Chapter 26: runes
after getting ready, cain started walking over to his mana studies class, along the way several of the other students were whispering and throwing glances at him. {looks like you're famous now. I didn't think that would happen considering your dark and brooding nature before now} 'it's not like I meant to be like that, I literally didn't have a soul of my own.' {thats fair}
walking into the mana studies class cain looked around. the walls and ceiling were all white with a futuristic style to them. throughout the room, there were several desks with different pieces of testing equipment on them and there were already a few people in the class. sitting at a random desk cain started to use primal growth while adding the metal attribute to his muscles so he could transfer it to his bones. because of the addition of a mana pearl to his mana heart, he didn't need to do the set of moves, although it would speed his growth exponentially, as using his mana heart to just absorb the mana and circulate it through his body would do the trick.
this meant he was cultivating at all times, whether he was sleeping, eating or just standing still he would always be growing stronger. this came with a downside though as it was many times slower than normal cultivation, while he could speed it up by actively absorbing mana the cases where doing this was better than just doing primal growth were few and far between.
soon the teacher walked into the class and began to introduce himself "hello class. my name is Rhys but you will be referring to me as sir. I am here to teach the mana studies course. today's lesson will be about runes and how they work. can anyone please tell me what they know?" standing up one of the students began to speak "runes act as a language of mana. we form a set of runes out of our mana that will cause it to perform a specific action, sought of like a code."
hearing about these 'runes' cain was intrigued. the teacher began to speak again before cain could think about what he could do with them. "as previously mentioned we use our mana to form a 'language' that will do a certain action, and just like how normal language has many different variants and version runes do to." while saying this he began to wave his finger in the air, a trail following it as it moved to form different shapes that cain assumed to be runes. "the rune language I am using right now it the one mainly used by the empire. at the end of the class, you will be given notebooks containing everything you need to know about runes for this year. make sure to study it well as you will be tested on it at the end of the year."
after a minute a line of runes had formed in front of the class. pointing to the line of runes the teacher began to explain "this line of runes once activated will form a floating ball of fire around 200 degrees Celsius with a diameter of 20 centimetres."
letting a small flow of mana enter the line of runes they began to glow before combusting into a ball of fire that began to fade before vanishing. "a functioning line of runes is called an inscription. the ball of flame made by this inscription faded because I stopped supplying it with mana. an inscription that needs a manual supply of mana is called a 'temporary inscription' while one that will absorb mana on its own is called a 'permanent inscription'.
while each has there own uses such as permanent inscriptions being used for defensive and supportive purposes and temporary inscriptions being used for offensive purposes. they also have their own downsides. for instance, a permanent inscription can't be altered after it has been formed meaning that if you want to change it after making it you need to remake the whole thing. they are also more challenging to make as you need to incorporate the mana absorbing function for it to actually be classed as a permanent inscription.
and while temporary inscriptions can be altered freely after forming them this process is costly. It will even destroy the inscription if done wrong, in addition to this you will need to continue supplying it with your own mana or set up an entirely different inscription that will collect and supply mana to it."
waving his hand before walking back to the podium at the front of the class he continued "but that's enough of that, for the next few lessons I will be teaching you the basics of the empire runic system and how actually to make an inscription. everything I have told you and will tell you is in the book I will hand out at the end of this lesson so make sure to properly study them."
after that, he began to teach the basics of how to use mana to form a rune and how different rune languages had different forming methods and could be used to form completely different inscriptions from other languages. the empire's way of forming a rune was to concentrate your mana to the tip of one of your fingers, or other appendages such as a tentacle or tail, and use it to form a string of mana that would stay in the air to form a rune. while this may seem easy, the consideration needed to focus the mana to one point of your body, form a consistent flow mana for the string and make the string stay in one place all while making as few mistakes in the runes that you were forming was extremely difficult.
or it should have been, just half an hour into the class cain had already mastered the mother of making a rune to the point that he could use almost all his fingers at once. while he could do this he didn't know any runes other than the ones that the teacher had used in the beginning and even then he didn't understand what they meant or what they did so he just continued to practise forming the strings of mana for the rest of the class as everyone else almost cried, or in some cases actually did, in frustration at forming a single small string and the teacher looked on at cain and realised just what kind of monster he had let in hs class.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Black_rabbit24x
Black_rabbit24x please read what i have writen down below.
these chapters have been made in large batches at once and released only once a week so you would be reading these two or so months after it was actually made. the reason I'm telling you all this is that if you see some chapters lose quality or word count, it's because I might have had to force myself to write them because I was running out of backup chapters.
the reason I only release one chapter a week is so that when I make a bunch at once I have a backlog to rely on if I get sick or have writer's block or just genrily lose interest in writing for a little bit. so please don't hate me if there are a bad chapter or two.
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