While I took my seat in Mum's workshop to practise my rune penmanship, she settled on the other side. She usually did paperwork or worked on designs for her next project, but today, she was redecorating the place.
I would have liked to watch and help out if I could, but she told me I needed to practise my elementary fire rune. Mum didn’t enforce the 10,000-hour rule zealously like the Spell did. She said I could move on to the next elemental script if I engraved the fire rune ten times in a row without making a mistake. As for attempting my hand at creating a fabricator, I knew it was beyond me until I formed my essence seed.
My ability to see essence threads gave me a huge advantage over other novice artisans, but I wasn’t sure how much it helped with essence unification. It had taken Rose eight seasons to form her core, but according to her, two of those seasons were wasted on meditation and training her ability to sense essence, another was spent getting used to the process of unification, and the remaining five were dedicated to igniting her essence seed.
My mind was far beyond my years. Ignoring my unique circumstances, the mastery I had over meditation was rare even among the awakened. Combined with
Fractal Soul and my high mental acuity, I had all the resources I needed to sense essence and adapt to unification within a week. Unfortunately, it hadn’t even been a full season since I began training in unification, and so far, my centre had been absorbing the essence greedily without showing any signs of igniting the essence seed.
If I based my timeline on Rose’s ignition, I was looking at a maximum of four more seasons to finally awaken, three earlier than my official communal awakening date.
So why did it still feel slow? I shook my head and completed my fifth script, all taking less than half an hour in total.
Engraving demanded far more attention than those lifeless drills did. It was too repetitive to be more fun than an actual sparring session, but perhaps it would get there when I was finally doing my own designing and artificing.
As I worked on my next engraving, the room’s temperature abruptly shifted, and a refreshing air surfaced. I faltered and turned to see that Mum had installed some kind of fabricator next to the hearth. It wasn’t large, but it looked far more complex than it initially seemed.
A greater probe revealed ley lines of essence veins carved all over the walls surrounding the hearth, extending beyond the room. The engravings covered the entire side of the wall, though most were hidden beneath the surface. Somehow, Mum had managed to engrave the script without needing to slice the wall into parts. It had probably taken her days to finish this project. Perhaps she had begun only after I pointed out how claustrophobic the workshop was.
“Well, that takes care of the ventilation problem,” she said, a bit haggard but with a satisfied smile plastered on her lips.
She had definitely done all this to placate me. Mum wanted me to learn forging, to understand how to craft fabricators. It was clear she wanted to share something she loved, to teach me her craft, but she feared that forcing it on me might make me resent it. In the end, she had decided to make the environment more inviting for me to train.
She would likely do everything she could to ease my path into runesmithing.
“Maybe we can even install some fancy apparatus when you finally awaken,” she suggested.
“It’s perfect as it is,” I told her, then showed her my work.
Mum examined it with a scrutinising gaze and exhaled deeply. “The speed at which you are improving is prodigious.”
“Perhaps all the play with the Arcane Knot helped,” I muttered.
“That it certainly did,” she said, deep in thought. “Though the culprit should be your ability to see essence threads to the minute details.”
“If only it helped as much in the way of essence unification,” I added suggestively.
“Patience, Pumpkin,” she said. “You are already far ahead of your age group.”
I kept my expression neutral as though that didn’t mean anything to me.
“Mother would have loved to have a child like you,” Mum muttered under her breath and shook her head. “Anyway, I thought it would take you half a season to master the elementary runes, but looking at these…” She held up my work and inhaled deeply. “It would be a crime if I cannot make you at least a Master runesmith in the next ten years.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
What could I say? It was mostly geometry and repetition. I still wasn’t as precise as I wanted to be, but that would improve with practice.
But I had to admit, engraving was almost like spell weaving, at least in theory and in outcome, though the middle process differed greatly. Nobody could tell which one derived from the other, but nobody could deny the unmistakable connection between the two.
“Mum, doesn’t it feel wrong to you that the spell acknowledges only the time spent on a Way, rather than actual mastery over it?”
“Does it now?” she asked, amused.
“It does,” I insisted. “I intentionally created some flawed scripts but still made progress in the Way.”
“But did you learn something from it?”
I scrunched my nose. “I did, but…” I paused. “Are you saying I’ll make progress as long as I learn something from it?”
“Yes,” Mum replied with a straight face, though something in her eyes told me she wasn’t telling me everything.
I stared at her suspiciously for an extended time until she finally caved.
“Learning is more important than simply progressing in a Way,” she said, “but even if you don’t learn anything, if you just draw the same script over and over, you’ll still be rewarded.”
My expression stiffened.
Mum smiled, clearly amused that I found this unnerving rather than reassuring. “At least, that’s true for a while,” she continued. “You see, the higher you go in a Way, the harder it becomes to advance, not just because it takes more time. The difficulty rises too.” She raised four fingers. “Take Engraving, for example. You’ll make progress just by drawing the elementary form for only the first four layers. The first hundred hours is roughly the lower average time needed to absorb the basics.”
“What happens after that?”
“What do you think?” Mum smirked. “Intermediate runes take up to the seventh layer. After that, it’s all advanced practice.”
So there was a failsafe in place to keep people from gaming the system.
“With how zealously you have been practising all the Ways, I feared you might begin scraping for every attribute point without trying to improve if I told you all that.” Mum sighed. “But I’m fully convinced now that my worry is unfounded.”
Somehow, she managed to look both frustrated and proud when she said that.
*****
Later in the evening, I finally completed the fourth layer of the Way of Essence Unification.
[Congratulations! Way of Essence Unification IV (100/100) is complete.]
[+6 Unallocated points.]
[Way of Essence Unification V (100/250) is now accessible.]
The reward for the fourth layer was the same as the third. Well, it was quite a lot of unallocated points, but nothing compared to what I would get for completing the next layer. I certainly did not practise simply for the rewards, but it was still a welcome bonus.
By now, I had accumulated a total of thirty-seven unallocated points. “Mum, should I invest these points in anything?”
“You completed the fourth layer already?” She paused, noting the change in me, though her fond expression soon became unreadable as she fell into silent contemplation.
What was she worried about? I couldn’t tell, and she probably wouldn’t give me a straight answer if I asked her either.
She placed her palm on my chest, and her energy flowed into my body. It wasn’t as subtle as it used to be. No, there was no change in the way her essence threads flowed. I had just grown more perceptive to them.
“Your centre is growing properly. With each session, you’re getting closer to awakening.”
My eyes widened sharply. “How long do you think it’ll take?”
“Only the Oracle knows.” Mum shrugged. “It depends on many factors—attributes, one’s affinity, certain gifts, and even the environment. You could probably form an essence seed right now, though it wouldn’t be perfect.” She paused briefly before continuing. “Each individual has different capacities, different attributes, and different gifts, which create different needs for their essence seed. But don’t be sad. There is a reason why some people have more essence than others at the same stage. Higher efficiency rate and range as well.”
I had heard about that from her before. It wasn’t just a matter of quality over quantity—it was both.
“Mum, if it takes me longer than expected to awaken, should I go through the Awakening Ceremony or continue through unification?”
Mum gave me a look. “It won’t take longer,” she said matter-of-factly. As if sensing my doubt, she hesitated before adding, “In case you’re worried… I may let you practise for another session if you have 25 points in Arcane Acuity.”
My heart lurched in excitement, and I immediately turned my gaze towards the mark on my palm.
“Don’t be hasty.” Mum caught my arm before I could make any rash decisions. “You’re free to invest your points as you like, but you need to understand how important they’ll be for your future growth. Remember, the interval between completing each step of the Way will get longer the further you go.”
“Wouldn’t I receive more points on higher layers, though?” For me, the maths checked out.
“While that might be the case, you can’t account for any bottlenecks you might encounter on your path. And I don’t have to tell you that higher attributes are superior to their lower counterparts, do I?” She stood up, releasing me. “Always think carefully before investing your points. It will save you from a lot of regret in the future.”
“So I shouldn’t invest in Arcane Acuity?”
“Did I say that?”
I tilted my head. You didn’t say it outright, but that was definitely how it came across to me.
“I advised you to consider everything before committing fully to an attribute,” she said, turning to leave me with my thoughts.
You can’t just leave after giving me a lecture!
I shouted inwardly. But deep down, I knew she wanted me to decide for myself… to come to the right conclusion.
Letting out a deep breath, I flopped onto the couch and opened my notebook. I needed to calculate how long it would take to complete more layers of Essence Sense and Engraving. After all, those two Ways rewarded points directly into Arcane Acuity.