NOVEL NEXT 70: Carving Touch
Liane had left to find out what Simon was up to and to properly scout the area. It was apparently extra important to Hari, because once we left to do patrols, he needed to know how much protection Micca would require from the guild.
She had tried to protest, saying she'd be fine. Hari would have none of it, though.
That afternoon, I got to work practising rune carving on melons. Fortunately, due to their size, I could make multiple attempts on a single melon. After a couple of hours of trial and error, I finally managed to get mostly accurate base circles.
"Nice work. Next, you need to work on the shapes—then we'll go over the words," Milo instructed.
I had used at least half the melons by the time Milo was satisfied with my efforts. Each one had nearly every inch of space filled with rune circles, along with the shapes inside them. Not all were perfect, but they were no longer too distorted to fit properly.
Next, Milo began teaching me the words. It was a bizarre process—you couldn't just copy the letters. You had to infuse your mana into the carving or writing tool while visualising the exact spell you wanted to cast. All the instructions on what to picture and how it needed to appear in my mind were in the book we had.
If I did it right, the words would form naturally, my skill guiding the carving to take shape.
It was so much easier said than done. I failed at least twenty times before I thought I had my first success. I had the words, the circle, the shapes—sort of. It wasn't my best work, but it looked complete.
"I think I've got one!" I called out happily to Milo.
He came over to inspect my work, and he didn't look immediately impressed.
"Well, you need to try it. To do so, you'll need to inject mana into the fruit," he said, taking a step back.
That sounded simple enough. Holding the melon in my hand, I tried to push mana into it.
Nothing happened.
"Try touching the rune itself when you infuse," Milo said—now standing even further away. That was odd.
I did as I was told. As I touched the rune, I felt a warmth on my fingers—then a tingle—as I successfully began to inject mana.
The rune lit up, bright blue.
The problem was... it didn't stop lighting up.
It just kept getting brighter.
Then, before I knew it, the melon exploded in my hands, throwing me to the ground and knocking the wind out of me.
"Ow…" was all I could manage.
A moment later, Crisplet burst out of the kitchen, flames a violent shade of red as he floated over to me. Spotting the remains of the melon, he immediately began shooting fire at the scraps on the floor, as if attacking them.
"Thanks, Crisplet," I said with a chuckle.
"Sooo, what did you learn?" I heard Milo say through a laugh.
"That I should've picked Edge Mastery instead," I mumbled.
Milo just laughed as the others all looked on in shocked silence.
"Well—besides that," Milo added, using his wind magic to clean up the melon scraps around the room.
"I really don't know. It seemed mostly correct," I said, embarrassed. I really thought I had it.
Milo turned to me. "That right there—say it again," he said. So I repeated what I'd said.
"Well?" Milo asked, expecting me to pick something up from my own words. Then it sort of clicked. It was mostly correct. It wasn't perfect…
"It wasn't perfect," I mumbled.
"Spot on! When carving runes, it's important that they're basically perfect. The further off you are, the more disastrous the results can be—with what you experienced here being one of the least disastrous outcomes," Milo said, now sitting down again.
"Otherwise, you did really well," Milo added.
"You've got this, Trev!" Micca said encouragingly.
With a deep sigh, I got back to work.
I tried three more melons. Two of them exploded on me—but nowhere near as violently as the first. Then the third... I thought I finally got it, but it fizzled out right as the melon was fully glowing.
I felt like I was so close, and I refused to give up. This felt like those days of training, where if we managed to land a single hit on the instructor back at the academy, we were rewarded with a better meal. No matter how many times you were beaten back, you tried again.
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So I kept at it.
By this stage, everyone had put some distance between me and where they were relaxing. Liane still hadn't returned.
Then it happened...
The melon glowed blue. The rune pulsed brilliantly blue before settling. The glow faded from the melon's surface—but the pulse within the rune itself remained.
"Di... Did I do it?" I asked excitedly, looking down at the melon in my hand.
Looking up, I saw Milo wearing a huge smile as he came over to inspect it. To my surprise, Hari, Jen, and Micca also came over for a look.
The truth was, I didn't really know what happened next. The rune I used was a basic barrier. The way it was supposed to work on a normal item was that you engraved it onto the surface of a shield or amulet, and once complete, it could be activated by injecting mana into it, granting a temporary barrier.
The quality of the rune and its complexity would then determine how many uses someone could get out of it.
But surely it didn't expect you to carry around a melon to cast a barrier?
As I stared at it in my hands, with everyone crowding around, I couldn't help but look up at Milo and ask the stupid question, "So... what now?"
"Well, that's the interesting part—we don't know!" Milo said cheerfully, pulling out his notebook and taking notes on the rune, the word, the shapes, and the characteristics of the melon itself.
"So, normally once you've successfully created a rune, you would infuse a small burst of mana into it to activate it—like the lanterns around the house here," he added.
Everyone took a step back, so I decided to give it a try, attempting to send a short burst of mana into the rune.
Nothing.
"Maybe I still can't use my own food?" I said, a little disappointed.
Milo took the melon from me and tried to activate the rune himself, but with the same result—nothing happened.
"Hmm. The next logical step would be that we need to eat it. It is food, after all," Milo said.
I looked at the melon. It wasn't huge, but I still needed to hold it with both hands—and you didn't usually eat the skin.
"Do we just cut it in half?" I asked.
I placed the melon on the table and pulled out my kitchen knife. I wasn't sure where to cut; it felt like I shouldn't slice through the rune.
"Probably best to keep as much as possible attached to the rune," Jen said with a shrug.
Instead, I trimmed off the edge of the melon—just enough to access the fruit inside while removing as little of the rune as possible.
I was pleased to see the rune didn't break. Next, I took a spoon and tasted a bit of the melon. The others soon followed.
It didn't feel any different.
"Oh—we got an ability on a timer," Jen said, glancing at her status.
I pulled up my own:
Notifications:
You have suffered 8 HP damage
You have suffered 2 HP damage
You have suffered 3 HP damage
…
You have temporarily gained the ability Mana Barrier
Abilities:
Basic Meal Prep: 5
Butchery: 4
Carving Touch: 1
Infused Flavour: 4
Chef's Pantry: 4
Culinary Transformation: 3
Arcane Foraging: 3
Fiery-sous: 5
Stock Reduction: 2
Mana Barrier: 1 (Temporary: 36 minutes remaining)
Active evolution quest:
Create 10 unique dishes.: 6/10
Oh wow, I had a new ability! I actually gained the ability from my own food!
I immediately tried to cast the barrier, and a small shimmer of blue appeared in front of me. It was then shattered as a tiny pebble from Milo came flying through it—losing momentum before lightly hitting my forehead.
"Damn, not very useful," I said, a bit dejected.
"Actually, I think it can be very useful. You're just not used to these spells. You see, it has a base mana cost, then you can usually channel mana into it, reinforcing it to a maximum," Milo explained, as small blue shields popped up in front of the others at various stages of solidity.
Milo cast his own, and although it started weak, it very rapidly became a solid light-blue sheet.
"Ah yes, see here—it starts for me at a base cost of 50 mana, but it allows me to channel 250 mana into it. It's even allowing the passive mana discount on spells from the class, making it incredibly solid. If this were well-placed and timed, it could save your life..." Milo trailed off.
"Very useful," he muttered. "Well done, Trev. We'll need to do some practice and study on this, but before you wrap up for the night, I want you to record everything you've done in your notebook—effect, duration, and try to copy your rune exactly onto the page. For this one, you can copy the words—just don't channel mana onto the page."
Milo went over to one of the chairs, where he had his own notes out and was pelting his own shield with pebbles at different speeds until it broke. It was truly fascinating to watch him work.
"This is amazing, Trev!" Micca whispered, her own shield a weak shimmer like mine had been.
"It really is good," Jen said, nodding in approval.
Even Hari was practising with its use, trying to get it to appear over his shield. It wasn't large enough to cover it entirely, but still.
I also saw I'd gained 36 experience in Carving Touch, so I wondered if the buff time correlated directly with the experience gained—or if that was just a coincidence.
I was nearly finished with my notes when Liane returned to the house.
"How'd it go?" Hari asked immediately upon seeing her.
She laughed a little. "Seems he did some digging on Trev at the guild. Someone there seems to have loose lips for coin. But also, the information he gathered wasn't any more than the general order—that if the cat appears, guild members are not to engage under any circumstances."
She took a seat on a nearby chair. "This, in combination with confirming Trev is under guild protection, seems to have him a bit spooked. He's trying to leave town and return to Dunhearth as soon as possible."
"That's good news, right?" Micca asked hopefully.
"Yeah, it is. He likely won't try anything, but he's leaving one of his goons behind to observe, so we're not completely free of him," Liane added finally.
"So, what happened here today?" She asked, eyeing Milo—who had multiple notebooks sprawled across the table and hadn't looked up once since she entered.
"Trev successfully created a rune in a melon. Gave us an ability for half an hour that let us create a mana barrier," Jen said, looking a bit smug.
"Wait—I missed out on new buffing food?!" Liane looked at me with the saddest eyes I think I've ever seen.
"I still have some you can try," I said, pulling out the melon. Immediately, her look of sadness vanished and was replaced with a giant smile.
"Thanks, Trev!" she said happily, trying some of the melon.
"Also, that's totally cheating, pretending to be sad like that!" I said in a huff.
She nudged me with her elbow. "Nah, it's not cheating—I'm a rogue. Using underhanded tactics is part of the class!" she laughed, before having a small blue barrier appear in front of her. It quickly solidified into form.
"This is really cool!" she said, sitting down again. "What's the next rune?" she asked.
"Uh... that I don't know. I was kind of hoping I'd get to look through Char's notebook and see if there's something that's useful but also basic," I said—then, before I knew it, Milo had pulled out Char's notebook and was passing it over to me.
"Get to work, then!" Milo said with a chuckle.