Chapter 107: Sorcerer
Grey Matter's abilities made him excel at being a sorcerer, or to be precise, his vast intelligence and complex mind made him able to understand all types of sorcery, as the small alien possessed not only unparalleled intelligence but also incredible affinity to sorcery.
Now, Grey Matter did not know all forms of sorcery, nor was he suddenly a master at it, but his intelligence allowed Hugo to dissect and analyze each piece of knowledge he came across. So, if given enough time and resources, Hugo could easily become an adept or even an expert in any sorcery.
Back in the Forgotten Shore, thanks to Grey Matter, Hugo had managed to become an adept at using runic sorcery, being able to create runic arrays capable of warding off Nightmare Creatures of the awakened and dormant ranks. He had also been able to enchant weapons with simple and primitive enchantments meant to increase their inherent qualities.
Due to the mess that was the Forgotten Shore, he had not gotten to spend much time learning and progressing his runic sorcery, so he had remained stagnant.
Of course, in his times of loneliness in Ariel's hell, he did make multiple things, but he could not advance his sorcery alone without other examples to take inspiration from and analyze.
But now, he had the greatest sorcery of them all, the ivory tower.
The first question a sorcerer must ask themselves before beginning to learn is simple:
What is Runic Sorcery?
Runic Sorcery is the most common type of sorcery used by awakened in the waking world, and currently the only one. It is based on inscribing runes to achieve magical effects. Enchantments are simply expressions of the enchanter's will, and runes are the building blocks used to manipulate energy movement.
Both Cassie and Hugo knew this. Cassie herself was taught the principles by Noctis, who is one of the greatest sorcerers of the ancient past.
Hugo on the other hand had learnt his sorcery by learning the basics from Professor Jasmine and improving his sorcery on his own through Grey Matter.
"As you know, runic sorcery is the inscription of runes onto objects. However, if you want to truly ascend beyond being an apprentice, you must understand how the runes work," Hugo said, walking calmly through the room.
"You must first transcribe True Names without speaking them, for example, writing down the true name of fire onto an object. Then you must bind that Name to a material object, granting permanence, and in the end, pouring soul essence to serve as a battery is the easiest step. This is likely something you already knew, but I have actually discovered a method of increasing the potency of the enchantment."
"You did?" Cassie asked, listening carefully.
Hugo, as Grey Matter, puffed his chest with confidence. "Of course. It's a method that's likely used by the great clans but is currently unavailable to the public. That method is shaping Names into songs and phrases, expressing the desired enchantment in details to get better results. Such a feat can only be used by sorcerers with a rich vocabulary in the runic language."
"However, the system still relies on knowing the meaning of True Names, transcribing a name without understanding it has no effect, much less transcribing an entire phrase."
"To make it easier for you, I will share my knowledge with you and explain it along the way. This way, you would be able to learn and understand the knowledge I'm sharing," Hugo said.
Cassie nodded, and then Hugo activated [Cognitive Blessing], granting Cassie his knowledge of the runic language.
The blind seer gasped and nearly fell over as the knowledge entered her mind.
Sid looked distressed at this, catching Cassie before she fell. "Lady Cassia, are you alright?"
"I understand it now..." She said, using Sid for support.
"Good," Hugo said, pointing a finger at her. "Now, young lady, you will be my assistant as we decipher the sorcery of this tower. Sid, be a dear and bring me a lot of paper and ink, please."
The young Fire Keeper hesitated a little before nodding and leaving the room to bring the paper and ink.
Cassie and Hugo began working on understanding the sorcery.
Their goal was simple: use this sorcery to increase Hugo's own understanding of sorcery, as Grey Matter's mind is simply unmatched, then have Hugo teach Cassie what he understood and share that knowledge with her.
The Ivory Tower's Sorcery... Saying it was complicated is an understatement.
It was the prison of the Daemon of Hope after all, and the source of The Crushing.
By now, they understood how to turn it off, but that wasn't really the hardest part of the enchantment. It was like a switch that you can toggle on and off, not something that you need to be skilled to do.
To understand the enchantment behind The Crushing, one must understand its nature first. Which is exactly what Cassie and Hugo did.
They spent hours outside the tower and inside testing The Crushing, but limiting it so that it doesn't harm anyone. They wrote notes about their discoveries, and they found a few interesting things about it:
Firstly, The Crushing is commonly believed to only destroy, but it is actually far more versatile, as it can be used and wielded by the owner of the tower. Granted, they needed a Saint to test that out comfortably but Cassie and Hugo were able to use control the crushing through the ruinic array. Even if it was extremely hard.
The crushing is a mystical sister of gravity, embodying the power of attraction, infact it was as if the tower itself was a sorcerer that was using runic sorcery to imbue the concept of The Crushing into the world.
Hugo even suspected that the tower was a divine rank artifact, with the sorcery inside being basically its programming.
The Crushing can repel all things, both physical and spiritual, away from Ivory Island, or pull them toward it as well.
This duality is what allowed the Chained Isles to exist for thousands of years—suspended between two extremes of Hope's Tower.
It can make things weightless or cause them to collapse under their own weight, or it could intensify with proximity to the island, making it so overwhelming that not even gods could overcome it unscathed... Well, not really.
Hugo did not think a god would struggle with The Crushing, as a Supreme would likely be able to tank it with some difficulty.
In the end, Hugo and Cassie noted that The Crushing itself was the result of Hope herself enchanting the tower with her divine will, making it extremely complex to understand even for the most skilled sorcerer. Not because of the complex runes, but because of the mechanism and the will behind it.
However, Hugo did manage to understand the overall structure of the design, such as how the power source—the divine soul shard—interacted with the runes and how the runes themselves remained usable even after thousands of years.
What fascinated Hugo the most was that The Crushing was only a single component of the runic array. The others involved The Gateway Runes and the tower's mystical connection to the Ebony Tower.
The Ivory Tower's gateway is surrounded by myriads of glowing runes on the surface of the seven broken chains that form the gateway circle. These runes are separate from the runes that make up The Crushing, however they're still a part of the overall structure, which is the tower itself.
The gateway part was indeed powered by runic sorcery, but it was the Nightmare Spell that was connecting the gateway to the War Realm, allowing awakened to cross between worlds.
And then there was the connection to the Ebony Tower.
Hugo studied that part carefully, his Grey Matter mind working through the intricacies. Both towers were connected through a stone arch on the last level of the Ebony Tower and a matching arch in the white gazebo on Ivory Island. On the Ebony Tower's fifth leve, an image of the Ivory Tower had a runic inscription that translated to "Desire" or "Hope", confirming the tower once belonged to the Demon of Hope herself.
Out of all the enchantments in the Ivory Tower, this was the one Hugo was most confident he could replicate if given enough time and resources. The connection wasn't as complex as The Crushing, instead it was more of a bridge, a pathway between two points which was a concept he understood well. The runes were intricate, yes, but they followed a logic he could trace, as one rune on the ivory tower represented point "A" and the other rune on the Ebony tower represented point "B".
If he had the right materials and enough time, he was certain he could recreate something similar...
'By enough time, that would likely be three years or so...'
Perhaps not on the scale of connecting two entire towers but a smaller version? A pair of enchanted objects that resonated with each other, allowing communication or even transport between them?
'That would be an extremely useful enchantment for the cohort to communicate with each other...'
In fact, something like a communicator badge from the second nightmare would be extremely helpful. It was unfortunate that the badge had stopped being a Memory in the second nightmare.
Maybe he could use [Lost Arts] to see if the Galvans had anything like it.
"We should stop here for today, it's been nearly a full day," Cassie said, slightly dazed.
Hugo nodded, agreeing with her. He had been using the Lifeform Lock to stay in Grey Matter for a prolonged period without running out of energy. So, he had spent the entire day studying the runes, writing notes and explaining his thoughts to Cassie.
Currently he was in the process of writing the rune responsible for that connection.
He waved Cassie off. "You can go, I'd like to stay for a while longer."
Cassie nodded. "Make sure not to exert yourself."
And with that, Cassie left the main room of the tower and headed towards the gateway, returning to the waking world.
Hugo was currently writing about the Galvan sorcery, which involved using runic sorcery to create machines and technological wonders.
Of course, doing so wouldn't require writing just the true name of fire on a sword and calling it a day. Instead, it would require creating hundreds of components by hand, then for each component of the object, you would need to write an entire sentence describing the enchantment, while also connecting each enchantment inside the machine.
By Hugo's calculation, it would take hundreds of years of studying sorcery for current humanity to start producing Galvanic objects.
The [Proto-Tool], [Proto-Truck] and even the [Nemtrix] were examples of such Galvanic sorcery.
He was currently solving two necessary problems: one was figuring out how to make such a large chain of runes, and the second was where to find materials for Galvanic items.
After all, the materials used for sorcery must be able to withstand the enchantment.
'Maybe using my other aliens will help.'
Hugo's flaw had gotten to him, this time making him think that Grey Matter was the only species capable of creating such marvels. And so, the idea of changing forms to help himself had not crossed his mind in the slightest.
But thanks to his intellect, Hugo recognized that there were indeed certain things that the other aliens could do better than his current form.
For example, the chains outside of the tower were great materials, but he would need an alien strong enough to control them.
And more importantly, perhaps his other intelligent alien could help in solving the first problem.
Hugo opened the Lifeform Lock and decided to change forms.
Blue light emerged from his Omnitrix, as his form grew bigger and bigger, before sprouting a brown carapace of sorts.
The transformation was over in a moment, and now Hugo possessed a rust-colored crab-like appearance with pincers for hands.
"A most exquisite form indeed, one possessing a higher intelligence than most of the previous forms and far outmatching the Galvan form in terms of thinking speed and mental power. Brainstorm is a fitting name."
Using his pincer, Hugo calmly picked up the notes he had written in his Galvan form and frowned.
"Tsk tsk tsk, what nonsense is this?! My Galvan form cannot possibly be this sloppy... Hmm, let me see."
Brainstorm's intelligence was about equal to Grey Matter's, however the former possessed higher mental powers and processing speed than Grey Matter.
Brainstorm's abilities and attributes included Bio-Electrokinesis, Levitation, advanced calculation and intelligence.
The advanced calculation was so advanced to the point that Brainstorm's mind was quite literally a supercomputer. The calculations for the rune placement, how many were needed, and all of that were suddenly processed and solved in mere minutes.
Brainstorm wrote down the right way to inscribe the runes, the phrases that should be inscribed, the components needed for a Galvanic item and more.
It took him exactly three hours to finish everything, making Hugo relieved for the existence of the Lifeform Lock, or else he would have timed out a while ago.
'Now, the heavenly chains should work well for constructing Galvanic items. Paired with some of Sevras's dragon bones, I would only need a few machine parts from the waking world.'
It was time he began crafting some gifts for his cohort.