**Ding! General Skill Available! Would you like to learn: Rune Mastery - Ykkardian (Rare)?**

Kaius stared at the system notification that hung in his vision, feeling exceedingly pleased with himself. Getting offered the skill on his first attempt was evidence that all of those evenings spent in mind bending study of runes had been worth it. That his father’s exacting methods and intolerance of mistakes had worked.

Mastery skills were interesting. They might boost competency, but you had to display some baseline capability before a Skill would be offered to you by the system. It was an especially high bar for the runic arts. Your inscription didn’t have to be perfect, but it did have to work. It took months of practice for that to even start to become a possibility. Even for him, with a grandmaster as his father, it had taken a lot of sweat and tears to get to this point.

“Kaius. Why the hells did that paper explode.” Porkchop asked him, still lying on the floor after the shock of Kaius’s rune’s spontaneous detonation had startled him from his seat.

Kaius refocused on his friend, scratching his head awkwardly. “Err. The paper couldn’t handle the throughput of the rune?” He offered.

“So you knew this would happen?” Porkchop accused.

“Well. Yes. But-”

Porkchop snorted, interrupting him. “Usually you tell people before something blows up right next to where they are sleeping.”

“Sorry, I-”

“Will it happen again?” Porkchop cut him off again.

“I mean-”

“Will. You. Keep. Blowing. Up. Paper.” Every word flowed across the link slowly, Porkchop making his annoyance clear.

“Yes.” Kaius said, feeling a little silly that he had forgotten to warn his friend about the slightly volatile effects of scribing active runes onto mundane materials.

“I swear to all of your two-legged gods that if you manage to blow up this house as well I will eat your boots.” Porkchop pushed himself to his feet, walking out of the study. “I’m going to nap on the bed. Come find me when you’re done blowing stuff up.”

“Sorry!” Kaius called after him, feeling a little bad. The feeling passed quickly, his excitement for his new skill returning in full force as he turned his attention back to his notification.

Kaius accepted his new Ykkardian mastery, and pulled up the description of the skill.

Rune Mastery - Ykkardian:

Level 1

Rare

Understanding relies on signs and symbols. These relations have weight. Once distilled into their purest form, power is all that remains.

This skill improves the users ability to create Ykkardian formations, and increases the stability of the formations themselves.

Each level slightly increases speed and accuracy when inscribing Ykkardian runes.

Each level slightly increases stability of Ykkardian runes.

Each level slightly increases memory and learning capacity of Ykkardian runes.

Kaius focused on the middle effect of the skill, increasing formation stability. It was runic stability that had led to his earlier sheet immolating, and was what had caused the destructive detonation that had ruined their last home.

It was an interesting trait of runes, many things could affect stability. Mana density, having too much of a single aspect, use of poor materials, mistakes in an inscription itself - all could have the effect of disastrously destabilising a formation. Even if an unstable formation didn’t collapse with as much excitement as his previous experiences, it would still invariably fail at some point.

Perfect stability was basically a myth. There were too many variables to control for, and all formations eventually failed because of them. Still, skills that boosted that aspect were invaluable. He doubted that it was enough to stop the paper from burning, not at his level, but it might be enough to make it less…Explosive.

Kaius quickly moved to test it, redipping his pen and pulling another sheet from his stack. He kept to the same rune. Drawing out Strength a second time would make it far easier to tell how much the skill impacted the formation's inevitable failure. Different runes failed differently. He had no doubt that if he used sigils for Decay or Consumption that the paper would have been far more likely to crumble into dust rather than ignite.

The tip of his quill glided over the page in a single stroke, broken only to collect more ink from his well. He was faster and smoother than he had been only a few minutes before. His latest Skill tweaked his movements, giving him the confidence to draw with haste. The curves and slashes of the sigil seemed to leap out to him, no time being wasted on remembering the exact angle of a line, nor if the stroke that crossed its centre was two and a quarter fingerlengths, or two and an eighth.

Neither did he feel like his Skill was writing for him. It was all him, just better.

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After a few minutes, he was done. An almost identical copy to his first rune, only differentiated by its slightly cleaner linework, sat in front of him.

As soon as the ink was dry, Kaius snatched the page off the desk. He held it at arm's length, shielding his eyes with his other hand. A flicker of intent and he linked the sigil to his mana. The page went ridgid again. Just for a moment. Then it burned. Flashing into a fire as fast as he could blink. Singeing his fingers and showering the hardwood desk with a cloud of glowing ash.

**Ding! Rune Mastery - Ykkardian has reached level 2!**

It did not, however, explode. Success!

Kaius cackled, throwing his head back as a full bodied laugh shook him in his seat. Runes! He was finally working with runes! It had been so long, years of effort to reach this point. And here he was, at the finish line. Finally starting the most important work he had for his class.

Soon. Soon he would be able to cast. He would merge Runic Lexicon, quickly followed by Mana Manipulation, and then his work would truly start in earnest.

Deep down he knew he had a lot to do. There were two more legacy skills, plus his final upgraded skill, after that. And he had to cap everything at twenty. No small task. But when he could finally cast? It would all be worth it. Every moment spent training, fighting. All of his arguments with his father. Living in a forest, in hiding.

It would all be worth it if it led to him pioneering a new runic art. A true mage art, one that would let him fight up close with the power and flexibility of magic at his side.

“I heard that! Weirdo!” Porkchop called, his tone teasing. Kaius snapped his mouth shut, cutting off his villainous laugh with a wince.

He pushed his embarrassment out of his mind. He had more skills to earn. Experimenting with Ykkardian could wait until he had filled out his skill list. No point risking accidentally accepting a different rune related skill when he was inevitably offered one.

Also, maybe he should clean the desk. Two failed runes had completely covered its varnished top in ash. If it got into the ink while he was inscribing it could cause a failure. He stood up, cutting free a section from one of the curtains that draped down the sides of the window behind him. Using the scrap to wipe up the dust as best he could.

Sitting back down, Kaius thought on which language to use next. He could use any of the four, he knew that. He also couldn’t help the fact that it had been burned into him for many many years that his legacy skills had an exact order.

It felt bloody wrong to just pick willy-nilly.

Biting his nail, Kaius decided to work outwards from the scripts he would use for his spellcasting body formation. He already had Ykkardian, which would make up the central keystone. Outside of that would be the controller, a dense working that would serve as his link and interface with the overall working. Imprinting spell-like effects into an object with runes was, well- not easy, but relatively straight forward. Making those spells directably and intuitively controllable like a real spell? Far harder.

You needed a dizzyingly complex array. Something that could handle context with ease. Something capable of handling arguments. Something adaptable.

After a lot of discussion, he and Father had settled on using the Vhaxani script. For his niche use case, it was perfect. Though from his fathers lessons he had quickly gotten the idea that Vhaxanish was only useful for niche edge cases. Frankly, whoever had discovered or invented it must have been demented.

Sure, it was technically equally capable at doing just about anything, and it definitely was amazing for creating perfectly tailored command and control arrays. It was also categorically verbose, and its formations and arrays invariably ended up being a dozen or more times longer than any other option available. It was also notorious for being finicky. When working with such a long structure, a single syntax error could throw the whole thing off. Causing weird quirks, or catastrophic stability failures.

If he was being honest with himself, it was shit. Really shit. Horrible to use, overly complicated, and unnecessarily confusing, even when compared to other notable offenders. It was also the best bet he had. That complexity was needed when he wanted to do something like creating a permanent self sustaining body array, with disposable spell sections, that also linked to his mind and system.

It was also the sole piece of his spell casting formation that Hastur had insisted he completely design himself. His father had still done all the leg work for the rest, including helping him brainstorm some spell hymns written in High Lothian. The controller itself though was far too complex and important, Father had done it all without asking for his input. Kaius remembered that week.

His father hunched over his notebook, furiously scribbling. Tearing pages out in frustration, nearly throwing his whole damn book in the fire more than once. Any time Kaius had made so much as a peep, Father had yelled at him to shut up. Only for him to wake, finding his father thrusting a page of what looked like a wheel of minuscule angled letters in his face. Telling him that he had to memorise the entire thing. Perfectly.

It had taken another three weeks.

He was grateful to Father- loved him to pieces, but gods damned did that man have high demands on his ability

Kaius sighed. It was still going to take forever to finish a formation and get the skill. Worse, he had to do it without making any mistakes. Even a basic light formation would take him at least half an hour.

Gods, he hated Vhaxani. Thank the hells that as soon as he had created his spell formation he could forget the entire damned thing.

Deciding he may as well just get on with it, Kaius put his pen to the page. Writing out dense swirling letters that coallessed into words thirty to fifty characters long. Each was small enough that he struggled with the necessary precision. Thankfully, one of the only positives of the script was that each individual letter was simplistic. Barely more complicated than those of Common. Even if there were five hundred and twelve of them.

Kaius kept grumbling to himself, muttering a thousand vile curses against the script's inventor, as he scribed out a basic runic formation. Word by word the lines of the script spiralled inwards, flowing according to Vhaxanish sacred geometry. Half an hour turned out to be an underestimate. A full hour later Kaius stared at his finished formation.

Squeezing his fist rhythmically, Kaius restrained himself from crumpling the damnable paper. It had been an exercise in frustration. Not just due to the length, but having to stop every five seconds to double check he had his characters correct, or that his syntax was in order.

“It’s over now. Just activate the rune. Get the skill.” Kaius thought to himself, breathing deeply.

He reached out to his rune. Intermeshing with it. Connecting to his Ma-

It wouldn’t connect to his Mana. He’d made a mistake.

“Fuck!” Kaius yelled