I spent the next few decades working on fleshing out my rune magic system. After Felix had made such an incredible gift, I naturally had to take full advantage of it. The first thing I did was try to assess my ‘maximum number of runes’ that I could achieve in this life.
Based on my very rough estimates for essence count, I estimated that I would be able to form around 10 runes this ti, after taking into considering the drastic increase in upkeep cost every three runes. I wasn’t that excited about recording my third rune - after all, I had created that rune ability specifically to help with forming the Artificial sun, and it wasn’t very useful in other contexts. However, at least for our return to the Market it would be better than nothing. I couldn’t have ‘pieceal’ parts of the rune magic system - it was impossible to have a fourth rune without first forming a third rune - and I felt it was a much better idea to have a giant pile of runes ready when we returned to the Market. I simply noted to myself that next life, I would start out by copying the first two runes from my brand back onto my body, then ‘fix’ my third rune ability before I copied the rest of my runes back down. Even so, I was interested in seeing what my tenth rune was like. Thanks to Sallia’s accomplishnts last life, I now had a pretty good idea what the tenth through twelfth runes in the original magic system did - but I had no clue what the thirteenth through fifteen runes did. Since my rune ability compressed my first six runes into three, that ant I would get my first taste of the next tier of rune upgrades quite soon.
Ti continued to pass as I worked my way back through the rune system.
Power: Form Your fourth, fifth, and sixth Runes out of Absorption Essence
Achievent 1200, Achievent 1,500, Achievent 1,800
My fourth, fifth, and sixth runes didn’t differ much from my previous life. Just like last ti, in addition to the stat boosts provided by the runes, I was also offered a chance to enhance one sensory organ with each rune. These enhancents deserved quite a bit of thought this ti, because these sensory organ enhancents would also carry over when I used {Brand of Miria}.
I didn’t think about it for very long before I decided which organs I wanted to improve. The first organ I boosted was my eyes. I had already determined last world that enhancing my eyes was exceptionally useful - it would give far more information, especially spatial information, than I would normally have access to. My eyes were already the most important sensory organ I had access to, since that was just how humanoid biology worked. It simply made sense to lean into that sense when it was already important.
The second improvent went to my skin. Being able to ‘feel’ the void, space, and spatial disruptions using my skin wasn’t just an improvent to my safety against hostile spatial manipulation. It could also give a reasonable level of awareness for the space around , which was sort of like a very light version of my second rune ability. This would help react faster to surprise attacks, which would definitely be useful in future worlds.
Finally, for my third improvent, I locked in my ears as a useful third sensory organ to boost. This was mostly due to lack of other choices. I really only had my nose, tongue, and ears left by that point. While there might be so situations where I wanted to sll or taste space and spatial manipulation, being able to hear changes in space seed far more useful most of the ti.
After that, not only did my Achievent total soar, but I still had room to grow. As the years passed, I continued to push further into the rune System.
Power: Form Your seventh, eighth, and ninth Runes out of Absorption Essence
Achievent 2,100, Achievent 2,400, Achievent 2,700
Since my Ability outright removed the original benefits of the next three runes and replaced them, these three runes were quite different from the benefits Sallia got last ti. My seventh through ninth runes granted small stat boosts - but more importantly, they started attuning my body to the power of space. Last world, I had done at least so experintation with this already, since I had reached my eighth rune last ti. This ti, my species had a significantly longer lifespan, so I spent a bit more ti experinting with each layer of ‘spatial attunent’ as my runes progressed. Just like last world, every single rune I created made my body more fluid. More graceful. Air literally interacted with my body less with every single rune, allowing to overco things like air resistance.
I also noticed sothing rather different from last world. Last world, I faintly rembered the teleportation abilities from attuning my body to the power of space as being… not very efficient. These teleportation abilities worked, but I found that they didn’t do everything that I hoped they would. However, in this world, coupled with my sensory enhancents, I noticed that the benefits of the seventh through ninth runes were a bit different, simply because space was more fragile and more active in this dinsion than the last one. I could feel space bending and contorting itself to fit my needs more this ti. It was hard to put my finger on all of the benefits this gave , but I was certain of a few things.
First, teleporting via the innate abilities of my seventh through ninth runes was much cheaper in this world. Second, the boost to things like ‘reduced air resistance’ was weaker in this world. Third, in this dinsion, being attuned to the dinsion allowed to sense and redirect space in ways I hadn’t been able to last ti - particularly when it ca to creating ‘micro tears’ in the world around . These were pretty useless for most purposes - but they had great synergy with {Spatial Rifts}. It was even easier to set up a field of spatial tripwires with this ability than it was via portals.
Based on the fact that the actual benefits of these runes had slightly changed this ti, I learned that the unique properties of each dinsion could also heavily influence so of my Abilities. There was always so ‘core’ logic to how they worked - but even if the ability was the sa, the exact way it manifested could be subtly different from one dinsion to another.
I also noticed that in this world, by the ti I had built my ninth rune I could teleport myself much more easily than last world. Even though I could teleport myself by creating a portal with my first rune ability and then widening it via shaping magic, it was actually much cheaper to just use raw spatial manipulation. I could near-instantly ‘blink’ from one place to another at a relatively low essence cost, as long as I had a rough idea where I was teleporting to and it wasn’t too far away. Since my second rune ability let use space and water vapor to ‘see’ my surroundings, this basically ant that I could teleport anywhere at any ti for a low price. This was an incredible tactical advantage that I looked forward to exploiting in future worlds, if we ended up in other dinsions where space was fragile and easy to mold.
Once I ford my tenth rune, I confird that I had reached the edge of my maximum number of runes. I didn’t have enough essence regeneration to push to an eleventh rune without boosting my absorption stat. Since I couldn’t think of a good way to do that, I decided to just accept that this was the limit for now, and moved on to the actual benefits of my tenth rune.
Power: Form Your Tenth Rune out of Absorption Essence
Achievent 3,000
In total, forming all of these runes actually gave a rather hefty essence payout. I got 14,700 total essence from all of these runes, which pushed my Achievent total from 305,430 Achievent to 320,130. In any other world, this amount of Achievent would have actually made a pretty big difference on my Achievent total - but because of how well our artificial sun project had gone, this was basically just a rounding error.
The tenth rune’s effects were interesting.
As Sallia and I both discovered when we reached this stage, the tenth rune didn’t offer benefits that were very similar to the original benefits offered by runes. Instead, my tenth rune allowed to ‘bond’ with a certain type of weapon. This bond was on a conceptual level rather than a physical one - so I was bonding with a weapon type, rather than one specific weapon. This ‘connection’ to a weapon would allow to do all sorts of things with weapons of a similar nature. I could strengthen weapons by holding them and infusing so absorption essence into them. I could control them at a distance. I could even use them as remote sensory organs, allowing to temporarily connect my eyes, ears, and so on to the weapon as a kind of surveillance cara - though this did also REMOVE my ability to use those senses for my main body. If I connected my vision to my umbrella, my actual physical body would beco blind until I disconnected my vision.
Overall, the sensory ability was odd, but useful - but the ability to strengthen and remotely control weapons was the bigger boost here. Sallia reported that the next two runes expanded upon this ability in odd but useful ways, so I had sothing to look forward to whenever I ford my own eleventh and twelfth runes - though that would have to be next life.
As I worked on my runes, ti continued to pass. The sanctuary grew ever safer and more stable, and decades ticked by. Before I knew it, I had turned two hundred. Ti continued to drift by as I worked on understanding and improving my runes and making the most out of the ‘quiet ti’ in this world.
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