Return of the Runebound Professor

Energy from dozens of shattered runes prickled against Noah’s skin. His entire soul felt like it had been permeated with raw magic. He could feel it tingling against his tongue and filling his lungs.

Hairline fractures ran throughout the dark void surrounding him. Dim beams of white broke though the emptiness like rays of sunlight breaking through a dirty window. He wasn’t concerned. The damage wasn’t nearly as extensive as it could have been.

As it turned out, bringing runes into his soul and shattering them an instant later really didn’t give the runes much time to bond with him. That meant the injuries he sustained from removing them were far more manageable.

The cracks wouldn’t have even been worth thinking about if he hadn’t made quite so many of them. He’d been working with a lot of runes — but it had been to great effect.

Crumbling Space and Warped Matter were finished. They floated alongside Natural Disaster and Empty Proliferation. All four of the runes were flawless. They were completely prepared to advance to the next stage.

That left him with three slots to fill. Fortunately for Noah, he knew exactly what he was going to put there. He’d known since before he started hunting for runes in the auction. The normal strategy would have been to carefully consider the Rank 5 Rune he wanted to create, get the constituents, and then make the Rank 4s one at a time whilst ensuring he understood every component enough to successfully combine them into an effective Rank 5 Rune.

The process would take weeks or months for someone who was careful and intelligent enough not to rush ahead like a moron. It would probably take a few days for an idiot like Dayton, who just slammed all his runes together to advance through the ranks as quickly as possible without completely crippling his potential.

Noah planned to do it in minutes.

I’m done doing things the normal ways. I don’t need to hide from the nobles anymore. The time for that is over. If the nobles want war, I’ll give them war.

The first Rank 4 he wanted to create was relatively simple. He’d been heavily inspired by the Fragment of Renewal — or rather, its inverse.

There were few disasters as horrifying as a plague. And, as far as Noah was concerned, that definitely counted as a disaster. It would fit in with the rest of his runes. He was already stretching his definition of exactly what counted as a disaster.

That was the best part about runes. There were no hard rules about combinations. It was all fueled by intent. If he could find a common pattern among the runes he made, then they would combine. It was as simple — and difficult — as that.

Noah carved his hand down, shattering a Rank 5 Creeping Frostborne Infection rune. He sliced through its components, splitting apart the sickness related runes and moving the rest to the side to store for energy later.

He repeated the process with several other runes he’d gotten from the auction, pulling all the rot and infection related runes free. It definitely wasn’t his favorite rune. There was something a little unsettling about working with runes as gross as these.

Anyone walking around with a rune that can rot things away is hardly someone I’d want to associate with. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite.

Oh well.

His lips curled into a cold, determined smile. It was ironic. His life on Earth had been so short. Only twenty-something measly years, and the last one of which he’d spent in a hospital. He’d spent it lying alone in a pristine white bed with only the beep and whine of the machinery around him to keep him company.

Noah could still remember wondering why he’d been the one to get sick. Why he’d been the unlucky one. He’d eaten healthy — or at least, as healthy as his budget had afforded him to. He hadn’t smoked or drank. He didn’t use any drugs.

Noah had done everything right.

And none of that had saved him.

He was more than familiar with the insidious rot of sickness. He knew what it felt like to have his body slowly wither away until nothing but the soul remained. Noah understood rot well. He wouldn’t claim to be an expert on it — but he finally had an answer to that question he’d asked. An answer to why he’d laid in that bed and wasted away until nothing remained.

The answer was that there wasn’t one.

There was no reason he’d gotten sick. Life didn’t give reasons. It was simply what one made of it. Nothing more and nothing less. It was experience. And today, Noah used that experience.

He took everything he knew of the slow march of sickness and used those memories to drive the runes flying around him together.

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A brilliant flash lit his soul. Noah squinted through the light, looking down upon the new rune that had taken form.

His lips twitched as his smile grew slightly wider.

Then he called on Sunder and carved the rune apart.

It hadn’t been perfect, much less flawless. Noah supposed it would have been a bit arrogant to believe he’d get it right the very first time around.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to.

Twice more, he reformed the rune.

Twice more, he Sundered it.

Noah didn’t let the failures dissuade him. They weren’t even truly failures. They were simply steps in the right direction. Each one brought him closer to a flawless Rank 4 Rune.

And then it was done.

Fragments of green energy twisted around Noah, remnants of previous combination attempts, as he looked upon the new rune in his soul.

Consuming Rot — Rank 4

This time, Noah didn’t smile. There was no time for him to waste on anything but advancing. He simply drew upon the rune, feeling its power grip his entire body as he tested it. The rune’s power remained uniform as he walked in a circle around it. It never faltered or changed.

He’d created a Flawless Rune.

Noah flicked his hand and the rune shifted back, floating to take its place in its soul. He drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly to steady himself. His soul was awash with energy and soul damage, but his work was not done.

Two more.

Consuming Rot had been the test run. It had been equal parts brute force and understanding. The next two runes he had to make were going to stretch his definition of a disaster even further.

First, something that aligns with something else I’m familiar with. Everything in this world is a pattern. Runes themselves are a pattern. There are few things that work better with patterns than music. I’ve been trying to figure out how I could directly use music in a rune for a while now, starting with the first one I ever made.

And now… I have an idea on how to do it.

Noah drew runes into his soul from the Grimoire and sliced them apart one after the other. He removed a mixture of Space, Matter, and Vibration runes from within them, cutting them down to their base components before rebuilding them to ensure that every material he worked with was at Flawless quality.

Then he repeated the process that he’d taken with Consuming Rot, driving the runes together. His first attempt failed to produce a Flawless Rune, and so it was sliced apart. His second and third attempts met the same fate.

He was burning power at a rate that would have made even a noble cry. Noah was pretty sure he’d completely destroyed dozens of runes in his pursuit of rapid advancement. Thousands upon thousands of gold, an immense amount of power, all burned.

And from that fire, the fourth attempt emerged.

It was a Rune inspired not by the harmony of music, but the lack of it. Nature was full of harmony. It could be found almost everywhere. But finding something with absolutely no harmony whatsoever… that was difficult.

A concept completely devoid of any manner of harmony was a pattern in itself — and that was the concept which Noah used to create his sixth Rank 4 rune. He ran it through several tests, but it passed every single one.

The rune was Flawless.

Spatial Deharmonization - Rank 4

Noah’s skull pounded, but he ignored the pain. He could feel power pressing against the walls of his soul from all the new runes he was forming, slowly and steadily causing it to grow even larger.

There was only one Rank 4 left to make. He had absolutely no plans of stopping now.

Features creased in determination, Noah called the last of the runes he’d gotten from the auction into his soul. He still had a large number of Space and Matter Runes. They’d normally have been pretty difficult to get, but the nobles had emptied their pockets out when he’d put Demon Runes up for auction.

Noah’s lips creased into a thin line as he worked to cut the components up. He moved with the practiced precision of a chef chopping vegetables apart on his cutting board for the hundredth time, sweeping the unneeded runes out of the way to use as power sources later.

He combined runes. He split them apart. He combined them again.

Noah repeated the cycle relentlessly. If the Runes could have cried out in request for a break, they would have. He cut them apart easily ten times in his pursuit of understanding. He accepted nothing short of perfection.

Ineffective runes were replaced. His approach was adjusted. He tried again. And again. And again.

The cracks covering his soul grew. Even without giving the Rank 4 runes he was making time to properly connect with him, they were still part of his soul. There was only so much damage that he could take — but the Fragment of Renewal waited for him, and so he did not relent.

Noah wasn’t sure how many combinations he tried and failed. All he knew is that the rune was not where he needed it to be. Several times, he got close. He created a perfect rune that anyone else would have been beyond delighted to have.

Noah shattered them without a second thought.

He was not satisfied with anything but a flawless creation.

And that was what he made.

His breaths came heavy and ragged. He’d fallen to his knees at some point while he worked, and before him floated a dull rune of murky gray. Its twisting shapes rippled like oil reflecting sunlight. The rune drew from much of his experience in the afterlife and what had come after it, and yet an equal portion of its power had been purely from theory and testing.

Theoretically, Noah shouldn’t have had the capacity to make it yet. The rune should have been just barely beyond his understanding. But, ironically, his lack of understanding had lent itself perfectly to the creation of the Flawless Rune that now floated before him.

Fractured Reality - Rank 4

His seventh and final Rank 4 Rune was complete. Noah grabbed for the Fragment of Renewal, letting its gentle power wash through his soul and cleanse the damage away as he battled to catch his breath.

Three new Rank 4 runes floated within his soul, filled to the brim by all the energy he’d ripped from the excess runes. The amount of power it had taken was astronomical.

Noah’s lips finally twisted into a smile.

He’d done it.

I’m ready to advance to Rank 5.

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