Gregory's knowledge of creating rituals was tenuous at best, but he could recognize their general shape and knew what a completed ritual looked like. He had expected that runes would just be pieces of rituals that he could slot together to create new effects. Instead runes were single large symbols with intricate detail. Rituals always formed a circle, more or less, but runes looked more like standalone letters.
The beginning of the volume explained that runes represented general concepts and, in theory, could be woven together to form ritual-like spells. The author noted that it was both harder to craft runes and harder to link them together than for modern rituals, so he didn't expect a resurgence in the art, but still thought that magical society could benefit from a study of the past.
What followed was a detailed catalog of around two dozen runes. The runes were painstakingly drawn, but the descriptions were lacking. Gregory stopped skimming through the runes when he found the first one that sounded helpful to his current predicament. The "Rune of Force" was, as the name suggested, supposed to enhance force.
Gregory started trying to draw the rune like he would draw a ritual. It was impossible. The details of the rune were far too fine for him to draw with his finger. He waved the mana away and tried again. He remembered Olivander's lessons, and the importance of intent. He focused his whole will on drawing the rune perfectly. His brow broke out in sweat, and he felt his mana draining more quickly than he thought it should have.
When he finally finished the rune, he was exhausted, drenched in sweat, and his mana was somehow half empty. For all his effort, the rune didn't look quite right. The smallest details were still missing and the shape didn't quite match the reference he was using.
Now that he had it drawn, however poorly, he had no idea how to activate it. Rituals could activate on their own if they were sophisticated enough, or they had an activation word. The rune didn't seem to do anything on its own, so he tried the later route.
"Force! Rune of Force! Enhance Force! Power of Force! Activate! Rune on!"
The rune did not activate, or give any indication that it would. He tried to carefully add mana to the existing rune like he would fuel anything more than a simple ritual. It felt like he was running into a wall, and the mana wouldn't enter the rune.
Out of ideas, he dispersed the rune. He paged through the book, finding a few handwritten notes here and there, but they were all just about ritual elements that might have been derived from a specific rune. He didn't know how to make that leap himself without an extensive background in ritual magic. When he finished browsing the book, his mana had recovered a little more, so he tried again.
He flipped back to the force rune and traced it in the air. This time he just let the barest trickle of mana out, and instead of focusing his intent, he just thought about what a force rune might actually do. Maybe he could feed it into his Spellforge? It seemed to break down rituals and spells into some more specific components…no, that wasn't quite right. They weren't really more specific were they?
As he thought, he finished the rune. It was awful, but the lines were a little more delicate and used barely any mana. He tried once more, continuing his musings on the Spellforge and rituals.
The effects the Spellforge pulled out weren't more specific, if anything, they were less specific. But they were more…something. Core? Maybe fundamental.
The idea resonated with him as he drew the rune. Fundamental aspects of magic. It felt right, and maybe that's what the runes were. Not magical effects, but symbols that represented those fundamental aspects.
The idea struck him like it had been planted straight into his mind. He stopped his current drawing and started over. As he drew the next rune, instead of thinking about what it might do, or focusing on his intent to just draw it correctly, he thought about all the things that force could do.
He imagined himself pushing a huge block of stone. He imagined a ball flying through the air, then some force pushed on it, accelerating it. More and more examples buzzed around his mind, and when he was finished, he knew he had done it.
The rune glowed with a pale green light instead of the blue light that his normal rituals had. It was still bad. It didn't have fine detail, and it was clearly misshapen on one side. But he could practically feel force radiating out of it.
Now he was less eager to activate this rune. He had no idea what it would do, or how much force it could generate. It could flatten him against the wall or simply tousle his clothes. Not that he knew how to activate it. Brushing it away like he did with rituals he hadn't activated didn't seem like a good idea either. It felt like it was somehow already active. Maybe it was. Maybe the next action that he took would be imbued with extra force?
He picked up a small splinter of wood from the destroyed cot. He threw it across the room. Nothing happened. He picked up another, but this time, he threw it through the rune. The rune vanished, and the splinter cracked against the wall with a loud snap. It made him jump in surprise.
He thought that it might have been loud enough to draw attention. He carefully closed his book of runes and set it near the wall of the dark corner with the skeleton. Approaching the cell door, he looked around, but it was silent and no one came to investigate.
Gregory was even more excited to try out the rest of the runes, now that he kind of knew what he was doing, but he paused. He didn't know what it was, but he had a feeling he wasn't alone. He decided it would be best to try to lay down and get a short nap in.
What felt like five minutes later, though he had no way to know for sure, there was a banging on his cell door.
"Wakey wakey! I see you broke your cot. I guess it wasn't designed with giants in mind," the goblin said.
Gregory rolled over and glared at it. He thought it was a man, but he had never met a female goblin, he had no idea if they looked different.
"Don't give me that stink eye! Are you ready to give up?"
"Why would I give you anything?" He knew the goblin wanted something, and he didn't think it was his supplies or gear. Gregory suspected it needed help, perhaps in descending further into the mines. He could be wrong though, and he didn't want to give away his suspicions yet. Things might work out better for him if the goblin started getting desperate.
Many people underestimate a big man. Despite Olivander's assertions, Gregory wasn't an idiot, occasionally naive and childish, sure, but he knew when things didn't add up. If this goblin wanted his things, he was at its mercy. If the goblin needed his help, then he could gain some advantage by biding his time.
The goblin sighed dramatically. "Because if you don't, I'm going to kill you. I don't want to do that though! I don't like killing people. I'll tell you what. I'll give you a few more hours in there alone, and we'll talk again.
Gregory didn't try to stop the goblin. He had plans for the next few hours.
As soon as the footsteps were no longer audible, he pulled back out his book. He had to shake his mind clear of a little grogginess — maybe he had slept longer than he thought. Carefully opening back up the old tome, he got to work.
Drawing the force rune again, he tried to dismiss it, knowing that his hand would be accelerated if it didn't work. To his relief, the rune was disrupted and his hand wasn't accelerated as he swept the glowing symbol aside. Experimentally, he redrew the force run and threw a punch through it, not intending to disrupt the rune. The extra force was obvious his momentum was greater after using the rune, causing him to stumble forward.
Now that he knew he could dismiss runes, he worked his way through the book, drawing rune after rune and focusing on the fundamental aspects of each one. He paused at the rune for fire. He wanted to try something.
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He picked up a splinter from the shattered cot, and then drew out the rune of fire. When it was complete he looked it over. It glowed with a soft red, and was clearly drawn by an inexperienced hand, but he could somehow sense fire from it, though he felt no heat. When he tossed a splinter through the rune, it started to smolder slightly, but wasn't in any danger of bursting into flames. It was similar to the force rune, it imparted just a little bit of the aspect it represented to things passing through it.
Working quickly, he drew out the rune again and threw the same smoldering splinter through. Each time it became hotter and closer to burning, until the fourth pass through a flame appeared. One final time, he created the rune and threw the burning splinter through. The result of sending a full flame through the rune was a flash of hot fire as the fire was magnified and the splinter burned too much to handle anymore. He stamped it out before anything in his cell caught fire.
His experiment had been useful. The runes magnified the concepts they were related to, and only imparted the concepts weakly if they weren't already present.
He drew out the force rune again with the intention of moving something very slowly through it, but he was stopped by a surprising message when he finished.
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New non-combat class available - Rune Crafter (Advanced)
Rune Crafter
* A proficient crafter of runes for a multitude of scenarios
Would you like to take Rune Crafter as a non-combat class?
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Gregory paused. He wanted a non-combat class. He wasn't sure what abilities that Rune Crafter might unlock, but he could definitely see the utility of becoming better at them. On the other hand, they seemed less useful and more trouble to draw than rituals. Olivander had warned Cooper away from a ritual based class. On the other hand, Olivander was an ass and had sent him to these mines with one foot practically in the grave.
Gregory gave his mental assent.
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You have unlocked the class Rune Crafter
You have unlocked the ability Rune Proficiency
You have gained 3 attribute points
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Rune Proficiency
* Passive ability
* You gain an innate understanding of runes
* Crafting runes requires less mana and concentration, and yields better results
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Gregory looked at the green rune in front of him. Now he could tell where the imperfections in the rune were causing issues, and he now knew how to fix them. The ability didn't give him knowledge about creating new runes, just intuition about whether or not they were crafted well.
He waved away the imperfect rune and crafted a new one. It still took him several seconds to draw, but all the obvious imperfections were gone, and the rune looked nearly perfect at a glance. He found that when he looked deeper the rune still wasn't perfect, but the flaws were ones that could and would be corrected with time and practice.
He was a little disappointed he didn't get a skill point with the class, but he still brought up the list of available skills for his new class.
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Skills available for Rune Crafter
* 1 Skill Point
* Imbue Rune
* 2 Skill Points
* Runic Tattoo
* 3 Skill Points
* Runic System
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He wasn't sure what it meant that only three skills were available. Typically each class offered a choice of five, but it could decrease as skills were chosen.
Dismissing the list, he focused on his new class. He knew non-combat classes leveled differently and was pretty familiar with the process since most of his family progressed through the use of non-combat classes. All he needed to do was focus on doing tasks that aligned with his non combat class.
In this case, he drew more runes.
They were easy now, he still had to concentrate, and he applied as much focus as he could to make sure he would improve his class. After a few trials with drawing runes and activating them, he learned that simply drawing a rune yielded a little experience, but activating them yielded more. He focused on the force rune, since he was familiar with it, and activating it wasn't likely to accidentally kill him.
He lost himself for a few minutes while focusing on this singular task.
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You have reached Level 2 in class Rune Crafter
You have gained 3 attribute points.
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"Wow, already?"
Without anything else to do, he kept making runes until he had a headache. The runes were definitely cheaper, and he could draw a lot of them, but they used up a tiny bit of mana when he activated them, so his mana had dipped low after nearly an hour of continuous work.
He had six stat points from gaining the class and leveling it. He still needed a little dexterity and wanted a little more mana, so he pushed three points into mana, giving him fifteen more total mana, and two into dexterity. He left the last one until he figured out what he needed to shore up. If runes proved at all useful in combat, he might need to shift to gathering more intelligence to boost those effects, or mana so he could keep going longer.
Now that he was thinking about stats, hadn't he heard that wisdom could increase your mana recovery rate? He knew it helped to protect against magical effects, particularly mind based effects, but he wasn't sure about mana recovery. It was something he'd definitely need to ask about when he got back.
Even though he was in a dark cell with a skeleton, he wasn't at all nervous. In the worst case scenario, Olivander had left him a path to freedom and rescue, assuming the man decided to show up in an appropriate amount of time.
He mused some more on stat composition while he waited for his mana to recover. Once he was bored of that, he looked back over the runes in the book. Once he was bored of that, he started searching the cell again for anything interesting.
Eventually he found himself back in front of the skeleton. Its robes were somehow intact. That was odd, wasn't it? Shouldn't robes have rotted away with the flesh of the person? Magic was usually the answer when something like this came along. Either an enchantment on the robes kept them in decent condition, or some kind of magic reduced the man to bones faster than normal.
"Scary, isn't it?"
Gregory wasn't surprised to hear the goblin, but the sudden noise did cause him to stiffen reflexively, ready for combat. He relaxed when he realized what it was.
"How long has it been here?" he asked the goblin.
"No idea. It was here when I first came down."
"And when did you come down here?"
The goblin looked at him, assessing. Finally, it chuckled and answered. "Too long, honestly. I'm tired of waiting. So let's do this: I answer your question, and then you answer mine. We'll go back and forth until one of us refuses, deal?"
Gregory really didn't have anything to lose. "Sure."
"Great, you asked first I guess. I've been down here for two weeks. My turn. Who sent you down here and why?"
Strictly speaking, Gregory thought, that was two questions, but he didn't mind answering and wanted to get some information of his own.
"A Magus named Olivander. He sent me down here to level up, I think."
"Olivander Casumus?" the goblin asked with curiosity and a little confusion.
Gregory held up a hand to forestall the question.
"My turn. Who sent you down here and why?"
The goblin grinned at him, catching that he noticed the double question.
"Shaman Griztilistix. Coming to the mines is a right of passage if you want to become a shaman, as I do. That's why I'm here. Clear the mine, or give up on my dream. Now, Olivander Casumus sent you? Like, Arch-magus Olivander Casumus? There's got to be more to the story than that."
Gregory laughed.
"Former Arch-magus. He's just travelling the world now. There definitely is more to the story, but to make a long story short, he has a bet with another Magus that I can level up more than another apprentice over the next three months."
"And he sent you here?"
Gregory wasn't sure why the goblin was so shocked.
"What's wrong with sending me here? Nothing has been too challenging yet, but I'm getting some solid experience."
"...he didn't tell you about the mines?"
"Uh, no. He's also sent me here when I had almost no health and mana."
The goblin looked at him like he was crazy.
"You seriously don't know anything about the mines?"
Gregory shook his head.
"Alright, fine. You win. I guess I'm not any good at this threatening captor act anyway. If Olivander Casumus sent you here, then maybe you can help me. You're going to need what I know so you don't get yourself killed, though, so let's make a deal. I explain to you what you've gotten yourself into, or were thrown into I guess, and you'll help me get through the mines. Deal?"
Gregory was pretty pleased with the interaction. Sure the goblin had locked him up and threatened him, but in the end, they were both just trying to survive. He would take any help he could get.