Chương 27: Chapter 28: Fabricating Runes

The idea that I would be magically adept at shaping skills and casting after awakening was horribly inaccurate. Besides gaining the ability to move essence out of my body and finally utilise my Gift, the awakening had been mostly anticlimactic. I was not complaining, merely stating a fact. I had anticipated the moment for so long that it had taken on an almost mythical presence in my mind, only to be thoroughly devastated when I tried to forge a rune in the air.

No matter how close within my halo of Influence I attempted to draw the rune, my essence threads flailed before I even managed to form an octagon.

"Remember what I told you about trying to run before learning to crawl?" Mum said, shaking her head in disapproval.

"Pumpkin, you cannot force your way through the paths. You'd need twenty-five points in both Will and Weight to even attempt spellforging."

"Alright, I give up," I muttered, dismissing all my essence threads. Despite all her reminders, I had to try it for myself. Even if I couldn't manifest runes in thin air as she had shown me, it was still an eye-opening experience to gauge the difficulty.

"Your time will be better spent engraving," she said.

"Or if you really want to cast spells with runes, practise Charms."

"But it isn't the same," I grumbled under my breath. While the creation of charms followed the same concept as spellforging, and their effects were similar, instead of carving the runes into thin air, charms utilised thin plates of metal, essence-infused wood chips, or paper. It just wasn't the same.

"Why can't I spend my attribute points on my aspects?!" I had uttered it as a complaint, but Mum took it upon herself to answer.

"Because the growth of your aspects is wholly dependent on the growth of your essence seed and aether root." So you're telling me to cut time off from my other practices for Unification? Keeping the question to myself, I leaned back in my seat and picked up my engraving pen.

"Now, let's see how good I am at engraving runes with my own essence." Turning off the supply of essence in the pen, I infused it with all my essence threads. The rune formation within the fabricator merged them all together into a single thread as I began drawing. I had thought all my mastery over the intricate flows of engraving would reset completely when using my own essence. Fortunately, I could not be any more mistaken.

"Oh, this is so much easier!" Engraving with foreign essence required me to pay full attention to my vision and the sensations provided by Arcane Acuity to ensure the essence flowed within the lines perfectly. But with my own essence, the task was effortless. Even if I made a mistake, I could withdraw my essence to erase it, so long as my Will remained imbued in the threads. I could practically draw with my eyes closed after gaining some experience.

"Why didn't you tell me?" I shot her a look, finishing the Amplification Rune.

"Hmmm," she hummed as though she hadn't heard my question.

"Mum?"

"Sorry," Mum said.

"I was thinking if I should teach you a neat trick now or wait for your Will to grow."

"What trick?" I asked, curious.

"It's something fundamental, like elemental shaping skills," Mum said, waving her hand.

"Usually, it's taught at the academy in the very first semester, but there are some eager shapers who tend to learn an elementary form of it on their own. One would have to be miserably boneheaded not to think about it during their first year as a shaper.

"You see, just as a shaper can shape the forces of nature, they can also shape their area of Influence." She paused, contemplating how to explain it in simpler terms. Grabbing a pen and notebook with her telekinesis, Mum drew a circle in the middle of the page.

"This is your essence seed." She then drew another larger circle around it.

"And this is your initial area of Influence." I almost knew what she was going to say next, but I stopped myself from interrupting her.

"Now," she continued, "the area of Influence of a common-class shaper is grievously small. Even in the noble class, it's barely a few metres in radius—too small to be effective in large-scale battles or other circumstances. To circumvent that, shapers are taught to manipulate their Influence." She paused to draw an oval around the essence seed, stretching it beyond the boundaries of the larger circle.

"See how the range grew in two directions?" Mum shot me a look.

"An experienced shaper can manipulate their Influence several metres in one direction, even if their original area of Influence is barely a metre." The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Like this?" I said, drawing my essence out of my finger and forcing it forward. With Fractal Sight fully active, I could acutely see the zone of Influence around myself, making it much easier to bend it to my will. Unlike my accidental discovery last night, I didn't just force brute Will into the work. No, after some careful experiments, I found that, like runes and spell designs, Influence required perfect symmetrical forms too. The discovery made manipulating it so much easier.

I shaped it into a long rectangular form, stretching outward, expanding my Influence in both the front and back. Since Mum couldn't see the halo of Influence, I used telekinesis to manipulate the runic pen, pushing it to the edge of my control. The metallic pen floated approximately three metres away, shaking slightly in the air as I struggled to maintain stability. Although stretching my Influence became easier, I still needed more practice with Weight.

"This is…" Mum faltered, her expression incredulous.

"How are you doing this?"

"Manipulating the area of Influence, as you said," I answered, an involuntary smirk creeping up my cheek.

"But how?" Mum narrowed her eyes.

"It takes hundreds of hours of training to achieve what you've just shown me. I presumed a natural awakening gives you better control of your abilities, but that still doesn't explain what I'm seeing."

"It's Fractal Soul," I said, as if that explained everything.

"Why didn't you mention it before?" she asked, her brows knitting together.

"I only found out last night, before you forced me to bed." Mum's frown deepened.

"How does it let you manipulate your Influence?" I hummed, trying to explain.

"The influence zone is like a dim halo around me, and I can control it with my Will." I described how the zone became unstable if it wasn't kept in some semblance of a symmetrical form. I told her everything I had discovered, but she seemed fixated on the first part.

"Wait, Fractal Sight lets you see the area of Influence too?" Mum's eyes widened.

"I suppose it's only natural, considering you can see essence threads. Besides, it isn't uncommon for experienced shapers to visualise their Influence. I bet Emi learned it too when she…" She faltered as she peered at me, her eyes gleaming slightly.

"Can you see others' areas of Influence?" As soon as she finished speaking, a halo of Influence erupted from her body and immediately covered our entire house. At least I deemed it did, the walls obstructing my sight. It was of no surprise that her zone was far more solid than mine, even though it spread so far. The weight of it—I could feel some of it pressing down on me, even if it wasn't much of a physical force.

"Whoa!" I exclaimed, which should have been a good enough answer for her.

"Mum, what class are you?" Mum hummed thoughtfully as her shaper zone dispersed in an instant.

"Trust me, it's nothing," she said.

"Most of my power is spread into Will and then Weight. But this isn't about that. Your ability to manipulate Influence, as well as see others' Influence, changes a lot of things."

"Like what?" It didn't help me in any way with essence weaving or weight distribution, and both of which seemed just as important, if not more so. Mum shook her head, clicking her tongue at my lack of appreciation for the ability.

"Do you have any idea how long it takes for a shaper to become proficient in their shaper zone? Or how long it takes to even perceive someone else's shaper zone? Years, decades even." Good thing my Gift saved me decades of training, then.

"I suppose this makes spreading your time among your practices a bit easier," Mum said, settling into the seat next to me.

"There's still a bit about Weight distribution I could teach you, but you don't need to spend much time on it… elementary shaping and telekinesis exercises cover that. Which leaves you open for—""Artificing," I chimed in, hopeful that she wouldn't gatekeep me from the creation process anymore.

"I was going to say designing," Mum said, "but that too. You've only learned elementary runes in detail. There's more about the artificing process I need to teach you, and then you can finally try your hand at creation." And make a large amount of money, I thought. That was an objective for the distant future. For now, my priority was learning the skills and finally crafting the gifts I wanted to send to my aunts. They probably expected nothing from a child, but that didn't mean I shouldn't try.

"That reminds me, I should send a letter to Emi and inform her about your awakening. She and Rose will both be delighted to hear that their little nephew broke our record for the shortest time to awaken." She stroked my hair fondly, but my smile faltered.

"What's the matter?" Mum arched an eyebrow.

"They'll want to give me presents for succeeding, won't they?" I asked, clenching my fists.

"Likely," Mum said with a smile.

"Why? Don't you like presents?"

"No, I love them. It's just that I haven't gotten them anything." Mum's expression softened.

"Is that why you are so eager to learn artificing?" I nodded heavily.

"Then I suppose we should begin right away," Mum said, rising from her seat.

"Do your thing while I go prepare your study materials." She left me to practise rune engraving and returned with two volumes of books in her hands—one larger than the other. However, as if that weren't enough, she retrieved a stack of papers from her study table, going through them one by one before handing them to me. I quickly noted that all of them were designs and schematics of rune formations and fabricators.

One of the books seemed to be her personal notebook on her experiences with runes—it was the smaller one. The other was titled Fabricating Runes. Before I could check how fitting the title was, my heart skipped a beat when I saw the author's name on the cover. Ashlyn R. Amadeus, Master Runesmith"Mum, you never told me you wrote a book," I blurted out. Where had she hidden this? I had checked every book in the study room, and this one had not been among them.

"Why haven't you given it to me before?"

"Because I didn't want you delving into deeper concepts without learning the basics first," she laughed, sneaking a glance at me as she continued sorting the papers.

"Now that you have, that book and my notebook should save you a couple of years of guesswork. Hopefully." I couldn't help but skim through the table of contents and found the book was entirely for advanced studies, filled with topics like Essence Resonance, Enchantment Irregularities, and Rune Engineering—concepts I had never even heard of.

"Oh, and make sure not to take the book out of the house," Mum said, handing me the stack of designs.

"Very few complete copies remain of it."