Runic Language

"Why? Why did you do that?"

Damian heard Lucian behind him. Without turning around to look back, he spoke while his eyes observed the big rock in the dim light to find his usual spot from where he climbed.

"What did I do?"

"You should have defended yourself! Don't you have any pride?"

She said while stepping out in the clearing just as Damian finally found the right place to climb but stopped himself, sensing the uncomfortable conversation.

"Pride? Of what? Being able to marry you?"

Lucian raised her eyebrows, her expression sharp as if he had failed to answer the simple question and said something dumb.

"Pride of your name! What else? Aren't you a noble?" she asked.

"Huh? Am I a noble? Last time I checked, I was a prisoner…" Damian scoffed.

Lucian's eyes widened in shock. She opened her mouth to retort, but no words seemed to come out.

"Go back, my Lady. It's not safe for you to be here."

Lucian glared at Damian, who was busy climbing his rock. She wanted to refute his words but no matter how many times she repeated them in her head, she couldn't find any disrespect or lies in them.

At last with a frustrated huff, Lucian gritted her teeth, turned around and left. Ever since this black-haired boy had arrived, he had never said or acted in any way that was disrespectful to her or her house. And yet, she didn't know why but he was the source of her anger that she couldn't explain with any logic. There was something seriously wrong with him, but she just couldn't figure out what.

Finally left alone with his thoughts, Damian sighed in relief.

"That was a close one!"

In this barbaric world where nobles could kill a person over the slightest disrespect and get away with a slap on the wrist, staying around them was just too dangerous.

Maybe he was overreacting since he had noble blood in his veins and the Goldilocks would never let their investment in Damian go down the drain. But relying on others was never his style. Damian believed in being prepared for anything that could go wrong, rather than just reacting to the situation.

After two months Damian had already acquired [Beginner Scholar] and [Beginner Swordsman], both leveled up to Lv.2 for Beginner Swordsman and Lv.3 for Scholar.

Scholar was essential for a mage class, while Swordsmanship or any weapon mastery skill was the foundation for a Spellsword. The efforts needed to be put into that were also simple, but necessary. Scholar gave a 5% extra INT, while Beginner Swordsman added a 3% boost in both STR & AGI. It might not be much right now, but after leveling up and ascending, it would result in a substantial increase in stats. However, for Damian, that 5% increase in INT was already making a vast difference.

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Name: Damian Sunblade Lv.3

Rank: Mundane

Affinity: Water, Space-time

STR: 8

DEF: 8

INT: 50

AGI: 8

DEX: 8

CHA: 19

LUC: 3

Blessings: Godless

Skills:

[Beginner Tree Climbing Lv.2]

[Truthseeker Lv.2]

[Beginner Scholar Lv.3]

[Beginner Swordsman Lv.2]

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After reading all kinds of crap, Damian had also learned about the advantages of Blessings. No one in this world was recorded as being without one, and everyone here took them for granted. The Sun God's blessing was the most common, but there were others as well—like the Sea God, the Goddess of Nature Astraea, the God of Chaos in myths and there was also one for the Commerce, named Lugh.

What really stung Damian's heart was the effect of blessings: 2X growth in the rate of leveling, which were fixed for all gods. After that, each god also granted a boost in certain stats or affinities. Being without a Blessing, Damian would likely level up more slowly than anyone else. It was the information he had derived from the sun god propaganda in the books. But it was a commonly accepted fact, the priests of other religions also agreed in their lore.

"Just perfect!"

Damian glanced up and noticed that the night sky was much clearer here. Funny how he had been around for two months and had realized it just now.

The next morning was meant for rest for the two of them, however, after waking up at 9, Damian headed straight to the library. Three extra hours of sleep was all the rest he needed.

By the time afternoon rolled around, he had finished the book he had been reading recently about Classes and jobs. So for a change of mind, he began to look around for a book that was more unique in topic.

After circling the entire Library twice, he finally settled on two: Emperor Yong Sheng Long and the History of Magical Tools; and another Runes - The God's Language.

Curious, Damian opened the book on Runes and he was immediately greeted with the weird symbol or character that took on the whole first page. The heading, at least, was in common language and it read - The fire rune.

The next 10 pages just explained its various uses and the history of discovery related to the fire rune. The section on application was certainly interesting and caught his attention. According to it, there were 10 common and most used Runes, which were also the foundation of all magical tools that were in use today. Of these, the fire rune was the most popular of them all.

A Runesmith imbues runes into high-quality metal, using the user's mana to create various effects like an increased sharpness or a special spell, which grants the user a deadly power.

However, even more fascinating for him right now were the Mana-scribes, who used runes on papers or parchments to produce even more amazing effects than proper Rune-smithing on metal since it was easier to draw the runes instead of imbue them into metal. It used the mana from the surroundings rather than from the user, but it had a critical limitation: the ink or material used to draw the rune needed to contain enough magic to last till the end of the process when a huge amount of mana from the atmosphere would converge into it and transform into the intended effect.

"Interesting stuff indeed! Do they somehow act as a temporary mana stone, big enough to attract the mana particles of the atmosphere?" Damian couldn't help but wonder.

If his guess was right, then it defied every known law of physics that he could think of. Intrigued, he flipped back to the first page, staring at the fire rune that had taken a full page and tried to make sense of whatever this rune was. There was no symmetry or known syllabus of any language that he knew could even slightly resemble the jumbled mess. If this was just one syllable of the so-called God's language, then the gods clearly enjoyed making things complicated for no reason.

Finally giving up on deciphering the rune, Damian was about to move his eyes from the weird drawing and to the other runes, when on instinct or just by random chance he felt like activating his useless skill, The Truthseeker's Eyes. 

The moment he activated the skill, he jumped in surprise and dropped the old book. For a split second, he saw some numbers hovering on top of the book, but they disappeared the instant he dropped the book.

"Hell! It works! It's actually useful for something!"

Excited, Damian quickly picked up the book and handset it at the corner of the old table. He opened the fire rune page once again and sure enough, there were some hovering numbers and alphabets attached with red lines. Yes, It was indeed alphabets and runes connected with each other on a web of brightly lit red circles with many pathways and sections.

"The numbers and weird runes… and this shape… It's like an equation of some sort."

'If these numbers represent some kind of value about the rune and alphabets acting as the parameters? Is it some kind of pre-made formula that would generate a set amount of fire?'

Determined to understand it better and find the similarities, Damian examined all ten runes one by one in great detail, keeping the skill active the entire time. Suddenly he realized that his head was getting heavier and heavier at the front and after some 10 minutes the pain had started to become unbearable. He immediately closed his eyes and the next moment, felt the pain stop increasing, but the existing ache throbbed relentlessly.

Damian closed his eyes and just lay down on the table, trying his best to relax and endure the splitting headache as much as possible but failed miserably. After half an hour of agony, the pain finally subsided enough for him to open his eyes again. Tears streamed down his eyes as he opened them.

But, his lips were curled up into a triumphant smile.

"I did it. I understand what one of the alphabets represents…!"

'Ding'

[The Runic Serf Lv.1 Acquired.]