Chapter 611: The Syntax of the Runes
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The preparation for the Black Operation of the Academy took place simultaneously with the planning of the liberation of the Mage Guild. During this period, Benjamin stayed in the Mage Academy to focus on his meditation, he rarely came out of his room aside from teaching people some disguising skills from time to time.
He could feel that his powers had reached a stage where it was far beyond reach for most regular mages, so perhaps, meditation was not so important to him. However, he was not sure how much difficulties he would encounter on his path to overthrow the church.
Therefore, he could not slack.
Although meditation would not prolong the time for the "Descending the Water", but it would serve to increase his reserve of water elemental energy and spiritual energy. Furthermore, who knew if he would experience another upheaval of the Space of consciousness like before if he continued to meditate?
Thinking along these lines, Benjamin was full of hope as he looked at the constellation of runes that was faintly discernible above him.
The Space of consciousness was full of limitless possibilities.
After meditating for about half a month, he was woken up. Initially, he thought that it was the arrival of the Fulner family which had dragged him from his isolated state. What he did not expect was that it was, in fact, the elderly mage who was studying runes in the academy that had called him out.
"Director Benjamin, I have made a new discovery."
Outside the doors of the director’s room, Benjamin was full of hope upon hearing his voice. It was obviously bursting with excitement.
Was regarding the study of runes...
He could only use four runes as of now and was poor at controlling them, which showed that there was obvious room for improvement. But, he always had his hands full and had not had much time to study it professionally, stagnating any progress.
Thankfully, he was not the only one in the academy who was interested in runes. This elderly mage had reached a plateau in his magical ability and was hoping for a breakthrough through the study of runes. Thus, his passion for runes in many ways was even greater than Benjamin’s.
During his stay in the academy, he had even roped in a few great and powerful elderly mages from outside the academy to join their research team. After Benjamin heard about this, he was very supportive of their research and provided them significant endowment.
However, he did not expect the endowment to bear fruit in such a short time.
"What did you discover? New runes?" Benjamin asked immediately.
"That’s not the case." The elderly mage shook his head and frowned, "Unfortunately, it is not easy to derive new runes."
Benjamin frowned, "So what did you discover?"
The elderly mage answered, "We discovered that these runes can somehow be linked to a sentence, which has different effects on each rune."
... Oh?
Benjamin’s heart jumped.
There was such a function?
Previously, when he had practiced on those four runes, it was not like he did not try to use them together, but the results had been unsatisfactory. At the same time, only one rune could exert its effect. For example, he could not perform an attack with the Damaging Rune, while speeding up the clustering of the water elemental energy with the Affinity Rune.
Back then, he thought that that was merely the rules, but this statement could change everything. Was there really a way to gain the effects of a multiples runes at once?
"How would we link them together?" Thus, he asked quickly.
"To link the runes to sentences, their syntax laws must be met." The elderly mage heard this and smiled, "We have categorized the runes into two categories, one group is comprised of the Origin Runes, which are the six runes that represent the kinds of elemental energy, while the other one is comprised of the Action Rune for commands like damaging and defense. For the runes to be linked into sentences, both Origin Rune and Action Rune must be used alongside each other."
Upon hearing this, Benjamin nodded without saying a word.
From the perspective of the elderly mage, Benjamin seemed to be blanking out, but in reality, Benjamin had entered the Space of consciousness and started his experiment.
Based on the hypothesis, all four of Benjamin’s runes were Action Runes. As for Origin Runes, the Space of consciousness used to have three, but now they were combined into a single rune. Benjamin was not sure if this would affect the results.
Regardless, he couldn’t wait to try.
As he reached his right hand out, Benjamin concentrated the water elemental energy on his fingertips and started drawing in the void. He started by drawing the Triangular Rune that represented "Water", followed by the rune that represented "Damage".
Suddenly, both the runes were linked together like a word and lit up in unison.
Benjamin’s jumped with joy.
The clustering of the water elemental energy was accompanied by a turbulence of the elemental energy just like before. Crowded ice blades, water bombs... They behaved aggressively in the hollow darkness, the whole scene was not very different compared to before.
However, a different kind of feeling arose from within Benjamin.
He felt like his mind was connected to the turbulence of the water elemental energy.
After realizing this, Benjamin quickly used his spiritual energy and tried to control the turbulence that was moving out of control. Instantly, the turbulence of the elemental energy calmed down and clumped up, it also stopped flinging ice blades outwards.
Benjamin felt surprised, even the System that was hiding far away sighed with relief and tip-toed out carefully.
"You finally learned to control this stuff." He could not help but complain, "How many times have I told you that the Space of consciousness is a precious place, stop tossing uncontrollable things in here all the time, it’s very dangerous."
Just as it finished talking, an ice blade flew and brushed across its yellow and orange face.
"!"
The System instantly jumped.
Upon seeing this, Benjamin scratched his head innocently and said, "I’m sorry... I seem to have limited control of it, I can’t handle it very well yet."
"..."
The System was speechless. It turned around and ran off far away.
Benjamin shook his head helplessly.
It really was not intentional. After linking the runes into a short sentence, although he could now control the turbulence of the elemental energy, there was a limit to his control.
He could condense the magic from the random turbulence into ice blade and could make the current flow slowly, but... The depletion of his spiritual energy caused by this was quite shocking – even the slightest carelessness would revert everything back to an uncontrollable state just like before.
But despite this, Benjamin still felt great. The rune was a huge and powerful weapon, even though it was not completely controllable, its destructive capabilities would increase by many folds. Not to mention, they had just started their study on linking runes.
Maybe... They would have much more progress in the future.
Benjamin was full of hope.