Back on Earth, a Knight wasn’t someone you’d call a brute. There was a medieval beauty about them, an air of chivalry and strength, a certain gracefulness that commanded, ever so gently, a sense of respect just out of appearance alone. Not that I’d personally known any Knights, but that was how they were depicted in the history books.

  After all, a Knight wasn’t just someone out fighting bloody battles. He was often a Lord of his people, and a protector of King’s peace and so on.

  That wasn’t the case here.

  Time and time again, I’d heard people call them brutes, with Radek being the loudest one in that specific field.

  I could now see that the reputation had some merit to it.

  Look at me.

  I had blood coming out of my nose and mouth. I had stomach cramps like I’d swallowed a live eel. My hands blistered after eating fifty chunks of a creature’s Core, and each of them itched as The Undying worked overtime to fix them back. My shirt was a mess of gore and torn in strips. My boots had mud all over them and then some inside.

  All in all, the only thing that was clean about me was Beatrice, and that was after I washed her surface in the river. I couldn’t take a risk by throwing my body into the water. In a situation like this, my sword was worth more than my scalp.

  Anyway, after devouring an untamed source of ferocious energy, my body was just about ready to burn. I nearly had steam coming out of my nostrils, which meant there was no rush for me to manage a fire. I was glad since the hollow of a tree wasn’t exactly a good place to light a campfire.

  I couldn’t sleep either because my internal energy rolled gurgling inside my Core and even though I sat with my back hunched and my legs drawn to my chest, sweat kept pouring down my face as though I was out running to save my little life.

  Keeping the rhythm of your breaths especially after consuming a beast’s Core was important, so I had to be conscious about each whiff of air getting in. That was easier said than done, not to mention annoying.

  To sum it up, I had to wait in this exact spot for a while to ensure I’d made every bit of the Greytooth’s energy mine.

  That would be boring.

  I was in desperate need of distraction.

  So I pulled the one odd thing from my bag, which was a little notebook.

  Mother was a generous woman, but she wasn’t really the considerate type. Belfray had his numbers and tricks, and yet he could be the most dutiful soldier in the whole mansion who would hardly cross any lines with his Grand Marshall.

  This notebook was definitely Radek’s doing, and I was hoping it had something to do with his earlier promise.

  To be fair, he did bring Hardel sooner than it was planned, and I was kind of grateful for that. Granted, mastering the craft side of things would take more than a few months, but the little I’d managed to learn already made me a better person in general. Turned out hard work and discipline had more than a few uses in life.

  Who knew, eh?

  Still, it would’ve been way better had Hardel just given me the sauce for runesmithing. That was the title I decided to give to my new venture. After all, it was the main thing that separated “true” Runemasters from the other clowns.

  Radek’s words, not mine. He’d seemed to enjoy calling people names, a lot.

  After another rush of an inner heat wave, I let out a pained huff and opened the notebook.

  There was nothing inside, but I felt a pull.

  I knew this sensation.

  The pages were sealed with a soul lock.

  Now I was sure there were a lot of ways to manage a complicated lock, but this one was similar to what I thought was Orlath’s conscious attempt at keeping his fame only from people who lacked a generous amount of soul energy. As in, just like how I did with Orlath’s tale, all I had to do here was to pour enough energy into the pages and let them fill up.

  And filled up, they did, after which words showed themselves to me.

  A rare surviving transcript from The Empyrean Runecrafting, Volume 2 of 99, the only extant copy of a work whose true originals were consumed in the Dawn of Masters, when those who defied the natural order lost themselves to their own unbridled craft. May their souls never know peace in the silent spaces between worlds.

  Made available through the grace of Auremarion Valthuzar, first of his name, Supreme Runemaster of the Twelfth Concordance and Bearer of the Living Rune of Manghor, as faithfully recorded by Prime Runemaster Laurel, who was granted the miraculous privilege of hearing a fragment of history spoken by the very mouth that once shaped the fate of many, and now entrusts it to those bold enough to seek a glimpse into the Unknown.

  Holy hell, those were some words…

  I blinked in case I read it wrong, but Auremarion Valthuzar wasn’t just any name you could make up. That made me question, for the briefest moment, my own name—whether I deserved any right to be involved in such a convention in which people were named in such grand fashion—but the voice of my inferiority complex got lost soon when I saw something else.

  Volume 2 – Chapter 1 – Words of Power

  I sucked in a deep breath.

  There had been some expectation, of course, but this was bigger than I’d thought. Mother definitely knew nothing about this. She’d been insistent that I had to keep away from certain practices until I was at an appropriate age, especially after having witnessed those rain clouds I accidentally called upon a little pond.

  Don’t get me wrong. She was giving me time to be myself. As in, she wasn’t the battle-hardened General training a failure of a soldier anymore. She had begun to grow a certain tenderness toward me, and I was grateful for it.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  This, however, was different. I suspected Radek got this rare notebook from that one friend from whom he’d also borrowed Orlath’s one-page epic.

  Was that guy a Runemaster or something? Or were these sorts of things more common than I thought?

  No. That couldn’t be the case.

  I was pretty sure I was holding a treasure.

  After peering out from my little hole to see whether I had company stalking about the tree or not, I leaned back into the hardwood and spread my arms. The night air was chilly, which thankfully helped cool my overheated body. On top of that, I was getting used to the shrieks and the occasional roars that stabbed into my ears.

  Onto the soul crafting now.

  Onto the juicy stuff, alright.

  I devoured the first page with a predator’s hunger, leafing through the next couple of them in minutes. In total, the notebook had only two chapters with the rest of its pages completely blank. Before moving to the second chapter, I reread the first chapter and made sure I’d got it all right.

  It was as I suspected.

  The words here had nothing to do with crafting boost-type Runes, likely since this was the second Volume out of 99. Instead, the second volume of Empyrean Runecrafting focused more on the fact that being a Runemaster was about imposing your essence upon the world around you.

  I kinda knew that already after my initial set of experiments as I got to experience what it felt like to call upon nature’s blessing by simply making yourself clear through a few words and supplying them with enough soul energy. This text, though, delivered more insights into the process.

  What were those insights, you ask?

  First of all, there was a thing called authority. Apparently, before you tapped into the nature around you, you were supposed to check whether you had the authority for it or not. It was only when you were sure you got a free pass that you could begin inscribing your intent onto paper.

  There were different kinds of authority, but basically they fell into two broad categories: Laws of Nature and top guns of that particular world. Turned out a world could, in fact, straight out shun any Runemaster trying to manipulate its resources if it had a baked-in law that was against such practices. Similarly, a person could do the same if they had the means and powers to back it up.

  That brought me back to my experiments. When I called rain to that pond, or even before when I started a fire, I didn’t come across anything strange, meaning that our big world didn’t have any limits.

  For a second I thought I was lucky, but I wasn’t that naive.

  Did Belfray check this before he settled here?

  Probably.

  He was a clever guy. He must’ve expected a kid to do… foolish things.

  Anyway, once you ensured you had the authority, you could then start practicing.

  I was surprised how similar the training examples highlighted in the text were to my ignorant, slightly dangerous experiments, except you would start with specifically worded sequences so as not to hurt yourself. Depending on the intensity and the amount of your soul energy, you could manipulate natural elements to a degree. There was a limit. If you tried to go for a nuke, for example, there would be a cost.

  You would die.

  It was true that each individual had a distinct soul energy of their own, but there was one thing they all lacked. A central control system. Soul energy didn’t have a built-in control system like a Mana Core or an Internal Energy Core, which meant that it didn’t have any filters, and it would, to a fault, try its utmost to achieve the desired result even if that would leave the host a dry corpse in the end.

  So yeah, act with caution, and mind your own limits.

  Don’t go for a nuke.

  Noted.

  Oh, and you were supposed to practice with Words of Power only after you’re at least 16 to ensure you had enough reserve to not get killed by a simple spellwork.

  Moving on, I chanced on a different, but painfully simple concept in the second chapter, and three practical Rune examples written below it, which made me pause.

  It was called a trigger.

  They used physical triggers for the practical runes, unlike me who so cleverly tried to turn magical leathers into time bombs.

  Take this Soft Anchor as an example.

  It was a Grade 1 Rune that basically anchored things to your person with a touch. Inscribed into a strip of magical leather thin enough to wrap around one’s finger like a ring, it manipulated air to create a suction force between the palm and the object to manage a temporary adhesion effect.

  The full prompt of the rune was simple, yet detailed enough.

  "Fix me to what I touch until I blink when I press my index finger into my palm.”

  Another Grade 1 Rune, namely the Soft Muffle, was one that I found particularly useful in a mansion surrounded by unwanted ears or in a strange forest full of creatures. It muffled the voice by disturbing the air wave structure around the mouth, triggered by a two-finger pinch gesture.

  I liked the sequence of words, as well. They were kind of dramatic.

  "Blur the air around my voice for the words of a breath when I pinch two of my fingers."

  Ultimately, though, the examples didn’t mean much. By working the same logic, I could come up with my own little runes. The only thing I had to watch out for was the consumption of my soul energy, and the resources available at hand. If I were in a world where air barely existed, then the use of a Soft Anchor or Soft Muffle would probably be enough to kill me.

  It was with a pang of excitement that I decided to give these simple runes a try. The more complicated ones that popped into my mind right away would have to wait since I didn’t want to make a mess here in this hollow and leave myself vulnerable against the beasts.

  ……..

  My back prickled when a rattling sound echoed across the forest right after I was done wrapping my third practical rune on my left middle finger, one that I’d decided to call General Muffle, which was definitely a good name.

  Shortly after, it sounded like a branch tore itself from the middle and crashed down to the ground. Then came the steps bounding across the dirt, crunching on wood, stomping on bushes, but that wasn’t the part that sent my heart thumping in my chest. No, whoever was out there this close to the dawn, they were coming straight toward me because the sounds kept rising.

  I clasped Beatrice’s leathery grip with my right hand, activating soul vision as I peeked out from the hollow just enough to see about the distance. Night vision was one of the things I’d initially planned on trying, but ultimately ditched since it had a broad effect that could be dangerous. Even the Grade 1 General Muffle rune, which dampened the sound of my movements, worked only for a limited time and consumed an ungodly amount of soul energy.

  No wonder they wanted the budding Runemasters to practice Words of Power after they were adults. Even a Grade 1 Practical Rune was a bastard to feed.

  I perked my ears and waited as the steps quickened. I couldn’t work out a number, but it was clear there was a group, and they weren’t in a good state. An occasional panicked shout travelled far across the forest and announced their presence to every member of the local life.

  That wasn’t very clever of them. The first rule of hunt was to proceed with silence. Even when you were on the run from a particularly angry beast, it was better to manage as silent an escape as possible to not give your hunter ample opportunities to spot your exact location.

  This group seemed painfully lacking in that compartment.

  I peered forward and beyond the river banks. Crossing the river was not an option as I didn’t yet feel ready to have myself an ice-cold shower. Going left would bring me face to face with the fast-approaching group, and going right—

  I caught three bronze hues glowing in the distance, spread wide and waiting in silent discipline.

  The shapes were hard to distinguish, but I could just about make out the thorny spikes jutting out of their backs. There was only a single creature in this forest that matched the description.

  Spikeback Lizards.

  They were blood-sucking creatures that usually hunted in groups of six, with half of them luring the victims into an already prepared ambush.

  My instincts screamed at me to run. I didn’t like this at all. I didn’t want anything to do with this. There were just too many variables at play here, but I couldn’t just let those poor people run into their own deaths, as well.

  So I walked out and prepared to welcome the group with my open arms.

  I might have exaggerated myself and forgotten that even though I was a Bronze Knight and a Runemaster both, I looked like a ten, at best eleven-year-old kid.

  That didn’t quite fit with what I thought would be my heroic act of saving the desperate from their fates.

  The instant the group laid eyes on me, the man at the front let out a creative curse and grabbed my hand like he’d found his lost son. Before I could so much as blink, I was hoisted onto a younger guy’s back, the world tilting as we broke into a dead sprint. Wind slapped my hair all over the place, my bag slamming repeatedly against my ribs, and Beatrice nearly slipping from my grasp.

  ……

  They say it's fixed now. We got the power back. Hopefully, things will remain... as they are, now.

  Back to our schedule, friends. And again, sorry for the sudden silence.

  WE move!