CHAPTER 62: THE AXIOMS

Soren walked back through the lonely cobblestone corridors, illuminated only by the gleam of his own Soul Weapon. The darkness in these areas of the dungeon truly ran deep—Sienna had told him that there were countless patches even she and the others hadn’t bothered fully exploring.

Speaking of Sienna, she decided to remain at the cliffside terrace outside the abandoned dungeon. Something about communing with the Orbits of Fate? He didn’t fully know. Nevertheless, as instructed, she had sent him back to group up with Cassia again. Even though the claustrophobic pathways stretched out like a maze in the darkness, he was still able to trace back his steps toward the underground garden. Even if he couldn’t, he could always rely on his Soul Weapon’s map to guide him there.

My abilities sure do make everything convenient. He chuckled to himself.

Aside from that, he was also given three gifts from Mistress Sienna to commemorate his joining of the guild. While his Soul Weapon levitated to the side of him, he glanced down at what he was holding in his hands. Three ancient books that held any earthly aroma, wrapped together by a string. As his steps echoed out into the lonely corridor, his thoughts churned back to what Sienna had told him.

“The Axiom Codex, Dictionary of Scripted Runic, and Arcane Geometry: Spellforms Made Easy.

“I want you to study these three books tonight. Report to me what you know a week from now. You may use your Soul Weapon’s abilities to understand them faster, but take consideration of their drawbacks.”

Soren sighed as his hands sagged from the weight of the three tomes. Seriously, does she think I’m a copy printer? He didn’t wanna admit it, but he technically was a book scanner. Though, as she said, his abilities certainly had drawbacks that could hinder his understanding more than it could help. The biggest had to be time—Sienna had given him only a week to report back to her. Using [Eyes of the Fairy], he could theoretically scan the entire books and [Record] them, but the amount of anima it would take will be too much for him to handle—he won’t last long enough to chronicle the entire book. It was a complete waste of time.

But more than just the amount of time, he also needed to actually understand and apply the material. According to Sienna, she was most likely going to test his knowledge in a practical way—simply memorizing the material won’t be enough. Yes, using [Record] on himself can help him learn the material and gain skills from it, but from his previous experiments, Soren knew that none of this information stuck around in his mind if he didn’t actively use it—human memory was fallible after all.

Taking a few turns, he finally reached an area in the corridor with some lighting. Moments later, he heard someone call his name.

“Soren.” the familiar voice echoed through the cobblestone halls. He turned around and found Cassia standing behind him with a somewhat annoyed expression and her arms crossed, as if awaiting an explanation.

Soren chuckled. “Perfect timing—I was looking for you. Mistress SIenna took me somewhere to deal with my… Situation.” He continued explaining to her what had happened alongside his agreement to enact an accord with her to freeze his Soul Chain’s fate.

“I… See…” She muttered slowly, her frown clearly visible. “Come then,” she said. “I’ll lead you to your room.”

Soren followed her, somewhat perplexed. He sensed something was off with her reaction but decided to change the subject.

“I have a room?” He never heard anything about this.

“Yes,” she nodded, “we already knew you were going to get accepted so Joyce prepared a room for you. It’s fairly close to the lounge area we were at before.”

“I see…”

They walked silently for a while until they returned back through the underground eden, passing by the book-filled canopy toward the hallway they had arrived from originally. After a while, they reached a wooden door that had seen better days. Cassia turned to face him, “This is where you’ll sleep from now on. Tomorrow morning, come to the lounge for breakfast. We’ll also explain what you’ll be tasked with now that you are officially a guild member.”

Soren nodded and twisted the rusty knob. He glanced back out toward Cassia who was walking away,

“Thank you,” he said faintly. Cassia froze for a second before moving forward once again.

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Soren wondered if his time in Yadria had shifted his expectations. The room he was given was fairly plain—a single bed, dresser and study desk. There was also a broken closet to store his (non-existent) clothes. Still, he knew he couldn’t complain.

This is better than living on the streets. He thought. His thoughts churned back to his time on Earth. After his grandparents died and his chess career ended, Soren spent his time aimlessly going through college without a purpose in mind. He was able to live off of the savings his grandparents had left him, but even that was slowly running out. He eventually needed to sell off a lot of furniture just to keep himself afloat. Not that it mattered anyway—even if he eventually needed to sell the house, he no longer even cared. Nothing at that time mattered to him.

I may have changed a lot since then… He now had a new purpose. He actually wanted to live and fulfill his goals again. But most importantly, he has now acquired a new family.

A family, huh… He couldn’t help but chuckle at his own hubris. I still don’t even trust them all and I doubt they trust me fully either…

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Soren threw himself on the bed. There is no point in thinking about this right now, he thought. Star Fate Guild was nothing more than an opportunity. He must know everything there is to know about magecraft, and advance himself further. Whether Sienna and the others even viewed him as family didn’t matter. He was going to use them to benefit himself regardless of their feelings.

For the past hour or so, he had been busy reading the first book Sienna had given him.

The Axiom Codex… The name was imprinted on the old leather cover. It was a fairly interesting book to say the least.

Since his acquisition of a Soul Realm some two weeks ago, one thing has been on his mind: using it to cast magecraft. Sadly, this dream of his had been continuously delayed due to their mission in Yadria, but more so than that, he currently had no clue what his affinities were.

Affinities, as Myrin described them, were traits associated with a person’s True Self. They give meaning to one’s own anima, and this meaning can be imbued into spellforms to create magecraft. However, not all magi had the same affinities, nor the same amount of them. Some were born with more, some less. And depending on the combination, a magi’s options when it comes to magecraft could be vast or limited.

Enter, Scripted Runic. A mystical language with no distinct origin that has the ability to stir the Beyond. The opening words of The Axiom Codex were as follows:

“Words derive meaning. And meaning derives power.”

A truer sentence couldn’t have been said. From what he understood, Scripted Runic was nothing more than a set of symbols that each contain a conceptual idea or meaning inside the Beyond. And it was through the combination of these meanings that higher level concepts could be cast. In a way, they could be thought of as the language of the Beyond itself—a language that projects the knowledge the Beyond contains into the natural world as a set of symbols.

As for how these symbols were categorized… That was where the true complexity began. The true essence of The Axiom Codex dives deep into these categorizations of what it calls ‘Material Runes,’ runic symbols that are the building blocks of Scripted Runic. These categorizations are called Axioms.

Material Runes are said to be one level lower in complexity than Abstract Runes. While an Abstract Rune represents metaphysical concepts that do not exist in the real world, Material Runes do. Fire, water, rocks, light, plants, but even things that interact with the natural world like spirits, and even the very essence of anima itself.

The book goes on to categorize these naturally occurring concepts as ‘Axioms of Affinities’. For example, if a person held an affinity for flames, how that fire was manipulated depended on what axioms were used within the Scripted Runic spellform. There was an axiom for geometric shapes, time, energy consumption, size, and many other factors. But then there were also axioms for the affinity itself, like the type of flame being dispensed or created, the flame’s temperature, and whatnot.

Each axiom could be composed of sets of material runes that describe what that axiom means. The way Soren contextualized it was through a comparison to English. If material runes were the letters of the language, axioms would be the sentences, and spellforms would be the paragraphs.

What interested him most about this was how these axioms interacted with each other, especially axioms of different affinities. If a person had an affinity for flames and an affinity for ice, combining the axioms of these two opposing concepts could create a spellform that utilizes the effects of both. Flames that are ice-cold, or maybe freezing ice that sears your skin. It all depended on how the axioms were combined within the spellform and at what certain ratios.

Soren sighed and turned the page—he was still pretty far from actually applying any of this. And there were still things he still didn’t fully understand, such as Material Runes of Reason. Unlike regular Material Runes, these had no direct association to any affinity but simply governed the very structure of how axioms operate with one another within a spellform. The page he was currently glancing at listed them.

“Etiva, Velia, Nonis, Exvelis…” The codex list went on and on.

Etiva was a Material Rune of Reason that defined the unification of one or more axioms. From the example shown to him in the book, a spellform diagram continued to repeat this Etiva rune symbol in between different sections of the spellform, locking the system to only function if and only if every axiom was activated together. Then there was Velia which branches the spellform into two axioms, and according to some conditions, the spellform will activate either the first or the second axiom, but not both. Each of the other runes held different logical reasons for how they functioned, but they were all essentially bridges that linked the different sections of a spellform and its numerous axioms. Heck, even the axioms themselves seemed to utilize these Material Runes to function—they were everywhere.

“This kinda reminds me of my computer programming class back in college…” He murmured to himself. And in a way, he wasn’t completely wrong. These material runes acted similarly to boolean logical operators used in computers. Although he had never been a fan of that class or computer science in general, he could still remember some of the things he learned in it, and the comparison to what he was currently reading about was pretty much one-to-one.

What’s interesting about these runes was the fact that any magi could use them, no matter their affinities. They seemed to be closely related to the foundations of this world itself, and not any one physical concept tied to one person’s own willpower—rules that outline the very essence and structure of spellforms themselves.

This also made him realize something—Material Runes of Reason had contradictory natures. They seemed to defy the very definition of material runes. By their essence, material runes were deeply tethered to the natural world—they were symbols of how the Beyond viewed the objects and things that make up this world. Yet these runes… They didn’t fit that mold at all. They lacked a direct physical connection—runes like ‘Nonis’ or ‘Exvelis’ were practically intangible constructs that simply defined the flow of logic itself. In a way, they were more similar to Abstract Runes than Material Runes—an oddity that only made him even more engrossed in reading the book, yet he wasn’t able to find the answer at all.

He chuckled to himself, Am I already trying to understand paradoxes within something I’ve only read about for a few hours? Soren decided to stop for today—he could try asking Mistress Sienna if he couldn’t figure it out the next morning. He placed the book down next to the pile and picked up his Soul Weapon which was already activated—the mysterious fountain pen had been continuously working on its own to [Record] anything he found worthy of chronicling during his reading session.

“Are you still not done yet?” The Records didn’t respond and continued writing in the strange blocky script. Soren sighed, “Weren’t you scheming against me this entire time? Why do you still pretend to be a normal book.”

No response. The fountain pen continued gliding across the page slowly. Soren sighed again. He laid the book open next to the pile and reached for the bed-side candle—darkness consumed his room, except for the small patch of light being emitted from his Soul Weapon. He tucked himself into bed with a frown.

“At least dim your light a little bit so I can sleep!”

Surprisingly, The Records listened to that command. The glowing gilded lines dimmed alongside its shimmering flame-like pages.

“I guess you’re not a complete asshole,” he clicked his tongue.