When I opened my eyes again, I was draped across Uncle Philip's lap. He was sitting on the ground, cradling my head in his hands like I was some fragile heirloom that had just shortncircuited.
"Ugh," I groaned, trying to sit up, only to be slammed back down by a white hot headache.
What the hell was that?
"Congratulations," Mnex chirped. "You just flushed your entire mana pool down the cosmic toilet with a single spell. Honestly, it's a miracle you didn't explode."
How touching.
"Henry," Uncle Philip added with a grin, "the theory part? Not bad. But the practical side? Well, it's painfully obvious you have no idea what you're doing."
"I didn't use all my mana," I mumbled defensively, aiming to satisfy both of them at once.
"No," Uncle Philip replied, "maybe not. But you forgot something crucial. Every single stage of spellcasting drains mana when you visualize it, when you pull it from your mind world, when you shape it, when you activate it. Every. Single. Step."
Oh. That... would've been nice to know beforehand.
"I didn't realize," I admitted, scratching my head. "But then, how do mages even fight in wars? How do they manage their mana?"
Uncle Philip burst out laughing. His voice echoed across the empty field, like the universe itself had joined in mocking me.
"Fight?" he said, wiping away a tear. "Mages don't fight. Not really. There have been a few warlocks here and there, sure but in all of recorded history, maybe twenty. Thirty tops. Across the entire continent."
Wait. What?
"If mages don't fight... then what do they even do?" I asked, my eyes practically falling out of my face.
"Farming. Alchemy. Inventions. Engineering," he answered casually, like listing grocery items.
"What are you people, then? HUH?!" I grabbed him by the collar with my tiny hands and shook him while he laughed.
"If your mana capacity is ridiculously high, sure, you might be useful in combat. But even then? You're looking at maybe five enemies if none of them know Resolve. Otherwise, you'd better be a warlock."
"So what, you're telling me you cast one spell, take out five dudes, and then need a nap?"
"Oh, Henry." He laughed again, genuinely amused. "Have you ever seen a mage tossing fireballs on a battlefield?"
Aside from my grandfather and Uncle Philip, I hadn't seen a single mage in my life. No. I shook my head.
"I don't know what fantasy you've built in that head of yours, but every mage has a hard limit. And we call that limit 'mana.' That's why most of us stay miles away from battlefields and focus on what we're actually good at, creating, improving, thinking, exploring."
"Sounds less like mages and more like overworked philosophers," Mnex muttered. "Still checks out."
"But I don't see magical inventions in daily life," I pointed out, stating the obvious.
"That's because they're expensive," Philip replied. "Normal folks can't afford them. But if you ever make it to Tharowen's capital, you'll see them everywhere. Or..." He paused and grinned, "maybe you'll come to Stonehalls and see them at the source." He even winked.
By now, the headache had faded and we were walking across the fields, well, he was walking and transform the remaining toxic mana. I was just watching, with my mana reserves running on fumes.
"What's Stonehalls like?" I asked, watching him scrape away another patch of toxic soil.
"It's two, maybe three times the size of Godfrey's Cross. At the center stands this massive obsidian rectangle. No windows. Two floors above ground, four below. That's where we keep our scrolls and books."
A library, I thought.
"It's both a library and our central hub. Beyond that, you've got classrooms, forges, labs... and four buildings, each tied to a different Path."
"The what now?" I asked, raising a brow.
"Stonehalls has four major Paths students can take," he explained. "Kind of like Houses, but not as theatrical."
He laid them out. Every student could choose one or more of these Paths to attend lectures and trainings.
The Path of the Forge, Verdance, Aegis, and Vitalis.
It made sense once he broke it down. Each Path represented a different way of seeing and shaping magic because no two mind worlds looked the same. Not everyone could bend fire with poetry or move earth by clenching their buttcheeks. Some needed a different lens entirely.
He glanced sideways at me. "So, what exactly were you expecting?"
"I don't know," I muttered. "A talking hat? Secret duels by candlelight? Bitter rivalries, blood oaths, the whole nine yards."
He laughed so hard he slapped his knee. "Oh, Henry. That imagination of yours is a national treasure. But you're not completely wrong, we do have duels. They're just... less stabby."
"Alright then, how many mages are there in the Stonehalls?" I asked.
"This year? 1,753. That's the total number of enrolled mages across the entire continent."
What.
"But I heard there's a magic tower in Vanceburg."
"There are magic towers in most major cities," he said. "High ranking nobles are more than willing to throw solmars at anyone with magical training, especially graduates from Stonehalls or mages who've unlocked their mind world. The biggest cluster I've seen is in the eastern capital of the Naan Kingdom. Last I heard, they had... sixty seven mages."
Sixty seven? That's it?
I frowned. "So if you're making magical items and tools… what kind of stuff are we talking about? And how do you even make them?"
I didn't know why, but I was getting irritated. Something about Uncle Philip's calm explanations made it feel like all mages just lounged around in bathrobes, sipping wine and calling it a career.
"Runes, Henry," he said with a smile. "Everything starts with runes."
Runes? You mean those weird squiggles that look like ancient keyboard spam?
Maybe mages weren't completely useless after all.
"They probably know less than hobbyist engineers," Mnex grumbled.
Uncle Philip continued, "Runes are used to strengthen walls, reinforce armor... we can do nearly anything. And if you ever come to Stonehalls, you'll be learning about them in your first year." He winked again. I was really starting to think this man was on payroll.
"You mentioned farming earlier," I said. "Can runes help there too?"
"Absolutely. There are tools that till the soil, melt frozen ground, you name it."
"Then why aren't these tools being mass produced? Wouldn't they help everyone?"
"Because even the most skilled mage needs a whole day to inscribe a single rune," he said, crouching to draw one in the dirt. "And inscribing one isn't like writing a letter. You have to replicate the same symbol in your mind world simultaneously. And that burns mana. A lot of mana."
Wait a second.
Mnex? Wouldn't this whole thing be... easier for us?
"Hah! There it is. That familiar glint in your eye the classic how can I cheat the system look. You get one clever idea and immediately try to speedrun the laws of magic."
Sure, but come on. Realistically speaking, couldn't we?
I felt a grin spread across my face.
If we could truly master the rune system, the possibilities would be endless.
"Yes," Mnex said, thoughtful for once. "From what I understand, if we learn this system properly, it should be child's play for us. Most mages waste half their mana because they struggle to simulate the mental and physical rune at the same time. But in your case? You've got me."
That was it. I couldn't hold it in anymore.
"Uncle Philip?" I said, trying to sound casual. "I've got a couple ideas I want to try. Can you show me a few basic runes?"
He laughed. "Henry, don't you think it's a bit unethical to beg your own uncle for free magical education?"
I raised an eyebrow. "Didn't I just revolutionize your farming system? What, you thought that was free?"
I threw in a wink for good measure.
We spent the rest of the day walking the fields. Well, Uncle Philip did the work. I just tagged along and talked, my mana was still bone dry. Even with all his effort, it looked like the land wouldn't be fully transform for several more days.
By sunset, we headed back to the mansion. In my room, Uncle Philip spread out several sheets of paper and began sketching symbols on each one with care and precision.
"When you draw these runes in your mind world," he said, "you need to only channel mana into the one in your mind. If even a sliver of it touches the one in the real world? It's a dud. And even if you do everything right, sometimes the rune just refuses to work. There are students who go through four years at Stonehalls and never get a single functioning one."
I asked the obvious question.
"So... if I don't channel mana into the one in the real world, where does that version get its energy from?"
"From everywhere," he said simply. "Mana is all around us. If you feed a rune with your own pool, it'll only work as long as you keep supplying it. But if you successfully cast the rune in both realms at once, mental and physical, it links up with ambient mana. The rune starts drawing energy straight from the environment."
That was... incredibly useful.
Mnex? Does that mean if we created our own symbol, we could invent a new rune?
"I mean... I doubt it. If it were that easy, the world would be drowning in useless NFT-tier runes by now."
Fair point.
"So how many have been discovered so far?" I asked.
"Six," Philip said, glancing around my room. "And I've drawn all of them for you. They're right there."
"Wait, when you say discovered..."
He didn't answer right away. His eyes roamed the room like a bloodhound catching a scent. Then they locked onto a rolled up scroll in the corner, Mnex's sewer system designs. He grabbed them, unrolled them like they were treasure maps, and began scanning them with alarming intensity.
I repeated, slower this time, "When you say discovered...?"
"This part's more history than magic, but... down south, there's an ancient city buried inside a mountain. No one knows how old it is. Could be a thousand years. Could be two. Maybe even older. Most of it crumbled with time, except for a single parchment. That parchment had these runes on it."
He let out a low whistle, like the memory still impressed him.
"People didn't know what they were looking at. Not until about three generations ago, when a professor at Stonehalls finally managed to decipher a few of the symbols. Even now, we barely understand them. But that's how modern rune crafting started. From that one lucky find."
A lost city inside a mountain… covered in ancient runes?
That sounded weirdly familiar.
"Bingo. Dwarves. They found your family tree," Mnex said, snickering.
"We don't actually know what the runes were originally called, Pull, Push, Bind, Seal, Stabilize, Flow... those are just names we gave them. I've drawn each one out. You can study them. But fair warning, anything beyond two rune combos? Doesn't work."
I scratched my head. "If the parchment wasn't fully translated, how did anyone figure out what the runes actually do?"
"Because the parchment itself was brimming with mana," he explained. "That's probably why it survived so long in the first place. It wasn't exactly straightforward reverse engineering, but over time, we pieced things together. That's why rune magic is still considered relatively new, it's only been in practical use for the last fifty years or so."
"So… still early tech."
"Congrats, Sherlock."
"And people still treat it like it's ancient history. Funny, isn't it?"
Then Uncle Philip turned to leave, still holding Mnex's sewer plans. I yanked them out of his hands, shoved him out of my room, and slammed the door behind him.
I could still hear him laughing through the wood.
"Henry, just so you know, those locks are laughably easy to pick."
His laughter echoed down the hallway.
What a knowledge glutton.
That evening, I sat under candlelight, surrounded by sheets of paper, deep in study.
"I think this is a full blown system," Mnex said.
What do you mean?
"Look at these formations. If Philip copied them correctly, I think triple or even quadruple combinations should be possible."
Testing the theory with Mnex's help was easy. We nailed the basic two rune combos on the first try.
But every time we attempted a triple or quadruple combination, it failed.
Not just fizzled, failed. No feedback, no resistance, just dead silence from the system. It was like trying to light a candle underwater.
But based on Mnex's analysis, they should have worked.
"Maybe we're missing something obvious..." he muttered.
The sky outside had faded to twilight, and I could barely feel my fingers anymore. My mana was long gone, and every breath felt like lifting weights. My eyelids dropped lower and lower, until I finally rested my head on the desk, just for a seco…
"Sweet dreams, my little disaster." Mnex whispered.
Darkness.