13 Runes!

Darkscale rapidly arrived in front of the pedestal on which rested the strange black hand. He looked at it for a couple of seconds, realizing that he had no idea about how to activate it.

"Dammit, this stupid Carelia! Where is she when I need her?" snorted the reptile.

Annoyed, the snake tried the same thing he did the first time he activated it: he used his tail to gently hit it. As soon as his body touched the tightly closed black fist sculpture, the object started to emanate even more of that strange vibrating waves that always surrounded it.

Then the hand began to open up, and soon the whole palm was completely stretched out.

"That was easy.." Thought the snake looking at the beam of black light that was starting to emerge from the center of the palm, cascading upwards towards the ceiling. A wide dark flickering screen appeared in the air, spreading in each cardinal direction for a few meters.

A red blood phrase accompanied by a vibrant chime appeared on the black background, announcing to the world that it this was the "Black Hand Market".

Then, for a few minutes, nothing else happened. Darkscale was beginning to feel anxious: the last time he immediately received a response from someone. Why was it taking so much time now?

"Come on, Spike…" called out the snake. "Anything…" he added uneasily after a few minutes passed.

His prayers weren't answered for another long period of time. After quite a while, when he was starting to lose the last strand of hope he had left, suddenly a second ringing tone emerged from the hand.

"Finally!"

The serpent was eagerly waiting to see his horned fatty friend come out, in his ghost-like form, to entertain him with new exciting offers. However, something else happened instead: the screen vibrated and the second line of silver words appeared under the name of the market: "We respect your choice, dear client: Anonymous Shopping Enabled".

It appeared for a few seconds and then dissolved back into the darkness of the screen, while new red-colored writing appeared.

Directly under the name of the Market emerged a list of what seemed to be four places, each one enclosed in a slightly lighter hued red colored box: The Armory, The Pagoda, The Palace, The Menagerie.

Then, under the crimson line of boxes came another row with two golden words separated by a wide void gap: Information, Contracts.

"Anonymous? What the hell is this?" the serpent was quite confused by the screen that he was seeing before him. It was quite different from what he saw the last time.

"I didn't choose anything! Scam! Fraud! All things that come from you people are broken and bugged! Despicable!"

The serpent tried to "fix" the hand hitting it a dozen of times, but he obtained nothing out of it. The Orbital Trade didn't move a bit, nor did the screen change. It flickered lightly each time he hit the Black Hand, but that was all.

Darkscale was frustrated, not because he couldn't contact his favorite seller ( and the only one who ever had done business with) but because he didn't have any idea on how to get what he wanted now that there wasn't anyone capable to hear his requests.

"I only need something to help me learn Manipulation!" Thought the serpent.

The human hadn't stopped trying to break in in the meantime, constantly making the whole Cave tremble and increasing the hate that Darkscale had for him each time he did it.

Suddenly, after one of the many attacks to the Blue Cave, the Black Hand flickered with a silver light and the box around "The Pagoda" expanded to contain all the screen.

A list of the object appeared on the black background: each item had a name, a price and a few lines of description. Almost all of them seemed books.

"Works on Manipulation" read a red concatenation of characters on the top of the screen, right under the "Black Hand Market" title.

"Huh?" Darkscale opened and closed his eyes a couple of time: why did the page change? It was exactly what he wanted it to search for, but how? How did it know what he thought?

Curious he tried to focus on one of the books, and immediately it expanded and showed a longer description. The serpent couldn't understand how Orbital Trader could read his intentions, but as long as it worked it was all good for him.

"It doesn't matter how… the important is having ti!" he smiled and started to search for something useful for all items listed. Most of them weren't things that Darkscale could not understand. Just from the title, they gave him a headache.

"Theories of Elven Law Song Manipulation? Astral Constellation Essence Manipulation? Chants of The Third Buddha? Faith Binding Manipulation?"

The majority of the titles didn't make sense to Darkscale. He recognized some words, but he couldn't tell at all what they were about. Even the synopsis didn't help much.

"How to Connect New Incantation to the Vitruvian Grid? This sounds interesting" his eyes stopped on a title, remembering what Carelia just told him a while ago about the first cultivators, the Vitruvians.

"Discover the keys to the Eternal Grid left behind by the Elder Gods themselves, the Vitruvians. The secrets to the greatest accomplishment of the Lost Line could be yours!"

"It sounds interesting…" admitted the snake. However, when he saw the cost he sucked a breath of cold air, losing most of the hope regarding ever being able to read the book.

"Fifty million? What the hell!" the price was unbelievably high. Plus, it wasn't even available to buy from his Orbital Trader, as confirmed a little note near the item.

"Only available in Physical Stores"

Plus below this was another phrase: "Requiring Trader Gold Ranked or higher.

"My Trader is a miserly Bronze. I guess I won't be learning about the first cultivators anytime soon".

A little disappointed, he still continued his search mostly finding very strange and incomprehensible items. However, after looking for a long time, he finally stumbled on something that looked useful: "Runes: A Simple Introduction to Manipulation".

His eyes shined seeing "Simple" and "Manipulation" together. He immediately read the synopsis: "Techniques are different meanings, Manipulation Methods are different languages. Runes are the most basic, solid language of them all. They can be learned and used by anyone. Sturdy as a Mountain, Trustworthy as your best friend. Runes."

Excitement could be seen in Darkscale's eyes while he read the few lines of the synopsis over and over.

"I need this"

His view run anxiously towards the cost, only to see that is asked only for a miserly 10 credits.

"Perfect!"

Before he could even start thinking how he would do to buy them, a ringing sound came from the Black Hand and a blue screen appeared in front of the Snake.

He was familiar with the blue window, it was the same method that he used when reading The Cultivation Pamphlet: the virtual library of the Blue Cave.

However, before he had to ask Carelia to activate it, as he didn't have the power to do so. This time, it just showed up all by itself.

Darkscale wasn't a complete moron, he could tell that there was something strange going on: first Carelia had that very bizarre reaction to the human, then the Black Hand seemed able to read his thoughts.

"Yet, it's better to focus on this for now" admitted the reptile, starting to read the text he had in front of his eyes.

A couple of hours later, the serpent stopped his reading, his body literally shaking with excitement. Runes were incredible!

They were very complex and the book he had was only an introductory tome, but it explained how they worked clearly: creating manipulation structures that could be reused until they fell apart from wearing. Each rune had a very specific power and required lots of time to be created, however, after the first investment of time, it could be used instantly for a while.

The thing that he hated the most about cultivation was its repetitiveness and long time needed for each session, however, with runes those aspects were greatly reduced.

The first part of the book explained in detail the thirty-three basic runes, the foundation of every other rune in existence. Each one of the basic runes had a very specific use, and using it in conjunction with other they could form more complex runes.

The second and last part of the book introduced a couple of the most simple composite runes, each one having different uses: from manipulating energy towards a particular point to containing energy, absorbing it or creating energy probes.

Darkscale immediately started to work towards creating a rune capable of helping him conjure an energy probe ( necessary to access the techniques that Spike left for you). It was a composite rune, even if only one of the most elementary that existed.

To train in its creation, he used a big bottle of ink that the previous owner probably used to write down his journals and his own tail as a pen.

The first thing he noticed while training, was that contrary to common cultivation as described in The Cultivation Way Pamphlet, runes gave him a real sense of progression. He could see the rune getting better and better and when he made an error he just started from scratch, knowing that the next time he would know how to avoid it.

By studying his errors painted with black ink on the blue stones of the Cave's ground, he had all the time he needed to understand and overcome them.

He wasn't simply there meditating until he managed to 'feel something". He was actively building his way towards what he wanted to happen. In this particular case, creating an energy probe. Why? To read the other two techniques he had for starters.

Hours of work later, after having created dozens of failed runes, Darkscale decided to take a pause. He hadn't slept for days ( nor eaten or drank) and was starting to feel a bit tired.

"I'm on the good path, I feel it" thought the reptile closing his eyes and soon descending into pure darkness.