Some time after the sounds of fighting stopped, I began to slowly sit up.

Torben is sat up like me, looking equally as shitty.

Argus is busy bandaging a deep wound on Grigori’s forearm who looks to be unconscious. Hopefully his artery wasn’t cut.

Halstein is breathing deeply, looking exhausted but doesn’t seem to be injured.

Thankfully, the cut on my back is only light but when I get back I’ll have to drown it in disinfectant, since I doubt a ghouls claws are very sanitary.

It took far too much time than I was comfortable with for us to set off again and Grigori isn’t in any condition to fight due to blood loss.

After a couple of close encounter shortly after moving again, they got less and less frequent as we got closer to our destination. Or at the very least, they got increasingly better at staying hidden.

As it began to get dark we found the path we originally travelled down, around half way between the ruins and Fort Torbek.

However, if you listen carefully, it sounds as if the whole area became alive all at once with shrill shrieks and low roars that lightly reverberate through the ground. Even though some of the loudest noises can be faintly heard within the fort, it is far more disturbing to get the constant feeling to be surrounded by growling predators roaming through the winding stone.

It didn’t take too much longer to reach the fort, where we received better treatment for our impromptu bandaged injuries.

And most importantly some hot food, the best spice is hunger after all. So the sub-par cooking became a gourmet meal, though in reality it was just a watered down vegetable soup. However, I managed to bag myself an extra piece of bread to compensate for being starved for a day or two.

A benefit of not being in charge of the squadron is that I’m not responsible for explaining everything that has happened, and therefore don’t have to attempt to deceive my superiors. Even though I believe I could do so easily if need be, and I’ve had plenty experience at it too.

Not that I’m bragging or anything…

I have a lot to study from our recent escapade, but I’ll firstly be focusing on examining the runes I copied.

However, after a few hours of experimenting, nothing is coming from it. Every time I write it out perfectly, but when I begin to pour in mana the parchment withers away, crumbling into dust. Not only this, but parchment is expensive and I had to go through painstaking  lengths to get enough of it to properly test the runes, plus I wanted to keep some for the future. Now I only have half of the original parchment and a growing pile of dust, with no progress to show for it.

Argus did mention that he knows quite a bit about runes from his sister, so I should be getting some information from him.

I just hope I didn’t copy the boxes runes wrong from the very start, even though I checked repeatedly that it was accurate.

The next day, I got Argus alone to speak to him, though I’m not sure what the point of secrecy is when the whole squadron knows about me. Even though I get a few curious glances from them, they aren’t bothering me too much nor do they seem afraid.

“So, Raegan I assume this conversation will be magic related since you wanted to speak alone.”

“Perceptive as always.” So much so its disturbing. “ I wanted to ask you more about those runes, since I reached a dead-end before I even begun.”

“Always happy to help, the others would probably want to know what all of this is about, so there’s little reason to be so secretive. It isn’t every day that you can find long forgotten knowledge after all.” At the end of the last sentence he adds a sly grin, and his eyes become… Intense.                                

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

So, by ‘others’ he means himself. Is this guy trying to compete with me for the ‘obsessive knowledge hoarder award’ or something?

But I suppose there is no reason why I can’t let the rest of the squadron know a little about magic, so long as they can’t use it themselves it will only be useful as a curiosity. My problem right now is that I don’t have any information to actually divulge, so their curiosity will have to wait.

For an hour or two, me and Argus begin the basics of how runes work. Though it would be more accurate to say he was speaking at me, whilst I struggle to commit everything to memory.

Engraving every detail into my mind, being careful not to miss anything.

After all the information has solidified and I reprocess it to make sure everything is there, I end up with this:

A rune is a magical circuit that contains the stored information for a spell or magical effect. Therefore, all is needed to use this information is a supply of mana to be fed into it. Of course, a more complex and powerful rune uses more mana. However, a small rune that uses very little mana may not require mana to be fed into it at all, with an example of this being Argus’s magic quill that uses no ink. The mana for these runes are instead supplied by the small levels ever-present in the surrounding environment, though the amount used is tiny.

There are two types of runes, with all of those that I come across being Hardwired runes and the other are called ethereal runes.

Argus doesn’t know a lot about ethereal runes, so had only explained they are temporary runes that are formed only using magic.

Hardwired runes are drawn structures, with each part of the structure being a different component of a spell or magical effect.

However, normal materials cannot handle high levels of mana going through it, needing to be specific made from materials that can handle a magical current. Due to this, high power runes that require a higher magical current, also need to be on better materials that can handle the higher levels of mana.

For example, a steel could handle a very basic rune on it, however a slightly more powerful rune would cause the sword to heat up when used. But a rune even more powerful than this would begin to melt the sword, in turn destroying the rune.

It is this reason that my parchment keeps getting destroyed, as its material would be animal hide.

However, a parchment made of monster hide rather than a cow would be much better, with its quality depending on the type of monster.

Once a magical rune is drawn, the first time you pour mana into it, rather than activate it will burn the ink into the material and become permanent.

Provided that it can handle the amount of mana needed for the rune.

There is some other bits of information, but this is the reason why my rune was failing, and that rune supposedly doesn’t have that high of a mana cost.

But even though now I know how to fix it, I’m still stuck until I acquire the materials for it.

And I thought getting regular parchment was a pain.

......................................................................................................................................................................

I have been swamped by college work for the last week, so not much time for writing. :(