The Ethersmith [Runesmithing Progression Fantasy]

"Shit," Coshi cursed under her breath. She tapped her finger on the table. A light coating of ether oozed from her skin, as if her anger was flowing freely to the air.

More writing appeared on the wooden board. Coshi glanced at it. To Vivi, the text was incomprehensible, until Lucius felt her attention on the board. He began translating the text.

"I'm truly sorry," it read, "but our hands are full as is. All we have to spare are loose mercenaries, none of whom have the skills to defend a convoy of such size from typhoons. I apologize, but—"

Coshi grit her teeth with an audible scoff. She slammed her fist on the table, grabbed the board, ripping it from its cable of conductive ether, and tossed it aside. The board clanked against the ground.

"Shit," Coshi said, now louder. "The abyss bless us, this is goddamned insane!"

Vivi and the Luminary's Lights stood nervously, watching their leader rub her hand on her forehead. Nobody knew what to say or do.

Coshi glanced at Vivi, then bit her lip. "You're dismissed. Don't worry about this. I'll handle it."

"Coshi, we'll defend the city," Vivi said. "I'm creating a weapon. We'll—"

"If you can create something to help us evacuate, please do, and do it quick," Coshi said. She stood and picked up the board from the ground, connecting it back to the communications device. "Now, I have more lords to contact. We will meet later. Tsarvan is ready to start your lessons."

Vivi had a lot more to argue, and many questions she wanted answered. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, faced with Coshi's look. The Luminary was not in a mood to talk.

The ballistas, Vivi thought, and the skill wisps. We need to solve this now.

"I'll start practicing with my mentor later," Vivi said. "I have things to do as well."

She offered a light bow before leaving. The servants escorted her out through the secret tunnel entrance. Vivi quicked her step, prompting the servants to move faster as well.

Outside, she fueled her legs with ether far past the one hundred ether rule. She moved swiftly, not at a full run, but ether helped her avoid traffic, keeping her more aware of incidents and jammed carriages ahead. She knew which streets were crowded before even reaching them, letting her pick alleys and shortcuts.

A bar fight was happening behind a bar near the middle levels of the city. The men paused, feeling Vivi's aura, then became completely awed as they saw who walked past. The men were far from poor, both wearing white vests stained with booze. Vivi wrinkled her nose but disappeared behind a corner in seconds.

How does the skill wisp do it? Vivi repeated in her head. She unfocused her eyes and moved her consciousness to her skills, looking at Shadow Swipe. The main pathway of the skill's structure looked very similar to Thorn Sword's. Both were weapon enhancement skills, and both had the three pathways Civar had talked about. The middle path looked exactly the same—the path that defined what a weapon was. The ether amplification path was similar as well. The differences were most apparent in the last path, the one that gave the ether commands on how it was supposed to affect the weapon it attached to.

The detailed functions of each rune combination within the pathways were still foreign to her. She wasn't an ether scientist, and she had no idea how a swiftness rune would react with a wind sub-element of the shockwave rune. But it wasn't Vivi's job to solve that. Civar was the one theorizing the rune-combination for her.

What she had to solve was rune activation. Which part within the rune actually shaped ether into its active form, sparking it?

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The Lost Raindrop came to sight. Vivi didn't bother changing out of her dress as she sat on her anvil. She closed her eyes and zoomed in deeply on the skill wisp. Lucius floated near her in her consciousness, though Vivi wasn't certain if he could see the wisp like she did. She ignored him and studied the runes.

She looked at one of the flow runes early on within Shadow Swipe's rightmost main pathway. It appeared exactly like the flow rune Vivi carved to Blossom, with the same proportions and all. The only difference was in the middle of the circular rune, where the engravings circled their way back toward the core, where the end of the rune was normally wrapped up, kind of like how a seamstress tied the last stitch to prevent the string from escaping.

Vivi zoomed in closer and examined the part where she'd normally wrap the end of a rune shut, connecting the end with the core. The wrap seemed to be missing. Instead, the end of the rune continued with another branch, one that moved through the flow rune's own structure, to the start of the next rune.

This was the part that made no sense. The extra branch of the flow rune passed through the essential branches that formed the flow rune—something that normally broke a real rune, making it inoperational. Yet, somehow, the skill wisp could break this rule freely. The flow rune still worked without issues despite the extra branch that would have broken the formation were it carved in a real rune.

Vivi zoomed in closer. Really close, as close as she managed, to really study the extra branch connecting two runes.

She saw something.

Vivi blinked, suddenly feeling stupid.

Well, she thought. I guess this is quite an obvious solution.

It turned out, the extra branch of the flow rune didn't actually intersect with the previous branches. Rather, the extra branch inched downward by a tiny distance, just enough that it could traverse below the main rune itself. The extra branch conducted the ether below the main rune, toward the next rune, where it rose again at the point where the next rune was carved.

Looks like depth is the answer, Vivi thought. The runic branches with the skill don't intersect at all. The extra branch goes downward, conducting ether to the next rune that way.

Lucius listened with a curious look on his face, though he didn't seem to understand what she was talking about.

If depth is actually the answer, we'll have more problems. I can't just carve downward with a rune. We're back at the same problem of inventing a new material that can create runes without carving them.

She continued thinking. It made sense that the skill wisp used depth to connect runes. Yet… Vivi didn't believe that was the full answer. Her experiment at Civar's lab had used depth too, in a way, to conduct ether from one rune to the next. Instead of a branch, she'd just used an ether root. Somehow, the skill wisp could also shape ether using runes without igniting the wisp active.

"Lucius? When you shape ether, do you…" Vivi paused and thought of her wording. "What exactly do you do before you ignite the rune into my body?"

"I just shape it and send it to your body?" Lucius said, as if that was as normal as breathing.

"Could you walk me through the steps?" Vivi asked. "Be as detailed as you can. When you shape ether, how exactly do you start the process?"

"Uhhh," Lucius said. He closed his eyes and floated beside her. Quickly, his expression turned to a puzzled frown. "I, uh, take a wisp, shape it, and toss it to your body?"

"More detail, please. Please define shape."

"I take a wisp from my core," Lucius said. "I… make it powerful, then I send it to your body?"

"And at what point do you ignite it?" Vivi asked.

He thought for a moment. "Right before I send it to your body. After making it powerful."

Vivi nodded, hand on her chin. She was fairly certain making it powerful meant picking the branch that was to be ignited. If so, Lucius ignited the wisp after he picked the branch. That probably meant that runes did the same.

Vivi opened her eyes fully and picked up the ether root. "I have an idea. Let's see if this works. Lucius, initiate a root for me. Let's create another contraption for an experiment. The exact same we did at Civar's lab."

She began shaping two ether roots to create another rune-combination experiment. She only had expensive roots available; it hurt to spend an adamantite root on something as simple as this, but Vivi didn't have time to fetch something cheaper.

She carved another mass rune to the first root. This time, however, she didn't wrap up the rune at the end, leaving it loose. Doing so felt wrong, as if she was breaking every fundamental she'd learned about rune-carving. Not wrapping up a rune properly was generally considered a mistake, which would leave the rune completely inoperational. An incomplete rune would do nothing.

Still, Vivi had an idea. She carved the incomplete mass rune to the first ether root of the experiment, then a shockwave rune to the second, just like she had with the first experiment. She wrapped up the shockwave rune, making it complete.

She took a deep breath, and pushed ether through the mass rune.