I feel a little bad going through the notes of a deceased companion but I know he wanted me to spread his work so I dutifully work through them.

This doesn't stop me from salvaging them for what they're worth. They contain a surprising amount of character for research notes. Scribbles and anecdotes fill out the pages, progressively getting more the further I go and almost eclipsing the actual research.

The last dozen pages show a detailed description of [Eclipse Obliteration], the spell he used to kill the [Sporemother], with a complete absence of anecdotes. It's pure spellwork and theory.

I can't cast it, due to my lack of [Shadow Sorcerer] and a few of the later Skills in [Runecarver], but I think I can make a much weaker version with runes, using Gems to power it.

If he managed to make such a sophisticated spell with no help or outside resources, I can surely improve it.

Kara is starting to grow restless. We know everything we need to get rid of her contract but I'd rather have her cool down before confronting the Leader of Tharon. He is bound to be a challenge unless we can talk him into dissolving the contract and talking him down won't be easy when he has a knife at his throat.

It takes two days for her to burst into my room, towing the receptionist from The Open Dress with her. "There he is, Maggie, locking himself in a room and playing with his tech instead of talking with people. You're welcome. "

The receptionist, Maggie, has a red face and is clearly struggling to find her words. She looks like she got forced into here by Kara and would rather be anywhere else. But that would only make sense if Maggie wants to do something before we leave and ask Kara for help.

She looks kind of cute, all flustered like this, but she doesn't leave. She probably has another problem with bandits or the drunkard I helped her kick out but didn't want to ask me so shortly after declining my help two days ago.

"What is it," I ask, looking up from the runes I drew on the sheet with gem ink. It is working surprisingly well, considering that I just dumped gem dust into a bottle of ink and mixed it thoroughly.

"Maggie wants to talk with you. I won't let you out unless you get this over with," Kara tells me, pushing Maggie into the room. Kara turns around and leaves, slamming the door. "Don't be mean!"

"Why would I be mean," I ask aloud, annoyed at Kara. Looking over at Maggie, I see her sitting up from the floor and folding her legs beneath her, patting her dress down.

She is wearing a long blue dress, lightweight and baggy enough for the desert but thick enough for the decorations painted on it by hand to really shine. It was a beautiful dress with cacti and flowers on it that probably looked like a landscape when it got dirty enough, dirt and dust staining the bottom enough to look like a ground.

She coughs awkwardly and brushes a strand of her hair behind her ear. "Hello."

"Hey," I say, "you wanted to talk?"

"Yeah," she replies, mustering the runes I had drawn. She is obviously looking for something to distract herself or talk with me about instead of what she came here for.

She looks very interested so I point at the part Balthazar called 'thingamajig'. "This is used to control the mana flow but the person who I got this design from didn't use gems to power it."

"Why didn't they use gems, aren't they the source of mana," She asks, trying to make sense of the design. She is tilting her head around to see the design from different angles, crawling around on the floor and dirtying her dress.

"No, Gems create a sort of charged mana that materialises an effect unless it is immediately channelled into a material or a spell," I explain, drawing a simple chalk rune onto the floorboard. "The material holds the charge until it's triggered, similarly to how gems explode if damaged, but people can infuse them with purpose, narrowing the effect or even turning them into streams of weak effects, slowly using the gems as fuel. Most Skills discharge the entire power at once but are quite rigid."

She slides over next to me, looking at the rune I am drawing. "So it's harder to do it like this?"

"Not exactly, more expensive, not harder," I explain, tapping the thingamajig of the rune to activate it. It mostly affects the layout of the rune as the entire array produces power when using gem ink while regular runes take one input. The one input is the way Balthazar solved it but there are probably a dozen other ways to power an array like multiple redundant gems.

The rune dissolves and gathers into a small ball of light, levitating off of the floor and slowly changing colours. The changing of colours is a hundred times harder than making it levitate but I assume that Maggie will probably be more impressed by it floating. My mana slowly ticks down, only to immediately refill as my Mana Regeneration is far greater than the cost.

Maggie cups her hands around the orb of light, causing it to levitate higher. "That's pretty. What else can you do?"

"Anything," I humbly reply, " as long as I have enough time to research." I haven't found any limits on runes and Balthazar was sure that there are none, determined that this is the highest form of Skills.

She leans against me, peering at Balthazar's notebook and putting a hand around my shoulders to steady herself.

This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

I close the notebook as a wave of protectiveness washes over me. I don't want her to read the notes. It feels selfish because he wanted me to spread the knowledge but his ramblings and stories inside the notebook feel too personal to share. I'll make a version that I can openly share.

"I can teach you, " I say, grabbing a piece of chalk and drawing the most basic rune I know on the ground.

She looks me in the eyes and hesitantly answers "Sure, I'd love to learn something else."

"Oh, did you draw the dress yourself," I ask, figuring that the pattern looks like something she'd draw. It just fit too well and I just made a mistake with one of the runes I drew, wanting to mask before she could notice me correcting it.

"Yeah," she says, lifting her dress and rubbing a hand over one of the cacti, cleaning it off. "I wonder if I could hide runes in a painting, maybe do something to keep the stench out of my room."

The idea has merit. I start explaining the easiest runes and let her draw a few herself, doing my best to convey what to look out for.

Her runes look even tidier than mine. She probably developed a very steady hand with her drawings that I can't compete with.

Once she has the basics down, I start explaining how to charge and activate them.

It's pretty hard the first time you try it but gets easier with every rune you learn to connect to if you are using simple one-rune arrays, multi-rune arrays always have the same connector. You have to grasp in the dark until you find some traction for the first time, sending threads of mana to find the point where they get sucked in and then send a burst to activate them or a stream to charge them.

Gem runes automatically activate most of the time but some arrays don't.

It's getting late when I manage to finish my explanation, I did kind of overexplain. I notice her nodding off too late and she ends up with her head on my shoulder, asleep.

I am not sure what to do. I don't want to wake her up, because she probably has to go to work tomorrow and it's late but I can't sleep sitting up without anything to lean on. I could sleep against a wall but I am sitting in the middle of the room.

Trying to gently shove her off and keep her steady to lay her on the ground quickly fails as she falls over into my lap. She somehow doesn't wake up from falling over, instead she puts an arm around my leg.

She must be exhausted, not waking up from that. This is the first time I've had someone else this close without trying to murder me that I can remember and she is just so damn soft.

I let my intrusive thoughts win after a few seconds, patting her head. Her hair is really fluffy and curls slightly towards the end, feeling great between my fingers. I comb through it with my hand while debating whether or not to wake her.

I can probably sleep sitting up, right?

"Hey, what are you two doing for so long," Kara calls out as she opens the door. She abruptly stops as she sees us on the ground. A grin spreads across her face. "Oh, I expected a lot but nothing like this. I'll leave you two alone."

"What do you mean?" I remove my hand from her hair and try to stand up before remembering Maggie laying on my lap. Kara closes the door and leaves with a giggle. "What did you expect?"

Maggie stretches, groans and then turns to lay on her back. She blearily opens her eyes and looks up at me, smiling dumbly.

"Hey. Exhausted?"

She closes her eyes before snapping them open, suddenly wide awake as she sits up.

I narrowly dodge her headbutting me as she does her best to get off of me, sitting down opposite of me with a red face and a curtain of hair hiding her face.

She frantically pats down her dress and hair, making herself as tidy as possible. "Sorry for that, I had a long week and you're comfy," she apologises. The week isn't even halfway done.

"No need to apologise," I wave her off, putting the materials for the runes into my bag. I won't let her work with magic when she is this tired, it can be dangerous. I don't know why but getting called comfy is nice. "Were there a lot of guys like the drunkard this week?"

"I just had a long week," she explains, sighing wearily. She really looks exhausted, with big bags under her eyes. "It didn't stop at work."

She idly smears one of the innate runes she drew, thinking about something before backing out of it. "I don't want to rant, I am sorry."

There is no way that there is nothing important there but I don't want to press the issue if she is already sleep deprived and annoyed. It just feels wrong to be invasive when she is already so overwhelmed.

"It's alright, I've had some difficult weeks," I reassure her. It would have been pretty nice to have someone to rant to or just talk with that isn't just a random guy in a saloon. "Last time I departed from here, I accidentally took a Bounty to hunt a dragon. It wasn't just one and I almost lost my life twice, accepting it when the older dragon towered over me," I say with a chuckle.

She stares at me with wide eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing," she quickly answers,"I just didn't expect you to laugh about it. What happened?"

I grimace as I remember the first dragon tearing through my back. "Dragons are a lot more resilient than I gave them credit for. It tore out a part of my back but I made it into my cloak so I think that's fair."

"That's what the cloak is made out of!" She grabs the edge of my cloak and feels the material, marvelling at the quality. "It's awesome, have you enchanted it?"

"No, not yet," I say. "The [Tanner] who worked on it was pretty good though."

Yawning, she lays down. "A shame."

"I think you should probably go home and get a good night's sleep, I only have one bed here," I tell her, smiling. She is kind of cute but the bed would be a tight fit for both of us.

"Probably," she agrees without moving an inch.

"Come on," I prod her, poking her in the side. "You can take the bed, I'll sleep on the floor."

"Uhmm," she struggles to find the right words, fidgeting as she sits up.

I walk over to a random spot and sit down against the wall, putting my back next to me. Seeing her still wanting to say anything, I try to encourage her "Yes, anything you need?"

"No," she instantly answers, turning away towards the bed. "Thank you."

She answered that way too quickly but I am already starting to feel fatigued. I did a lot of work on runes today and spending mana is exhausting.

I doze off to the soft music coming to us from down below. It is weird, this isn't even the same room I was in last time, but it feels like home.