Chapter 249: Runes

…

Evin stood next to a fancily dressed young man, as the latter dutifully recorded the details of a team of researchers. 

After everything was settled with the Vulpine Mother, Gizel started to become occupied with her research inside Evin's shadow. Evin had asked for a laboratory to be built inside his town, which became fully operational with a few requests from Gizel here and there. 

As one of the leading researchers of the North, the woman enjoyed a hefty amount of authority and resources, so one little extra laboratory wasn't really a big deal. After she got the okay from the Vulpine Mother, she decided to bring in her team of assistants, who called themselves a team of elite Magical Engineers, and fully dedicated her time on this project.

After Evin's World Sprites became able to turn into energy, the research team focused on trying to create a Golem Core that utilized the World Sprites as a source of energy and also a command unit. 

The Vulpine Mother also helped a lot in this process, offering access to her vast knowledge regarding the subject of magic. She possessed answers and solutions to a lot of problems the research team faced, which tremendously helped the team's overall progress.

Sadly, the Vulpine did not allow Evin to access any of the information she possessed, but she explained that it had a very important reason, so Evin could only sit silently on the sidelines, only allowed to see the most surface level knowledge of the process.

It wasn't that big of a deal anyway, since for Evin and his World Sprites, he just had to understand the general idea of things, so that they were able to pilot the golems without much issue. They weren't really expected to become Somaturgy experts, as the task was akin to getting a whole new university degree. Even with increased intelligence of a mage, it wasn't possible to understand the nitty-gritty details of it all. It was the same concept of soldiers learning to use and take care of their weapons, but not quite invent or build them from scratch.

But he was finally able to learn about runes and magical engineering in a much more extensive way. Nasst had promised to give him some books regarding the topic at a later date, but wasn't quite able to follow up on the promise.

Thankfully, Gizel had brought a trainee researcher who also didn't really have anything important to do, except for observing and recording the details of the research. A gaudily dressed young man named Tusa, who seemed to be no older than twenty. The young man was very knowledgeable about the subject of magic and science, making it apparent that he had enjoyed a very good education from a young age. Gizel had instructed him to explain things to Evin when he wasn't busy with recording. 

After Tusa finished recording everything he needed to, he started to explain some stuff to Evin.

"The most widespread use of runes is to attach a trait or a feature to a spell without wasting extra imagination on it," Tusa said casually, "One could say that it was a method of replacing the need for proper imagination and mental articulation in a sense. A sad thing indeed, but that is how most mages function."

Evin was listening to the man as he drank a hot cup of coffee that he made himself. The young man was something of an elitist of logic, who looked down on any mage who opted to plow through problems with their willpower. 

"Since you're a logical mage, you probably don't face the problems that our less fortunate brethren meet on a daily basis. After all, if you find yourself struggling with a spell, you would usually opt to try out a more specific method of imagination, or a different world altogether. But it isn't so easy for most of the mage caste, unfortunately."

Evin didn't mind the snark remarks of Tusa. He himself was someone who preferred and advocated logic over willpower and emotion. Though he wasn't sure if he was going to be so passionate about it all.

"As you probably know, willpower-based mages tend to only focus on one World or maybe two, but never five or six, like we do. As long as they aren't able to solve everything with one World like the peak pursuers of the True Path, most of the time, they'll find themselves stuck on one problem or another for very long times."

"This is where runes come into play. For example, let's suppose that a mage was trying to destroy a wall or something. But the problem is, he can only use the World of Fire… and he isn't a very good one as well. Coupled with the fact that walls usually had an advantage over fire, the mage had fallen in quite a pickle. A peak-quarter core at the age of 15 who doggedly chased a single world, without much to show for it as well - the very personification of mediocrity," Tusa said with a look of schadenfreude.

'Well it's not like everyone's able to receive the proper education needed to become a logical mage… and it's not like everyone has access to Core Shards or other methods to increase one's core size,' Evin thought in his head, but he decided not to argue with the man over the subject. He only nodded in a half-acknowledging way and said nothing else.

"But, thankfully, the mage possesses an extensive amount of knowledge on runes. With that, he gets access to tons of other methods to deal with the problem at hand. He could form a World of Fire spell with a [Melt] rune drawn on some part of it, which would make it so that his flames would melt the walls down. Or, he could form his spell with a [Self-solidify] rune drawn on it, which would turn his pile of fires into something much heavier and bulkier."

"How much extra mana would be needed for that?" Evin asked. It would be great if everything was that easy, but he was sure that there was a catch to it all and he was fairly sure that it was related to mana consumption.

"It depends on the rune. [Melt] would probably make the spell cost twice as much as the original, while [Self-solidify] would make the spell cost almost thrice as much. Naturally, there are countless lesser runes which help a spell in small but significant ways," Tusa explained, "In fact, you can try out a fairly easy one right now. Try to imagine a floating orb of fire in the air."

Evin complied with Tusa's request and a flaming sphere the size of his head floated in the air.

"Now imagine a plus sign on it, it would be even better if you created the bundle of fire to look like a plus sign."

It was a bit weird, but Evin managed to reshape the orb to show a big noticeable plus sign on it, almost the size of the orb itself. He then noticed how a sizable chunk of his mana was drained, as the orb's size increased almost four times its size.

"Huh…" Evin thought, weirded out by how automatically the process happened. He wasn't even thinking about increasing the thing's size but there it was, burning in the air in all its flaming glory. 

"Weird, isn't it?" Tusa said with a laugh, "When you get too used to casting with logic, using runes feel a bit awkward at first. The lack of control and the general feeling of what the hell just happened."

"Definitely…" Evin said, dispelling the flame he's just created.

He then created another orb of fire and increased its size through facts and logic – which was just to make it consume oxygen faster. When he compared the mana consumption of both methods, he found that using runes cost him roughly 40% more mana. And it wasn't like it was any faster, since Evin's ability to imagine things were quite advanced at this point. One more thing that was problematic was that the logically inflated orb was much hotter compared to the one achieved by the rune. 

'Is this what Nasst meant when he said that mages have a lot of ways to use up their mana?' Evin thought.