5 months later
[Futhorc +2 exp.]
[Rune – Futhorc: 1000/982’459]
“Finally.” Said Lux with a relieved smile as he finally relaxed on his small bed.
For the past five months, ever since receiving this incredible gift, he had been exploring and trying to understand the mysteries of Futhorc.
While it had been relatively easy at the beginning to learn some things simply by writing the runes on the paper and infusing the little bit of magic he had in his body, it had gradually become more difficult to improve as time advanced.
Thankfully, over the months, he had made some small discoveries over the use of the runes, allowing him to improve his understanding and greatly increase his mastery over the Futhorc runes.
While it didn’t grant him an exceptional understanding, having reached a thousand exp mostly by grinding would grant him a proper foundation over Futhorc.
Thinking back to all of the runes and their uses once put together, seeing each rune represent a different word and concept, Lux smiled happily.
For the first time in months, he had finally achieved something, achieved something that could truly help him.
Looking at the runes placed in different locations in the cave as if randomly drawn, the young boy tilted his head, as for the first time, the way they were placed made some kind of sense, something he hadn’t noticed beforehand due to his lack of understanding.
“Now I’m sure of it.
There is a secret in the cave and those runes are key to it.” He said to himself, a bright smile appearing on his face as he could now make progress once more.
Those last five months had been especially grueling as he could do nothing except make random speculations and rewrite the runes, grinding the little bit of exp it could grant him as if there were no tomorrow.
Looking at the runes, all of which held a considerable amount of knowledge hidden in their seemingly thin but intent filled strokes, Lux didn’t feel disheartened by the obvious slow progress.
Instead, he was feeling excited.
Compared to his previous way of living, he was making constant progress.
Opening his notebook, his sleepiness had all but vanished as the new knowledge seemingly begged him to discover what was hidden in the cave behind those runes.
Writing down the same runes he was now used to copying, he now felt like he understood their meanings as he put them together, creating a semblance of a sentence, of a meaning.
With this new discovery, Lux continued studying and improving across the entire winter, putting even more thought and research into these runes as his already few excursions were cut even shorter due to the cold wind off the coast of England and the snow blanket that appeared with the weather.
The steps, already slippery, were now dangerous to even step on, preventing him from leaving his small abode.
As such, with his new favorite pastime, Lux directly stopped his winter excursions, his supplies enough to survive the winter even if without any extravagance.
As the months of winter passed by, the decisively recluse boy finally discovered the secrets of the cave after spending yet another 8 months as the month of May showed up with the clearer and decisively warmer weather.
Mastery
Runes
– Futhorc: 3322/982’459
“So, by doing this, followed by this.” He said to himself as he placed his hand on a rune that looked like a man who lifted both arms on its side and another that created four triangles and a diamond shape on the side, the same shape that the diamonds on playing cards had.
“It should open the door.” He said to himself as he inserted the little bit of magic he could control into those two runes that lit up before pressing both of his hands on the third and most important rune, the rune that symbolized a home or a place to live.
[Futhorc +50 exp.]
As the notification appeared in front of his eyes, completing the challenge granting him a lot more mastery than normal, the wall at the very end of the cave seemingly disappeared as a corridor appeared leading to three different rooms.
With great enthusiasm as this scene proved that his studies hadn’t been done for nothing, he walked straight towards the right-most cave.
Curiosity was eating him alive.
He had been researching for months already and only now did he manage to uncover the secrets hidden in the place he lived for so long.
Entering the first of the three hidden caves, all made of pure gray rocks, he walked through a door that looked seemingly fine after obvious centuries of being unoccupied and arrived in a small but equipped room.
At the very center of the room, a white circle with various other circles, triangles and more forms were seemingly painted directly on the ground, taking up at least three quarters of the room.
He had no idea of the use of such symbols, but he was certain that they were somewhat important for it to take up so much space in the limited size of the room.
Lifting his head from the circle, unable to comprehend anything from it, his eyes focused on the working table on the side of the room.
The area seemed somewhat delimited as there were some wooden structures that separated the room in two.
With various glass vials, a broken cauldron and an item that could create fire when he pushed magic onto its symbol, he was pretty satisfied with these discoveries.
From now on, he wouldn’t have to always eat cold food and he could even heat himself in winter from then on.
He would simply have to block the hole at the bottom of the cauldron and it should be fine to cook with.
Placing the items back on the table as he didn’t know their uses and didn’t want to break anything, he turned towards a small booklet on the table next to the items.
While the small booklet couldn’t hold much information, anything about this obviously supernatural cave was welcome in Lux’s eyes.
Sitting on the ground, he wasted no time, his fingers grasping the small book, his fingers touching the obviously old parchment.
The scent of old seemed to entrance him as he found himself focusing even more than before on the information kept within the pages.
Looking at the words that he could barely recognize, a slightly different grammar, some different strokes, a slightly different vocabulary, he couldn’t recognize all of the words despite trying to.
‘This should be what the teacher previously mentioned as old English or something.’ He thought as his eyes remained glued to the book, trying his best to understand some of it, to be able to make sense of every word that still eluded his understanding.
Spending some time slowly reading, his frown only became more apparent as all he could tell was that this was some kind of list.
‘What are basilisk fangs and the poison of Acromantulas?’ He wondered as he wasn’t certain if he read these right or if they were really something that existed in this world.
Placing the book back down with the promise that he would continue to study it soon enough, he moved on to the second cave, the middle cave.
Compared to the first cave he visited, this time, the interior was less spacious but it was obvious that everything seemed more important than the previous room as the rocky floor and walls had been changed into clear wooden planks and plenty of storage.
The storage area was obviously the same size as the previous cave.
However, due to the large amount of storage, the space was quite cramped, having to squeeze in some places to access some of the deeper shelves and compartments.
With a raised eyebrow at this room which was quite different from the previous one, he still happily pulled open some of the compartments.
Seeing various types of materials, he grinned.
He knew that with just those, he would have a lot of things to learn.
He wasn’t afraid of finding something he didn’t know, he was afraid of having nothing to do and growing bored once more.
The more supernatural things he encountered, the better and if there were challenges on the way, it would be perfect.
Some of the materials he opened looked like beetle eyes while others were fangs as long as his arm.
It was surprising how some obviously small compartments could hold items that were obviously bigger than the space inside of them but Lux quickly attributed it to magic and moved on.
Continuing, he saw materials he could have never imagined.
Some horns, some plants which he couldn’t recognize and even completely silver-colored blood stored in various smaller vials.
Looking at the easily hundreds of various closed compartments and the nine he had opened at this time, he decided to look at the rest of the hidden cave before coming back.
It wasn’t as if he knew what those materials were or how to use them.
Closing the compartments and the storage’s door behind him, he finally arrived at the last door.
This specific door brought him quite some excitement.
Compared to the previous ones which were completely normal wooden doors, this one had all kinds of markings and decorations on it making it special compared to the others.
Pushing open the heavy oak door, his steps finally led him into a bedroom.
A large bed was at the very back of the small-sized cave and a bookshelf was on the right side of the bed.
While there were few books stored on it, the simple luxury of the bed brought him inexplicable joy at the hope of being able to sleep on it.
The bookshelf, however, was made of simple planks from a tree he wouldn’t be able to identify.
After all, he knew almost nothing of trees living in a cave himself.
Looking at the two pieces of furniture, Lux, finally happy to have his own bed, stared at it for a while before his attention turned towards the third and last piece of furniture, a small desk by the left side of the bed.
Seeing a clean piece of jewelry, a ring, resting on the desk, above a piece of paper, he immediately knew that the piece of jewelry belonged to the previous owner of the cave, most likely the witch that had lived in this cave a few centuries before, the same one who had supposedly protected the village of Dale from the gigantic wave.
With clear interest on his face, he picked up the ring, finding it pretty before immediately placing it on his left middle finger.
However, he barely had the time to admire the ring’s glow before incredible pain rushed throughout his body.
He had never felt something so excruciating.
Even the beatings he used to receive were nothing compared to the pain he felt.
It was as if his entire body was convulsing, his muscles tearing and burning, his bones breaking and reassembling themselves as his organs tore and healed non-stop.
Everything happened in only a few seconds and by the time his mouth opened to let out a scream, his mind simply blacked out, his body falling on the hard floor but by that time, he had already sunk into unconsciousness.