The runic trials grew more and more difficult, yet Arson’s pace increased. For every pattern he thought he found, the runic skyscraper destroyed his perception by mixing up the details completely in the next room or area. Probability wasn’t real within the confines of the tower.
“So I am supposed to put more than just manna into my constructs,” asked Arson.
“Yes,” replied Ezra. It was Arson’s second time in her kingdom and both were very happy with the surprise.
His prompt for his 3101st trial, was titled simply, Complete a Living Construct. This had long eluded him but the princess seemed to have a much larger understanding of both runes and even constructs of magic since the last time they’d spoken. Arson almost rushed to complete what he thought would end his current trial, but paused.
“Would you like to pick up our game where we left off?”
The queen's smile was as nefarious as his own mother’s, and Arson wondered momentarily if he was ready for a rematch just yet.
The woman seemed much older than she had been. Not only did her demeanor speak of confidence, but the land around her had changed vastly.
The once desert was now a luscious landscape of greens and blues. The tall trees of the land, now even taller and grander than they had been before. It was as if thousands of season cycles had passed for the woman and only a few had for Arson.
“I thought that you would never ask,” said Ezra. She lifted her hand and they began. Arson truly didn’t know what he’d signed up for, but it took him days to get the woman to even acknowledge that he’d learned a lot.
It was then that Arson realized, he may lose. The contest continued and the two didn’t seem to have an end to what they could offer.
Arson logged more new runes and combinations of runes in seven days than he did in the last thousand trials. Something he began to wonder if the queen knew. As nearly none of what she offered was similar in scope, use or complexity.
It was almost like she had access to every rune in her mind and had set her mind to automatically pick her next choice from the remainder. It was what Arson had done and he’d been dwindled down to 107, when a golden rune popped up above Ezra’s hand and she sighed.
“Why do I feel like you know that you have won, child,” said Ezra. Arson shrugged and smiled.
“Will you at least stay for dinner before you vanish?” Arson thought for a moment, before he nodded.
He hadn’t needed to eat since he entered the runic skyscraper. So the thought of a meal with a friend sounded nice, even though he wanted to create his Living Hand construct in its truest form, and move on.
He didn’t know how long it would take him to achieve the feat at hand, but regardless, a warm meal would help him miss home just enough to push him onward. The thought of his friends and mother were the only thing left to motivate him after thousands of trials. Other than his lust for more runes.
“Do you know the tale of the 21 families, child?”
“No,” responded Arson with a mouth full of food.
“I have heard of the eleven HonorBorn families,” managed Arson through bites of a lamb dish.
“Well then you have heard of the Omni, which are the culmination of those families, but have you never been told about how we the HonorBorn, or the Omni, are a counter to a set of families known as Omen, or the SinBorn?”
“What, no I have never been told of any Omen,” said Arson. He nearly wanted to laugh at the name, but still wondered what the woman would say. Instead, she remained silent.
“That’s all you’re going to give me?”
“Hmmm, I think that would be for the best, this is something for your parents to speak to you about when you are older,” said Ezra. Arson almost yelled aloud that he was nearly nine, but then remembered she may have been here for hundreds of season cycles since they’d last interacted.
She’d really take you seriously after that Arson…
“Okay then, I’ll put it on the list for things that I need to ask my mother about. The two spoke on about runes for a while more before Arson’s thoughts of runes and constructs consumed him entirely.
Ezra dismissed herself from the table and left Arson to his work. He’d disassembled his third hand and had begun to try to not only infuse it with his mana and life-force as he recreated the construct, but also tried to add his stamina, or natural energy.
He’d never infused a rune, merely created them out of what he knew to be his pure mana, or mixture of the basic elements he had access to through his foundation. Now though, he pushed far more of himself into his construct than ever before.
His vision went dark. And it became hard for him to breathe. But he pushed on. Until he was forced to close his eyes. After a moment longer Arson felt the dire need to stop, or something would be lost to him forever. So he did.
It was then that he thought to look at his overlay. Which showed him that he’d fed the construct everything he had, and more.
All of his display gauges were empty and he also had soul based status afflictions that warned of potential soul damage. As well as a final prompt that took Arson’s breath away, the sound of a turbine grew and his vision slowly returned.
“Congratulations young scion. You have completed multiple bonus objectives.
1. Defeat a master of earthen runes, 2/3, 207% completion rate.
2. Learn more runes than the number trial you are in, rank S: runes needed: 3101, runes gathered: 3701.
3. Complete a Runic Construct Living grade or higher: Rank achieved: Soul Grade. SSS “Hand of Living Will: You have created not only a construct but a skill. Your Hand of Living Will, can not only follow your commands, it learns independently from you, as it is a conscious creature that can be summoned from your soul and is powered by all of your resource pools.
Note: this ability can directly drain not just your mana, but your life force, and stamina as well.”
Arson read the prompt a dozen times. People screamed around him, yet he stood frozen. He had so many ideas, so many things he wanted to try.
“Move out of the way, Kid!” Arson distractedly looked over his shoulder only to half acknowledge the giant carriage that stormed to him. Even though his concentration had been fixed on the prompts he normally ignored his newest construct was made to operate even without him actively being focused on their use.
So even as he ignored the carriage that nearly struck him as hard as any automated vehicle back home could, his Living Hands sprung into action with speeds almost equivalent to Troy’s accelerated movements.
Arson finished his prompts. Meanwhile his new construct centered itself underneath the carriage, and its two assistance spread across one side. Arson only looked up again after the carriage had been lifted and shoved aside.
“What the sparks!” A man screamed as he was flung free of the carriage. Arson gaped. Both at the sight of the flipped vehicle that seemed to be propelled entirely by runes. As well as his Living Hands.
The three hands, one white and the other two golden, assaulted any and all combatants that neared Arson. It wasn’t until his offensive hand slammed a demon that Arson truly took in his surroundings. Creatures made of stone and darkness rampaged through the streets.
He witnessed a two headed bear run through a home. Its armored body looked like metallic bone that could be seen on its exterior, yet like the other demons the majority of its body was comprised of shadow.
An armored man was held in the mouth of both of its heads. An overly stretched leg in one mouth, and most of his torso and left arm in the other.
His movements were sluggish and desperate and Arson began to change the set of runes he currently used. It was in that moment that his prompt for the trial popped up a second time, with an updated message. Arson was distracted for only the second it took to register the words displayed.
Trial 3102-0 End the runic summoning before you die.. Arson remembered a slightly different message which asked for him to find something called a demon’s egg. Arson was shaken from his thoughts when the man screamed. His leg and arm devoured.
“No!” Arson screamed and rushed toward the bear. The man still alive, swung his arm up toward the bear as it attempted to chomp him up completely. His short sword, clanged uselessly off the bear’s metal frame.
Faster than Arson could move his jack of trades hand grabbed one of the metal jaws in a vice grip and yanked the massive creature aside. The second head still in range to the armored man, decided to take its own open mouthed lunge toward the man.
Without a thought from Arson, his offensive hand delivered a strangely infused mana punch to the second head before it made contact with the man’s body.
Arson was confused as he dragged the man away as he screamed. Both because the man still fought chaotically, and so did all three of his hands, without any direction from him.
After Arson restrained the man’s wrist so that he wasn’t struck with a sword. He focused almost entirely on as much mana as possible being pumped into as many basic runes of healing as he could currently maintain while also in an active meditation.
The remaining sliver of his mind was focused on the fight in front of him. His three constructs were able to keep the demon at bay. Which gave Arson enough time to close the wounds on the man. Wounds he wouldn’t have if Arson wasn’t distracted by his every thought.
The man had stopped his one-legged kicks in the direction of the bear only after Arson began to heal him, and had now passed out. Arson wanted to roll his eyes, but yelled at the people near to him before he charged toward the bear.
“When you flip that sparking carriage take this guy with you, or I’ll hunt you down myself!” One of the two men that pushed on the upturned carriage gave Arson a half hearted nod. He was in a full run the next moment toward the beast.
Without a pause, Arson hurdled over a pile of debris, planted a foot and transitioned as smoothly as he could into his practiced spartan kick. He extended his leg and the impact sounded like a struck gong.
Luckily for Arson the metal of his bones, was far more dense than the metal of the realm he currently fought in. Unluckily for Arson, this demon was far from the apex being within the demonic invasion.
Still the fight shifted his mind from diplomat, to the runic warrior Arson wanted to embody.
He tried various combinations of punches and kicks as he dodged. Forced to change element types with nearly every landed blow as the creature seemed to grow resilient to his magic as he used it.
Except for his Jack of all trades, and its two helpers. The odd Manna type that the constructs used on the demon did more and more damage with time. Arson couldn’t slow his perception, or use absurd amounts of mana alongside his skills since he entered the runic skyscraper, but…
He still tried, not in an attempt to see the damage being done, but instead to see the strange manna that flowed around the constructs as they fought. He needed to know if he could replicate the energy type, which he knew he could somehow, and gain an edge for the fights to come.
His mana disappeared while he took in each punch grab and slap, but he gained nothing visually, until he touched one of the hands as it flew by.
For the briefest moment he felt it. The sensation froze him long enough for Arson to be back handed by the bear. He flew for thirty feet and smashed into the stone gate of a nearby manor.
“You deserved that too for freezing so close to a giant bear that not even your defensive hand could back you up,” said Arson with a grunt. He charged again.
His intent was entirely different when he fought the beast this time. The exchange for Arson was more to learn than to fight.
He did so by only a single fold of his mind being used toward each task he needed done simultaneously. The first of three was to move. The second was to touch the energy of his constructs as much as possible. With his final fold being focused on points of weakness.
With his mind focused like this Arson had a feeling a point in time would come and he would know to attack. His mother would have been ashamed of how he missed his first three true opportunities, but she wasn’t there to see if he threw a tantrum slightly, right?
“You know you are going to die today, demon, I’m giving you the option to run,” said Arson with a smile. He felt alive in a way he hadn’t since he’d been in the dump for the first time. He was truly afraid, but prepared.
He dodged and slowly gathered more of the energy he collected from his constructs. It felt of fire, and nature hints, and maybe even light and air magic. So Arson added as much to the mixture of those elements as he could with what little mana he had left.
Then he felt the faintest hints of water and earth, and with what he had when he realized their presence left in mana felt like droplets to Arson’s body. It left the energy he stored in his hands far more chaotic than the constructs that used this balance of energy seemingly safely right in front of him.
He shifted his focus away from his constructs in addition to the fold he dedicated to their trajectories around him and the demon’s body. The breathing technique took over and an influx of mana came in slowly at first. Arson seemed to balance out the manas wrapped around his hand until it also looked oddly like a twisted green flame with powerful orange tips.
A flare triggered in Arson’s mind and he knew his opportunity had come.
His offensive hand had one head distracted. While his defensive hand held the other head to the side by the side of its mouth.
He looked for the hand he wondered if he should name Jack, and found it held one of the bear’s back legs off the ground by an ankle, which explained why it hadn’t moved. Arson’s charge toward the point between the two heads was smooth and completed in a mere blink to some who watched from a distance.
A family stuck on a nearby rooftop watched as Arson was surrounded by a large concentration of demons. They saw a violent surge of green and orange flame rush down his body, wrap around his foot and extend toward the demon as he kicked.
The spartan kick crushed the spine of the two headed creature.
The demon finally died and Arson took a look around. Demons could be seen on the verge of a stampede all around him, and he hadn’t even noticed until he’d slain the bear. Arson’s next words changed the lives of an entire family’s future, and he was completely unaware.
“My name is Arson Omni, and I am nobody’s toy!”
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