Chapter 149: The Language of Runes

"Well, I’m gonna start the work..." Max said as he began taking out the herbs.

He arranged them neatly across his worktable, then glanced sideways at Yennefer, who was watching him from the side. "But let’s get you comfortable first..." With that, Max reached over and immediately started undoing the buttons of her shirt.

Yennefer looked annoyed and quickly slapped his hands away.

"I can take them off myself..." she said.

Max smirked and reached for the second button anyway. "No, I insist... I wanna make your watching experience as good as I can," he said with a little chuckle. One by one, he opened the buttons of her shirt, revealing the gray lace bra underneath.

Yennefer looked annoyed but ultimately let him continue. Instead, she focused on something that had been bothering her as she watched him work. "How do you write runes so fast and precisely?"

"You won’t believe me, but they came to me as easily as writing in the human alphabet—just with a few more grammar rules and stuff..."

As he spoke, Max went on to take off her shirt completely, then leaned in with his nose pressed against her breasts, taking in her scent like a shameless pervert.

He really did look like one.

Next, he reached for her short office skirt. He had once believed that women her age shouldn’t wear skirts that short, thinking their curvy bodies looked awkward in such tight-fitting clothes.

But that was back when he’d only ever seen women like her through a screen.

Seeing it in person was a completely different matter.

From this close, it was one hell of a view. He could clearly see the lines of her panties, and if he were just a little more courageous and leaned down, he could probably get an even better look.

But that might get him jailed for a while.

Thankfully, Max didn’t need to go that far. He could simply take off the skirt itself.

He did exactly that, letting it fall to the floor and leaving her big thighs and butt exposed. For a moment, he wanted to free her from the rest of the fabric covering her body as well.

But he could do that later, after he finished his work.

For now, he kept his promise and let her keep her panties and bra on.

"Once you understand what each rune means and how it functions, you can start figuring out what it’s actually used for. A single rune can have multiple meanings, and depending on how you use it or combine it with other runes, it can serve different purposes," Max explained.

Yennefer nodded thoughtfully. She didn’t seem particularly bothered anymore by standing around in her underwear as she slipped one heel off and then the other. She briefly placed a hand on Max’s shoulder to steady herself while removing them, then set both shoes aside before turning her attention back toward the array.

As she took them off, Yennefer became slightly shorter than Max, though not by much—perhaps only an inch or two.

Even then, she still couldn’t quite believe what he was telling her.

For a rune to come to someone’s mind as naturally as words in their native language was incredibly difficult. Even ordinary written language required considerable practice, with most people needing to write the same word hundreds of times before it became truly natural.

Runes were far more complicated than that.

Yet Max could seemingly recall them without hesitation, writing strings of runes one after another with remarkable speed and precision. Many of the runes he used were repeated, but that didn’t make the feat any less impressive.

Considering his age—and the fact that he hadn’t even awakened his mana that long ago—his ability to memorize and write so many runes so naturally was genuinely shocking.

Even Yennefer herself, despite having decades of experience with magic and rune writing, couldn’t achieve something like that without considerable effort. Although she had stopped practicing much over the last decade, she could still write familiar runes and create simple arrays, such as a mana-gathering array or a basic heating array, with relative ease.

But that ease came from years of practice.

She had spent decades familiarizing herself with those runes, learning how to control her mana while writing them and understanding how each one interacted with the others. What came naturally to her now had once required countless hours of repetition.

confused and shcoked at same time she asked, "how?"

Max, meanwhile, had already found a very convenient place to rest his hand—her round, big butt—so he didn’t exactly have much trouble staying relaxed while explaining.

The truth was, he didn’t really have a proper explanation.

It was all thanks to another ability he’d gained from the System when he’d transmigrated here. He didn’t even know what the ability was called, but it somehow made runes feel less like some ancient magical writing system and more like a strange programming language.

Once he understood what a rune did, his mind simply treated it like a piece of code.

"So... I guess it’s an inherent ability?" Max said, shrugging. "And my mentor helped me understand them, so they came pretty easily..."

Yennefer didn’t believe the inherent ability part for a second.

She could believe Max was a genius. After all, she’d already seen enough to know that much.

And considering the mysterious mentor whose notes had allowed even her to learn new runes at a surprisingly fast pace, she could also believe that his mentor had something to do with it.

But even then, Max’s ability was still shocking.

There was a huge difference between having a good teacher and being able to look at complicated strings of runes as naturally as someone reading ordinary words.

Curious to see him actually work and use those runes, Yennefer grabbed his wandering hand and shoved it away.

"Now get your fucking hands to work. I didn’t come all the way here so you could spend the whole damn time groping me..."

Max reluctantly pulled his hands back, wearing a slightly pained expression as though she’d just taken away something he was rather enjoying.