The weight of the earth pressed down on Kael. Forty feet of solid rock sealed him away from the sky. His mana gates filtered the stale air and fed his blood with oxygen.
Yet his mind rejected the confinement. Breath came easily, but the instinct to flee clawed at him. The silence pressed against his ears until it felt dense enough to bruise.
Even his thoughts sounded too loud in the narrow space. Two days had passed in this self-made tomb. During that time, he had extracted the runes from the stone monkeys with surgical care.
Each pattern had been refined through relentless focus. He scraped them clean of error and excess until only perfection remained. Now those perfected runes hovered in his memory, sharp and waiting.
He refused to etch them into his mindscape. His soul could only bear so many permanent inscriptions.
These were utility runes, powerful but not worthy of that final space. They would remain external for now. The isolation gnawed at him in a way solitude never had before.
He was accustomed to being alone, but this was different. This was absence. A void where even the passage of time felt uncertain.
If he did not focus, the darkness would finish what the stone had begun. Kael raised his hand and traced the rune for shaping through the air. Turquoise mana bled from his fingers and washed over the jagged walls.
He felt the familiar pull as his energy synchronized with the stone. Resistance softened. The rock yielded, its rigid structure loosening until it resembled wet clay.
He pushed his intent into the wall, carving out a simple shelf. The result was ugly. One side sagged under its own weight while the other bulged thick and misshapen.
Ridges scarred the surface where his control had slipped. The angles refused to line up no matter how he adjusted them. Kael stared at the mess with a tight jaw.
Power is not a substitute for skill, he muttered. I can command the mountain to move, but I cannot tell it how to look. Mana must be partitioned with the care of a master artisan.
He placed his palm against the stone and closed his eyes. If I cannot carve a straight line in granite, how will I ever weave runes into living marrow. I must learn the grain of the world.
Pressure, then release. If he rushed, the stone cracked. If he hesitated, it hardened before the work was complete.
This was the boundary between a common mage and a true craftsman. Kael exhaled slowly. I will not be common.
I will not fall to my own lack of discipline. He worked for hours in a fevered rhythm of creation and destruction. Shelves, cubes, and spheres rose from the wall only to collapse back into it moments later.
His fingers ached from phantom pressure. Nerves screamed even though his skin never touched the stone. Every failure revealed a new weakness in his control.
Frustration built with every attempt. No matter how smoothly mana flowed, the edges remained jagged. The dream of shaping fortresses felt distant, almost childish.
Potential meant nothing without mastery. If he could not command inert rock, flesh would be impossible. Stone was forgiving, but flesh was not.
One mistake there would not mean a crooked shelf. It would mean death. He closed his eyes and began again.
Failure followed failure until doubt crept in. The rune itself felt wrong in his hands, despite its perfection. He turned inward and reviewed the memories he had taken from the stone monkeys.
Even their young shaped stone with instinctive grace. When he examined those memories closely, he felt the absence of something fundamental. Not power. Not knowledge.
Structure. The array tablet had declared the shaping rune perfect. He had not consulted the Compendium earlier, unwilling to spend precious points.
Now, anger pushed him past that hesitation. Kael focused on the interface within his mind. Compendium, analyze the rune and confirm its integrity.
A blue light flickered across his vision.
[Query Initiated: Analyzing rune integrity. Cost 10 CP.]
The response followed almost instantly.
[Result: Analyzed rune is stable and perfected without any flaws.]
Kael let out a sharp sound that echoed off the stone. His fist struck the wall, pain flaring up his arm.
Then why does it fail in my hands. The interface pulsed again.
[The analyzed rune does not adhere to any structure as the host removed structural limitations during the refinement process.]
Kael froze. Understanding settled with a cold weight. He had stripped the rune bare because the tablet had marked those limits as imperfections.
In chasing purity, he had erased the framework that gave the rune form. He cast the old version to test the realization. The mana flow felt crude and narrow, constrained by rigid boundaries.
Yet the stone obeyed cleanly. The affected area was small, but the result was precise. The flaw was not power.
It was application. His thoughts returned to the monkeys. The juveniles never worked alone.
Each performed a single role in a shared process. Only the elder completed the full sequence himself. Kael was not an elder. Not yet.
One monkey softened the stone. Another extracted impurities. The third compacted it into its final state.
Three actions. One result. He paused, then extended both hands.
The shaping rune formed in one palm. The compaction rune glowed in the other. Mana streamed between them, weaving in the space before him.
The stone responded more cleanly this time. The surface smoothed, edges aligning with far less resistance. Still, imperfections remained within.
Kael clenched his teeth. The extraction rune was missing. These were not separate magics.
They were fragments of a single whole. He had never cast three runes simultaneously. His usual reliance on gestures would not suffice.
Control had to come from intent alone. The next hours bled together. Again and again, he failed.
Again and again, he adjusted. Sweat dampened his clothes as concentration pushed him to the edge of collapse. Finally, something clicked.
He cast the shaping rune first, loosening the stone into pliable mass. Then the extraction rune flared, ripping every discordant fragment free. Chunks of waste clattered to the cave floor.
Last came compaction. Mana poured in as the softened stone folded in on itself. Layers compressed and voids collapsed.
Kael held his focus with trembling resolve. When it ended, he staggered back. The wall gleamed.
The stone had transformed into a deep blackish brown. It was smooth as polished marble and radiated density. Kael reached out and attempted to phase through it.
The stone rejected him. The same resistance he had felt from the vault walls surged back, solid and absolute. He cast a spike spell in disbelief.
The spell shattered on impact. No mark remained. Heart pounding, Kael cast the shaping rune once more.
Nothing happened. Relief washed through him, chased quickly by fear. He had not altered the entire cave.
If he had, he would have sealed himself inside a prison of his own making. A tomb shaped by his own hands. Now that he had the first success, he needed greater control.
He carefully removed a stone block from the unaffected wall. An idea had been revolving in his head since he attained the array tablet. He did not want to inscribe these runes in his mindscape.
Perhaps he could make the casting effortless by using a physical medium. He recalled what little knowledge he could glean from the academy. He recalled the stone dwelling array built with the Compendium.
He saw how the beast core was infused and merged with the array. This granted it artifact properties rather than remaining an inert item. Kael reached out to the system.
Compendium, give me the runes flexible for any mana type.
[Query Initiated: Runic array neutralized for every mana type. Cost 50 CP. Balance 30 CP.]
Kael observed the changes the Compendium imposed on the runes.
He wanted to test the effects of these neutralized patterns. He used the shaping rune on the extracted block and began to cast. The stone became malleable, allowing him to extract a smaller block.
He pulled out every impurity his mana sight could detect. Then he started to compact the stone with all his focus. When he finished, a stone tablet sat before him.
It had gained the shining color of blue marble. Kael attempted to infuse mana into the new tablet. He was shocked to find it deflected his energy.
Even his own power could not penetrate the stone. It could be used as armor, but the material was too rigid. It would likely hinder the mana flow of the user.
If this stone could not be enchanted, it only provided basic protection. Kael needed more experiments. If this material could create artifacts, his survivability would increase.
He took another stone slab and removed every trace of dross. He did not compact it this time. Instead, he infused mana while the stone was still malleable.
The stone accepted the energy, but the strain was immense. His concentration reached its limit and he lost control. A misshapen chunk of stone hit the floor.
It glowed with shimmering veins of mana throughout its surface. Kael ignored the tremor in his hands. He reached down and retrieved the glowing failure.
The stone felt warm, but when he infused it, blockages appeared. He knew this piece was useless. However, the experiment proved that mana could be infused into the stone.
He looked at the failure with his mana sight. It was a mess of internal contradictions. One section had hardened into blue marble while another remained brittle.
The shimmering veins of mana pulsed like a dying heart. Kael calmed his mind before starting again. While the stone was malleable, he began the infusion.
He used the method Lyon showed him. He created a nucleus of mana in the center to form a mana core. He kept infusing energy into this central point.
The concentrated mana began to flood out and saturate the stone fully. This method was slow and excruciating. He knew he had to take it slow to infuse every bit of the block.
After some time, the whole stone glowed. Mana suffused every nook and cranny. Kael then started to compact the stone.
He did not let it happen naturally. He was carving an array while slowly compacting the material. His head ached from the work, but he could feel it functioning as intended.
After he fully carved the array, he compacted the stone into a ring. When he finished, his body staggered and he fell to his knees. Kael closed his eyes and let his body gain equilibrium.
When he could stand again, he picked up the ring. It was blackish stone with brown runes glimmering throughout. Kael picked up the ring and put it on his finger.
It was a little loose, but that did not matter. He infused his mana into the ring. It accepted the energy smoothly as if he were channeling into a perfect rune.
Once fully infused, the stone around him became malleable once again. Kael had successfully inscribed his perfect runes into the ring. It created the same effect as if he had inscribed it in his mindscape.
Kael could feel that this rune would halve his concentration needs. He had created an artifact with nothing but stone. Kael felt a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
He had manufactured the base for a true artifact from common dirt. He did not stop there. After some rest, he created the rings for extraction and compacting too.
He had finally created the tools he needed. The three rings sat upon his fingers, their surfaces absorbing the turquoise light. They were more than simple accessories.
They were an externalized mindscape. By shifting the runic burden to the stones, he freed his consciousness for higher functions. He stood in the center of the cramped chamber and raised his hands.
The three artifacts hummed in unison. The shaping ring softened the far wall, turning granite into fluid mass. Immediately, the extraction ring flared with a cold light.
It drew out the impurities in a stream of gray dust. Finally, the compaction ring pulsed. The wall did not just harden; it transformed into blue marble.
The process took seconds where it had once taken hours of labor. Kael felt a surge of cold triumph. He was no longer a man struggling with the elements.
He was an architect of the deep. He focused his will on the ceiling above him. The earth parted with a grace that felt almost holy.
He began to ascend, the rings guiding the stone in a rhythmic dance. He rose through the dark layers like a bubble in water. The pressure of the earth no longer felt heavy.
When his head finally broke the surface, the cool night air hit his face. He climbed onto the forest floor and looked back at the hole. With a single thought, the compaction ring pulsed.
The earth collapsed back in on itself, sealing the entrance perfectly. He was a ghost in the woods. Kael looked at the dark rings glinting under the moon.
He had the power to shape the world, but his CP balance was low. He needed to hunt. He needed essence to fuel his growing ambitions.
He adjusted the rings and stepped into the shadows. Every stone beneath his feet was now a potential weapon. He could feel Echo awakening from her advancement and he needed to hunt more CPs. Kael phased through the earth and started travelling towards the cave monkey use to extract their metallic ores.
It is time to hunt the monkeys and practice his newly learned runes with flesh mana.