Renard was the first to break the silence in the command hall. His grin returned, ever the joker, as he leaned back with a crooked smile. "Well, with this ink trick of yours, boy, maybe half of us will live long enough to drink after the next wave."
Scarlett shot him a withering glare, her ice-blue eyes flashing with irritation. "This isn't the time for your shitty jokes, Renard."
"The A-rank beast will reach the shore in a few hours," she continued, "When it does, the next wave will come with it. We don't have the luxury to waste time."
Her gaze fixed on Adrian. "If you insist on staying, Adrian, then use that ink. Start doing inscriptions."
"We need advanced runes, ones even the weakest Defender can use." The weight of command pressed into every word.
Adrian and Dorian exchanged a glance, understanding passing between them without speech. They hurried back to the Rune Division's head hall.
The old man wasted no time, dragging a heavy chest onto the central desk. Metal scraped against stone as he hauled it into position.
When the lock snapped open with a sharp click, a massive ink container was revealed. Dark fluid rippled within.
"This," Dorian rasped, gesturing at the container, "will anchor thousands of inscriptions." His weathered hands traced the container's edge with reverence.
"But the inscribers we have are exhausted, and most can only etch the basics." His sharp eyes cut toward Adrian. "For advanced runes that can turn the tide? It's just us."
Adrian pressed his hand over the container's cold metal lid. The white-grey mist of his pseudo-manifestation seeped through the gaps, coiling into the dark fluid below.
The ink stirred, responding to his touch like a living thing. Its color shifted to luminous white-grey, the surface shimmering faintly with inner light.
The drain on his mana was sharp, heavier than before. But compared to his vast reserves, it was nothing more than a sting.
Dorian's instructions followed fast, his voice urgent with battlefield necessity. "No offense, boy, but forget attack runes. We don't need more fireballs or thunder."
"We need runes that keep people alive." His gnarled finger tapped the desk emphatically. "Survival first."
He sat down at his station, already scrawling the first sequences of a healing rune. His quill moved with practiced precision across the parchment.
Adrian took a nearby desk, staring at the blank parchment before him. The weight of responsibility settled on his shoulders like a mantle.
What could he inscribe that would guarantee life? Healing runes could mend wounds, but only when defenders escaped actual danger.
Firepower wouldn't matter if soldiers were already bleeding out on the ground. His mind raced through possibilities, each more complex than the last.
Spatial blink! That was something he used himself to save others. If the defenders had it, they could escape lethal dangers at critical moments.
But space-based runes were legendary ones, requiring extensive time to inscribe. Even Dorian was simply creating healing runes, knowing legendary inscriptions would take too long.
They were limited by time here, with death approaching on every wave. He need something that he could do faster.
"No, rather, what could increase my speed of inscribing?"
He had studied two volumes of the Language of Mana, devoured knowledge from battlefields, and even from A-rank themselves. Each time his understanding grew, his inscription speed increased alongside his power.
"Master Dorian," Adrian said abruptly, "Do you have access to the third volume?"
The Rune Master's quill halted mid-stroke. His eyes narrowed, weighing the boy in loaded silence.
Normally, even the whisper of such a request would be denied outright. But after what Adrian had already accomplished, what point was there in refusing?
Dorian flicked his smart device, sending the file. "Don't make me regret this, boy."
Adrian didn't answer. He opened the text immediately, the holographic script rising across his device.
The Source stirred the moment he saw it. Symbols, once cryptic, unfolded like familiar words. His mind devoured them whole.
Unlike the first two volumes, this one was different. It didn't speak of fundamentals or simple elements. It was filled with secrets. Concepts that touched the edges of myth, space, gravity, death, life… even time.
Adrian read. His Source translated, illuminated, consumed. In thirty minutes, he had absorbed what would take a lifetime for others.
To Dorian, who occasionally glanced over, the boy looked like a fool squandering precious time. But Adrian's world had already changed.
"Boy, we don't have all day," Dorian muttered without looking up. "That Leviathan won't wait for your reading session."
The concepts of gravity deepened, space sharpened, life and death whispered truths into his bones. And time…
He no longer saw runes as tools. He saw the architecture of reality. Compared to the boy who sat down half an hour ago, he felt like a god gazing upon a child's scribbles.
He didn't understand everything, the volume and language of mana itself was incomplete, but fragments were enough. Enough to reshape him.
The power surged through him, an understanding not just of glyphs but of what they represented. He reached instinctively for time itself, which he needed the most now.
If others studied it, they might someday carve a rune to mimic the concept, if they had the affinity. But Adrian's Source broke that wall. And with it, he started to shape a spell, not just a rune.
He began with the impossible, reversing time. His reserves screamed in protest, the spell collapsing before it formed. He scaled down, adjusting, molding.
Slowing time? No, too wasteful. He flipped the perspective. He wouldn't slow the world. Rather, he would accelerate himself.
Tests followed, each burning mana faster than a battlefield siege. Tenfold acceleration shattered even his reserves in seconds.
Fourfold bled him dry. But threefold… threefold was perfect. The balance struck, the flow sustained.
His mana drained but replenished in equal measure, a perfect cycle. He could hold it indefinitely.
Adrian whispered the spell name as he created it, sealing the spell into existence.
[Temporal Veil].
Golden threads shimmered across his skin, weaving into an aura that pulsed like a heartbeat. Then, with a surge, the world slowed around him.
No, he became faster.
Dorian's movements became sluggish, his every gesture dragged by invisible resistance. The distant flicker of torches bent into long ribbons.
Even the drip of ink from a scribe's pen seemed to freeze in midair.
Only Adrian remained untouched. No, not untouched. Exalted. The world had slowed threefold, but for him, life rushed forward.
Adrian moved freely within it, each motion smooth, thought sharp, body light.
His breath hitched. This wasn't illusion. This was time itself, bent and twisted to his pace.
He clenched his fist, the golden aura flaring. For the first time, he felt it, time not as an enemy, but as a tool.
He had stepped beyond runes, beyond scrolls, beyond the limits of human affinity. He had carved a path into the forbidden domain of time.