70: Carving Touch

Liane had left to find out what Simon was up to and to properly scout the area. It was apparently extra important to Hari, because once we left to do patrols, he needed to know how much protection Micca would require from the guild.

 

She had tried to protest, saying she’d be fine. Hari would have none of it, though.

 

That afternoon, I got to work practising rune carving on melons. Fortunately, due to their size, I could make multiple attempts on a single melon. After a couple of hours of trial and error, I finally managed to get mostly accurate base circles.

 

“Nice work. Next, you need to work on the shapes—then we’ll go over the words,” Milo instructed.

 

I had used at least half the melons by the time Milo was satisfied with my efforts. Each one had nearly every inch of space filled with rune circles, along with the shapes inside them. Not all were perfect, but they were no longer too distorted to fit properly.

 

Next, Milo began teaching me the words. It was a bizarre process—you couldn’t just copy the letters. You had to infuse your mana into the carving or writing tool while visualising the exact spell you wanted to cast. All the instructions on what to picture and how it needed to appear in my mind were in the book we had.

 

If I did it right, the words would form naturally, my skill guiding the carving to take shape.

 

It was so much easier said than done. I failed at least twenty times before I thought I had my first success. I had the words, the circle, the shapes—sort of. It wasn’t my best work, but it looked complete.

 

“I think I’ve got one!” I called out happily to Milo.

 

He came over to inspect my work, and he didn’t look immediately impressed.

 

“Well, you need to try it. To do so, you’ll need to inject mana into the fruit,” he said, taking a step back.

 

That sounded simple enough. Holding the melon in my hand, I tried to push mana into it.

 

Nothing happened.

 

“Try touching the rune itself when you infuse,” Milo said—now standing even further away. That was odd.

 

I did as I was told. As I touched the rune, I felt a warmth on my fingers—then a tingle—as I successfully began to inject mana.

 

The rune lit up, bright blue.

 

The problem was… it didn’t stop lighting up.

 

It just kept getting brighter.

 

Then, before I knew it, the melon exploded in my hands, throwing me to the ground and knocking the wind out of me.

 

“Ow…” was all I could manage.

 

A moment later, Crisplet burst out of the kitchen, flames a violent shade of red as he floated over to me. Spotting the remains of the melon, he immediately began shooting fire at the scraps on the floor, as if attacking them.

 

“Thanks, Crisplet,” I said with a chuckle.

 

“Sooo, what did you learn?” I heard Milo say through a laugh.

 

“That I should’ve picked Edge Mastery instead,” I mumbled.

 

Milo just laughed as the others all looked on in shocked silence.

 

“Well—besides that,” Milo added, using his wind magic to clean up the melon scraps around the room.

 

“I really don’t know. It seemed mostly correct,” I said, embarrassed. I really thought I had it.

 

Milo turned to me. “That right there—say it again,” he said. So I repeated what I’d said.

 

“Well?” Milo asked, expecting me to pick something up from my own words. Then it sort of clicked. It was mostly correct. It wasn’t perfect…

 

“It wasn’t perfect,” I mumbled.

 

“Spot on! When carving runes, it’s important that they’re basically perfect. The further off you are, the more disastrous the results can be—with what you experienced here being one of the least disastrous outcomes,” Milo said, now sitting down again.

 

“Otherwise, you did really well,” Milo added.

 

“You’ve got this, Trev!” Micca said encouragingly.

 

With a deep sigh, I got back to work.

 

I tried three more melons. Two of them exploded on me—but nowhere near as violently as the first. Then the third… I thought I finally got it, but it fizzled out right as the melon was fully glowing.

 

I felt like I was so close, and I refused to give up. This felt like those days of training, where if we managed to land a single hit on the instructor back at the academy, we were rewarded with a better meal. No matter how many times you were beaten back, you tried again.

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So I kept at it.

 

By this stage, everyone had put some distance between me and where they were relaxing. Liane still hadn’t returned.

 

Then it happened…

 

The melon glowed blue. The rune pulsed brilliantly blue before settling. The glow faded from the melon’s surface—but the pulse within the rune itself remained.

 

“Di… Did I do it?” I asked excitedly, looking down at the melon in my hand.

 

Looking up, I saw Milo wearing a huge smile as he came over to inspect it. To my surprise, Hari, Jen, and Micca also came over for a look.

 

The truth was, I didn’t really know what happened next. The rune I used was a basic barrier. The way it was supposed to work on a normal item was that you engraved it onto the surface of a shield or amulet, and once complete, it could be activated by injecting mana into it, granting a temporary barrier.

 

The quality of the rune and its complexity would then determine how many uses someone could get out of it.

 

But surely it didn’t expect you to carry around a melon to cast a barrier?

 

As I stared at it in my hands, with everyone crowding around, I couldn’t help but look up at Milo and ask the stupid question, “So… what now?”

 

“Well, that’s the interesting part—we don’t know!” Milo said cheerfully, pulling out his notebook and taking notes on the rune, the word, the shapes, and the characteristics of the melon itself.

 

“So, normally once you’ve successfully created a rune, you would infuse a small burst of mana into it to activate it—like the lanterns around the house here,” he added.

 

Everyone took a step back, so I decided to give it a try, attempting to send a short burst of mana into the rune.

 

Nothing.

 

“Maybe I still can’t use my own food?” I said, a little disappointed.