"Great thinking! My control over Origin Flames is still crappy, but since Adamant is very resistant and hard to find, we might as well try and see if it can withstand the flames. "Maybe Adamant will be destroyed like normal metals, but maybe it could be just cleansed from the previous incantation. This will have to wait though. I’m not going to use Origin Flames for a while. "I don’t want to take any chances of weakening my life force before it fully recovers." Lith said. "Right. I’m sure that your decision has nothing to do with you not getting laid once since your return." Solus’s voice oozed sarcasm. Lith dodged the question by starting to craft runes, stumbling upon their first hurdle. Engraving one rune at a time seemed to have no effect. They would retain his mana just for a few seconds before turning into just a fancy inscription. He then tried to use Bonding to give the blades a mana flow of their own, yet the runes engraved before the Bonding remained inactive, whereas the ones engraved after the procedure would actually weaken the item’s mana flow. "Seriously, what the fuck?" Lith said after wasting quite a few crystals. He could buy the blades in bulk, but mana gemstones were another story entirely. "Yondra said that Runesmithing is part of the preparatory phase, then why does nothing work?" "Remember that we are attempting to reproduce the work of fake mages. They can’t do things in steps like we do. Maybe if the network of runes isn’t complete, it can’t hold the power they are imbued with." Solus pondered. "I disagree. Look at this junk." Lith showed her the blueprints of the only three rune-engraved swords they had, pointing at the old blades. "I could understand if we were talking about Orion’s blade but the others? Both swords are covered in so many runes that I can’t think of a single fake mage with enough mana to carve them all at once. Sure, the Odi had the Reactor, but this blade was clearly crafted before its construction was completed "With runes, Adamant, and infinite mana at their disposal, the Odi would have never settled for such a small pseudo core." "Fine. Do you have any better idea?" Solus tapped her foot, her hands were planted on her hips. "No." "Then give mine a try." Since it was still early in the morning and runes were his new priority, Lith did as instructed. He reproduced the runes of Huryole’s sword, which had the simplest rune pattern among those at his disposal, on a new one down to the last detail. The result was impressive. All the runes shone with power, not only retaining the mana Lith had employed, but also absorbing the surrounding world energy to empower themselves. Soon they were even stronger than both Lith and Solus had predicted they would be. "Told you so!" Lith said throwing his latest failure inside the safe room. Any decent Forgemaster had their lab connected to a room where to throw their faulty products in case they detonated. Unlike most of his colleagues, however, Lith had Solus put a reinforced glass between the lab and the safe room, so that he could observe the deterioration process of his creation until its bitter end. It had allowed them to more easily understand what had gone wrong and why. Lith used the technique he had learned during his stay in Kulah, making Invigoration move through the stone of the tower so that he could study the sword with his breathing technique from a safe distance. In normal circumstances, it would have been an impossible feat. The further the subject was, the fewer details Invigoration would perceive, to the point that even Life Vision would be better. Yet the whole tower was part of Solus’s body and she was in turn part of Lith. It greatly boosted his new ability’s range and effectiveness, plus Solus could replay all the events he spectated, allowing him to focus on different aspects of his failure just by performing an experiment once. "Yeah, but it was worth a shot." Solus said. She had never expected to succeed at the first try. There was a reason why runes were a state secret that not even most Awakened were aware of. "Any idea what’s gone wrong?" "Off the top of my head, at least a dozen." Lith replied. "Hey, that’s my schtick!" "Just to be sure, I’ll try out one of the spells that Phloria has marked as mere teaching props." Lith ignored Solus’s remark and took the booklet out of his pocket dimension. Some of the simplest enchantments had pictures showing what the final result would look like. Lith couldn’t read the ancient language, nor had he found a dictionary for it, but now that thanks to Phloria he knew it wasn’t anything dangerous, he could try and replicate the depicted runes. To not waste any more materials, he used a stone slab as a medium and engraved the words of power according to the scheme in the booklet with his own mana. Once again, the runes started to grow more powerful and unstable by the second, but since there were much fewer of them, the safe room was useless. The resulting explosion shouldn’t be able to harm him. "Do you see that?" Lith pointed at different runes that were pulsating in unison. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖 "Yes." Solus said, turning back into her wisp form and storing her dress. She had no Skinwalker armor and she loved her clothes dearly. "It appears that there are at least two different sets of runes. Each set tries to connect with its components, but they both fail because the mana pathways they create mess with each other and cause the energy to overload." "My thoughts exactly. What we believed to be a bunch of separate objects are actually all part of the same structure, like an oversimplified array." Lith tried to store the stone slab inside his pocket dimension before it detonated, but to no avail. The haywire energy was rejected by his storage space. "Dammit. It would have been nice having a few live grenades of that magnitude ready to blow." Lith said. "Maybe we should apply runes to Alchemy as well." "I don’t think it’s possible." Solus pointed out. "Most alchemical tools are made of pure mana, whereas Runesmithing takes place during the preparatory phase. Wands are an exception since they have a physical medium, but we don’t know if runes might interfere with the spell infusing process." "Point taken. We’ll think about it later." They spent the following hour by studying the recording of the explosion of the sword, separating the different sets of runes based on the rhythm at which they pulsed. It took them a few more failures to iron out the last details since if a rune was surrounded by the components of another pattern, its frequency would mimic their own and screw up Lith’s predictions. Once they were done, Lith could discern three different sets of runes on Huryole’s sword, at least five on Phloria’s and too many to count them on the Odi’s. He even managed to perfectly replicate the weapon from the lost academy. "Well, the good news is that now we know that runes have to be engraved in sets and that a single one by itself is useless. The bad news is that even with this knowledge, we have no idea what each pattern does." Lith said.