Upon reaching the final stage before that upgrade, Jonathan started to experiment. As he marched, he summoned the two runes he was interested in upgraded to his hands again and again, feeling how they interacted with the world around them. He had thought that their increase in power had only been due to Divinity, but there was something else going on there.
His Rune of Hatred had begun to yearn for blood whenever he released it. Even before it had automatically sought out those who triggered it, but now, it was like it had a mind of its own. Jonathan could tell that he was extremely close to a breakthrough, but wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for. This was the point that the heroes from those books he sometimes thought of would have meditated in a dark room for a week to commune with the spirits of the universe in hopes of finding their path forwards.
Unlike them, Jonathan had no time, and a different progression system. The Runes were not direct connections to the universe itself. One could not master their concepts on the same level as the Daos from Jonathan’s favorite fiction. Instead, they were conduits to that power, unlocked by Divinity. They channeled the power of the universe down into a form more palatable to the control of lesser beings. Even the gods were not masters of everything. In fact, Jonathan knew that they were not even masters of the System.
As coils of Divinity and conceptual energy whirled around his fingertips, he grew closer and closer to his goal. Finally, he found the kernel of insight he was looking for. His Rune of Hatred had transformed into something more akin to the ideal of Revenge, seeking out those who he saw as wrongdoers and punishing them for their transgressions. Of course, this was not enough to trigger and upgrade.
He applied this new lens of meaning to his rune, and started to build in hypothetical additions to the rune that would bring it closer to the concept of Revenge. Then he searched through his skill matrices, looking for a match. There were many runes that seemed similar to his Rune of Hatred, but most of them were even more complicated than what he was looking for. What he was doing was a process completely unregulated, unlike the skills themselves. If he plucked a rune too advanced for his mastery out of his skills, he could easily overload his Divinity channels.
Eventually, he found what he was looking for, a rune with the Rune of Hatred as its core, and a few sharp edged designs curling out from its sides. He smiled as he felt a resonance with his current rune, and he plucked it from the matrix. Then he slotted it in the metal space he had saved for his runes, watching as it subsumed the Rune of Hatred.
You have upgraded a rune!
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Rune of Hatred->Rune of Revenge(Second Tier)
Revenge is said to be a dark and slippery slope, but it is often one that the so called paragons of virtue that spout such things fall to themselves. It is nothing more than what you make of it, however, and it can be used for good and for evil. Releasing the power of this rune will send its energy towards those you deem as being worthy of revenge. It will grow more powerful the more that target has acted against you. At higher levels, this rune will be able to find your enemies, no matter where they are.
The designation of the rune opened up a whole new world to Jonathan. Perhaps it was more similar to the Dao system than he had thought. He already knew that some runes were more powerful than others, but this was a concrete representation of that. It also brought more meaning, and more confusion, to the lines in the description of runes about their higher levels. Was it simply referring to overloading it with Divinity, or did it mean greater ideals along the conceptual ladder? Perhaps it was a mix of both, given that the power of individual runes were not fixed, instead dependent on Divinity infusion.
These ruminations helped him paint a better picture of his position as a runic acolyte, but he could tell that he had a while yet to go. There were likely ten or more levels of runic power, probably culminating in the natural elements themselves, or perhaps the most powerful concepts he could think of, like Creation, or maybe even the Void itself.
He had ample opportunity to test out the rune for himself on the monster that dwelled in the Rot-Trunk Copses. A few undead came shambling out from between a small cluster of trees occluding a ruined building. They were all below level 220, and as such were pathetically weak compared to anyone in the army.
Jonathan simply raised one hand and let his runic energy loose. A cloud of scarlet erupted from his palm and into the air. Then it coalesced into a spear of energy, quivering in the air for a moment. Before the undead could move, it lanced forwards, and through the nearest one’s head. The monster exploded in a cloud of desiccated flesh, the powder landing on the ground next to it. The spear kept going, slicing through the other two undead, with similar effects.
Jonathan was already quite happy with its power, but even then, it kept going. The spear continued off through the air, weaving through the trees in its way. A few moments later, it was out of sight.
Essence started to spiral through the air back towards Jonathan, telling him that the spear had found more undead. It kept going for more than a minute, until it finally ran out of energy. Jonathan looked down at his palm, and smiled. This would be invaluable in widespread battles. He could take out thousands of fodder in the time frame that the rune provided, and all for the relatively cheap cost of half his Divinity pool. It seemed steep on the surface, but it was actually quite reasonable, given his regeneration rate. The more Divinity he had, the more he regained in the same amount of time.
Even with all of this, his skill was still stuck in the last part of Journeyman Rank. He would need to upgrade his other rune before he could finally reach Expert.