Return of the Runebound Professor

There were a lot of places that Noah wanted to visit, but he elected to return to his room. Before he started wandering around and exploring this new world, he was determined to get a better grasp of exactly what he could do.

Todd and Isabel had said that people only got seven runes per level, but Noah had eight. Something told him that the massive Sunder rune was most certainly not normal. Drawing any attention to it would have been stupid, so he’d have to find a different way to learn about it.

Once Noah got back, he sat down on his bed and pulled out Vermil’s book, flipping through it until he found the Ash rune again. Like he’d thought, it was greater. He found the Wind runes next.

“Why did Vermil choose to make a bunch of crappy Wind runes instead of good ones?” Noah asked himself. “It sounds like he came from a pretty good background, so shouldn’t he have had access to whatever it is that people need to make better runes.”

Noah chewed his lower lip in thought. Back when he’d fought the monkeys, he’d felt energized after killing them. He hadn’t paid it much attention at the time, but the energy had felt similar to what had struck him when he’d looked at the runes in his mind.

He closed his eyes and reached into himself again, descending into the darkness of his mind. With a rush, runes sprung up all around him. Their energy slammed into his psyche once more, but he was ready this time.

Noah pointedly avoided looking up at the enormous rune he knew was floating above him, instead studying the Wind runes before him. As he focused on them, he realized that even though they were all the same rune, they felt slightly different.

Three of them shimmered with the exact same intensity of light, but the other two felt emptier. The light coming from them was a few shades lighter, and the pressure they emitted wasn’t as strong.

Still, the three that felt full didn’t show any signs of evolving or getting stronger. Noah turned to the Ash runes. Now that he was looking for it, he could almost instantly tell that both of them were nearly empty.

Despite that, they felt dozens of times stronger than the filled Wind ones. Noah nodded and let his consciousness pull back, returning to the real world.

“Okay,” he said to himself. “I think killing monsters is one way to get more energy in my runes, but they don’t evolve into a higher quality when they’re full. Lesser runes seem easier to fill, but they’re weaker. That means, if I want to get stronger, I need to get rid of all my lesser runes if possible. Then I presumably need to fill up my runes with energy and figure out how to combine them – and also find out if Wind and Ash is actually a useful combination.”

Noah grinned. It was nice to have a goal beyond ‘avoid getting killed’. There was still far too much that he didn’t know, but at least he could start to make out a path through the trees. He leaned back and his hand brushed against the gourd at his waist.

The smile flickered and faded.

“Shit,” Noah muttered. “I completely forgot someone tried to murder this dude by giving him a poisoned healing potion. That probably meant that they’ll give it another run when they realized the potion didn’t do its job.

He sat, staring at the wall and pondering, for a total of five seconds. Then he shrugged and hopped to his feet.

“I’ll deal with that when it comes. I couldn’t even begin to figure out how many enemies Vermil had, so for now, the best strategy will just be to keep an eye on anyone trying to offer me snacks. Until then… it’s time for some science experiments.”

Noah extended his hand, picturing the Ash rune in his mind. Gray lines traced through the air above his palm, interweaving and twisting together to form a complicated pattern in the air before him.

Wind magic I get. You cut things up. Maybe fly around. But what am I supposed to do with Ash? Blow dust at people? Actually, for that matter, how does magic work at all? I get that runes give access to it, but can I literally do anything I want within its domain?

Noah imagined a cloud of ash swirling up from his hand, but nothing happened. He didn’t even feel any draw on the magic. He pursed his lips and lowered his request to just a few grains, but it met a similar result.

After a few more minutes of trying to figure out how to work the rune, he shelved the idea for the moment. There were still more urgent things to investigate.

Noah dismissed the Ash rune and pulled up Wind in its place. With a single mental command, the air above his palm started to churn. Thin whisps of white energy swirled in a tight sphere.

It dissipated, and a light wind rustled Noah’s hair as he directed it through the room. Noah’s grin stretched wider and he pictured the energy picking him off the ground. His clothes rustled, but nothing happened.

Noah’s tests caught the stacks of papers he’d so carefully put together several hours ago, tossing them all across the room with a single, misplaced gust. His grin flickered and he let his fingers drop, releasing the magic.

He cursed, but his eyes lit up as another idea struck him. Noah focused on the papers, squinting slightly in concentration, and imagined dozens of strands of wind reaching out and restacking his papers.

Some of them started to rustle. They shifted lifting into the air and flying through the room, mostly in the direction that he’d pictured and – nothing. The wind he’d been manipulating dropped away, vanishing without a trace along with the rune floating above his hand.