The next day, Dirk and Ava resumed their school schedule.

Because Dirk didn't have any issues with his spells, he didn't go to his classes for help. The only spells he hadn't gotten a hang of were his dark ones, but that was due to him not having his dark mana heart yet. Only Curse of Darkness could even be studied, let alone the other ones that had higher prerequisites. Plus, Dirk didn't know if he wanted to see Garel in order to get help.

So he decided to go back to his forging and enchanting classes.

First came the enchanting class. Upon entering, Dirk was silently handed the enchanting book by his teacher. The old man spoke with a small scowl.

"I understand that developing your spells and fighting monsters in the dungeons is important, but enchanting is a craft that takes time and dedication. You are my only student that has ever missed so much time and study pertaining to this craft. Thus, I give you a... challenge, if you will. Catch up with the first half of that book and enchant this item. If you can do so within 2 weeks, then you can stay in my class. Otherwise, I don't want you here. You have the ability to enchant, but you lack the commitment. And if you decide to leave for another job anytime soon, then don't bother coming back."

"..."

Dirk was silent in front of his irritated teacher. His face sported a mean frown, and his dark eyes bore into the man. With a huff, he snatched the item his teacher wanted him to enchant and walked out of the classroom. He had already scanned the book entirely, so he didn't need to remain in the room to use it.

"Hm. Overconfident brat."

The teacher waved his hand as Dirk exited. Dirk didn't bother as he left the area, his eyes frigid. As for the item, it was another piece of leather. Dirk just threw it into his pocket ring before moving on.

After his enchanting class came forging. Dirk entered that room early, meeting his dwarven teacher.

"Dirk! It's nice to see my most accomplished student again. Tell me, do you plan on leaving for jobs or whatnot anytime soon?"

The dwarf asked this question with an expectant gaze. Dirk shook his head, pleased by this teacher's lack of hostility.

"No. I'm here for the foreseeable future."

"Good to hear! Since that's the case, I've thought of a curriculum for you. How many hours a day can you devote to forging?"

"Hm, I can comfortably do 8."

"8? That's more than I expected. Very well. I've done a bit of thinking, and I'm interested in squeezing out your natural talent. Thus, I'm not going to baby you like all those other students who won't go anywhere with forging. I have three classes every day that take up about 5 hours of my time. I want you to come to Forge 8 of the Hall of Artisans a few hours before noon from now on."

"Understood."

"Good. Let's see if you can live up to my expectations. As for today, I want you to do a bit of studying. Take this book and read through the theory of fire section. I know you're a fire mage, and this stuff is especially important for forging. Plus, there's a bit of knowledge in here that goes into more depth than even magic texts. It'll be useful to you even beyond forging."

The dwarf flicked his hand, a book appearing from his pocket ring. It was a pristine book built from parchment and a thick scale leather cover. It wasn't huge, but it was by no means small. Dirk took it, feeling the weight in both his hands.

"Stay here for a few hours, and disregard your classmates during class time. When class ends, you can ask me any questions. I want to make sure you understand certain things before moving on."

"Understood."

Dirk nodded before turning and heading to his desk. Not long after, students started flooding into the classroom. There were less than when the class first started.

Dirk opened the book, his head buried in it and disregarding the odd gazes from those around him. Even as the dwarf started yelling instructions, Dirk was zoned out.

His AI scanned each page as he flipped through the book. Inside, there was tons of foreign theory. It went through things like hammer techniques, how to channel strength, and how to control the body.

There were two important sections though. The first was the fire theory as the dwarf mentioned. This section talked about the different types of fire, temperatures, and how different materials interacted with fire. It even talked about how a fire mage could control their fire directly to conduct their forging. This knowledge went beyond using spells with runes. Instead, it was direct elemental manipulation, touching upon the highest level magical techniques.

Dirk eventually tore his eyes away halfway through this section though, flipping through the rest of the book to get an idea of the rest of its contents. Like this, he was quick to find another section. This section was metal theory, and the name immediately drew Dirk's attention.

This section talked about how an earth mage, preferably one with the metal specialization, could directly control metal to conduct their forging. It provided the same guidance as with fire theory, both touching upon elemental manipulation in order to perform the highest level forging techniques. At a high enough level, there wasn't any such thing as using some shabby metal hammers to mold low quality metal ingots. The best forgemasters used their magic and elements to build the highest quality tools and forge the highest quality metals into works of art. Only elemental manipulation could provide the sheer power and precision necessary to build the best products.

This was all extraordinarily valuable knowledge. It described techniques that couldn't be matched even by machines on Earth. It gave Dirk a peek at the highest levels of forging, a world he didn't even know existed. He hadn't thought it was such an in-depth craft.

Dirk wanted to quickly scan everything. If he could record all the knowledge within this book, he could study it for years to come. However, as he reached the deeper portions of the section, he found something odd.

On the deeper pages pertaining to metal theory, each one was filled with complex runic symbols. These were huge runes comprised of hundreds and thousands of mini runes, all brought together to form a runic system. Dirk had barely seen such a thing when forming the runes for his mana heart. Even that rune, one that he had barely comprehended enough to complete, couldn't match the complexity of any rune plastered across the dozens of pages in this book.

Flipping back, Dirk found that the second half of the fire theory section was similarly filled with runic pages. Dirk looked at the runes across the first couple runic pages, and when he concentrated, he was surprised to feel the runes pop out at him. He buried his nose deeper into the book, the runes seemingly imparting knowledge to him.

As he was engrossed in viewing the runes, Dirk didn't notice his surroundings change. He went from the classroom to an ocean of mana. All around him was a sea of fire, metal, and some lightning. Dirk didn't notice this though as he concentrated on the rune in front of him.

The rune within the book, as Dirk had discovered after focusing on it, was filled to the brim with vast knowledge. Runes were the language of magic, and to make them, one had to comprehend the meaning behind them first. Through millennia, mages had come to comprehend their elements, discovering runes that they could use to codify magical knowledge. Thus, runes weren't only used to form spells. They could also be enchanted to things. Not only that, but they could be used to store information. This book utilized that third option.

The runes Dirk looked at had all the information behind metal and fire theory. If one could comprehend the entire rune, they would understand the page's contents. Understand all the pages and they would attain all the knowledge within the book. However, one had to comprehend the runes first. This wasn't simply ink on a paper. This was magical text filled with profundity. It contained information that was beyond the written word.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

[Alert! Runic data attempting to be recorded. In order to record non-standard text, your assistance is required in elemental tracing.]

Suddenly, Dirk heard this alert from his AI. At that moment, he became a bit more lucid. Looking at the rune in front of him, he quickly understood what his AI wanted.

Suddenly, around the rune on the page, digital lines began to appear. Dirk's vision began to focus on one of the parts of the huge rune. Then, alongside his AI, he began breaking it down. The digital lines were moved by Dirk to conform to the runes bit by bit, outlining them and then being saved. As he did this, the AI recorded the information down.

What they were trying to do could only be described as runic tracing. Dirk couldn't actually comprehend the entire rune. For a bit, he thought that he would need to study the book long term to get anything from it. But with his AI, he discovered that he was actually able to trace the runes, saving them for later.

This didn't mean that Dirk or the AI understood the rune. He wouldn't even be able to create the runes with this traced information. It only meant that Dirk could look at it later, going on to comprehend it then. This was the beauty of runes. It codified elemental information, so technically, it could be copied without comprehending it.

Such advantages were found in enchanting as well. Enchanted scrolls could be used by mages without understanding the runes on the paper. Enchanted weapons could be used by their handlers without understanding the runes within the enchantments. Despite not understanding the enchantments, mana could still be pushed through them, activating the runes and thus the enchantments or spells.

Dirk's AI was now using this same logic. It could record the runes, tracing them and saving them for later. It was almost like the AI was enchanting the runes into itself, thus being able to save it.

However, this process of tracing wasn't easy. As Dirk moved the digital lines to encapsulate the rune, he found it become more and more complex. The more precise Dirk tried to make the tracing, the more complex he saw the rune become. It was a cycle of tracing, discovering inaccuracies, correcting them, and discovering even more inaccuracies. This caused Dirk to frown. It was only after a while that he finally traced a rune 100% correctly, but it took a long time, and it was only a tiny portion of the entire page.

'I can trace runes, but to get 100% accuracy takes time. If I want to get all the runes in a timely matter, it'll have to be inaccurate. So the knowledge will be shallow, but at least I'll have something.'

Dirk came to this conclusion. If he had 100% accuracy, then he would have 100% of the knowledge contained within the rune. But he couldn't copy the runes so precisely in the time he had. So he took a step back, deciding to go for quantity over quality.

The entire rune entered Dirk's vision. Then, he saw digital lines appear around all the complex lines of the rune. Dirk's mind was filled with myriads of information.

Staring holes into the page, Dirk sifted through the information, correcting the digital tracing of the runes across the board. At the same time, a progress bar appeared displaying the accuracy percentage.

The percentage rose quickly at first, going from 0% to 5%. Then up to 10% before slowly reaching 20%. It started to rapidly slow after that though as the runes became deeper. After almost half an hour, the accuracy rose to about 25%.

It seemed like Dirk had traced a little under a percent a minute, but the last 10% took much longer than the first 10%. In another half an hour, Dirk didn't know if he could get much further past 40%. And in another hour, he might not get past 50%. It became exponentially more complex the deeper he went. The only reason he got to 100% in anything was because it was a single tiny rune, maybe representing a single word.

And this was only one page. There were dozens of pages filled on each side with these runes, and the deeper one went, the more complex the information became. Dirk was a bit overwhelmed by the profundity.

Taking a step back, Dirk sighed. His eyes were a bit bloodshot now.

At that moment, there was a knock on his desk.

"Having a hard time, are we?"

"Huh?"

Dirk's head snapped upward, seeing his dwarven teacher that stood beside his desk with a smile. The man chuckled.

"Don't bother attempting to understand those runic pages. Difficult, too difficult! You'll need to be at minimum a Tier 5 to start learning such things."

"Oh. Sorry."

"No worries. What are you going to do, steal it? You can't even understand it! Hehe, there was a reason I had no problem giving this valuable book to you. In fact, there's a reason places like the academy and master artisans are never worried about lesser tiered persons stealing any of their high level books. It's because they can't do anything with it! And if there aren't any runic texts, then the item probably isn't valuable."

"..."

Dirk nodded understandingly. The next moment though, he froze up a little.

'Those books that Garel gave me. They were supposedly spell texts that described Tier 6 spells and such. But I didn't see any runic pages in them. Were those really such valuable books? You know what, knowing Garel, they probably planted fake spell books for him to steal. Maybe I need to talk to him...'

Dirk scratched his head. No matter what, Garel had tried to help him with valuable spell knowledge. If Dirk could warn him of the danger, that might save both of them some trouble. Maybe that would ensure that Garel didn't steal anything anymore since he apparently wasn't as sneaky as he thought he was.

"Anyway Dirk, we'll stop here today. I hope you at least read some of the beginner parts of fire theory."

"Yes, I did."

"Good! Then tomorrow morning, Forge 8. Be there and we'll begin."

"Understood."

With that, Dirk left forging class. He had a smile on his face as he left the Hall of Artisans, pleased by the day's developments.

Since the rest of his day was free, Dirk decided to head home early. Upon arrival, he got comfortable did a destruction cycle. He was in agony for several minutes as he destroyed his blood and many veins, causing black and purple lines to surface on his skin.

He sighed though as he finished. He had gone through many, many destruction cycles for his blood, yet it still wasn't finished. The only thing that indicated if he was getting close was less pain when carrying out the cycles, but not even that had gone down. His pain tolerance had only increased.

"Am I doing something wrong? It's been too much time... What if it's something like with my mana heart, and I need higher concentrations of anima? Interface, search my anima manual for text about increased anima densities."

[Searching...]

Dirk waited as his AI made a query. After several seconds though, he was surprised.

[No applicable results found.]

"None? Weird..."

Dirk rubbed his chin. Was he just being impatient with his progression? He felt like there was something else though.

"Now that I think about it, my manual didn't have runic text. I was told it was high level. Wouldn't it have runic text if it were high level?"

Thinking of that, Dirk suddenly stood up. He quickly walked to his bedroom where he dove into his closet and sifted through neatly organized items. After a few seconds, he fished out his book, the Anima Resonance Destruction Technique.

Dirk flipped it open, reading through the sections. Way back when, he had only seen ink on a paper. There wasn't anything magical about this book. But that was only through the eyes of his younger, inexperienced self.

Now as he flipped through every page, Dirk was intrigued. Halfway through, he faintly spotted some runic lines. These lines followed some of the text, but others flowed through the entire page.

After concentrating on a single page for a while, Dirk was actually able to make out a small runic formation that weaved itself throughout the page. It wasn't nearly as complex as the one he found in the dwarf's book, but it was elusive enough to not be obvious.

"Would you look at that... Wait, doesn't that mean my Mana Heart Technique has runic formations too?"

Suddenly, Dirk dove back into his closet. After pulling out the large Mana Heart Technique book, he flipped to the back.

"Whoah..."

When he stopped on a page, Dirk was hit with a wave of information. Looking at it through his magically developed eyes, Dirk could make out fading runic formations. The formation that covered the entire page showed only portions of itself as it seemed to fade in and out of existence. And when Dirk concentrated on one of the fading images, he was a bit overwhelmed by the runic complexity. It hurt his eyes and head.

"Jeez. I can't look at that for more than a few minutes... Just how complex is that rune?"

He was baffled as he flipped backward. After arriving at the halfway point, Dirk slowly glanced at the page.

Thankfully, this one didn't have an overwhelmingly profound rune on it. Yet, the rune was still just as complex as the one Dirk had seen in the dwarf's book.

"A vast majority of the information within this book has been hiding in plain sight. I can't even look at the runes in the back. Maybe I should trace these though. Might as well."

Shrugging, Dirk went back to his Anima Resonance Destruction Technique, going to the earliest page with runes on it and tracing them. In this book, the runes weren't so complex. As he began tracing them though, he found some oddities.

"These runes... They're not mana."

He was surprised. The runes he had seen in the dwarf's book were made of fire and earth mana respective to the section. But these runes had no trace of mana in them. He did recognize the energy though.

"It's anima? You can actually enchant things with anima? I mean, it's a controllable energy, but I've never heard of someone taking it out of their body... Oh well."

Deciding not to think too deeply about it, Dirk focused on tracing them. Despite not being mana, they traced just fine, but despite not being as complex as the other runic formations he saw, a single page still took two hours to trace. By the end, Dirk had to massage his temples. It took a lot of concentration to trace runes.

But he wasn't a hasty person. After resting for a bit, he continued to trace runes. As long as he could get the runes into his AI, he could recall and study them as much as he wanted later. He didn't want to have to rely on a physical object that couldn't be taken everywhere with him.

Like that, Dirk spent the rest of the day tracing. Even when Ava came home and made dinner, he didn't stop tracing. He only stopped to eat dinner, the pastime doubling as much needed rest.

Finally, come night time, he was hit by a wave of mental exhaustion. He had told Ava that he was trying to comprehend runic formations on a page, something she didn't know existed either. She was surprised though at the mental toll it took on Dirk. She might think he'd been exerting himself, casting spells all day long with how tired he was.

At least getting to bed was easy. The two were quick to fall asleep beside each other. While she wasn't as tired as Dirk, Ava was still more than done with the day. She had her alchemy class to take, and she was determined to do well in it. Unfortunately, it took a lot of mental and magical effort on her part. Such a complex profession wasn't easy to get good at.