Chapter 214: Components Of Runes

Joseph was still controlling the raft and guiding it toward the high ground he had mentioned earlier. The crashing water, darkness, and unfamiliar forest made the journey dangerous, especially because their vision was limited to the small area illuminated by Alex’s fireballs and the flaming torch Sarah was carrying.

Alex eventually asked Petra about the torch, and the little girl gave him an uncertain answer.

"I don’t understand how Uncle Jospeh made it. He said he used kinetic mana to create it," Petra said.

"It’s big brother!" Jospeh said, shouting over while keeping his focus on the raft.

Yulia, Joseph’s wife, clicked her tongue at his attitude, making Sarah and Emma chuckle.

Alex nodded after hearing her answer. Kinetic mana was becoming more interesting the longer he observed Joseph using it, although Alex still would master his own spells and elements before learning it himself.

He quickly focused back on his training. Nobody had asked him to help fight the Voltserpents because the others could handle the monsters without much trouble, and they understood that it was better for the rest of them to preserve their strength for whatever was coming.

With Sustained Breathing, Alex had at least found a way to fight underwater without immediately running out of air. Now, he needed to improve his attack power and defense before the real danger appeared.

Attack power was relatively easy to deal with. Alex looked down at the Fire Element Rune he was currently creating and continued working on it while studying every part of its structure.

As he reconstructed the rune, he suddenly noticed something that he had previously overlooked. The central part of this rune was exactly the same as the rune inside his F-rank Fire Wand.

Alex’s eyes narrowed slightly as he studied it. This meant that the F-rank Fire Element Rune was not a completely different rune from the higher-ranked version, but instead served as the foundation upon which the more advanced Fire Element Rune was built.

That immediately raised another question.

What exactly did all the additional runes in the Fire Element Rune from the Wild Orc Leader’s Wand represent? Alex believed that some of them probably increased mana conversion efficiency, while others might improve the stability of compressed Fire Element Mana.

There could be other functions as well, but he would need to experiment with them before he could understand their exact purpose. Still, he had discovered something important about the structure of higher-ranked Element Runes.

The first component was the foundation. The second component was everything added around that foundation.

Alex continued examining the rune while the raft moved through the flooded forest. If the foundation was unique to each Element, then the additional components might not necessarily be unique to Fire Element Mana.

Alex’s eyes became slightly more focused as a new possibility entered his mind. If those components could be separated from the foundation, perhaps they could be modified, improved, or even combined with other Element Runes.

If the additional runes inside the Fire Element Rune increased mana conversion efficiency and compression stability, Alex wondered whether those same principles could also be applied to the Life Element Rune.

He would have to experiment with that later. For now, he focused on completing the Fire Element Rune because he needed to improve his attack power before whatever was hiding beneath the flooded forest finally appeared.

Alex would have loved to say that he completed the rune quickly, but the damned thing had far too many intricate details. After spending a considerable amount of time working on it, he had only managed to complete about half of the rune.

He started with the foundation, which was the part he understood best because it was the same basic structure as the F-rank Fire Element Rune. After that, he carefully added the parts he had identified through his experiments as the runes responsible for increasing compression stability.

These runes were particularly important to Alex because they would allow him to compress Fire Element Mana further before releasing it. He had chosen them over the mana conversion efficiency runes for a simple reason: he had a huge amount of mana and could afford to waste some of it, but he could not afford to compromise on firepower.

Once the rune had reached a usable level, Alex stopped working on it. Completing it from here would take too much time. Still, this rune was as strong as the original fire element rune of Wild Orc Leader’s wand, even if it consumed more mana. He did not harden it with Will, even though any logical person would have done so when they knew a dangerous battle could begin at any moment.

Alex could not help remembering the Lightning Element Rune he had spent so much time holding together until recently. It had consumed a large amount of his concentration, but the experience had also improved his mana control by leaps and bounds.

Anyone who looked at what Alex was doing could understand that it was a training method. It was certainly dangerous, and perhaps even reckless, but the results were worth it because forcing himself to maintain unstable mana had greatly improved his control.

Alex’s heart began beating faster as he held the newly created Fire Element Rune on his palm and stored the Fire Wand in his Inventory. He could not tell whether his heart was pounding because of the dangerous thing he was doing or because he was excited to finally see how powerful the new rune would be.

Just as he was about to prepare himself to strengthen his defenses, Emma suddenly spoke, her voice carrying over the crashing water. "Something is wrong."

Alex’s eyes opened immediately, and he stood up while looking around the flooded forest. The sound of the rushing water was loud enough to make communication difficult, but Emma’s expression made it clear that she had noticed something important.

"What’s happening?" Alex asked.

"The number of Voltserpents is decreasing. Shouldn’t there be more of them by now instead of fewer?" Emma asked while looking into the darkness.

"You think they are going after other monsters?" Sarah asked as she looked around nervously. She was still afraid, but unlike earlier, her eyes were firm as she tried to understand what was happening around them.

"Are they going after other monsters, or running away from something?" Yulia muttered.

..

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