Chapter 223: The Connection Between Elemental Runes
After bidding farewell to Nicolas and leaving the ship, Leonardo continued his search for Norwegian Ridgeback habitats.
High above, in the wind and snow.
Leonardo sat on Norbert's broad back, looking down at his right hand. A new pattern had appeared on the pad of his little finger—a wave-shaped design in vivid blue.
The Beginner Elemental Water Rune. A loan that had been triggered by chance over the past few days. The task had been simple enough to complete on the spot.
He flicked his wand and summoned a mass of clear water, manipulating it deftly through various shapes.
Like the lightning rune, the water rune provided a flat ten percent boost to all water-element magic, while also increasing Leonardo's affinity with the water element.
What interested Leonardo more, however, was that after acquiring this water rune, it had formed a faint, subtle connection with the Advanced Elemental Lightning Rune on his thumb.
Following that connection, Leonardo released an arc of electricity.
The water and the lightning seemed to attract one another, intertwining. Beyond that surface interaction, what Leonardo sensed at a deeper level was far more significant.
It wasn't that different elements couldn't coexist. In alchemy, a central question was how to harness the four foundational elements of water, fire, earth, and wind. But when different elements occupied the same space, they inevitably consumed each other. That rate of consumption was a critical factor in all alchemical work.
Right now, the water and lightning before Leonardo's eyes were woven together, but the consumption rate was slightly lower than the usual rate.
Alchemy was a rigorous discipline, with well-established standards for elemental consumption rates.
After testing under various conditions, Leonardo confirmed that whenever he activated a rune, the consumption rate of the corresponding element dropped below the normal range.
It was like two children who would normally squabble and fight, behaving under an adult's supervision.
The lightning element and the water element were those two children.
And because the lightning rune had reached the advanced level, Leonardo's control over the lightning element was stronger. As a result, the lightning element's consumption was even lower than the water element's.
Leonardo's first thought was simple: if he could collect the runes for all four foundational elements, water, fire, earth, and wind, it would almost certainly benefit his alchemy as well.
Reducing the consumption rate between those foundational elements meant that a great deal of existing alchemical knowledge and technique could be refined, or even fundamentally restructured.
At least for Leonardo himself, as the bearer of the elemental runes.
"And then there's composite elemental magic…"
Leonardo watched the lightning-wreathed stream of water drift through the air, and the idea began to take shape.
In truth, as magical complexity grew, more elements needed to be drawn upon, and the heightened activity of those elements when they met only drove consumption rates even higher.
That was precisely why high-tier composite elemental magic was so rare. Pouring in more magic and performing more complex operations, only to receive diminishing returns, made the whole endeavour scarcely worthwhile. Research in that direction had grown increasingly scarce over time.
But the connection between the lightning rune and the water rune showed Leonardo a new possibility.
If he could continue raising the level of his elemental runes, strengthening his affinity with the elements while reducing inter-elemental consumption to an acceptable or even negligible degree, then composite elemental magic would finally become worth developing.
"Something new to study…"
Leonardo suddenly recalled the system's comments from the previous elemental rune loans. Collecting all the elemental runes would yield a "surprise."
There were five elemental runes in total. The four foundational elements, water, fire, earth, and wind, plus lightning.
Based on the connection he had already observed between lightning and water, perhaps he didn't need to max out every rune. Even if they were all only at the advanced or even beginner level, simply gathering all five might produce some kind of transformation.