The Rune Formation (Part II)

Kyros stood there for at least five minutes as the grey hunk of iron turned into essence and got transmitted into the golem. By the time he was finished, there was so much essence circulating inside the golem it was literally glowing white.

Reya just stood there, astonished.

"That's not… neutral metal, is it? I'm pretty sure that's metal made through essence… You would be using up essence to decompose neutral metal..."

Finally, she came to the logical conclusion.

"So you're the owner of this metal, which means you… created that humongous amount of metal…"

"Yep!"

Eo picked up the essence-glowing golem piece. Then he turned to look at the giant rectangular depression in the sand where the giant block of iron once sat.

"Now that I'm on the ground, I'll explain this trap."

Eo walked over to the center of the depression.

"You see, this trap is a ray formation, meaning it projects essence from the power source into a single direction. Apparently it gets activated when it detects someone of a certain power level steps within the area marked by 3 triggers."

Reya nodded slowly, looking slightly confused. "Not sure what that really means, but okay?"

"Anyways, the geometry of the rune showed that once it activated, it created a massive essence ocean, with something like a vacuum near the ground. The difference in the essence potential was large enough to bypass the body's natural resistance, and essence started forcefully being transported out. This transported essence would travel through lines insulated from the suction, and would race around powering the formation even more. However, to initiate something like that would require an even greater amount of energy to begin with. That should be found at the power source."

Reya just quickly nodded, indicating her desire to not hear the lecture longer.

"What, I thought you wanted to know how this trap worked!"

"Yeah, but you're beginning to sound like one of those boring geography teachers…"

Eo's eye twitched. He then plunged his hand into the center of the rectangular depression.

"Around here is where the power source should be."

Eo felt something and pulled. Feeling resistance, he yanked as hard as possible. It gave way and his hand flew out, clutching the power source. Clumps of sand fell as Eo's hand revealed a glassy white sphere. Eo observed it, realizing it sort of resembled that black sphere on that monster that could talk.

"So this is what's powering this whole thing?"

Eo looked back at the formation, which started randomly distorting. The patterns of purple light faded until the whole thing dimmed out of existence.

Eo ruminated. (The creator of the formation didn't put into account the fact that the golems could conduct the essence out of the conducting lines…? At this point I have no idea…)

Reya tilted her head to the side.

"Now you broke the thing. What are you going to do now?"

Eo blinked.

And then he blinked again.

"Wait… that's true…"

Reya staggered, open-mouthed.

"Are you serious?! All of this travel to a formation to have it ruined… you're secretly trying to make me mad or something, right?"

Eo realized it wouldn't have mattered anyways.

"We didn't create the rune, so we couldn't have used it anyways…"

"Then what was the point in coming all the way here anyways? You just realized we couldn't use it? Seriously?!"

Eo put his hands up in defense. "It's fine though, because we can replicate it. I… memorized it."

Eo didn't understand the rune 100%, but he had certainly memorized the pattern. It was like one of those foreign language vocabulary words. He had no idea what it meant, but he knew how to write it down after hearing it.

Reya stretched out her limbs. "Okay, so where are we going to put this?"

Eo thought for a moment.

"Well, we're going to use this get rid of the big bosses, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, so we find out where the biggest ones are heading, and then we put it in front of their path!"

"Sounds solid."

"Let's get going, then."