very similar. Like a long cone. But that wasn’t the kind of projectile he was after here. He was mostly focusing on arrows and hoping crossbow bolts would be included. Throwing daggers…well anything was better than nothing. How many throwing daggers could they carry anyway?

Focusing back on the sigil he redrew it, this time instead of cones he copied the outer triangle but replaced the three inner triangles with something that looked like three arrows in flight one after another. He stared at it and felt the Divine Translation Spell activate. Projectile. The notifications were flashing now but he’d deal with them in a moment. Because he already knew. He’d felt Runic Knowledge in his chest as he’d altered the Sigil, creating something of the same Concept, but a different interpretation. It was ready to evolve.