Although it was the size of a hang glider, there was no control bar. All it had was a suit attached to the glider itself, with matching gloves that served as the controls for the glider. It had its own wind enchantment, of course, it being an artifact and all, but Noah figured that his own gust spell would outperform anything a measly tier one enchantment could possibly output.
So, he put on the gloves, got inside the suit and prepared himself. He slowly conjured a massive gust of air under him, and the glider began to rise. But it was short-lived as he tipped over, not managing to rise any more than a foot above the ground.
“Crap. Guess it’s on to Plan B. Mark, my sweet old amazing cousin! I need you to throw me.”
“Ummm. What?”
“Throw me like a paper airplane!”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious. Now, let’s go and make me flyyyyy!”
“If you say so.”
Mark stepped closer to the glider and grabbed the Noah with two hands. He asked again if Noah was sure, but all he got was an enthusiastic yes as a reply. “Well, worst case is I heal him.” So, he brought Noah above his head and mustered all the strength in his body and threw him like a paper airplane, into the air.
“I’m flying! Wooh!” Noah exclaimed as he rode the momentum generated by Mark’s throw. A moment later, though, his climb towards the sky slowed, and he stalled. Taking that as his cue to start up the jet engines, he conjured two concentrated gusts of air at the soles of his feet. This propelled him higher and higher until he felt cold, too cold to keep climbing. So, he activated his gloves and steered himself downward just enough so that he’d be parallel to the ground.
Like that, Noah flew. But he forgot one thing: goggles. He had to keep on squinting just so he could see where he was going. Thinking that it was too annoying to keep on flying without goggles, he decided to turn back.
As he was flying, though, with the wind in his hair and the boundless sky in front of him, his mind couldn’t help but wander.
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Two years ago…
DING
The door chime rang as Noah walked in to the old Puzzles bar. He looked around, trying to find his friends, when he saw them at their usual booth. He walked over, passing by the bar where he almost bumped into a lady who just got her drinks. “Oops, sorry about that.” He said. He made eye contact with the lady and was taken aback by her eyes. “Those are the prettiest eyes I’ve seen in a while.”
The lady, who was definitely at least five years older than him, blushed a bit and giggled. “Why thank you. And they said chivalry was dead.”
“Oh crap, did I say that out loud?” Noah covered his mouth and looked away right in the direction of their booth where he saw his friend John stand up and start walking over to him with a broad grin on his face. “Crap, he’s coming over. This can’t be good.”
John arrived and put his arm around Noah and said. “What he meant to say was, he thinks you’re very pretty and would like to get your number.”
“I really hate you right now.” Noah mumbled under his breath.
“What was that?” The lady asked, as she couldn’t quite hear what Noah mumbled.
“Nothing nothing.” Noah shook his head and panicked a little before continuing “All I said was he’s right and it would make my day if you gave me your number.”
She giggled and took a napkin from the bar, pulled out a pen from her purse and wrote her number on it. “Here you go, make sure to call me.” She winked as she walked away to her friends’ table.
Noah looked at her go and said. “Was that really necessary?”
John just laughed and patted him on the back. “Of course it was! It's been three years since that bitch veronica cheated on you. I say it’s time for you to let someone in finally and move on.”
Noah let out a sigh. “Yeah, I know, I know.” He shook his head, trying to forget that bitter memory. “Enough about that, let’s drink.”
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“That was the night I met Sophia. Wonder how she’s doing?” He thought as he neared the apartment building. This presented him with a fresh problem: landing. “Crap. I didn’t think this far ahead.” Then he remembered how airplanes landed. “Okay, aim for the parking lot, nose up, gentlyyyy.” But he was going too fast and couldn’t slow down enough, so raising the nose of the glider only made him fly up again. “Guess it’s time for round two.”
Round two was much of the same. “Crap, Plan B then.” He flew around the apartment building waiting for a certain someone to come out. Unexpectedly, that certain someone came out of the forest. “Mark! Catch me! I don’t know how to land!” He then descended, aiming for where Mark was… and crashed…
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“Ow, why didn’t you catch me?” Noah said as he dislodged himself from the glider.
Mark laughed and came closer. “Figured healing you was easier and faster than trying to catch you mid-flight.” He then proceeded to casting his three main healing skills on Noah to mend the scrapes and scratches he got from crashing. “Pretty cool though that you can fly like that. Not very fast, but good enough for scouting.”
“Yeah, but it really isn’t fast enough for my purposes.”
“And what’s that?”
“Super mocha! Or well, super chocolate for now. There should be some seeds in Hershey, which is northeast of here. But with the world expanding and all, I’m going to need to be faster if I want to go there and come back.”
“Hmmm. True. You need to work on getting space magic then or something.”
“Yeah. Only thing is, I don’t even know where to start to get it. I know the general theory around it courtesy of all those years watching the discovery channel but I really don’t know where to start. That’s why the rune book was such a game changer. It might be the key to our travel dilemma.”
“I’ll trust you with that then while I improve my monster-hitting and punching bag-ness.”
Noah then stood up with all his wounds now healed up. He put the glider away in his artifact and said. “You do that. Now, let’s go back so I can start reading the book.”
With that, Noah took out his book and read while walking on his way to his room.
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The next day, sun light shined and peeked in through a crack in the curtains and revealed the figure of a man in his mid-twenties with dark circles under his eyes. Noah had obviously not slept and had read and re-read the book on runes all throughout the night. "Unsurprisingly, runes are complicated," Noah thought to himself. “They kind of remind me of programming.” Unfortunately for Noah, he wasn’t a programmer. The only thing he knew about it was, it was a series of ifs and thens.
Noah could feel a headache coming as he stared at the runes in the book. “I’m basically learning a new language, ugh.” He’d always been bad at memorization, so learning a language was a steep hill he never climbed. “Hopefully, my increased intelligence helps with that.” He then read through the entire book one last time.
KNOCK KNOCK
Noah looked over at the door and saw Mark walk in. “What’s up?” he asked.
Mark was appalled when he saw the state his cousin was in. “Jesus Christ Noah! Did you not sleep?”
Noah just went back to reading his book. “Runes are really interesting you see. And I can already imagine a ton of uses for them, heating, cooling, running water and so much more! And that’s only with the basic tier one runes! Oh, and speaking of runes, they’re kind of like programming, do you have any experience with it?”
“No. But don’t change the subject! You need to sleep. Your mana may be through the roof, but your body is still that of a normal human!” Mark said worriedly.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s just one night. I’ll live.”
Mark looked at his cousin and sighed. “Okay, but we’re not going to any dungeons today. Can’t have you falling asleep when there are enemies around.”
“Tomorrow then, this is my last read through anyway. After this, I’ll try out drawing the runes and maybe we can have some running water.”
“Uhuh, sure. Just make sure to sleep after all your weird hocus pocus.” Mark then turned around and walked out of the room, leaving Noah to his magic.
Noah continued to read and tried to memorize every detail of every basic rune. This was important, as the introduction to the book mentioned that details were all that mattered in rune crafting. “The devil is in the details, as they say.” He memorized everything from the strokes to the smallest and thinnest hairlines. It was basically calligraphy, but with magic and dire consequences if he made a mistake. If he made one wrong stroke, the mana would go haywire and potentially ruin the surface where the rune was drawn, or even worse, it could cause the whole thing to explode.
“Though I guess tier one runes shouldn’t have that much power. And I have [Mana Shield] so I should be fine.” With that thought, he went outside and noticed that the sun was at its highest. “Damn it's hot.” So, he went beyond the parking lot and built himself a stone hut where he could work on the runes.
There were different ways to implement runes on different surfaces. You could draw them on with magic ink, which was the widely used medium. You could also carve them directly into the surface itself for a more permanent effect. And of course there was one other way which didn’t require the other two ways of rune crafting, mana etching. It was the process with the highest level of mastery needed because you needed a fine control of mana in order to mess with the mana residing in the object itself.
“I’ve got the mana manipulation skill, so maybe I can give this a try…” Noah thought as he pondered on what he was going to do. “Hmmm. I should try the magic ink thing first I guess, just so I can get a feel for it.”
And so, Noah brought up the system store and bought the tier one magic brush, ink and paper he needed to start. He then began with the basic water rune as he his first goal was to get themselves some running water. He first cast [Mana Shield] but encountered a problem, the shield was too big. So, he made it smaller and made it so that it would stick to his skin, which earned him a level in mana manipulation. He did a fist pump, then focused back on the practice paper. If everything went according to plan, the rune would start spewing out water as soon as he completed it, until all the mana in the ink was depleted.
BOOM
It exploded.
Lily, Emeri and the piglets, who were all on the first floor at the moment, went over to investigate. They peeked inside the stone hut where the explosion came from and saw Noah on the floor. “Big brother Noah, are you okay?” Lily asked worriedly. “Should I get big brother Mark?”
“No, no, I’m okay Lily.” Noah said as he got up and patted his clothes of dirt. “Besides, I don’t want to hear his “I told you so” right now,” He mumbled. “You can go back to playing Lily, the stuff I’m working on is kind of dangerous as you can see, haha.” He laughed, but it was more of a laugh at himself.
When he saw that Lily had walked back to the building with the boars, he immediately went back to drawing runes again. This time, he went about it slower and more careful.
BOOM
It exploded. Again.
This time, Mark came out of the forest just in time to hear the explosion. He put down the deer he was carrying and went over to check the newly built stone hut. He peeked his head in and saw Noah, soot covering his upper body. He couldn’t help but smile. “Hmmm. Guess not sleeping is taking its toll on you, huh? I told you sooooo~”
Noah sighed and was about to retort, but didn’t in the end. He sighed again and headed for the apartment building to sleep. Grumbling all along the way.