Back in the inscription hall, the atmosphere was relentless. The scratch of quills, the hiss of mana ink, the endless shuffle of parchment. Every scribe knew the next wave was coming.
Adrian sat at his desk but did not move. His hand hovered over the ink, but his mind turned elsewhere.
Affinity-bound.
If he could break that chain… humanity would change forever.
First, his thoughts drifted back to the healing he had done earlier. He'd never managed to heal someone like that before.
He realized why. The scale of this battle far exceeded anything before. Even A-rank Defenders fought openly, their affinities blazing.
His Source had absorbed it all, analyzing, deepening his comprehension. Especially space and water, Renard and Scarlett's very presence had bled into him.
It explained his growth. His healing came from this. Now, he also felt his mana reservoir, it felt more vast than before.
By his measure, he could probably stand against a B-rank monster now. But that wasn't enough. Even if he could fight a B-rank monster now, that was just one more body in the tide. That wouldn't save the masses.
Runes might.
...
He thought deeply. Advanced runes were affinity-bound.
His Source allowed him to cheat, converting his mana into any form. But only he had the Source. That path was a dead end for humanity.
Still, it proved a possibility.
Then his gaze fell on the basic scrolls, stacks of barrier, light, and heat. Basic, crude, but universal. Why could anyone use those? Heat was fire. Storage was space.
By all logic, they should still be affinity-bound. And yet, even a D-rank defender with no fire affinity could light a torch with a heat rune.
The professors had explained it vaguely back at the HQ: "The Language of Mana's symbol takes care of it." But that explanation had always been hand-waving. Now, Adrian wanted the truth.
"Liora," he called softly. "Could you pass me a storage scroll?"
She glanced up from her own work, "Planning to store something?"
"Just curious about the mechanism." Adrian accepted the parchment, studying its simple symbols.
She explained that only rune masters with spatial affinity could inscribe them.
It had simple function, inject mana, and it would open a pocket of space, store items. The space would be attached to the scroll.
Later, destroy the scroll to retrieve everything. One-time use. Crude, but useful.
He didn't care about function. What mattered was why anyone could use it.
He lit his pseudo manifestation, white-grey mist wreathing his eyes. Pushed raw mana into basic scrolls one by one. Light. Barrier. Heat. Storage.
He saw it. A pattern.
The rune symbol didn't just wait for affinity, it adapted the mana. Raw mana flowed in, and the rune bent it, ever so slightly, to fit the affinity it needed.
His breath caught. That was the secret. The professors were right, the symbol did take care of it.
Then he tested with a Gravity Snare scroll. Pushed in raw mana, eyes tracking every thread. The rune symbol tried to adapt it… but the conversion was too shallow, too thin. A spark of gravity flared, but not enough to activate the full symbol.
"Damn," he whispered.
"Something wrong?" Mira looked over from her station nearby.
"Just testing a theory." Adrian set the scroll down, frustration building.
So that was why basic runes worked.
Basic runes worked because the Language of Mana could bend raw energy slightly, just enough to trigger a simple universal effect. Advanced runes demanded full transformation. Without an affinity, the conversion collapsed.
How did the language of mana do this?
He could see the process but not explain it. Trying to find it from the Language of Mana itself was like staring at the ocean's surface, knowing the real answers from it was Impossible for the current him.
He needed to find another way.
He leaned back, chair creaking. He hit another dead end.
He suddenly thought of someone! Rune Master Dorian! Maybe he could get some inspiration from him.
Adrian rose and made his way into the Rune Division's head hall.
Master Dorian Veylan sat hunched over a desk, quill scratching fast as his hand moved across parchment. He was inscribing advanced runes, symbols complex enough to glow faintly even before activation.
These weren't for the common defenders, they were custom tools for B and A-rank Defenders, emergency scrolls matched to their affinities.
Few noticed them in the chaos of battle, but they had already saved lives in the last wave.
Adrian stopped a respectful distance away, not wanting to intrude. He watched for a moment, studying the older man's hand, precise, fluid, confident.
After some time, Dorian's gravelly voice broke the silence without looking up. "You've been standing there too long. Speak, boy."
Adrian inclined his head slightly. "I didn't want to interrupt your work."
"Work never ends here." Dorian's quill moved without pause. "If I stopped for every wide-eyed defender, the wall would have fallen years ago. Out with it. What do you want?"
Adrian drew a breath. "I've been studying the basic runes. They work for anyone because the rune bends raw mana slightly, enough to trigger a shallow effect. But advanced runes fail. The adaptation isn't strong enough."
Dorian's quill did not pause. "That's the first lesson every apprentice learns. What of it?"
Adrian pressed on. "If there's even a trace of adaptation in the symbols, doesn't that mean the Language of Mana has the capacity for more? Shouldn't it be possible to extend that principle? To make advanced runes universal?"
At that, Dorian finally looked up. His eyes studied Adrian. For a moment, the only sound was the faint crackle of glowing ink drying on parchment.
"You speak like a man chasing ghosts," Dorian said at last. "Do you know how many inscribers have tried? Entire lifetimes wasted, scrolls piled like mountains, blood spilled over ink and theory. The answer was always the same. Dead ends."
Adrian didn't flinch. "Maybe they all stopped too soon."
Dorian's mouth twitched, something between amusement and irritation. "Arrogant. You sound like I did once."
He leaned back slightly, quill resting in his fingers. The ink glistened darkly at its tip, still wet from his last stroke.
"Listen well, boy. The basics bend because they are shallow. Advanced runes demand depth. They require resonance, affinity, precision. Without it, the symbol collapses."
"I know that," Adrian said quickly. "But if the Language of Mana can bend, even shallowly, then that means the principle exists. The framework is there. We just haven't learned how to push it further."
For a long moment, Dorian was silent. His eyes grew distant, memories flickering behind them. His own youth, late nights spent chasing the same dream, quills worn down to nubs, stacks of failed parchments.
He had thought the same once, that he might break the rule. But he had failed in the end.
Maybe that was why he considered answering at all.
He flicked a finger, tracing a rune in the air. The strokes glowed brilliantly for a moment, then unraveled into nothing like smoke.
"You've seen this before," Dorian said. "Air teaching. It purely uses our mana and works… if you are flawless, if you trigger it instantly. But hesitate for even a breath, and it unravels. Why?"
Adrian frowned, watching the last wisps of light fade. "Because there's nothing to hold it."
"Exactly." Dorian dipped his quill again, black-gold ink glistening as it met parchment. The sound was precise, deliberate.
"When I was young, I obsessed over this. Think about it, air teaching must have been the first form of rune-writing. Whoever first learned the Language, they would have used their own mana to draw in air."
He glanced at Adrian, gauging his reaction. The boy's eyes had sharpened, following every word.
"But how could they pass it on? How could common people ever use it? Doesn't that sound familiar to the problem you're gnawing at now?"
Adrian's pulse quickened. His breath caught as understanding began to dawn.
"We think breaking this rule is impossible," Dorian continued. His voice carried the weight of years, of countless failures. "But don't you think that first inscriber once thought the same? That air writing was the only way?"
"And yet, someone, or perhaps generations, discovered a way to inscribe runes into mediums. Ink. Parchment. Stone. Walls. They made the impossible possible."
He leaned forward, quill hovering just above the parchment.
"That lesson cost me years to accept. If those before us had only stared at the Language itself, inscription would never exist today."
Dorian began writing again, as though the matter were already closed.
"Don't waste your youth chasing answers in the Language alone. If you want to break the impossible, you'll need to think outside the box, just like how they created the mediums. That's the only advice I could give you."
The quill scratched steadily once more. Dorian's attention was gone, buried back in his work.
Adrian stood in silence, Dorian's words ringing in his skull. The hall continued its frantic pace around him, but he felt removed from it all.
"Not just the Language."
His thoughts burned. He had hit a dead end with language, but maybe that was the wrong place to look all along.
For the first time, Adrian began to turn his mind outward, to possibilities beyond the runes themselves. Maybe the answer wasn't in the writing.
Maybe it was in what held the writing.