Kaius sat at the head of a grand dining table, nine high backed seats lining each side with a long tablecloth embroidered with heraldry draping over its centre. After two full days cooped up in the manors office, he had decided he needed a change of scenery.

Sitting at the head of the table was weird. An experience far removed from his rather…rustic upbringing in the Arboreal Sea. He felt like a kid playing at a noble. The whole thing got another confusing twist to it when everything was just a little too short for him.

Oh well, at least the chair was terrifically comfy.

Porkchop had decided to join him again, lounging on a plush carpet that sat in front of a roaring hearth. After dinner last night they had done some more exploring of the multi floored manor, eventually managing to stumble across a treasure trove of wood and coal in some unmarked closet tucked into one of the narrow servant corridors that twisted through the house's ground floor.

After a good sleep, and a hearty breakfast of pork and eggs, Kaius was ready to tackle the last two of his remaining Runic Mastery skills. Neither of them should be too difficult, at least in comparison that was the mind numbing exercise in frustration that was Vhaxanish.

Once he had all five he planned on getting as much initial practice as he could through scribing formations on paper. That would, however, inevitably run out. Nor would he be able to use that for anything larger or more complex than the most basic of workings. Warding the house and surrounding area was bound to get him the rest of the way there, and would give them some extra much needed security besides.

As it stood, lounging around in a manor at the centre of a Depths constructed city full of goblins wasn’t exactly what he would consider safe. He might have been convinced to leave his armour unadorned inside of the bedroom he had been using, but he still wore his sword buckled at his hip at all times.

Wards would go a long way to mitigate that anxiety. If it wasn’t for the benefits of levels, he probably would have eschewed practising on paper at all. However, most of the more effective warding he knew, especially those that incorporated his chosen scripts, was only known in theory. He needed every boost he could get if he wanted to translate that into runic arts utilised in practice.

He twiddled his quill, twirling it between his fingers. Thinking.

The next script he needed to work on was High Lothian. It was, perhaps, the script that would see the most use in his spell formation, at least in terms of his regularity of inscribing with it.

It was a complex script, though not quite as bad as Vhaxanish. It was also rather flexible, and was notoriously good at being used to define and shape spell-like effects. That was what he intended to use it for. Runic spell hymns.

While the rest of his spell formation would be permanent, the hymns themselves would be consumable by nature. His goal was to burn the overall formation to his body and his mana pool, creating an immutable self sustaining formation. However, that was just the ‘machinery’ that would let him cast spells.

The spells themselves would be High Lothian inscriptions entirely in their own right. The casting formation would hold them in stasis, drawing on his mana pool to reserve some of his mystic might inside of the spell hymn. Once called upon, the spell would burn, consuming itself in an instant to cast his desired hymn.

That also meant that he would need to prepare each and every cast of a chosen spell ahead of time, and could only store as many as his mana pool could support. It also meant if he wanted two available casts of a given spell, he would need to inscribe and link that runic hymn to the overall spellcasting formation twice.

He and his father- mostly Father- had spent weeks trying to find a way around this. It unfortunately looked like it was a hard limitation of his attempted style of mage craft. Every time they tried to make a hymn permanent, it required consciously channelled mana to activate. Completely defeating the point of the exercise.

No, he needed to cast at the speed of thought, which meant sacrificing staying power in favour of focused instant bursts.

That fact had made High Lothian the best contender as a script to use for the hymns themselves. Yes it was complex, and yes it was finicky. It was also dense and incredibly flexible. Any spell effect he could think of could be programmed into a High Lothian hymn. Even better, most of the complexity came from properly planning any given hymn, due to the extensive number of characters and contextual grammar of the script. Once memorised, he would be able to inscribe a given spell hymn relatively quickly. At least compared to other scripts which made it easier to create spells, but harder to inscribe them.

Unfortunately, even if High Lothian was technically capable of spell hymns up to the fifth tier -the highest tier of advancement currently discovered- his spell casting formation was only capable of handling spells up to the first.

Anything more than that would put undue stress on his body, his father had said. He’d been willing to risk it. Father had not, and without his help the entire exercise was dead in the water.

It wasn’t the end of the road, not by any means. He was counting on a class that heavily incorporated this unique style of magecraft that he was pioneering. Almost everyone who managed to use something novel before class selection was offered something similar.

It was highly likely that some of his general skills would evolve to support runic casting, hopefully allowing him to iterate and improve on his design. Even better, there was a chance that his casting formation would be directly integrated into his class skills, giving him an organic way to improve upon it through his natural rising through the tiers.

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That was reasonably common. A runewright might start with a skill that allowed them to directly empower a formation of the first tier, and then when they evolved their class as they passed through the level two hundred barrier -entering the second tier- that skill would usually evolve to include formations of that tier as well.

In the end, that was all in the future. For now he had to get his High Lothian skill, then he could move on to his last.

Kaius stopped twirling his quill, dipping the pen in his ink.

He decided to write out a runic hymn for a Spark, what may as well have been a cantrip. Most runic spell hymns were used in the creation of wands and staves and the like. Implements that allowed a mage to channel mana to create a given spell effect. They were mightily expensive things, and invariably broke after a number of casts. Barely anyone used them, only rich magi who could afford the expense to round out their build, or hold on to a hidden ace.

The script wound across the page, taking the shape of an arrow. It was the basic structure for evocation effects, ones that he intended to make heavy use of. Dense characters scrawling, Kaius worked fast. Spark was one of a handful of spell effects he had memorised for use in casting. This one needed slight tweaks, as his father had taught him how to modify them for use in his specialised body formation, so he did still have to sit and think every now and then.

He finished quickly, letting the page sit for a moment to dry before he lay his hand over the page, channelling his mana.

There was a slight crack as the formation activated. The runes sparked, arcing to the tip of Kaius’s finger. A moment later and the formation overloaded, immolating the page.

Kaius yanked his hand back, shaking it to distract himself from the jolting sting of the zap.

“Shit, that smarts!”

Porkchop chuffed, looking over to him in amusement. “Did you mess up again?”

“Nope!” Kaius said happily, sticking his tongue out at his friend. “Just ah.. May have forgotten that activating a spark array without any targeting or control components leads to it zapping whatever’s closest.”

Porkchop snorted at him, before settling his head back on his paws. “Good thing you didn’t use that bolt spell like you wanted to then.”

Kaius winced. Originally he’d planned on using Arcane Bolt, the only spell hymn of the first tier that he knew. It was a spell he intended on testing his casting formation with when he finally got to make it. He’d wanted to get some practice in inscribing it, but Porkchop had rightly pointed out that his paper formations were already literally exploding.

Good thing he’d listened, Kaius thought as he scratched his head. Otherwise he might be nursing a wound that was a lot worse than a little zap.

Still, undirected or not, the spell hymn had worked. The notification that rang in the corner of his mind attested to that.

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

Accepting the skill immediately, Kaius pulled up its description.

Rune Mastery - High Lothian:

Level 1

Rare

Wield the language of the arcane, seal and constrain the mystic with sacred hymns. The power of magi yours to obtain, limited only by time, material, and capability.

This skill improves the users ability to create High Lothian spell hymns, and increases the stability of the spell hymns themselves.

Each level slightly increases speed and accuracy when inscribing High Lothian runes.

Each level slightly increases stability of High Lothian runes.

Each level slightly increases memory and learning capacity of High Lothian runes.

Smiling as he read the description, Kaius brushed the ashen remnants of his last formation off of the table. Clearing the space for his continued work. Refusing to take a break to celebrate, he sat back down and grabbed another leaf of paper.

He was down to his final script. The one he would need for containment and stabilisation arrays. It was another vital part of his spell casting formation, one that was almost ubiquitous in all body formations. Most runic inscriptions relied on consistent geometry, and smooth and uniform materials to maintain their stability.

Body formations did not, and could not, have the same advantages. By definition the body was a dynamic organism. Surfaces twisted and shifted, distorting the formation. Muscles and blood moved freely. All this and much more were what made body formations so ruinously difficult to create.

It required a rare type of array worked into the formation for them to function. One that served to preserve and maintain the formation's overall function. One that projected the formation's structure into the surrounding mana of the body. Even cut and severed it would allow the formation to function for some time - though inevitably without the physical inscriptions to support it it would begin to fail.

Simenoan was one such script designed from the ground up to support this type of runic array. Named after the runewright Simeno, who pioneered both it and body formations more than a millennia ago. His father had told him much about the man. Apparently they were kindred spirits. Though, where he sought to use runes to emulate the magi, Simeno had used body formations to turn himself into a supreme warrior. Engraving wards, strength boosts, rejuvenation, and other similar enhancements onto his very bones.

Kaius could only hope that he would have as much success as the ancient runewright. That his own name would similarly last through the millenia.

Once again he started by scribing another Ykkardian sigil on the centre of his page, this time returning to Strength. Around it he scribed a Simenoan stabilising array. It was a geometric script, encircling his central sigil in overlapping circles, tessellated triangles, and more.

“Moment of truth.” Kaius thought, finishing the formation with a final flick of his quill.

He reached for the page, sinking his mana into the formation. The page snapped to rigidity.

Kaius clenched his fist. Waiting. The page lay there. He reached out, tentatively lifting the formation. The page was as stiff as wood, strong and proud in his hand. Stable.

A few heart beats later, and the inherent weakness of the instability reared its head. It immolated slowly, starting from the very centre of the Ykkardian sigil. The moment it started to burn into the geometry of his Simenoan array, the stabilising force collapsed. Instantly combusting the rest of the page.

Kaius grinned as another notification started to blare in his mind.

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