"BOOM" A loud explosion happens in a rocky hut at the edges of a small town, at the shores of a big lake, and surrounded by a green sea of crops and fruit trees.
"Fire! Quick, come!" A woman cries, and all the people near the hut start taking buckets of water from the lake and throwing it at the burning house.
Then, from inside the house, through the burning door, a boy jumps out. His clothes burned in some places, but the thick leather gloves and apron managed to save the important parts of his body.
"Again, this is the third time this month already, Leon. Why can't you stop doing this shit and be normal for one week?" Asked a man from the side, throwing a bucket full of water at Leon.
"Sorry, sorry. This time I was so close. I almost did it." Leon said.
"You need to take more care, kid. Some day you'll kill yourself." Another man said.
"Sorry guys, I'll do better next time." Leon says while performing a small water magic, controlling the water from the lake to go into the hut constantly, extinguishing the fire in a few minutes.
This boy is Leon, the son of Fabious, from the Black Bull Tribe. This town is Black Pear City, a somewhat small town built around a lake on the Green Plains. A district inside the United Tribes.
Walking through the black streets of Black Pear, the boy arrives back at his house.
"Dad, I'm back!" He screams, then goes to wash his face and hands, to go eat dinner.
"What happened this time? You're missing one side of your hair." As he reaches the kitchen, his father asks.
"I don't really know. Probably the rune to control the output of Mana inside the formation was wrong, so it exploded." Leon answers, taking one plate from the cabinet and taking his food from the oven.
"You need to be more careful, your passing of age is nearing, you need to be at your peak." His father says, punching his head lightly, but still giving enough pain.
"Ouch, I know dad, I'll be more careful, sorry!" Leon cried.
The passing of age is a ritual that every youth of the Black Bull Tribe needs to go through at his 16th birthday. If they manage to pass, they will become a full member of the tribe, if they can't pass but survive till the end of the day, he is expelled from the tribe. And of course, the ones that die became food for the bulls.
Leon will pass through the test next week, so as every youth, he is excited and afraid. Afraid of dying, and excited of becoming an adult, and acquiring his bull bloodline.
As his dad and all the powerful people he knows, they all are half bull, half human. They used an ancient formation to fuse their bloodlines with the one of the bulls they killed. Transforming themselves into Minotaurs.
Unfortunately, only one in one million can be born a minotaur, even if both their parents are. No one knows why this happened.
So, every generation, when reaching adulthood, has to kill a bull alone, and activate the formation to fuse his bloodline with the one from the bull.
Finishing his dinner, Leon runs to his room, takes the blueprint of his latest project, and starts modifying the runes.
It is a blueprint of a furnace. He is using a set of shield runes as the walls, precision runes to filter the right amount of mana, letting a constant flux of mana, and storing the excess, and last is the fire breathing runes.
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As he lets his mana flow inside the precision runes, it sends mana to the shields, forming a ball, and to the fire breathing runes, lighting it up and making the flames hotter.
The problem is that when the flames rise above a thousand degrees celsius, the shield stops working, and the fire burns everything near it.
Running into the small library inside their house, Leon takes five minutes to find the book he is looking for. Passing through its pages fastly, he finds it. It's a rune to use inside the precision rune, and it can change the output of qi from 50/50 making it more or less as the time needs.
Going back to his room, he takes one big book from the side, and quickly finds a rune to measure the temperature.
Now with a new blueprint on his hands, he starts to draw the new runes, modifying the old ones to fit the new ones inside.
As the temperature rises above a thousand, the thermometer will trigger the new rune inside the precision set, and it will change the output of mana, sending more mana into the shields, and less into the fire.
"Now I think it will work." Leon says with a big smile.
"Dad! I've finished! Let's go see if it's good." He screams, running down the stairs.
"Stop screaming, I'm not deaf" The minotaur says, getting up from his sofa, and going to the courtyard.
Getting in the middle of the courtyard, Leon stops, closes his eyes, breathes deep, and clears his mind.
Fabious activates the formation on the ground, creating a big circular shield, with he and his son inside.
Leon controls his mana, letting it flow through his meridians, and out of his hands. Controlling the mana, he makes runes with it, creating first the precision set, then the shield and fire breathing sets at the same time.
The formation seems to be working pretty well, so he starts to send more Mana inside it, to make the fire burn hotter.
When it passes from a thousand degrees celsius, the shield starts receiving more mana, and manages to hold the fire inside.
Leon then controls the fire, raising its temperature more and more. And as he does so, the formation makes the shield stronger.
"Success!!" He screams out loud, and starts jumping on the spot.
Letting the formation there, to run out of mana on its own, he turns to his dad with a big smile. "I did it!" He says.
"Yes, you did, congratulations. For building your first own formation you can be considered a Runesmith now. I'm proud of you, and your mom would be as well. It's not easy to do this at the age of fifteen." His father says.
At the mention of his mom, his smile falters a little, but he quickly goes back to smiling.
"Where's my badge?" He asks, extending his hand to his father.
Fabious is the head of the Runesmith branch in this town, and a member of the Runesmith association inside Black Bull Tribe. So everyone that wants to become a Runesmith in this town needs to prove to him that they are worthy of such a title.
Runesmith is the profession of creating formations made out of runes. Runes are the written language of the laws of mana. By using a certain rune, you can activate the corresponding aspect of the laws of the mana on the world, and if you combine them together, you can create a formation to control the mana of a certain region.
The things you can do with formations are as numerous as the stars, and also are the variety of runes, every day someone discovers a new rune, and probably there's an infinite amount to be discovered still.
"Ok dad, I'm ready to make my axe." Leon says, then asks. "Can we do it now?"
"It's too late already." His dad answers. "Go sleep, tomorrow you'll have the whole day to make your weapon."
The next morning, Leon jumps from his bed, takes a quick shower and runs to the library of his house to find the right runes. Taking three books with him, he goes back to his room, takes a clear sheet of paper, a pen, and starts drawing.
It's an axe, the length of the handle is 100 cm, of the axe head is 31 cm, the main blade is 23 cm, and the second one, in the same shape as the main one, but smaller, 11 cm. Also the handle has a leather stripe on it to feel it securely in a hand.
The hammer is a little too big, giving that it clearly is a one handed axe. But Leon is planning on using it as a two handed axe for now, till he passes the coming of age.
All minotaurs are at least 2.2 meters tall as soon as they fuse their bloodlines, and can grow even more. The norm for a fully grown minotaur is 2.6 meters, with the tallest reaching 3.2 meters.
The axe will be made of two pieces, the body and the core. The body is the handle and the two blades, with a hole in the place the handle meets the blades. The handle will have 75% of a rune to return the axe flying to the hands of the wearer of a bracelet. The blades will have a formation to transport any type of mana it's put in there, sending it to the blades.
The core will be a treated beast core in the middle of two plates of metal. One plate will have a small formation of a bleeding poison, as it consumes the mana from the core, it will produce a poison that, as long as it is in a wound, it won't stop bleeding. And the position of this rune will match perfectly with the transport formation, keeping the two blades always emitting poison, as long as the core has mana. The other metal plate will have the core 25% of the runes of the formation to return to the hand.
In the end he designed the bracelet. It’s a simple metal coin and two leather ropes, with the destination of the return formation. The one that is wearing this and sending mana inside will make the axe fly to him. He just needs to be in a 30 meters radius of the axe.
When Leon finishes designing the axe, the sun is already in the middle of the sky. He ran downstairs, finding his dad at the table, eating his meal.
“Dad, i've finished the design.” He takes the blueprint, puts it on the table and looks at his father. “What do you think?”
Fabious takes the blueprint, studying it for a little.
“Well, it’s a good job, but I can see some flaws. Nothing big, just that if you research more runes you can make it stronger.” Fabious finally says.
“come on dad, you can say that of every formation in the world, there’s always a better combination of runes.” Leon exclaims, then asks. “will this work?”
“Yes, it will.” He says. “come, eat your meal, then let’s make this weapon."