Runeblade

Looking at his system guide's guilty and sad smile twisted Kaius's stomach in knots. It made the familiar office fade away, shelves of leatherbound volumes falling into the background as he gave his guide his full focus.

Having the knowledge of his previous glyphs shoved into his head hadn't exactly been pleasant, but the guide had never once made a note of it, and definitely had never apologised. Could it really be so bad?

He knew little, far too little.

Kaius forcibly unclenched his hands — he had to steel himself. Regardless of what was coming, he had faith that the system had his best interest in mind. It wouldn't be the first time he'd endured pain or discomfort for the sake of growth, and it wouldn't be the last.

"What's the issue? Any warning you can give me?"

He didn't see the harm in asking. Afterall, it was his guide after all — it was there to inform him.

The system guide smiled, the scars on his face scrunching, "I always liked that about you, Kaius. Very solution oriented."

Straightening from where he leaned on the wall, the guide walked over and sat on the edge of the desk. He drummed his fingers on its top in silence, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"The glyph and the spellhymn are no more problematic than the others you have learned here. However, VOS—"

The world quaked as the word slipped from the guide's lips. Kaius's heart raced, adrenaline surging through his veins as every sense he had tuned in, became more alive. VOS sunk its grip into his heart and mind, forcibly wrenching his focus towards it. Meaning flowed into his mind, an impression that he struggled to grasp and comprehend. Opening, awakening, growth, and power. Fragile, small words incapable of coming close to even brushing up on a small section of one corner of whatever power his guide had let slip.

It hurt. Like staring at the sun, but with every sense he had.

The system guide winced.

"Sorry about that. Vos —"

This time it was just a word. Kaius still jumped in his seat a little.

"— is another story. That…excitation you just experienced was a small taste. Strictly speaking, conceptual magic such as this should be well out of your reach for quite some time. For good reason — you're not built for it. Not yet, at least — even taking into account the mild tempering the skill provides."

Kaius frowned — it was something he was not supposed to have? He didn't know that was even possible. The system was the ultimate arbitrator of all, how could something break the rules like that?

His guide grinned.

"It's not quite like that. It's not restricted, it's just that if it were not for some very specific circumstances, it would be out of your reach. Vesryn, the man himself, was a genius — and the path he paved for others to follow was as demanding as it was potent. There's a reason the Order's standards are so strict, and that their classes are of the rarity they are. In his strength, he found something miraculous, and in his mercilessness, he found a way to gift it to those who were not ready."

Oh, great — it wasn't something banned, just something far enough beyond him that the very system itself pitied him for what was coming next. It seemed nothing good ever came easy. The skill better be damned worth it.

At the very least, whatever 'conceptual magic' was, it sounded powerful. It had to be powerful, if even an utterance had affected him so deeply. An intentional slip, he had no doubt. He was not so much of a fool as to believe that the system could do something so mundane as make a mistake. It was, he reasoned, likely an easy and direct way for him to grapple with the gravity of Vos.

His guide gave him a knowing smile. Kaius returned it with a nod — certain that it had also known he would catch on to the ploy. He didn't bother to question its motive — it was his guide. Whatever it did was in his best interest.

Still, he did have questions. Many, many questions.

"Is it beneficial? You've been quite heavily focused on the negatives so far."

The guide gave Kaius a nod, certainty plain on his face.

"It is. Receiving Vos—" This time the word did not painfully resonate. "—at this stage will be hard, demanding, even cruel — but it will mean you are learning a deeper power long, long before most ever do. You won't be able to fully appreciate or utilise its complexity if and until you develop to a more appropriate point, but that experience will give you a rather notable advantage. Hells, the tempering you will receive from your glyph and hymn alone would be significant. That said, whether you have the ability or Will to reach that point will be up to you."

Kaius gave his guide a resolute nod. He'd long set himself on a hard path — if Vos could help him climb further, then he would weather whatever he had to in order to master it.

He just wanted to know what it was though. His guide sat calmly, waiting through his silence as he tried to think of how to phrase his question.

"What even is it though? The skill made it sound like it might have been one of the runes that you use, but you called it conceptual magic? And if it is a system rune, how is it also a word?"

His guide laughed. "Ah, the young and curious, it is always a pleasure to see. At the highest levels, existence gets…wonky, in a way that would be impossible to explain. Vos is a word, a rune, a form, a meaning and a concept all at once. In its totality, it is a behemoth, and as a rule such…runecraft is usually only understood by those who can comfortably grasp such large things. If you were to see Vos in its totality, I would have to mop your brains off the floor — you will be brushing up against the barest edge of it. The parts where it is 'empowerment', 'magnification', 'open', 'potential' and many other things."

Kaius grappled with his rising frustration, feeling like his shoulders were a bow drawn taut. What did the guide mean? Okay, it was a rune with some basic applications, likely insane complexity and power behind it, but how was he supposed to use it? Even for his glyphs, a single rune was not much help on its own. Nor could they be spoken out loud!

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The guide sighed, pushing a few loose strands of hair out of its face.

"This is what I meant when I said it's not really meant for someone of your level of development. Kaius, I didn't say it was like those things, or that it represented those things. It is those things — on a conceptual level. There's no way you're going to understand until you experience it for yourself, at least in a carefully limited sense — even then, it will only be in the broadest of senses."

"But how will I use it? It sounds like I am getting an incomplete fraction of a single rune, with no direction on what to do with it!" Kaius replied, setting his elbows on the desk with a thud.

He wasn't mad at his guide — not really — but it was still frustrating to feel in the dark. His guide hopped off the desk, rounding it to clap him on the shoulder.

"It's a small consolation, but you will know more afterwards. To understand something, to truly know it, is to be able to wield and control it. While that is only slightly relevant now, where it will help you use one of your Skills, it will be very important later. Struggling through it this early really will give you an edge very few have."

Kaius rubbed his face, sighing.

"How will I even get better with it? The skill only helps me withstand backlash. Do I find more system runes?"

His guide laughed, giving him a last clap on the shoulder. "No — that would be missing the tree for the forest. You deepen your understanding of Vos. This single word was the pinnacle of everything Vesryn ever achieved, and even his genius never brushed up on more than its edges. The limited slice that you'll experience is pushing the limits of what is possible in the early tiers, it'd be best to put the thought of more runes out of your mind for now."

Rounding the desk to stand across from him, his guide leaned forwards onto his hands and gave him a small smile.

"Now, are you ready? Everything I've said will make a lot more sense with context, I promise."

Kaius held his tongue. As much as he did want to pepper his guide with a hundred more questions, what they'd already discussed had left him feeling more uncertain than he had at the start. A glimmer of nervousness remained about what Vos might do to him, given his guide's initial reaction, but he quelled the feeling with a flare of his will.

He'd never been broken before, and wouldn't be now. He gave a firm nod.

"Good lad. Now, we'll start with the glyph and the spell — they'll be easy after all your practice."

Knowledge and information flooded his mind. The glyph was interesting, his mouth tingling as it burnt itself into his tongue, embedding itself deep into the natural flow of mana through his circuits. A stout, blocky thing — it looked like it had been drawn to withstand a siege, its lines and mana conduits blocky and thick.

The spell was even stranger. It was a palindrome — a short phrase of three dimensional runes that was identical both forwards and backwards. He knew from the understanding gifted to him that it would be able to be written in an endless sequence that would burn to reinforce his body, mind, and soul against a single thing alone. Vos. Or its after effects, at least.

His eyes widened as he delved deeper into the spell. The cost! It was variable, sure — each segment of runes would be cheap to inscribe, only a few points of mana — but the rate of consumption! Half of his pool wouldn't even buy him a full second!

Looking up sharply to his guide, he saw his concerns being waved off.

"It'll get better as the skill levels and you get more mana — don't worry, the effect is commensurate. Now — brace yourself."

Kaius barely had the time to clench his jaw before insight was forced upon him.

VOS.

He saw it. A rune that stretched in directions that made no sense, that made him want to claw at his eyes and scream. They were impossible to grasp, sliding away, yet forcing themselves upon his mind all the same. It was more than width, length, and depth — changing, morphing without care or whim for his sense of geometry. Yet, they were the same. Impossibly the same. It was unchanging, yet it shifted. He saw it from all angles, yet there weren't enough of them.

He heard it. A dissertation — a treatise that stretched for years of constant speech, yet was compressed into a single note. It was noise, but it never touched his ears — too complex to be reduced into simple pressure and vibration. It was soft, yet so loud that he clutched at his eyes and screamed. It was discordant, yet so sonorous he might have wept.

It was a Truth. So great and terrible that he could do nothing but wail and laugh — nothing but try and slam his head into something, anything hard enough that he might escape. Kaius found himself stuck fast, forced to witness in silence as his soul shuddered under what should never have been within his grasp.

It was a word, a sound, a shape, and a truth. It was sonorous, and discordant, clean and simple, yet stretched in directions he had no name for.

It was a revelation, and a destroyer.

Kaius lost himself in a wave of horror, unknowing and uncomprehending — yet having it thrust upon him all the same.

It was VOS.

And there was more. So much more, locked and hidden beyond unbreakable barriers that turned aside his eyes — deafened his ears and dulled his touch. The restriction was gentle; it was barbaric; it was inviolate.

He knew then, with certainty, that without the system supporting him his mind would have shattered. His soul quaked under the strain still, flaring and struggling as it quavered before the slightest fraction of a greater truth.

This was what the glyph was for — to protect himself from the terror of the unvarnished totality of it all. To help him recover from the wounds, and withstand the weight just a little more next time.

Empowerment… to use something so simple was outright heresy.

The moment ended as suddenly as it had begun, and a thousand insights slipped out of his mind — vanishing like dust in the wind. Twinkling embers remained — a fraction of a fraction of something grand and complete. A truth that he could call into being, if he but had the will. To empower, strengthen, potentiate, and grow.

Even those iotas seared — curdled his mind if he spent more than a moment in reflection of what they had once been. That absence left its marks on him — a totality to ponder, and endlessly delve. A danger, lest he dig too deep and be swept away on a tide that was so much grander than his mortal mind could withstand.

A single word?!

The restrictions the system had used to hold him in place vanished, and Kaius howled with manic laughter. His guide watched on in silence as he vented the terror, panic, and insanity that still lingered — slowly fading as even the remnant memory of a memory fled to the depths of his mind. It faded slowly — persistent enough that he half expected Rapid Adaptation to flare: to develop Mental Resistance or something similar. There was nothing — just the aftershocks as he grappled with more insight than his mortal mind could bear.

Kaius sat in silence for a minute longer.

"Rotting roots!"

His guide gave him a sad, but proud, smile. "Indeed. Keep on your current path, and you'll find the experience less…capricious in the second tier."

Kaius met the guide's eyes and gave him a nod. He had nothing left to say, no more questions. As incomprehensible as the experience had been, the remnants that lingered were enough. A metamagic and general enhancement, in the most butchered and twisted of senses, that could empower whatever he wanted, if he had the will to do it.

It was so much more, but that was enough. For now.

He woke up a moment later, back in the tent with his team — still grappling with exactly what he had experienced.