"What’s next?" He asked Menadion with a peculiar relaxed smile she recognized from a mile away, making her turn green with envy. ’I’ve been celibate since Threin died, you damn bastard! Show some empathy.’ Ripha thought. "Runes." She actually said. "Picture Creation Magic like a set of stairs. The first steps are mana crystals, then runes, and lastly pseudo and power cores. The order is relevant because what you learn in the early steps is carried on to the next." A wave of her hand conjured a couple of Orichalcum staves covered in runes, with no crystals and no pseudo core. "Begin." Lith and Solus examined the artifact for a while and then said: "Some of these runes make no sense. They form no enchantment and are merely decorative. Why did you use them?" "To give you a starting point and something to fix." Menadion replied. "I won’t waste my time crafting a masterpiece just for you to tinker with it. It’s the principle that matters." "Okay, but what are we supposed to do with this?" Solus asked. "That’s up to you to understand." Menadion said. "You already know everything you need for your task. You just need one small leap of understanding. Now stop yapping and get to work." ’Okay. My starting point is that everything we learned was wrong.’ Lith thought. ’I must ignore what I know about renewing runes and analyze the problem from scratch before applying what Ripha taught us.’ ’What’s the difference between mana crystals and runes?’ Solus thought. ’Or rather, what do they have in common? There must be something if what I’ve learned about dismantling mana crystals applies here as well.’ It took them almost half an hour to find the answer to their question. ’That’s it!’ Lith and Solus thought in unison yet on their own. ’Runes form their own mana circulatory system that can hinder the one created by the crystals. Back when we learned about Runesmithing, we compared the mana circulatory system generated by mana crystals to veins and the one generated by runes to arteries. ’The process is similar but with one big difference. Crystals are solidified world energy whereas runes are comprised of pure mana. Once detached from the metal, they fade into nothingness since their energy has nowhere to return.’ Lith started eroding the mana circulatory system, loosening the grip the rune had over the Orichalcum. The moment he was done, however, the runes required focus and a constant supply of mana not to dissipate. Rewriting the rune pattern wasn’t an issue but once he turned it into an actual enchantment and applied it to the metal, only part of the newly reborn mana circulatory system overlapped with the old one. ’It’s no big deal.’ Lith fixed the metal like he had done to dismantle the crystals and handed the final product to Menadion for evaluation. "It’s utter trash. A complete failure." She said after a brief glance. "Again." Solus looked at Lith but he could only shrug in confusion. ’I can’t believe Lith screwed this up. It’s not that complex.’ Solus thought as she presented her staff to Menadion. "Wow! You two really are two peas in a pod. This is as trash as Lith’s. Again." Ripha recycled the staff and returned it to Solus. ’I’ve gained two clues from this failure. One, there is something I have overlooked, and two, Ripha didn’t just reset the runes she also resetted the metal. She wouldn’t have done that if it weren’t meaningful.’ Lith pondered everything he had learned by splitting mana crystals from enchanted metals but failed to find an answer. At least until he remembered that Creation Magic wasn’t just magic, it was Forgemastering magic. ’The mana circulatory system!’ He suddenly realized. ’If there were mana crystals or a pseudo core, fixing the metal like I did before would have ruined the artifact. Even worse, the mana circulatory system that forms after rewriting the runes would have further distorted the structure of the enchantments. ’How am I supposed to alter the rune patterns on an artifact without messing with its mana circulatory system?’ After a bit of reflection, Lith developed a theory and put it to the test. This time, he used darkness magic to undo most of the mana circulatory system and separate the runes from the metal but was careful to leave a small tether between them. This way, the runes retained their integrity and the mana circulatory system was never depowered. On top of that, the artifact retained Lith’s energy signature, making both the runes and the metal more docile to his commands. Lith first altered the shape of the wrong runes into those necessary to form a working enchantment and then slowly dispelled the darkness element. The energy tether regained its strength until it dragged the rune pattern back on the surface of the Orichalcum. The mana tendrils generated by the new runes now had only one possible direction and overlapped with the arteries and capillaries that belonged to the old rune pattern. Lith presented his work again and this time Menadion rewarded him with a nod and a smile. ’Well done.’ She said via a mind link not to reveal the solution of the conundrum to Solus. ’The important part of this exercise was learning to modify runes without disrupting the preexisting mana circulatory system. ’If this were a real artifact, you couldn’t have rearranged the internal structure of the metal without removing the crystals and the pseudo core first. It’s not impossible, but why redo everything from scratch if the problem lies solely in the runes?’ ’I see. Thank you.’ Lith telepathically nodded. ’Ten times out of ten?’ ’Glad you are learning.’ She chuckled, sending him back to his desk. It took Solus a bit longer to find the solution to her problem and by the time Menadion was done explaining to her daughter the purpose of the exercise, Lith was already at his fifth attempt. When he completed it for the tenth time, he went back to Ripha. "Give me the next set of runes, please. There’s no point waiting for Solus since I know how this goes." "There is no new set of runes." Menadion replied. "They all work the same way and unlike crystals, the strength of a rune pattern depends solely on you. They don’t resist the Forgemaster and you can modify one rune pattern at a time. "The next step is working on a pseudo core." She took the staff from his hands, removed the runes, and gave it a simple enchantment. "Change it to any spell you like. As long as it works, you pass." Lith was flabbergasted and Solus was stung in her pride. She focused ten times harder but kept her own pace, preferring quality over speed. When she was finally done, Lith was still studying the pseudo core. ’Is this even a spell?’ The shape of the pseudo core was perfect. It was positioned at the exact center of the staff, spreading its vibrant mana evenly throughout the artifact. Yet the pseudo core appeared to be purely cosmetic, just like the runes of the previous exercise. ’Each rune flows into the next like the notes of a symphony yet they serve no purpose.’ Lith studied the multiple strings of runes that comprised the pseudo core until he knew them by heart.