He has gone crazy, Pip trotted her way up to Rick to peck some sense into him.
“That won’t do,” Rick chuckled.
“Do you want to die early?” shaking his head, he chastised himself. It was just that after meeting the Demon Kings, it was hard to ignore their abundant resources.
Pip stopped midway, noticing Rick return to his rational self.
“But I do need to find a better way to farm this place,” Rick thought aloud.
“But it would be too much of a tragedy if I could not get farm these plants.” He said, looking around.
Suddenly, from the corner of the eye, his red backpack caught his eye. The wheels on his mind start whirling.
“Pip, come along, we have work to do,” he called.
Rick rushed towards the bag in full throttle, with Pip in tow.
Zipp, he opened the bag.
‘If I can make a golem, I can definitely make it work,’ Rick surmised.
He had found two golem-cores in the hut, along with a carving knife.
But he had already destroyed the Earth-golem during the fight with Eira and Alex. On the other hand, he could not even activate the other golem-core.
He had put the golem crafting idea on the backburner because of this. Without the Earth-core golem to copy the runes from, it would be impossible for him to craft a golem on his own.
“Maybe I can do it now,” Rick intoned, clutching the bundle of ancient parchments.
He could sustain the golem for more than five minutes with his Concentration. But he was still willing to try it.
He picked up the bag, and looked at Pip and said, “Don’t eat anything.”
Pip nodded her head obediently.
Rick was not comforted even a little bit with her sincerity. But it was hard for Rick to scold Pip. After all, she had saved him not once but twice.
“Actually you know what, you come with me,” he picked her up and placed her on his shoulder.
“Peep!” she smiled and clawed her way to sit on top of his head.
Resigned to his fate of being a bird’s ride he walked towards the room.
---
There were parchments sprawled all over the desk.
“What is all this?” Rick exclaimed looking at the illegible markings and words on the sheet.
He had rushed into the room excited. But he realized now that he could not understand even a single word in the hundreds of parchments sprawled around him.
It was all written in a language he could not decipher.
“Fuck! That Gaap shortchanged me,” he cursed. The parchments did not even have any diagrams of the runes.
“Why can’t the Lemegeton tell me how to craft a golem? The grimoire is completely useless,” he said, frustrated. He picked out the grimoire from his backpack and flipped it open.
“If this is the most powerful grimoire, why did Eira almost kill me,” he vented.
Suddenly, the grimoire started flipping on its own.
The Gru’taz language.
An ancient demonic language is spoken predominantly in the western regions of Hell,
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The language is lost among the surfacers but is one of the six extensively spoken languages of Hell.
The documents are being translated and catalogued.
Please wait…
“Ghru’taz?” Rick murmured. He wondered, “Do they think I speak all these demonic languages?”
“If that’s the case, I will definitely have to learn them,” Rick realized. “Trying to command an army which speaks a different tongue is a catch-22, bound to end with my head, not off my shoulder.
“Let me know with the Lesser God’s System when the translation is complete”, Rick said noticing that the parchments were still not translated.
Taking the opportunity he asked, “Lemegeton, Do you know all the demonic languages?”
The pages flipped back.
Human Languages, the volume title read.
There were thousands of languages catalogued in the index. Rick flipped through the pages and finally found what he was looking for, Demonic Tongues.
He read the introduction chapter while waiting for the translation to complete.
“Hell is not ruled with absolute authority by the four Kings,” he murmured as he read through. He leaned back, “The kingdoms of Hell are more complicated than I expected.”
‘Six languages. Three spoken in the mainlands ruled by the kings.’ he recalled what he read. ‘The other three spoken by Uraga Dynasty, the Igthara Mages and in the Vanishing Archipelagos ”
His aim for learning the demonic-languages was to be able to command the Legions of Hell's Demons.
Staring at the night sky, he finally spoke his mind, “It’s a fool’s dream.”
Ding, the ring of the notification jolted Rick from his thoughts.
[Translation completed]
“It worked,” he said.
Putting the problems of the future at the back burner, he flipped the pages of the Lemegeton.
As he skimmed through the translations, the quality of the work, impressed him. But what truly caught his eye was the first paragraph of the document which read,
The translations from Gru’taz to English is completed.
The data has been recognized to belong to the Volume-Runes and has been catalogued therein.
The information has been added to the existing information and modified for a comprehensive reading.
“Aren’t you a dear,” Rick smiled and opened the Runes Volume.
Previously, the Volume on 'Runes' only had a single page with a list of the three runes he had successfully recorded. But this time, the index to the volume itself ran three pages!
“Gaap, you monstrous beauty,” he guffawed, opening the first chapter.
Runes are a complete language on its own.
The runic glyphs are the manifestation of the natural laws. Runes form the medium of transfer between the natural law and the object, giving it magical properties…
As he read through, the fog of ignorant mysticism around runes cleared. Although he had not digested everything he read, his fundamental understanding of runes had deepened.
By the time he reached the last line of the first chapter, he received a notification,
Ding
[The proficiency of the Skill: Rune Craftsmanship has increased]
[Skill: Rune Craftsman (Apprentice)]
[Proficiency: 34%]
As Rick checked the skill he noticed that the skill has evolved from Novice to Apprentice rank.
Dismissing the notification, he flipped the Lemegeton to the next chapter. The second chapter was on ‘History’ with an account of how the various runes were discovered.
“Let me cover all the bases,” he shrugged and decided against skipping the chapter.
True to the name of the chapter, it was mostly an account of the Heroes of the past and their toils on how they discovered a rune.
After six days of being drenched in the marshes of T'aime Wetlands, Poleg bat Ozmec came across the Tarched Ink plant. The leaves of the plant, which she discovered, were always dry. On its surface she observed the Kavu rune, keeping the leaves dry.
But he was glad he did not skip the chapter. For at the end there was the account of a person he knew,
Sol the previous Owner, attempted to record to standardize the Core Runes. However, the project failed. The cultivation of the eighty-two chosen warriors went berserk. They were consumed by the core-runes passed on to them and died.
It has been surmised that every elemental mage must gather the Core-Runes from nature directly, for they are unique to each.
“If I come across them, good enough,” Rick spoke. He had no intention of scouring the surface of Earth searching for the runes. He had immediate things he had to focus on.
He skimmed through the rest of the chapters from Crafting Skills, to Crafting Tools. Finally, he reached the one chapter he was looking to read the most, the recorded runes.
Prior to this, there was only this one chapter in the entire volume. The chapter had the three recorded runes, the Sound rune, Mana-Gathering rune and the Word rune, along with the Fire Core rune.
But when Rick checked the chapter this time around, he could not conceal the excitement in his eyes.
Flip Flip Flip
He flipped through page after pages. One after the other, every page had various diagrams in it along with a short description of the rune with it.
“I should definitely be able to a golem knowing all this,” Rick said. Adding, “why didn’t the Lemegeton not have all this information before?”
Suddenly the pages of the Lemegeton flipped and a six ominous line appeared,
There are three volumes to the Lemegeton.
The Owner possesses the First volume.
The Second and Third Volume were stolen shortly prior to the departure of the previous Owner, in an attempt to diminish his powers.
Due to the death of Grimwar the Necromancer, possessor of the Second Volume, returned back, causing an influx of new information.
Rick stopped reading any further after this.
He immediately shuffled through his back and fished out Samira’s Word-Communication Scroll. On it was the code, “GD” and a tick mark next to it.