Waking up a few hours later, Lux rapidly dressed up and moved to the main cave, where he had left his activated rune schemes.
He had no idea what would happen to them but he was certainly excited to know and learn of his mistakes.
Reaching the cave, his eyes focused straight on the twelve pieces of paper at the entrance of the cave, each of a distance of a few dozen centimeters from one another just in case.
However, as he looked at the papers, he was surprised to see that only seven of them remained, ashes at the location of the others.
Approaching them, he looked at the notes he had left besides them and immediately understood what went wrong.
Those who had burned had both the sun and the day symbols written on them.
Perhaps it was a case of having too much energy and being unable to store it in the paper or it may have bursted in advance due to the amount of energy.
Looking at the remaining seven papers, he saw that a few of them had variations of the symbols yet those with the ‘sun’ symbol on the side to transform them into the moon or night failed to collect any energy as he couldn’t feel anything coming from those four torn pages.
However, amongst the three remaining, he felt thrilled.
Not only did each of them have the ‘day’ symbol upside down, trying to simulate the symbol for ‘night’ but the same sun symbol seemed to have transferred a large amount of energy to the other symbols preventing the papers from simply combusting.
“It seems that the collection of energy was a success.” Muttered Lux as he noticed that each of them had a different amount of energy stored due to their location in the cave and the limited amount of sunlight they had gathered.
However, just as he finished his words, the page with the most energy kept into it instantly combusted, creating a small fireball in the cave which extinguished itself just as fast.
However, the amount of light that appeared during the appearance of the fireball was comparable to a flashbang, a term he had learned when they learned about the second world war in school.
As for the heat however, it wasn’t too bad with the cold wind from the sea surging in the cave.
“Alright, with this I only have two rune schemes still working.
I’m pretty sure the problem is with the material itself as it can’t store enough energy to act as I wish it to.” He continued as he held his chin in contemplation, his eyes glazed as he looked at the two remaining pieces of paper and waited for them to activate as the night was slowly falling.
Slowly improving his occlumency while waiting for the rune scheme to make it or to break, a few hours passed by and just as he was wondering if there had been a problem, a change appeared on the pieces of paper.
As his eyes were attracted to the slowly radiating light, he confirmed that both rune schemes worked perfectly.
While they were the same, the amount of energy in each of them were slightly different due to their placement, one having a lot of sunlight while the other almost none.
Besides, he was almost certain that they didn’t need actual sunlight to function properly, he believed that the rune scheme would take the energy in the surroundings to complete its goal and the sunlight only worked as an add-on, helping the energy fill up faster.
The paper continued to release light for two more hours before they eventually fizzled out, the material itself having small burns on its sides, showing that despite the tame energy, it wouldn’t be able to work properly more than once or twice.
[Futhorc +100 exp.]
“Yeah, I’ll have to inscribe it directly in the stone wall if I want to make sure that the light manages to continue throughout the whole night.” He said to himself, deep in his thoughts as he looked around, searching for the best location to inscribe it without destroying the rune scheme already in place.
Taking an engraving pen that was stored along the rest of the equipment in the first room, he immediately began his work.
Despite only changing it from a piece of paper to a stone wall, there were some extra steps.
He had to take into consideration not only the previous rune scheme but he also had to take into consideration the dents and crevices in the cave itself, making sure that each rune could be properly inscribed and linked with the others without leaving any imperfections behind.
Taking some time to find the perfect location and to sketch a blueprint of the rune scheme directly on the wall, he made sure that everything was proper with his little knowledge of creating these schemes before finally starting.
Pushing some magical energy into the engraving pen, the pen’s tip slightly glowed showing the energy flowing through the pen as he pushed it against the stone making the wall of the cave.
Immediately, the pen slowly and effortlessly entered into the stone, as if a hot knife cutting through butter.
Following the lines he had practiced and practiced again for countless months, he felt he could copy them to the detail with his eyes closed.
Yet, still filled with caution, he continued staring, concentrating as much as he could for the task ahead.
Completing the first symbol, he continued, not stopping for a moment as he knew from the grimoire that should he stop without completing a closed loop system of the runes, the runes would have difficulty integrating with one another.
For some large rune schemes that may take days, weeks, months or even years to create, the grimoire revealed that they had to create multiple closed loop systems of rune schemes and finally make each singular system one extra large rune scheme.
However, he knew that for the current runes he was inscribing, he couldn’t stop in the middle.
Completing the second rune while thinking of these random tidbits of information, not being as focused as he had expected to be, his eyes sharpened as he finally worked on the last and hardest of the three runes.
It wasn’t due to the rune’s details but because there was a crack in the stone wall and he had to create the rune while expertly avoiding passing a line straight on the crack.
Starting the rune, he did the first half without a problem and as he started on the second half, he felt his mind go into overdrive as he did his best to perfectly adjust the rune so that the rune would pass both above and below the crack before reuniting on the other side.
However, due to the size of the other two runes, needing to keep a relative sense of proportion between all three runes for the rune scheme to function, the two lines had to pass exactly above and under the crack, about two centimeters around the crack.
Taking his time, taking as much time as it took him to make the first part of the array, creating a mental image of how he wanted everything to look as he slowly made the marks in the stone.
Finally, after half an hour of work, his first rune scheme was completed.
Whether it worked or not, he would have to wait for the following day, allowing his work to absorb some sunlight and energy to light up during the night.
Right as he finished and was planning on heading back to sleep, he noticed a notification in his Runic Lexicon appearing.
[Lighting Wards +23 exp.]
[Mastery]
Wards
– Lighting Wards: 23/7198
“Is it called the lighting wards?” Said Lux with enthusiasm as he saw a new category appear in his Runic Codex.
He was always happy whenever there was change.
After all, it was the only thing that had accompanied him for over a year and despite not being sentient, simply receiving such updates from time to time always brought him happiness.
Deciding to continue learning for as long as possible, he readied himself to head back to sleep.
He would continue studying the following day since there really was no light remaining in the cave, only the faint glow of the moonlight illuminated a small part of the cave yet even it was starting to dim as the clouds in the night sky threatened to engulf the surrounding ocean, a storm was no doubt coming closer.