Chapter 732: Four Runes
Chapter 732: Four Runes
Their departure from Helios was very late at night, and Little Yin fell asleep several times only to be awakened by the cart shaking. Thus, Arthur decided to rest for the night.
Their path changed from the woods to a mountain range, but it was relatively empty of monsters since most of them feared Arthur. Finally, the cart stopped at the mountain's base a few hours before sunrise, and Arthur helped Little Yin.
"Are we going to rest here?" asked Little Yin, confused and drowsy. Arthur made sure she didn't fall from the cart while nodding in response. "What if we get caught?"
"I set alarms down our path here to ensure we know when someone is coming. So you can sleep while I prepare this place for their arrival."
"You can sleep. I will stay guard," said Little Yin with a shake to wake herself up. "The fight earlier must have exhausted your mana. You can recover for a bit before they arrive."
Arthur stared at her with unfamiliarity. She was different from when they met; she was aggressive and more of a brat. His eyes must have betrayed that amazement, and she coughed in embarrassment.
"My sister is too polite, so I need to make sure she isn't looked down upon," said Little Yin, addressing his thoughts in such specificity that Arthur suspected the real identity of the Omniscient Vessel.
"What changed about that now?"
"You are our ally now, not a stranger who wants to exploit my sister's kindness," replied Little Yin wither seriousness. The moonlight shone down on her blue eyes, making Arthur see her sincerity.
"Just go to sleep," said Arthur, grabbing her head and shaking it lightly. "I don't need sleep to recover. There are a lot of things I need to prepare before we are caught. So just trust me and go to bed."
Little Yin opened her mouth to object, but she ended up nodding. After that, the two found a cave a few meters up the mountain and sat camp in it, lighting a fire and making some instant noodles.
After giving the woman her share, Arthur sat down and watched the flickering flames. He deeply thought about the risks of being in Ilios since Mistletoe was also here.
If the two of them met, Arthur had no idea how he would treat Oriole. Should he act as if the two of them are friends or enemies? Does Sier know about Gala and Diana since he could read Oriole's mind?
"What do you hope to achieve by this?" muttered Arthur, confused about his friend's action.
"Did you say something?" asked Little Yin as she pushed a bowl of noodles toward Arthur, with a single egg on top. "You didn't earlier as well. A sharp mind needs a healthy body."
"You can have it yourself. I don't like eating," said Arthur as he blocked the bowl. The reason was that he couldn't taste anything anymore, making eating more depressing than ever.
"I enjoy meals more if they were shared," said Little Yin, pushing the bowl against his hand. Arthur could feel its warmth and took it under Little Yin's glaring eyes. "Now, let's eat and enjoy the scenery!"
Arthur was confused, as the woods were pitch black with no scenery to talk about. However, Little Yin was an expressional person and pointed toward the sky. As he raised his head, Arthur saw a starry night adorned with a full moon.
Little Yin took more noodles from the pot and started slippering them, humming with happiness at their taste. Arthur smiled and grabbed a fork to eat, but as he expected, it felt like a tasteless paste in his mouth.
"It's tasty, isn't it?" asked Little Yin as soon as the food was in his mouth. Arthur nodded and continued eating, unwilling to spoil her mood or reveal too much about himself.
After the meal, Little Yin found some even ground to lay some covers on. She then took out a pillow from her storage ring and turned to Arthur, looking at him with a guilt-stricken expression.
"You needn't worry about me. I wouldn't sleep even if there were no danger," reassured Arthur, making Little Yin lay down and sleep on her side. She was still staring at Arthur, sitting beside the cave's entrance.
Arthur returned to watching the night sky, wondering how he found himself in this situation. The more he planned things, the more he realized his plans had permanently changed because the world was also moving. Everyone was facing dangers or pursuing them.
Little Yin began breathing deeply, and Arthur turned around to find her asleep. He stood up and covered her with a quilt since the woods and altitude made the weather chilly. Then, he cast a barrier rune on the cave before going down the mountain.
A mountain was an excellent spot to defend against many enemies, and Arthur would have a complete vision of the surrounding. Unfortunately, the trees also made excellent trap-holders for his runes. The peaceful nature turned into deadly traps as Arthur passed by, preparing for the possibility of meeting an enemy too powerful even for him.
Although Arthur was the master of runes, he needed mediums to bind their existence to the world. This way, he could use these runes even with a single command.
"Just to be safe, let us build an array," muttered Arthur as he started working hard. An array was a complex matter, even for him. Arthur could, at best, make an amplification array, with several similar runes activating simultaneously.
After he reached Level 40, Arthur managed to increase his creational mastery over the runes. He started being able to use four runic lines in every single rune without losing control. That was a similar case for arrays, as each array couldn't be more than four runes.
This was different from what Arthur used to do: activating several cards with the same rune. He used this method to create what runemasters called pseudo-arrays. However, creating an array with integrated runes was the realm of grandmasters, and Arthur stepped into it.
"Different reactions could amplify the damage done," muttered Arthur as he created the array's outline that would hold the runes. "If I use water and lightning, it would be more powerful than using lightning alone. Also, it could be devastating if I used water, ice, and sound blasts."
Even though such arrays would be powerful, Arthur was not planning to create one. This would be his role in attacking since his runes were more powerful when supplied with the mana of creation. Instead, he wanted to build support and crowd control arrays.
"Illusion, spatial confusion, fear, and agitation." These were the runes that Arthur picked. But, first, he had to hold down the array with one hand and write the runes with the others.
The outlines of the arrays were runic lines that translated to 'flow' or 'connect,' which Arthur assumed to be the basic outline for arrays. He started with the illusion rune, which was the hardest, as it contained image, depth, sound, and scent creation. It was much harder to maintain the array's outline while creating the rune, making Arthur's hand tremble.
"I never expected to face a challenge with runes after meeting Gaia," ridiculed Arthur himself, but the first rune was done. He placed it in the array, and it glowed a soft violet hue that stemmed from the rune.
Spatial confusion was a rune that not even Arthur mastered, making it crumble several times as he wrote it. Although Gaia explained to him what most runic lines meant, it was up to Arthur to make the combinations.
For example, when Arthur tried linking spatial compression and decompressing to create spatial confusion, the two lines canceled each other. This made it impossible to create a spatial rune without a sequence link.
A sequence link was a runic line that binds the others. When Arthur created it, it looked like three lines with the same starting point that acted as the central piece for the rune. Arthur then added the sequence of spatial compression, rotation, and decompression, attaching each at the end of the lines.
"A little test might be necessary," muttered Arthur as he activated the rune, and the world began to shake and turn around. Then, a few moments later, it stopped. "It needs to keep rotating."
Therefore, Arthur dissolved the rune and recreated it using a loop link rather than a sequence. This made the rune continuous instead of a single effect. These concepts were taught in Jerano, but Arthur knew them by heart.
After installing the second rune into the array, Arthur easily created the fear rune. It was all about mimicking the symptoms of fear and inducing a psychological response in the target.
As Arthur was about to create the fourth rune, agitation, his hand started to turn into runes. His frown depended as this shouldn't be his limit, but Arthur stopped making it anyway. Finally, after momentary confusion, he realized that he had already created four runes since the outline was a rune too.