Complicated Runes

"The plan will take a little longer than expected."

Felix, who was digging into his caramel pork, stopped for a moment. Swallowing the mouthful of rice and delicious meat, he asked his roommate/landlord, "How come? And for how long?"

Yasue, who was eating too, replied nonchalantly, "Because of a miscalculation of mine. Several, in fact."

"Pray tell."

Yasue narrowed his eyes on Felix as he said, "First, you. I didn't think you would grow this strong this fast. Your martial arts are good, but they could use some polishing. But your Magic, I don't think I have seen anyone manipulating it better than you. In the player base, at least."

Felix shrugged, "I did spend a month training."

Yasue shook his head, "Don't play dumb. You saw the speed at which you leveled up. How do you think the top players haven't reached Level 50 already?"

Felix felt some amount of surprise at Yasue's words, as he had not really thought about it before. He didn't pay that much attention to other players to begin with.

"Are you saying they have been training too?"

Yasue snorted, "Of course they were training. While a good grasp on martial arts is great and sets you above the curb, Epoch has shown the path forward. Be it to train magic as you did, or martial arts as I did, that's the way to the future."

Felix pinched his chopsticks on a piece of pork, and throwing it into his mouth along with some rice, asked, "Why do it now though? Couldn't they rush to Tier 1 or 2, throw everyone in the dust, take all the resources, and then train?"

"Because of the rank up. Doing so hastily would result in you crippling your account, so now is the best time to start training."

"Even so, they can still level up to Level 50 first."

Yasue chuckled dryly, "Who said they didn't?"

Felix paused, before mumbling, "I guess the Internet isn't the most reliable source…"

Yasue rolled his eyes, and resumed his explanation, "The biggest mistake I made though was underestimating how important their plan in the Mountain Pass was. I knew it was something big, but nothing of this size."

"Isn't that good? The more pissed off they are, the better the chances they come to attack us with all their might. And things do seem to be going in our direction, since Silverfall even asked me to protect Drakon."

The two had already spoken about Drakon, and thankfully Yasue didn't have a problem with him being part of the plan. Well, on the premise he did not know anything about said plan.

"Problem is, things went too far. They hate you, no problems there, but that no longer simply involves personal feuds. You fucked with their livelihoods, and they need to take care of that."

"So that's why the plans will be delayed?"

Yasue nodded, explaining, "Blue Light put a lot of resources into that plan. They owe favors because of the Mountain Pass, their players got left behind to prepare for this, and they are fucked within the Margarita Kingdom. If they do nothing, then their Guild will crumble onto itself."

Noodles left hanging from his mouth, Felix mumbled through the food, "So I almost destroyed a First Tier Guild?"

"Somehow. So don't worry about the hatred part, and because they can't deal with you yet, they put the 1000 Gold bounty on your head. You should be proud, you are in the top 10 highest bounties within the game."

His face twisting, Felix groaned, "Rejoice? I wouldn't call getting showered in assassins something to rejoice about."

"Well, it still is famous. And with it come propositions."

Now Felix was confused as he asked, "What do you mean propositions?"

Yasue pointed toward the window with his thumb over his shoulder, saying, "Since you need to make contact with someone to contact them in game, contacting you in the real world is much easier. And finding your real life identity through the footage in-game was rather easy. That's why I expect several guilds to send their men to recruit you. Should arrive in the next few days."

Felix's face blanched as he asked, "They know where I live?"

Yasue rolled his eyes, scoffing, "As I said, you may be the best magician among all the players I saw. And I know a lot of them. If it wasn't for their pride, the Divine Ten would have sent some of their men to invite you. And even if it was only your martial arts, you could join a Super Hundred if you applied."

Felix rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed, "I'm not that good…"

"Get off your high horses Olson, you might be good, but if we fail then your account is dead."

Felix paused, before spouting, "We won't fail. What should I expect for the near future?"

Yasue took both of their now empty bowls, and answered, "I heard Blue Light is planning something big, they are pulling all their remaining resources into their new plan. Even the company behind the Guild is causing some ruckus. You should be able to do your own thing for a couple of weeks, before being needed."

Getting up, Felix asked, "You'll contact me anyway?"

Yasue smirked, a hint of madness barely hidden within as he replied, "With the scale of what they seem to be planning, I may not even need to warn you."

And with that, Yasue walked to his room, closing behind him, and clearly ending the conversation. Felix returned to his own room, pondering on the ominous words.

Blue Light had already planned on something that would have brought an entire city to its knees, so Felix did not doubt they would hesitate for even a second to do something big, that would affect a lot of people.

What they would do, though, that he did not know. But Felix tried to never bother himself with things out of his control. Rather than fumble through the dark, spawning hundreds of theories in his paranoia, he would much rather focus on doing his own thing, and wait to see.

Putting on the chip and activating it, Felix found himself under a large rock, providing him some shade. Stepping out, Felix checked his surroundings, but found no one.

The day before, Felix had left the city along with Drakon, and had decided to disconnect here with the older player, so they wouldn't get a bad surprise when they came back.

While violence was forbidden within the city and would be met with retaliation from the city's guards, they would have also been much easier to spot.

By leaving in the middle of the night and disconnecting under one of the thousands of rocks around Fìrma, Felix and Drakon had made it much harder for whoever may try to follow them to actually do so.

Since Drakon wasn't here yet, Felix sat down on top of the rock, and started experimenting with his Mana.

Now that he had grown used to First Circle Spells, the next step would be to go for Second Circle Spells. After all, he had already made 9 different First Circle Spells, each the equivalent of a D Rank Spell.

He probably had more of these than any other player, but he wouldn't limit himself to common people's standards. Not only was his entire magic relying on flexibility, Felix also needed more experience with Runes.

So while he should technically be able to strive for Second Circle Spells, it wasn't the right time yet. Besides, even if he were to manage to make a Second Circle Spell, the Mana Cost alone would be crippling.

Even if Felix should be able to use it once, this single use might nearly deplete his entire MP. So Felix went for the smarter approach, and tried different kinds of Rune combinations.

Felix was quite free in his training too as each try did not cost too much Mana. A typical First Circle Spell cost him 2 MP, or 20 with his Curse, but that was for a fully functioning Spell.

Here, all Felix was trying to do was check the compatibility between several Runes, which cost him around 1.5 Mana, so 15 MP per try.

Considering Felix's MP Regeneration was 0.42 per second, meaning he needed less than 36 seconds to recover 15 MP, Felix's training was not even actually lowering his MP.

After all, no matter how much of a genius Felix was, Felix wasn't randomly choosing Runes to use together, every combination had considerations behind them, which took Felix more than half a minute to put together.

So time passed quickly as Felix was focused on his training. Drakon and he had agreed the day before to meet here sometime after noon, as they had both ended up staying quite late the night before.

While waiting for Drakon, Felix wasn't working blindly. Because of the Dark Gate, Felix had received a lot of inspiration on Runes related to spacetime.

After all, while it was called Dark Gate, the thing had pretty much nothing to do with darkness, and was simply a door through spacetime, infused with the Divine Energy of Izrath. It didn't simply work on Runes, but also on Faith.

Faith was handling the coordinates, while the Runes were handling spacetime. Hence, every Rune used were related to the subject.

And not only was the Dark Gate the most complicated enchantment Felix had ever dealt with, by far, but Felix had also gotten to ask as many questions as he wanted to Vaena, a Master level Runic Expert on the subject.

That's why Felix's grasp on this particular group of Runes had advanced far beyond any other, and he well intended on using that to his advantage.

Spacetime was a very hard element to affect due to how complex it was. Creating a flame wasn't hard, because fire by itself was a simple concept. Spacetime, on the other hand, was a much harder concept to comprehend, and to translate into Runes.

That made it almost impossible to create First Circle Spells that could affect it, as the most Runes Felix could put in a First Circle Spell was 8. Actually, even Second Circle Spells might be too small for this kind of complicated Spell.

That did not mean it was impossible though. For example, Felix's Gravity Well, which pertained to Gravity, an element connected to Spacetime, and just as complex.

And it was from that Spell that Felix learned that if he wanted to even get a shot at manipulating such a complex element with so few Runes, he needed to work around it.

Gravity Well did not work with Runes that described Gravity and the effect on it, but rather was concentrated on the effect. The Runes in the Spell ordered the world to emit a suction force, and the world obeyed using the most suited element. Here, gravity.

This might be hard to understand, but Runic Magic was very complicated magic to begin with. Besides, trying to explain everything would only drag Felix down, as using calculated analysis was not an option for Runic Magic.

With there being 102432 Runes and variations, the possibilities for Spells were virtually endless. Taking First Circle Spells alone, since they could have between 5 and 8 Runes within them, the calculation of how many possibilities there were was headache inducing itself.

102432^5+102432^6+102432^7+102432^8.

The first three were negligible to the whole operation, but 102432^8=~1.212e40.

In other words, the number of possibilities was made of 41 numbers. So there was a billion of a billion of a billion of a billion possibilities, for First Circle Spells alone.

…

…

Could that explanation have stopped at 'virtually endless'? Yes, absolutely. And no one is going to apologize for it.