During the rest of the night, Nathan continued examining the turtle's corpse and the tree in the clearing.

When the first sunlight arrived, he had already gotten all the notes he would need for his investigation. After hours of experimentation, he had concluded that, as they had predicted, the new symbol on the turtle's shell could create a barrier if it was fueled with energy.

The rune would take that energy and create an energy layer that would isolate the inside from the outside.

The barrier's characteristics would depend on the amount and type of mana. An example was that water-energy-fueled barriers seemed to work better against fire-energy attacks but were weaker than earth-energy barriers against physical attacks.

Not only that, but it could also work together with the other rune they had discovered. That way, the first rune would gather the energy from its surroundings and use it to fuel the barrier, just as the turtle had done during the fight.

That opened the door to new possibilities.

The staffs they had created were already useful, but if they added this new rune, its versatility would increase by a large margin. Not only that, but after they discovered this new rune, they realized that more runes with other functions should exist around them. They just needed to find them.

If they could learn how to use a few dozens or even hundreds of runes with different functions, they would be able to create the ultimate weapon that could adapt to any situation.

With that idea, Nathan continued his investigation and examined the tree.

By using his sea of consciousness, he inspected the plant, trying to learn everything he could before even getting near it.

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The first thing that caught his attention was a large amount of energy inside it. For some reason, the tree's roots were gathering large amounts of corruption from the ground and directing it toward the tree's branch.

There, he found something else that caught his attention too.

As the energy flowed toward the branches, its quantity began to decrease little by little, but at the same time, its purity and density also increased. This phenomenon reached its peak in the branches that carried fruits, as each one of those fruits was nothing else but large amounts of corruption condensed into a small body.

'I guess that explains a lot of things.' Nathan said with half a smile.

With the fruits having so much corruption inside them, it was easily understandable why Travis' arm got so corrupted just by touching it. If they wanted to manipulate those things, they would need to raise their cultivation by a large margin or to have some protection against corruption.

Even though it was interesting to look at how the energy condensed to create fruits, it was even more interesting to learn why that happened, so Nathan began to work on it as soon as he recovered his dantian's energy.

His first move was to inspect the branches. Not only did they have some symbols carved into them, but they were also where the energy was condensing, so it was safe to assume that they would hold the key to that process.

As he already had some experience copying and reproducing runes, he began drawing the symbols that extended through the branches in his notebook, but soon found out that it was much more difficult than he had expected.

As the symbols were carved on the branches, he needed to adapt their shapes as he drew them on paper, as they were not the same when drawn on a flat surface as when drawn on a three-dimensional surface.

Another problem was that those symbols were much more complex than the previous ones, as they were composed of tens of lines.

Comparing them with the runes they already knew was like comparing a somersault using your arms to a backflip: the idea is somewhat similar, but the difficulty is much higher in one than the other.

Even if that was the case, Nathan continued working on it for hours until he managed to get an acceptable copy of the symbol. Once he got what he wanted, he began to pack his things and prepared to leave.

The turtle's corpse had begun to decompose, and he feared its smell would soon attract some magical beasts to the clearing, so it was better to leave now that he had managed to get what he wanted before anything went wrong.

With his investigation notes in his bag, he began his journey to return to the academy.