Chương 20: Inkless Casting

Ch 20: Inkless Casting It was the morning after our little intrusion into Principal Dickhead's office, and the birth of the plan to go Mimic hunting. Sahirah had returned to her own room immediately afterward, but she'd also shown up at my door first thing in the morning, willingly skipping runes class because we hadn't had the chance to check our status after reaching the second stage of dual cultivation. That wasn't because I hadn't brought a copy of the system with me yesterday.

It was simply because the effects of the resonance had continued long after our training ended, something unfinished warmly asking us for more time. That was why Sahirah had claimed a spot on my bed while we lazily waited for that sensation to fade, or rather, while she lazily waited and watched me do all the hard work with the runes.

I had taken off my shirt and started inscribing runes on my left arm before she had even arrived, and after several hours of careful work, I was finally nearing the end of the revised versions of my Casting Assistant and Mind Library, both updated after taking every piece of feedback Teacher Lathara had given me into account.

"Are you really going to burn those runes into your skin, Eric?" She hadn't spoken in quite a while, and her question failed to break my concentration. Only three runes remained. They would go on the back of my hand, drawn with the same high-grade ink as the rest. Once I finished and activated the spell with mana, the ink would burn itself permanently into my skin. I inscribed a rune, then another, and a smile spread across my face as I finished the last rune. Only then did my brain properly process her question.

"I mean..." I pushed against the floor with one foot, sending my chair spinning around until I was facing her.

"Why wouldn't I burn my skin to rush my way into the inkless casting club? With this, I can create and copy spells much faster, and I won't need to spend as much time writing runes anymore." I grinned.

"Although... I suppose I'd reconsider if you told me you didn't like how I look with my arm covered in runes." Nearly two thousand tiny runes stretched across almost the entire length of my left arm, the total amount trimmed after Lathara's review and written in expensive ink... and I'd just told her I'd give up the whole thing if she said she didn't like how it looked.

Kind of ironic, considering I didn't give a single fuck about it when Lathara said those spells could ruin my chances of having an academic future... Almost too happy about my impulsive declaration that was more of a joke than anything else, Sahirah slipped off the bed with a mischievous glint in her mismatched eyes and slowly walked toward me.

"And who said I liked how you look right now, even before the runes?" she teased. Towering over my chair, she leaned in and took a slow breath, smelling the fresh ink on my skin.

"It's a pity the scent will fade once the ink dries. It suits you."

"Really?" Now that was something I couldn't understand. She... liked the smell of ink on me? Why would anyone like the smell of ink? She rested both hands on the armrests of my chair and leaned even closer.

"A girl's new room feels far too empty without that smell." For one dangerous moment, I thought she was going to take the initiative and finish the kiss we'd nearly shared the night before. My heartbeat sped up. Instead, when her lips were just inches away from mine, she casually used my chair for support, reached across the writing desk, and picked up our copy of the system. She stepped back with the satisfied smile of someone who knew exactly what she'd just done.

Pretending nothing had happened, she activated the sphere. [SYSTEM STATUS] Name: Sahirah ATTRIBUTES ‣ Strength: 7 (+3) ‣ Agility: 9 (+3) ‣ Constitution: 29 (+5) ‣ Mana: 306 (+51) Well... As impressive as her numbers were... that was still one hell of a way to kill the mood. We both stared at the status window for several long seconds. I broke the silence.

"I mean... that's an absurd increase in mana. But your control must've improved too." Sahirah extended one hand. Blue light flowed from her fingertips. The lamps above us flickered as she carefully began shaping mana into runes. The first rune formed. One. Then another. Two. The structure collapsed before a third could appear. She sighed.

"From one to two." She bit her lip.

"At this rate, a certain someone is going to keep calling me Mana Bomb Girl forever."

"Going from one rune to two is a hundred percent improvement. Why are you complaining?" She stared at me with perfectly deadpan eyes before repeating my own words from a while ago back to me.

"That's exactly the kind of thing rich people say to poor people after building their third vacation home." I couldn't help laughing. She might be talking about control right now, but, coming from the woman with over three hundred mana, that complaint was almost insulting. She was the rich and I was the poor human who'd had only twenty-eight mana yesterday and probably possessed the lowest total status in the entire school. She definitely deserved some payback for even thinking she was the poor.

I stood and casually wrapped one arm around her waist. My other hand settled against the small of her back, gently pulling her closer. Locked in my gaze, she slowly stopped smiling. I leaned in. Closer. Closer still. By the look in her eyes, she was completely convinced I was finally going to kiss her. Then I snatched the orb out of her hand in one quick motion, stepped backward, and checked my own status instead of kissing her.

[SYSTEM STATUS] Name: Eric Nevermore ATTRIBUTES ‣ Strength: 8 (+3) ‣ Agility: 10 (+3) ‣ Constitution: 12 (+4) ‣ Mana: 48 (+20) Sahirah barely glanced at the numbers. Instead, she simply pouted, taking a moment to process the fact that I'd actually retaliated in the truest form of an-eye-for-an-eye philosophy. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Seeing the impending threat of mana-fueled revenge, I wisely changed the subject.

"Well... I've officially reached the same amount of mana as those elves."

"Thanks to me," she replied, still sounding slightly offended.

"Thanks to you." I smiled.

"Without you, being the only human in this school would be unbearable. You make this whole rare-species thing a lot less lonely. At least we're going through it together." Competitive teasing aside, there was no point denying the truth. Without Sahirah, I'd be far weaker than I was now, though I was certain there were other ways to gain strength besides meditation. To my surprise, my honesty completely dissolved her annoyance.

She stepped closer, gently took hold of my rune-covered arm, and began inspecting the fresh ink that still awaited its first activation.

"How many runes can you cast without assistance now, Eric?" That... was an important question.

"It was three before we completed the second stage yesterday." I extended my hand.

"Let's see where I stand now." Without hesitation, I focused. Control. Resonance. Mana perception. Everything we'd trained for finally came together, allowing me to draw runes directly from the images in my mind. I created runes one, two, and three in a single batch. The rest proved harder. Four. Five. Six. The seventh never formed. The glowing runes collapsed into drifting motes of mana, and I let out a disappointed huff.

"One rune short of inklessly casting the simplest fireball spell. What a pity."

"That's before your Casting Assistant is ready, isn't it?" Instead of answering, I simply smirked and winked. She smiled back.

"What are you waiting for, then?" she said.

"Burn them into your body." I didn't answer immediately, merely imagining what that would feel like. It would be like getting my entire arm tattooed all at once, in the span of a few seconds. It would suck, more painful than anything I could imagine.

"I'd better sit down," I said, moving over to the bed.

"There's no way this isn't going to hurt like hell." Sahirah claimed a spot beside me on the bed, gently patting my shoulder as though that alone could somehow lessen my dread of the pain I was about to inflict on myself. It didn't work. In a shameless attempt to postpone the inevitable, I inspected the runes covering my arm one last time, despite knowing perfectly well there was nothing left to fix. Sahirah tilted her head.

"Are you really that afraid of the pain, human?"

"Of course I am," I admitted, raising my left arm so we could both look at it.

"But I'm doing it anyway." With those words, I finally took a deep breath and released mana into the ink. The runes awakened. Light spread across my skin from two directions at once. One wave began at my shoulder, where the Mind Library rested, while another surged outward from the back of my hand, where the Casting Assistant ended. Like rivers of blue fire racing through invisible channels beneath my skin, the countless runes lit up one after another until the two waves met near my forearm, completing the circuit.

For a single breathtaking second, it was beautiful. Every rune shone at once, thousands of tiny symbols transforming my arm into a living constellation. Then the burning began. It felt as though someone had pressed a branding iron against every inch of my arm at once. And I felt like I had just became Eric the horse, or Eric the cow. The smell of burning skin filled the room, nearly causing me to puke, while pain shot through every nerve until I couldn't tell where my arm ended and the fire began.

I heard Sahirah shouting something. Or... I thought I did. Her lips were moving frantically, but the words never reached my mind. The pain swallowed everything else, leaving behind only blinding white and the overwhelming certainty that branding my entire arm at once had been one of the dumbest ideas I'd ever had. Darkness followed.... Consciousness returned slowly. The first thing I saw wasn't the ceiling. It was two eyes staring down at me from inches away. One amber. One green.

They remained fixed on mine until they noticed I was awake. Without saying a word, Sahirah slipped an arm behind my back and carefully helped me sit up. Every movement was delicate. She supported my burned arm with both hands, making sure it never brushed against the bed or my clothes. Only after I was upright did I finally look at it. The skin had turned an angry crimson, looking freshly scalded beneath the complex web of black runes.

It resembled a tattoo laid over a severe burn, the contrast making every symbol stand out even more. Near my shoulder, however, a handful of runes still glowed in the same pale blue as my mana. The Mind Library spell. Good. Those were supposed to remain active as long as a single drop of mana was available in my body.

"Did..." I swallowed against my dry throat.

"... did it work?" Sahirah waited until I'd finished inspecting the damage before answering.

"Does it hurt much?" I slowly opened and closed my hand. Every movement stung, making me desperately wish I could dunk my entire arm into a bucket of cold water. That would have to wait. If I wanted to negotiate with Principal Dickhead about exterminating Mimics today, I'd need to test these spells first. After taking a deep breath at the thought that I would need to endure the pain for now, I nodded.

"Let's find out." I poured mana into the activation module. The runes near my shoulder reacted to the mana all at once, blue light spreading across nearly half my arm as the Mind Library entered its fully active state. My regular perception slowly vanished. Reality dissolved around me, my room fading away piece by piece until another place emerged in its stead. A small and quiet library. At its center stood a single wooden writing desk. Around it stretched countless empty bookshelves waiting to be filled.

I took a cautious step. The floor answered beneath my feet with a dull wooden creak. Despite knowing my body was still sitting on my bed beside Sahirah, my senses insisted I was standing inside this room instead. It wasn't perfect. The experience felt strangely similar to wearing an incredibly advanced VR headset. My brain knew the illusion wasn't real, yet my senses kept insisting otherwise. Without wasting time, I reached toward one of the empty shelves.

"I need a blank notebook." As my imagination interacted with the illusion, a thick leather-bound volume appeared in my hand. My smile came instantly. Then it widened. It had weight, texture even... The leather felt rough beneath my fingertips, and when I flipped through the pages, they rustled exactly the way real paper should. The longer I remained inside the illusion, the more convincing it became. That was something that deserved my attention. What if I spent hours in here and accidentally fried my brain?

With the time constraint in mind, I hurried to the writing desk, opened the notebook, and began outlining a simple fire spell. The difference was absurd. It wasn't like writing with a quill anymore. It felt like typing on a computer with aggressive autocomplete, like a good IDE. Entire rune structures assembled themselves almost as quickly as I thought of them, my hands barely needing to move before the next section was already waiting. Seconds later, the spell was finished. Perfect.

Immediately, I concentrated on my real body and fed mana into the standby circle on my arm, interfacing with the spell through mana and nothing more. The library began dissolving. The floor beneath my feet became transparent until the illusion finally peeled away completely. Reality flowed back into place. My room, my bed, and Sahirah standing directly in front of me, staring into my eyes, apparently concerned about the fact that my body had momentarily turned into a vegetable.

"No need to worry." I smiled, resting my burned hand carefully on her shoulder.

"I think it might be dangerous to spend too much time in there, but the Mind Library worked." I couldn't help grinning.

"And now..." I pushed myself to my feet.

"... let's try the Casting Assistant." I picked up one of the spare candles I'd left around the room in case Sahirah destroyed the lights in my room with her mana once more.

"Are you sure you want to test it inside your own room?" By the time she finished asking, I'd already placed the candle on the floor near the bathroom door and walked several meters away.

"The testing spell is the weakest fire spell I know. It'll be fine." She sighed, probably remembering my first day at Navar and the incident in the library. Meanwhile, I was unconcerned, and I raised my newly tattooed arm toward the candle. Ignoring the lingering pain, I activated the spell-loading module. Inside the Mind Library, the fire spell I'd created only moments earlier appeared instantly as the only option. I selected it. The Casting Assistant responded.

A translucent framework materialized over my arm and hand, glowing faintly like an augmented-reality overlay. Every mana channel, every rune, every connection was already there, outlined for me and waiting for only one thing. Mana. I smiled. Instead of inventing each rune from memory, I simply traced the luminous template with my own mana, following glowing paths that already existed in my mind in the form of a convincing illusion. It felt effortless. Like coloring inside perfectly drawn lines. One rune. Six.

Twenty-three. Thirty. Thirty-two. Thirty-five. I stopped when a headache told me I was nearly reaching my limit. The testing spell was complete, but I didn't activate it yet. Sahirah and I simply stared at it. A flawless thirty-five-rune magic circle floated before my palm, assembled entirely from mana, and holding its shape as my entire arm glowed like a weapon waiting to be fired.

"Thirty-five runes without ink..." Sahirah whispered the number as though saying it too loudly might shatter the illusion.

"That's five times those six runes you could cast before the tattoo." I said nothing, struggling to believe it myself. Casting thirty-five runes without ink was a huge leap forward. It meant that, from now on, most beginner spells would be available to me on demand, without spending credits on ink or spending time inscribing them. Even the easiest techniques from the Fire Moon book had entered my range of inkless casting. My favorites included Haste, Kinetic Push, and the Pain-Inducing spell.

Still, before getting too excited, I had to finish the test. Without further delay, I fed mana into the completed circle. One by one, the runes around my arm dimmed, like a constellation slowly fading as its stars winked out, the mana feeding them being used to activate the spell. When the last of the light disappeared, the mana circle flashed bright, then it faded into the air as well. That was when I looked across the room. The candle had lit successfully.

Its wick burned normally, though the very tip had melted a little more than I'd intended. But on the bright side, the bug wasn't with the Casting Assistant or the Mind Library. It was simply a bug in the test spell itself which I had assembled in a rush. Not so amazing was the fact that versatility and speed came at a cost. The whole thing consumed nearly twice as much mana as an ink-and-paper version of the same spell would have. Lathara's warning about continuous mana consumption was also a problem.

At my current level, it would take nearly a full day for my mana to recover if I drained almost all of it, and the entire library would be erased if I ever ran completely dry. Still, I'd call that a complete success. I already knew about those limitations beforehand, and there was a good chance I could simply outgrow them instead of solving them, provided dual cultivation kept increasing my mana. Sahirah looked almost as excited as I was.

She gently took my hand again, carefully inspecting the burned runes before looking up at me.

"How can a girl feel happy and jealous at the same time?"

"Would you be willing to give up your academic prospects for this?" I crossed my arms and smiled.

"If you want to, I can mark your body with ink and burn a copy of the same spell for free." Of course, with a few modifications to handle her absurd amount of mana.

"Not yet," she answered without hesitation.

"Not before we get our privacy back and can finally talk as a Nadiri and a Human without the Greys eavesdropping on every word." That was understandable. Still, the way she phrased it struck me as odd. She spoke as though we represented our peoples rather than ourselves. Was I reading too much into it? With the mystery surrounding her surname and everything else she'd been hiding... I probably wasn't. I sighed. Eventually, I'd learn the truth.

There was no point obsessing over it before she was ready to tell me and the circumstances allowed it. Right now, we had more pressing matters. We needed to negotiate our Mimic extermination proposal with Principal Dickhead, meet with the sales representatives to convince them that hunting Mimics was a good idea, and, of course, field-test the limits of my new spells.