Chapter 385 - Rune Item II

Date- 28 Mar 2321

Time- 08:32

Location- Southern Capitol region, SS-rank Gate dungeon Storm Horse Grassland

"Okay, I will try, but if you don't understand something, you can stop me and ask me." I did not know if Luna was being deliberate or genuine. Her expression told me that she cared, but her words sounded like picking a fight. 

"She is not doing it on purpose. Apart from doing research, Luna also teaches classes in the university; it's just a bad habit. If you think this is worse, I dare you to take one of her classes on her research in dungeon relocation." Seeing my narrowed brows, Anna explained that Luna was not deliberately trying to belittle me, but she treated me like one of her students. 

"With enough strength, a card apprentice can shatter his enemies' ego gem to pieces. Something similar happened to the founder of rune items. But in his case, only a tiny part of his ego gem broke, which was repairable. This was not deadly as having the entire ego gem shattered. If the ego gem is damaged beyond repair, the runes in the ego gem try to escape to the world. In this process, the host's body is killed. Therefore, what I am going to tell you next, do not try it in your home." Luna stared at me, awaiting my nod that I would not try whatever she said next. 

"Say it" my nod was not enough Luna pressed me to say it aloud. 

"Okay fine, I will not try whatever you are going to explain next." It better be worth it because I felt annoyed being treated like a child. 

"Once there is a crack or a tiny piece of ego gem is broken usually card apprentices heal them by two methods, 

1. Welding

2. Recycling 

Welding- Welding is a method where the crack or the broken piece of the ego gem is welded together over time using the purest refined soul energy. This method is mainly used for fixing the cracks on the ego gem.

Recycling - this method is not appropriate for cracks on the ego gem. Still, it is widely used to recover the broken piece of the ego gem by destroying the broken bit of the ego gem to soul energy and then using the soul energy to regrow the broken bit of ego, healing the damaged part of the ego gem. 

The recycling method would have been best for the card creationist I talked about earlier, but he did not choose these two options to recover his broken gem. Instead, he came up with his third method. That is to recover the broken piece of the ego gem slowly using his refined soul energy. This method was very time-consuming; therefore, even though simpler to execute, nobody chose this idea. 

But the card creationist chose the rarely chosen path to recover his ego gem. In time, not only did he recover his ego gem, but he started to nurture the leftover broken piece of ego gem to form another complete ego gem using his refined soul energy. 

The second ego gem formed was rejected by the body as there was only space for one ego gem, the original ego gem. So the card creationist decided to remove the second ego gem from his body, but after being taken out of the body, the ego gem became unstable. 

Seeing that his second ego gem was going to explode and shatter, he turned the ego gem into a card ingredient in hopes of preserving it, and he was successful." Luna paused 

"So I can form a second ego gem? Can people do that?" I acted shocked. Because this was not news to me as I have experienced the ability of my Calamity Soul Gem, which can pump out as many as calamity daughter gems I want, and each calamity daughter gem is way better than the ego gem. 

What caught my attention was that the body of the card apprentice cannot house more than one Ego Gem. But I have housed about three avatar daughter gems in my body. Is this another advantage of using dungeon calamity core to create my core? The more I thought, the more confused I got. So many unanswered questions, I could try to get the answer for them, but that meant revealing the secret about my calamity soul gem. No matter how I went about this, I was stuck here. 

"In a way, yes. Using the method used by the card creationist mentioned, one can create additional Ego Gem, but this is very dangerous, time-consuming, and painful," Luna affirmed that the creation of a second ego gem is possible. 

"No wonder you asked me not to try this at home. What next? Did he use the second ego gem that he turned in to card incident to create an item card to store and nurture broken runes, hence the name Rune Item" I said, acting shocked and convinced. What the card creationist that Luna spoke about did to his ego gem was something similar to what I did with my soul when Willam sliced a small piece of it. So all was not surprising to me.

" No, the card creationist found out that the secondary ego gem he created was missing something. And after brushing through the basics about ego gem, he found what his ego gem was missing, a condensed spirit. 

The ego gem he created was just an empty shell without a spirit in the center. One card apprentice has only one soul; therefore, it is impossible to develop a second ego gem. Without the spirit, the ego gem was just an empty shell. But the card creationist did not give up. He decided to do further research on the ego gem shell he had created for a new breakthrough. 

Further research was obviously to test the ego gem shell by placing a broken rune into it. To check if the ego gem shell had the abilities of an original ego gem. So the card creationist placed a broken rune in ego gem shell. And came upon an astounding breakthrough. Turns out that after placing the broken rune in the ego gem shell, the broken rune was turned into the spirit of the ego gem shell. 

Yes, the ego gem shell accepted the broken rune as its spirit, forming a complete ego gem." Having said that, Luna gave another pause seeing my shocked face. 

"..." This time, I was shocked for real because, what Luna was explaining and how my Calamity daughter gem work started to sound similar and similar. 

"So, does that mean that you can resurrect the card apprentice whom the broken rune belonged to?" Not knowing how to explain my shock, I hurriedly spilled the theory I was thinking about from the movement I turned broken runes into ego elementals using my calamity daughter gem. 

"No, resurrection is not possible by placing a dead person's broken tube in the ego gem shell because the original soul had passed and the original body is destroyed. Many ambitious people who share the same thoughts as you tried and failed in the process they did many cruel acts in the name of finding immortality." Luna shook her head in condolence, remembering memories she thought she had forgotten long ago. 

"Aren't you ambitious?" Comment Lorenzo on my question. 

"*cough* Dr. Lorn, so this secondary ego gem is the rune item you speak of?" Was I ambitious to think about using calamity daughter gem and broken runes to resurrect the dead? I don't know.

"No, it is not. And also, the secondary Ego gem, though completed, was not working because it did not have a continuous supply of soul energy. 

Once again, hitting the roadblock, the card creationist decided to do further research to create a continuous supply of soul energy for the ego gem. He used the soul energy reactor to supply soul energy for the ego gem creating the first rune item. Later conducting a few more tests, he discovered that the rune item card he made could also be used by the card apprentices who had not forged their ego gem yet. 

That's when the card creationist realized how big of a breakthrough he had come upon and shared his discovery with the world. 

With such a revolutionary breakthrough about ego gem, many talented and influential card creationists joined research in that field. After centuries of research, the field of Rune items has seen a rocketing development.." Luna enthusiastically narrated how the unknown card creationist created the rune items, which allowed even average card apprentices with no ego gem to use runes and rule power.