Chapter 63 Eternal Autumn [5] - Elemental Runes

Looking at the swiftly healing wound, Lloyd's eyes narrowed slightly before he finally closed his eyes for what felt like the first time in forever.

Searing pain coursed through his body for a moment, but after a few breaths to calm himself down, Lloyd closed his mind from the phantom pain and tried his best to focus on his surroundings as he had an inkling of what was happening.

'Focus...' He thought, his worries, pains, and anxieties fading into the distance as his body and mind slowly became numb and limp.

His memories began to slowly disassemble, each of his memories being thrown to the back of his mind, yet his brain activity was beginning to go off the charts for some reason.

When his memories began to disassemble, so did his thoughts, yet instead of throwing them all into the back of his mind, he created a single command and ingrained it into his mind.

Of course, he had no idea what he was doing; he was simply following his instincts. His mind followed a step-by-step procedure that almost felt natural to it, and when the rest of his thoughts finally disassembled, only two remained.

'Find the source.'

[4-Dimensional Thought]

When he opened his eyes, he didn't see the expected mirror he was just facing. No, he saw a dark void. It felt familiar. Not the familiarity of him being close to its elements or anything, but the familiarity of having been there before.

A dark voice filled with nebulas, stars, and galaxies in the distance. It was like the universe had been laid before him, but he was certain that what was before him was not his universe... No, it was not any universe he had ever seen before.

The darkness of the abyss he was looking at was as dark as what one would see if they closed one eye and tried to see through the closed one. It was black, yet it was empty and didn't exist. It didn't make sense, but Lloyd was used to such a thing by that point.

Then it appeared.

4 Runes, 3 of them being close in size while the fourth was 5 times as big as the largest one.

They all seemed to revolve around the larger rune, all three of them forming a triangle around the largest rune while emanating unique energies.

While the biggest rune seemed like a single rune, [4-Dimensional Thought] allowed Lloyd to split it into three different sections, each one of them seemingly representing their own element before combining to create something truly powerful. Something that came together to shine bright violet.

The three runes that floated around the larger rune all also had distinct colors.

The black one that shifted every now and then was the largest and most powerful out of the three. On the other hand, the orange one flared every now and then as tremendous amounts of heat were released from it.

It was less powerful than the black rune, yet it felt more powerful as an offensive Element, while the black one looked more powerful as a defensive element.

Last and by far the least, the cyan-silverish one that crackled every now and then released the weakest energy as it was much smaller than the red rune, coming at about half the size.

Looking back towards the large purple rune, Lloyd stretched out his hand and tried to grab it, and the moment his finger touched one of the rune's lines, a lash of white light blinded him before his vision and perspective returned to that of his laying on the ground while looking at the tent's roof...

But something was different.

'White... Maybe a little beige?' Lloyd thought to himself as his eyes were glued upon a white, cloudy, beige energy that wafted through the room like the smoke from a scented candle.

It didn't move fast enough to alert Lloyd of danger, yet I did not move slow enough to make Lloyd feel a shiver go up his spine. It moved just quickly enough to keep Lloyd completely calm, yet somehow, that was terrifying in its own right.

However, before Lloyd could move from where he lay, he saw another stream of energy come from his right, yet before he could react to the sudden intrusion of his private space, he watched as it entered the last remaining crack on his abdomen, causing a sharp pain to go through it before the wound finally sealed.

He didn't know why, but in that instant, he knew that one part of the purple rune had lit up.

'Dimensional engineering uses spacial runes, and since dimensional manipulation is a sub-ability of spacial manipulation, it only makes sense that one of the main elements that make the void rune is space.

It fuels it, which is the reason why my wounds healed so quickly. My body must have drawn upon the space energy within this tent and used it the best way it knew how.' Lloyd concluded while sitting up and looking around at the energies, yet when he did so, they slowly began to disappear as he lost his ability to see them, yet not his ability to feel them all around him.

Without thinking twice, Lloyd crossed his legs and sat in the lotus position before closing his eyes. Of course, he could not help but flinch a little as the scene of his skin being scorched entered his mind, but he quickly shook his head and focused rather than remind himself of the past.

Hours passed in the blink of an eye, and when Lloyd opened his eyes once more, they glowed extremely bright violet before slowly calming down and returning to their neutral color.

'I completely failed...' Lloyd inwardly sighed while getting up from the floor. He loved the fact that he could sit on the ground for possibly days without getting a cramp or muscle pain, yet a part of him almost missed it.

As Lloyd strolled to the front of his tent, he quickly thought back to everything he had done in his meditation.

'I got really lucky meeting Jack. Without him explaining his technique, I would have never known how to move the energy. Yes, I failed to fully cultivate any of the spacial energy despite spending hours on it...' Lloyd narrowed his eyes at realizing his words, but he still continued-

'But I learned how to circulate mana through my voice body! That's what matters, right?!'

Mana channeling, cultivation, and circulation worked differently for most classes, unless the classes were inherently the same. While the more physical classes tend to cultivate in order to increase the strength and durability of their body, emitter classes like mages and sorcerers tend to cultivate in order to enlarge their mana pool.

However, instead of doing what most other people would have done in his situation, he felt like he should put his efforts into something else...

Clenching his fist and taking a 'breath' in, Lloyd felt an energy enter his body, and before he could react to the sudden surge of mana within him, it was quickly absorbed into the orange rune before lighting it up.

'A form of fire cultivation. It uses the elemental particles around me to strengthen the fire rune, and since I can't use cultivation breathing techniques, I just absorb the elements through the pores of my skin which is surprisingly more efficient than I would like to admit.' Lloyd thought to himself while holding his chin.

'Of course, cultivation of different elements depends on many things like talent, environment and available mana, concentration, and comprehension of said element.

If I want to cultivate as fast as possible, I need to study the element and cultivate in areas of high mana and heat since those are the areas where I will most likely find the most fire elemental particles to absorb.' Lloyd concluded, and without skipping a beat, he left his room with his arms to his sides before slowly rubbing his eyes as if he had just woken up.

"Oh, you took your time. What were you doing in there, huh?" Veronica's teasing tone entered his ears as cold breath tickled the back of his neck.

However, instead of focusing on the vampire, that was a mere inch away from biting into his neck, he could not help but frown when looking up.

"Its still dark?" Lloyd asked.

"No. You just slept for a day." A pair of cold hands landed on his body as one caressed up to his neck while the other tried to tilt his head to the side.

"That's unlikely. I slept for about 8 hours, and it took about half the time for the sun to set. Not only that, but if I take into account that this realm feels like an infinite autumn, the nights are going to be equal to or longer than the day." Lloyd muttered to himself for a moment, yet he was quickly snapped out of his daze with the cold breath returned stronger than ever while a pair of sharp fangs pushed upon his skin.

Without thinking twice, Lloyd enveloped himself in flames, an action that caused Veronica to quickly jump back a few steps.

However, after putting her hand in the flame, she swiftly understood that the fire was too weak to hurt her, but now that Lloyd was no longer standing in the same place as before, she felt like the moment had passed.

"Where are you going?" Veronica asked.

Looking back at her, Lloyd's brow raised for a moment, but he quickly answered with a question of his own.

"Where are the rest of your group? And since when did you live here amongst everyone else. I'm pretty sure I saw your tent in the last location."

"Well, I think they are all having a meeting in that big tent. Everyone except Felix. I shoved him into that tent." She pointed with her thumb at a small tent a few dozen meters away from the main group of tents.

Of course, it was still within the mana field, so no monsters could get to it, but it was at the end of the mana field, meaning that if the mana field ever happened to go down, the person sleeping in that small tent would most likely be the person forced to deal with the first incoming monsters.

"We call it the thinking tent. Its where you sit for a few hours to think of your actions." She let out a laugh that would have pulled upon the heartstrings of whoever heard it.

Looking at Veronica again, Lloyd could not help but appreciate how beautiful she looked without her red armor.

She wore a long black dress, yet from the look of it, it seemed like she could turn it into battle-ready clothing in a matter of seconds through a little bit of mana to activate the runes that had been ingrained into the fabric.

Her fashion seemed a little gothic, but that only served to add to her charm.

"Cute dress, right? I look pretty good in it don't I." She smirked and winked.

"I wonder how it works. The craftmanship on it must be top-class and must have taken forever. The ability to reconstruct a piece of fabric into something completely different is an amazing use of runes." Lloyd replied, causing Veronica's smile to freeze at his convincing acting.

She could never know that he felt even the tiniest form of attraction towards her. That would definitely give her vampire pride a boost it did not need.

Before she could say anything, Lloyd's eyes looked like they had lightened up, and without saying another word, he turned around and strolled past all the tents before entering the largest one.

Separating the curtains, Lloyds stepped in, yet due to his [Soundless Steps] passive, none of them seemed to acknowledge his existence.

From what Lloyd could see, 5 people were sitting at the table as they all argued over each other, to the point where Lloyd couldn't even pick out the words they were saying to piece together what was occurring before him.

The tent looked beautiful, yet it was clearly just a place for them to eat and drink lots of beer after a long and hard day on the field.

Lloyd could see that the inside was about twice as large as the outside, and in all fairness, much larger than his bedroom tent.

Down the middle of the tent lay a long table with 13 available seats, the thirteenth one being at the end of the table and on the other side of where Lloyd sat.

No one was sitting on it at that moment, yet Lloyd had a feeling that the act was more of a courtesy than a need, since there was no way that the two outside the tent were in any way, shape, or form capable of being leaders.

*Cough Cough*

Fake coughing, Lloyd waited a moment for them to hear him as he entered, yet even then, it seemed like they could not hear a single sound coming out of his mouth

*Cough, Cough!*

Nothing...

*COUGH COUGH*

p1ease visit n0ve1b(in).ne)t

It was like he wasn't even there. And so, he did the only logical thing he could do: raise his hand and point his finger right down the middle of the dining table.

*Swoosh*

*Boom*

Without thinking twice, Lloyd shot a flame bullet at the seat at the end of the table; despite not doing much damage, it was enough for it to not only knock the chair back but also somehow catch the attention of everyone at the table, causing silence to finally fall upon the tent.

"Now I understand why Veronica doesn't want to be in here..." Lloyd commented, his eyes narrowed slightly as if he was looking down on the people within the tent as his [Monarch's Aura] only amplified that stance.

"You all complain and scream at each other as if you are back in highschool."

Silence...

That's all Lloyd heard at the moment, and even after he began to walk again, that's all everyone else heard.

He didn't know if they were stupified, flabbergasted, or confused, but it didn't really matter to Lloyd.

He was not about to watch the only group of people capable of getting him out of the dungeon break apart from one another and form distrust. Hell, he could even see Hime and Roderick, one of the most chill people he knows to date, shouting at two others without holding a single thing back.

Walking to the 'front' of the table where the slightly larger chair lay, Lloyd leaned down, grabbed the chair off the ground, and sat on it without skipping a single beat.

[4-Dimensional Thought]

Lloyd's eyes hazed over while his aura flared.

At the same time, they all watched a serious expression wash over Lloyd's neutral one while his voice became considerably more monotone, but not to the extent of when he becomes Null.

"So..." Lloyd spoke, his violet eyes piercing the room's heavy tension.

"What seems to be the problem here?"