The Runic Artist

Nate walked into the first assessment room with Kiri. Aisling, Evindal and the rest of the Guild Platinums had all gone to wait with the carriages. He didn’t think that was a rule enforced by the University, as a few of the other students appeared to have chaperones, but most of the students were unaccompanied. The first induction assessment was for Monster Studies and he and Kiri joined the short line for students.

The back half of the room was hidden behind a veil of shimmering cloth that seemed to be held up by magic. As the line slowly moved forward he could see what the process was. You showed your unigem, proof that this was one of your selected subjects, then were shown behind the curtain on the right-hand side of the room. Other students were exiting by the left-hand side so he had to assume they had a number of tests back there. Runic Knowledge was telling him that the cloth was muting sound in both directions. He smiled at the clever little enchantment.

Glancing at Kiri he nudged her as he could see that she was stressing out a little.

“You’ll be fine. You’re probably going to end up in a higher grade than me for this subject. Just remember, it doesn’t matter how we do. We’re here to learn. If we start out in a lower grade than we’d like, we just have to put in the work and we’ll get to where we want to be.”

Kiri nodded at his words, relaxing a little, though clearly still a bit stressed. He supposed he could understand why. She’d never really had to take tests like this. Her teacher had mostly been her Father, or maybe a few Guildies who she paid for lessons, and then finally Deverell. It was likely a much more personal experience than the cold calculation and written tests of academia. For him, tests were nothing new. That made him think that the Guild might be a bit annoyed if he didn’t give it his all, and he intended to, but not for every subject.

Monster Studies was likely to be interesting, and the lower-grades should be useful for Dungeon runs, but beyond that, this was one of his least useful subjects. So who cared if he ended up in the Basic grade for it.

It was finally his turn and after showing his unigem and getting his name checked off some list, he was shown behind the curtain. An older woman stood waiting for him behind a table in a sectioned off area. She motioned him forward impatiently and once he was on the other side of the table she began to explain the test.

“I will show you an image of a monster. I will then ask you a series of questions. Answer to the best of your ability. Based on the accuracy and depth of your answers, as well as how many monsters you are able to identify, you will be assigned your subject grade. Understood?”

“Want me to help, Boss?” whispered Frick mentally.

“Nah, I need to learn this stuff myself. I’d rather get a fair grading and be put in the right grade than have you constantly needing to feed me the information. It’ll be better this way in the long-run.”

Nate finally nodded and the woman spun up an illusion using magic of a small scaled dragonkin.

“Name of the monster?”

“Kobold.”

“Known weaknesses?”

“....everything?” he replied, though her frown told him she wasn’t pleased with that answer.

“The monster's strengths?”

“Traps and numbers,” he said with more confidence than he felt, though the examiner’s small smile hopefully meant he was close enough on that answer.

“Best time to attack?”

“When it’s in front of you?” he quipped, knowing that was the wrong answer.

The questions continued to come quick-fire, the next monster was a goblin and he thought he got less than half the questions right. After that was some sort of short aquatic humanoid with shark-like teeth. He had no idea what that one was and took a few guesses at how someone might fight one of them. The examiner only showed him two more monsters after that, neither of which he recognised. When she handed him his grade of Basic he wasn’t at all surprised and moved out of the testing area to find Kiri waiting for him.

“How’d you do?” he asked.

“Intermediate,” she replied. “I got the first few and even managed mostly right answers for the Blazeen and Spirokos but after that they started to get into the kinds of monsters you only normally see in Dungeons. Dad never bothered much with those. What about you?”

“Basic of course. You know how it is,” he joked.

“Yeah. You’ll catch up in no time though. You learn fast,” she responded, throwing an arm around him as they headed for their next induction test.

The next few tests passed in a flash. With Dungeon Knowledge he bombed out even quicker than he had with Monster Studies. Apparently being able to find Dungeons or beat them did not translate to knowledge about how Dungeons functioned, where they were most likely to appear, how the Dungeon tiers tended to differ and so on. A second Basic grade was fine with him though. Like Kiri had said, he’d pick it up quickly and catch up. It helped that Kiri would be joining him in the Basic grade for that subject.

Next was Skill Development, which turned out to be an esoteric subject that was more about problem solving, and, he would argue, common sense. They were presented with basic Skill names and descriptions, along with a Class name, and asked what they would do to attempt to evolve the Skills up a Tier. The Skills had started as Common along with the Classes and the further they progressed in the examination, the higher the Skill and Class tiers in the hypothetical problems.

Towards the end of the test he was given entire Class sheets shown, including multiple Skills. He’d expected to only get an Intermediate result but when the instructor beamed at him, explaining he was the first of the new students to get an Advanced result for the subject, he couldn’t help but smile. He supposed he had always been quite good at understanding methods for Skill Evolution and Skill Synergy. If he’d been able to go a little slower he likely would have gotten excellent evolutions at every stage of his Skill development. Kiri had managed an Intermediate result and told him she was going to get his input on her own Skill development.

Next was Mana and Affinities. Nate had expected to have to hold back in the tests but found himself stumped with some of the questions after he was confident he’d passed the Basic grade. He knew that affinities were involved in Class offerings but he had not considered how else they might be relevant to an individual's mana. Even his answers around affinities in materials seemed incomplete based on the assessors reaction. In the end he managed an Intermediate result, matching Kiri. Though she did brag that her girlfriend - her words - had actually gotten into the Advanced grade for the subject.

Concepts and Embodiment went much the same. Even if he could identify all the Concepts with ease and currently had a Perfect Embodiment, that accounted for very little of the actual theory behind both of the principles. Nor did he know the actual result of an Embodiment and why it was considered so important. That said, he was happy with an Intermediate result, especially when Kiri got the same, even if she claimed the only reason she’d managed that was from listening to him talking about his crafting.

After the Concepts and Embodiment induction tests they split up to handle the subjects they weren’t going to take together, with a promise to wait for each other at the Combat test after they were done. While Kiri was off testing for Economics and Tactics, he would be taking the tests for Enchanting and Art.

The room handling the Enchanting induction test was a smorgasbord of interesting things and he had to hold himself back from running forward to look over everything in his excitement. He did note that the room was far less filled than some of the other subjects had been.

Turning to the woman administering his Enchanting test he asked, “Why are there so few taking Enchanting?”

She glanced at him before sighing in a put-upon way, “Most people will not take Enchanting without an Enchanter-type Class. Dabbling is possible, especially with Skill Orbs, but the Stats behind those Skills are rarely the focus of the nobility. Most of those who take this course are merchants who are only doing so so they can assess and grade enchanted items quality better. That normally means they’re aiming for some specialised Identification Skill development. You don’t get a lot of dedicated Crafters, let alone Enchanters, coming through the University. They’d gain more from an Apprenticeship with an Enchanter, not to mention saving themselves quite a lot of wealth.”

He nodded along as she spoke and it made sense to him. The Nobility cared more about Dungeons and likely more combat-focused Classes. The Adventurer’s Guild was the same. Only the merchants might have an interest in the crafting Classes and even if the quality might be better at the University, was it worth the expense? Apparently the answer was usually, no.

With her explanation handled she took him to the first battery of tests. They were all schematics, detailing how to craft something. The schematics included the materials and their affinities, though there was no Sigils provided. Instead the name for the Concept was written in the language of Etrua. His Divine Translation doing the heavy-lifting, he worked through the schematics with ease, explaining what they each described creating.

The second battery of tests was completed enchanted objects. They were all being veiled by little black enchanted stones to prevent him from simply using his Awareness of the Runic Artist to return a result for what they did. As usual, he felt he could have brute-forced the veil, but he was more interested in seeing how well he could figure out what the enchanted objects did without using the identification capability of his Skill. He reviewed each item, getting a sense of the Concepts embedded within from his Runic Knowledge. He traced the mana circuitry, what he was calling their ground up gem dust that was used to create mana pathways, using his sphere of awareness.

With each correct answer the assessor’s eyebrows climbed further up her forehead.

“Wow,” his assessor said, eyeing him up and down. “You’re the first today to make it to the Advanced tests. You only need to successfully complete one of the problem statements to get an Advanced grade. You’ll need to complete five if you want to attempt the Expert grade examination, though we’ll need to fetch the Head of Enchanting if you want to do that. I will give you some privacy. Ring the bell when you’re ready.”

The third set of tests were problem statements. Each one explained a problem that someone was trying to solve. It was up to him how he went about solving the problem. Nearby there was a box of Uncommon materials that included everything one would need to create some basic enchanted items.

He realised reading through the ten different problem statements, that he could likely push through for Expert grade without too much difficulty. He wasn’t going to do that though. An Advanced grade should be enough to get him access to the Sigils he wanted. Expert was just putting a target on his back, especially if they looked into how he created his items. Runecrafting was adjacent to Enchanting, but from what he had seen, they were not the same. That was something he hoped would come out in the subject.

Getting to work, he decided to complete the problem statement for an enchanted item that would let you control the water temperature. It was an easy one and it was something he could likely fake the enchanting style for. He knew Enchanters could imbue a Concept into a gem. He did something similar, by using Conceptual Material to write the Sigils for Cool, Heat and Water inside three gems. He set up a simplistic flow diagram with two mana gems with modular flow enchantments on them, connected those to the Cool and Heat gems respectively, before connecting the Cool and Heat gems to the Water gem.

In the end, you could control the mana flow to the Cool and Heat gems which subsequently flowed mana into the Water gem. It worked, but even he thought it looked a bit shoddy. It was definitely not how he would’ve done it if he was crafting a rune. The assessor however seemed satisfied with it and asked if he would like to attempt any other problems. Her satisfaction shifted to disappointment when he said no but gave him his Advanced grade and bid him farewell.

His steps quickly took him towards the second-last induction of the day. Art, the subject he’d been most looking forward to. It might’ve been foolish, but in many ways, it was what he had dreamed of doing back on Earth. He’d wanted to graduate from school and get into a University to study Fine Arts. Of course, he’d had no idea what he was going to do with such. The usual joke was that you studied Arts so you could end up working in fast-food, but he could have lived with that if it meant he got to pursue what he loved. Now, finally, he was getting that chance. The only thing that had changed was he’d found a second outlet for his artistic desires. Runecrafting was still art, after all. He’d just proven his capability in that, or at least in the adjacent profession. Now it was time to prove his capability in art itself.

The room he walked into was brightly lit, with tools for creating art scattered everywhere. Paint, canvas, sculpting tools, wood, metal, the list of materials and art supplies went on. That being said, most of the room's occupants seemed to be engaged in painting. His eyes wandered over their work and he had to appreciate the attention they gave to detail. It seemed most were doing self-portraits, or portraits of a female model who lay draped over a chaise in the middle of the room. On the outskirts of the room there were a few sculptors and carvers, working with marble, wood and in one case metal that flowed like water beneath her nimble fingers.

An assessor approached him and ushered him inside the room. After confirming his identity through the unigem she explained the test.

“You will create one piece of art, in any medium you desire. It will be assessed by a panel of judges made up of staff from the Art department. The average of their assessment will be the grade you are assigned for this subject. You may use any Skills you have and the assessment will be based on your choices, style, perceived Skill level and any other metrics the Art department decides are relevant, based on your medium. You have the rest of the day to complete the task. Any questions?”

He just shook his head, making his way towards the paints and a free canvas. There was an artwork he’d been waiting to do for a little while now, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.