“Why would I bother with mana?”

  “Right? Najjar OS handles it.”

  “Exactly. If I have to feel it, something’s broken.”

  — Overheard outside a Najjar Academy augmentation lab

  Mom took more convincing than Dante had.

  She’d ambushed me the moment he left, eyes red-rimmed and voice tight with a worry that made my chest ache.

  We spoke for at least half an hour, discussing Mars, dad, danger… I’d promised to be careful, really promised, not the dismissive kind I usually gave, and explained that the license meant I’d been tested, evaluated, deemed competent by actual professionals.

  “Besides,” I’d said, holding up the book. “I’ll be spending the next week working on my gear and runes, learning from the magic book. Safest thing I could possibly do.”

  [Attention! You have revealed a SYSTEM FUNCTION to a non-system user. This is your first strike this month, resulting in: -100% Leveling LP progress]

  [Leveling LP progress: -19%]

  The system zapped me, an electric feeling, like touching a live wire, but I managed not to flinch. Barely. Just a slight twitch that Mom, thankfully, missed entirely.

  But inside? Inside, I was screaming.

  Negative percent.

  I’d had 81% progress toward my next level, earned through my fights.

  And I’d just casually mentioned “runes” to Mom, one word, one tiny slip, and the system had taken it all. Then kept going. Docked me another 19% beyond zero, meaning I now had to earn back 119% total progress to get the LP.

  Operational security, Dante’s voice echoed in my head. Never reveal secrets. Never. I’d just... forgotten, got comfortable and thought talking to Mom in my house was safe.

  The system violently disagreed.

  Apparently runes were a no-no, so… glyphs? Were the things on Erika’s armor runes, and everyone called them glyphs because the system was okay with that?

  “Dash?” Mom’s voice cut through my internal panic. “You okay? You looked like you spaced out for a second.”

  “Yeah,” I managed, forcing a smile that probably looked as fake as it felt. “Just today was really progress, you know? Dealing with Dante was hard, but now I know what to do.”

  She studied me for another moment, then nodded, apparently satisfied. “Remember. Text me. Every time.”

  “I will,” I promised, and fled before I could say anything else stupid.

  Like “subsystem.” Or “LP.” Or literally any other term that would dig my hole deeper. Comma stuck her tongue out as I passed her doorway, and I barely registered it. My brain was too busy calculating how many kills it would take to recover from this.

  “Stupid,” I muttered, closing my door behind me. “So fucking stupid.” Apparently, my mouth was a bigger threat to my progression than actual monsters.

  Now, sitting at my desk with the door locked and the book open in front of me, I could finally focus.

  The pages were... strange.

  Not paper, or at least not any paper I recognized. The material felt like leather but bent like cloth, and the text written across it shifted when I tried to read it directly. If I looked at a specific line, the words blurred into incomprehensible symbols, but if I let my eyes unfocus slightly, relaxed my vision, the meaning crystallized.

  To bind mana to purpose, one must first understand the fundamental structures that govern reality’s response to will. Runes are not symbols; they are compressed intent, mathematical representations of desire made manifest.

  I blinked, refocusing, and the words scrambled back into silver patterns. “Okay,” I muttered. “Don’t look directly. Got it, but… mathematical representations,” I muttered, and sat back in my chair, staring at the ceiling.

  My math teacher from two years ago had been so fucking serious about it. Mrs. Chen, who’d literally said with a straight face that “mathematics is the most important subject you will ever study, and everyone needs to master it regardless of their future path.”

  I’d rolled my eyes then and thought she was being dramatic. “Well,” I said to the empty room. “Fuck.”

  Each rune has its own equation that governs its purpose, so to learn a new rune is to learn the underlying equation and apply it in conjunction with object dimensions, mana frequency, other runes.

  There is always an answer to the equation, and successfully applying the rune means solving it.

  The apprentice who cannot solve cannot enchant.

  Turned out Mrs. Chen had been right, because now I was staring at a book that literally called runes “equations” and talked about “solving for unknowns” and “mathematical representations of desire made manifest.”

  My entire future as a system user apparently depended on the subject I’d barely scraped through with a C+.

  I let my vision unfocus again, and the text shifted.

  Not instructions this time, but a list.

  You unlocked basic runes:

  [Rune of Binding] - Level 1

  [Rune of Stability] - Level 1

  [Rune of Piercing] - Level 1

  [Rune of Durability] - Level 1

  You came into contact with FIRE magic. You UNLOCKED:

  [Rune of Fire] - Level 1

  [Rune of Fire Resistance] - Level 2 (Locked)

  You came into contact with FORCE magic. You UNLOCKED:

  [Rune of Force] - Level 1

  [Rune of Deflection] - Level 2 (Locked)

  [RUNE LIMIT REACHED! Increase level and advance to Level 3 to increase rune capacity.]

  [Note: Spells have separate limit.]

  Complete list of unlocked runes (Level 1):

  [Rune of Binding]

  [Rune of Stability]

  [Rune of Piercing]

  [Rune of Durability]

  [Rune of Fire]

  [Rune of Force]

  I stared at the list, brain churning through the implications.

  Fire and Force were already unlocked because I’d seen them used. Alice blasted me with fire. Omar had thrown force bolts. The system had cataloged that exposure and... what? Given me a head start?

  The other six were just vague names that could mean almost anything depending on the application. Binding could be for holding materials together during enchantment, or trapping enemies.

  Or both?

  Stability could mean structural reinforcement, or preventing mana fluctuations. Or—

  A new notification appeared:

  [SELECT FIRST RUNE FOR STUDY]

  Warning: Once selected, a rune study page will be locked for 60 hours

  Estimated average completion time: 4 hours

  I read that twice.

  The average completion time was four hours. Four hours to learn a rune, understand its equation, internalize the mathematics.

  But the system was locking me out for sixty hours regardless.

  Which meant... what? That I could learn it in four hours if I were average enough? That two hours was for people who actually paid attention in math class, and that sixty hours was the maximum before the book would force me to move on to the next rune, preventing me from learning for… system fuckery reasons?

  Probably that, knowing how system fuckery worked.

  “Okay,” I muttered, scanning the list again. “So I can learn two runes before Dante comes to collect.” Convenient… as if the person responsible for lending time knew that.

  The question was: which two runes?

  Fire was obvious. I had plasma weapons, worked with heat constantly, and built equipment that generated thermal signatures. Fire was practical, immediately applicable, something I could use right now.

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  But the others...

  Durability for my armor, and piercing for weapons or bullets if I wanted to change from plasma. Stability for... structural integrity? Power regulation?

  Binding could be crucial for holding complex enchantments together, but only if I learned enough other runes to make complex enchantments worth building.

  My hand hovered over the book, finger extended toward [Rune of Fire].

  Then I hesitated.

  “Think,” I told myself. “Don’t just grab the shiny one.” I thought back to Mom’s face. The worry in her every line, the red-rimmed eyes, the way her voice had cracked when she’d asked me to text her every time I went somewhere.

  The fear that she was going to lose me the same way she’d lost Dad.

  I needed to survive. Everything else, like offense, penetration… didn’t matter if I was dead, so my finger touched the page.

  [Rune of Durability]

  The book flared white-hot beneath my hand.

  Lightning slammed through me, not metaphorically, not like touching a wire, but with actual electricity that arced from the page through my palm and exploded up my arm, and my muscles locked.

  My spine went rigid. Every nerve in my body screamed as the current ripped through me, branching, spreading, seeking every corner of my being like it was trying to map my entire existence.

  I couldn’t scream.

  Could only endure as the lightning carved pathways through me that shouldn’t exist, burning new channels into my nervous system, my blood, my bones—

  It stopped.

  I gasped, slumping forward in my chair, chest heaving. Sweat soaked through my shirt, and my hand trembled where it still rested on the page, fingers twitching with aftershocks.

  “What the fuck—” I wheezed, and then I felt something new. Something that hadn’t been there a second ago, humming just beneath my skin like a second heartbeat. Not painful, just... present.

  I focused on it, and the sensation intensified.

  It was warm, not hot like plasma or burning metal, but warm like soldering close to skin. It moved when I focused on it, sluggish, thick, like honey trying to flow uphill.

  I tried to push it toward my hand, just to see what would happen, and the warm sensation dipped into focus over my hand, and I felt I could… direct it, albeit barely. “Mana,” I breathed. I could feel it waiting to be directed and shaped.

  It was like discovering I’d had a third arm my entire life and just never noticed until someone pointed it out.

  A notification flickered into existence.

  [New System Category Unlocked: Magic]

  I blinked, pulling up my interface with a mental command.

  There it was, sitting beside my broken skills and plugins sections. A whole new category I hadn’t had a minute ago.

  How many of those there are?!

  I opened it.

  [Magic]

  LP Progress: 0% [NOT SELECTED]

  Mana attributes:

  Quality: 0/2

  Density: 0/2

  Control: 0/2

  Efficiency: 0/2

  Resonance: 0/2

  Regeneration: 0/2

  Mana Subsystem: Equation Mana Subsystem

  Level: None

  Known Runes: None

  Known Spells: None

  I stared at the notification, my brain still trying to process that I had an entire new system category, when reality shimmered in front of me.

  Not metaphorically but actually shimmered, like heat distortion off an overheated rifle, except localized to the three cubic feet of air above my desk. The distortion intensified, colors bleeding into existence from nowhere, coalescing into solid matter with a soft pop that made my ears ring.

  Two objects materialized and dropped onto my desk with soft thuds.

  The first was a small cloth pouch, drawstring tied, bulging slightly with whatever was inside. It had that sign of system-generated items: the edges too perfect, the fabric too uniform.

  The second was—

  I froze. “What?!”

  A palm-sized figurine, maybe ten centimeters tall, carved from what looked like pale wood or bone. The detail was... excessive. Whoever had made this had put serious effort into the craftsmanship, because I could see individual strands of hair flowing down the figure’s back, the delicate curve of the jawline, the way the combat armor hugged the form beneath it.

  Red hair with a distinctive golden lock, green eyes with gold accents that somehow conveyed expression despite being carved wood, with a small smile.

  It was Erika.

  A perfect miniature Erika, posed mid-stride with one hand resting casually on her hip, the other holding a dagger that was probably sharp enough to actually cut despite being the size of a toothpick.

  My face went hot instantly.

  “What the—” I started, reaching for the figurine, and a new notification slammed into my vision with enough force that I actually jerked back.

  [ONLY USE FOR LEARNING, DASH.]

  I stared at the text and read it again.

  The system had never addressed me directly before. Never used my name. The notifications had always been impersonal, clinical, just status updates and warnings delivered with the emotional weight of a tax form.

  But this?

  This was different.

  The system had spoken to me, used my actual name. And the tone, even through flat text, carried something that felt almost... teasing? “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered, my face burning hotter. I’d heard stories, system users complaining about “stupid system”. The system was its own entity, running on alien logic nobody fully understood.

  System fuckery.

  But manifesting a figurine of Erika? The system was absolutely doing this on purpose.

  I imagined an alien world with weird aliens who created the system, sitting in front of holotv and watching me struggling, and yelling at the system to torture me, like creating an unreasonable time limit in my magic subsystem.

  “Hey system, why the 60 hours limit? Just let me learn as much as I can, and I won’t need to borrow the book anytime soon.” I complained out loud, not really hoping to get an answer.

  [Weak body.]

  Weak?! I exercise every Monday. Okay, except this week. And the Jeup paste was nutritious! At least… Jeup claimed it was.

  “I can take it…” I complained.

  [New sense added - mana sense.]

  I felt a slight but insistent burning sensation all over my skin. No, not over, but slightly below it, and as the seconds ticked, it was getting more and more annoying.

  Then painful.

  Then unbearable.

  “I get it!” I yelled, gripping a desk. “My body is burning with mana or something, just make it stop!”

  [Removing mana sense.]

  I breathed hard, trying to center my mind.

  [Mana sense can be obtained again in the system shop.]

  “What’s a system shop?”

  Silence.

  “I’ll ask Omar, so keep your secrets,” I smirked, calming down from that shock.

  [Estimated time to completion: Infinite]

  I groaned at that. “Fine, fine! Working on it!” I grabbed the book, flipping it open with hands that definitely weren’t shaking, letting my vision unfocus until the text crystallized.

  The page had changed.

  Where there had been a list of runes before, now there was a detailed explanation, complete with diagrams that hurt to look at directly.

  There was a drawing of a rune, and each line had numbers attached to it, and if I wanted to finish the enchantment, I would have to adjust the thickness of the lines, or angles, or length, to fit the object.

  For every level 1 rune, mana dust serves as the foundation, providing a stable substrate that responds to directed intent, and it is the only necessary component in basic runes, like the Rune of Durability; others may require other reagents.

  Mana quality and density help to stabilize the equation sooner; control and resonance help with adjusting the variables, and efficiency dictates the amount of mana needed.

  To learn your first rune, the Rune of Durability, apply mana dust to the object you wish to reinforce. Channel your mana through the dust, forming the rune’s pattern, and listen to mana feedback while solving the equation.

  Note: The object chosen for initial learning should be simple, non-living, and of personal significance. Emotional connection strengthens the learning process by providing concrete desire to manifest.

  I read that last line three times.

  “Of personal significance,” I repeated slowly, my gaze drifting to the Erika figurine still sitting innocently on my desk.

  The system had provided the dust, also provided the figurine, and had specifically told me to use it for learning. Then the book explained that emotional connection helped.

  “Oh, you absolute—” I stopped, taking a deep breath. Getting angry at an alien intelligence that could probably delete my entire person if it felt like it seemed counterproductive.

  But still.

  ERIKA. DURABLE.

  The implications were so obvious that even I, with my complete lack of social skills, couldn’t miss them. The system might as well have included a holographic sign saying “DASH HAS A CRUSH” with arrows pointing at my head.

  I grabbed the cloth pouch and loosened the drawstring. Fine powder spilled into my palm, glittering faintly in my desk lamp’s light. It looked like crushed crystals, or maybe very fine sand, except it moved slightly on my skin. Not flowing like liquid, but shifting, responding to something I couldn’t quite perceive.

  Mana dust.

  I set the pouch down and picked up the figurine with my other hand, trying very hard not to notice how detailed the carving was. How the miniature armor plates had individual rivets. How the expression captured that specific mix of confidence and warmth that made my chest tight.

  “It’s just a learning exercise,” I told myself firmly. “Just wood. Just a figurine. Nothing weird about this.”

  The system’s notification still hung in my peripheral vision.

  [ONLY USE FOR LEARNING, DASH.]

  “Shut up,” I muttered to it.

  I set the figurine down on my desk and carefully sprinkled mana dust over it. The powder clung to the wood, not falling away like normal dust would. It stuck, coating the surface in a thin layer that glittered softly.

  Now came the hard part.

  I closed my eyes, focusing on the warm sensation beneath my skin. The mana I’d felt after touching the book. It was still there, waiting.

  Channel your mana through the dust, the book had said.

  I focused on the warmth, trying to direct it. The sensation moved reluctantly, like pushing something heavy through mud.

  I opened my eyes.

  My hand was glowing. Faintly, barely visible, but definitely glowing with that same soft warmth I felt inside.

  The mana dust on the figurine reacted immediately. It glowed brighter, responding to the mana radiating from my palm, and I felt the connection snap into place like a circuit completing.

  And then... I saw it.

  Not with my eyes, but in my mind, superimposed over reality like a holographic overlay. Mathematical expressions, flowing and shifting, describing relationships between stress, structure, molecular bonds, energy distribution.

  The Rune of Durability wasn’t just a symbol. It was an equation, a formula that described how to reinforce matter against force, how to distribute impact across a structure, how to make something resist and use the ambient mana to reinforce itself in key positions.

  Variables appeared: object dimensions, material properties, desired reinforcement level, and available rune power.

  I didn’t understand half of it.

  The mathematics was beyond anything Mrs. Chen had taught, calculus and physics merged with concepts I had no names for. But I didn’t need to understand it completely; I just needed to solve for the unknown. Trial and error, just as anytime I worked on tinkering. Actually using Math?

  Nah…

  The equation shifted, simplifying, guiding my attention to the parts I could manipulate. The mana flow rate. The pattern of distribution. The—

  My hand twitched, and the mana pulsed.

  The equation demanded more precision. I adjusted, feeling my way through it like solving a puzzle where the pieces moved on their own. More mana here, less there, let it flow along the grain of the wood, avoid the delicate details—

  The figurine changed.

  Not visibly, at least not to my eyes, but I could feel it somehow. The wood had become... more. Denser, harder, and more resistant to force. The mana dust had fused with the material, becoming part of its structure.

  And carved across the base, so small I almost missed it, was a mark. Not silver like in the book, but a faint golden line.

  The Rune of Durability.

  Level 1, barely functional, probably the magical equivalent of a child’s first attempt at writing.

  The warm sensation in my body guttered out, the mana exhausted. I slumped forward, breathing hard, and a notification appeared.

  [Rune of Durability - LEARNING IN PROGRESS]

  Progress: 21%

  Estimated time to completion: 6 hours

  “… not even average.”

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY The System

  Join me on or

  On Patreon you can read 2 months ahead (~200 pages)