Heaven's Greatest Professor

Chapter 48  Rune

The inn was of moderate quality, even with the immaculate name like Dragon's Talon. Still, it was the best the little town of Triu could offer, not that they had a problem as they would only be staying the night.

The only reason they stopped for the town was that Sylvie wouldn't be able to fly with them non-stop. The white crane had been exhausted carrying them for almost the whole day. She deserved rest and good sustenance.

June discussed with the innkeeper to take care of that, while Warden went to check the bath. He had finally made use of his time and shaved off the thick beard that had been growing on his face. He even trimmed his long hair a little, though he was afraid of messing it up. His hair still reached his shoulders even after he finished. He would need a barber to do anything better.

Done with grooming himself, Warden returned to his quarters, putting on his light armour and cloak.

June knocked on his door about an hour later. Warden welcomed her into the small room, which had an old oak bed, a small study table and a chair.

"Are you going to sleep wearing armour?" June joked.

Warden shrugged, as that was kind of his plan. The place was new, and it worked up his paranoia to some degree. "I don't have anything else."

"You should have bought something on the way," she said. "Anyway, are you prepared to show me your fatemarks?"

"Now?"

"The night is long, and I have nothing to do," June said as she rested her bottom on the chair after dragging it before where he sat.

"Well, now is as good a time as any," Warden agreed. "How are you going to check, though? Do you have some device or something?"

"My eyes are better than what any device can find," June said as her pupils glowed white, literally spilling light. "Your palm."

Warden gave his left palm. June clutched it in her palms and drew her eyes closer to perceive deeper into it. He didn't know what profound truth she might be looking for or how she was even detecting them, but he complied with her request.

"Do you want to see what I see?" she asked.

"Sure."

"Okay, close your eyes and stay calm," June said, taking a deep breath, her face brimming with concentration. "I'll send the data slowly. Tell me if your mind is unable to handle it."

Warden closed his eyes as something soft pricked against the barrier of his mind.

"A cognitive defence?" June perked her eyebrows, surprised. "Didn't expect that. Accept the transfer."

Right at this moment, Warden had no clue he had something like a cognitive defence, but as she termed it, the theory behind such a defence became clear to him. Apparently, the imaginary line of defence of the mind defends against any empathic interference. Is this how he was unaffected by the Ghost Wolf's howl? It seemed most likely.

"Don't tell me you had the defence on, and you didn't know about it?" June said, reading his expression.

"We learn new things about ourselves every day," he shrugged.

After Warden consciously affirmed her interference, June transferred the data her special eyes received from interpreting the fate marks in his palm.

A chaotic darkness appeared in Warden's mind's eye, pulsating with purple energy flow. He was familiar with the energy, so he didn't think anything special about it.

"This is merely what everyone sees if they were to inspect the fate marks, perhaps even less," June said. "Now this is what I see."

The vision in his mind's eye seemed to zoom in and took him deeper into the molecular formation of the energy. Perhaps even deeper. And what he knew, it wasn't chaotic at all. There were chains of formation that made the whole energy flow. June transferred the vision of one such chain in detail.

Each of the links of the chain played its part perfectly. If even one of them broke apart, the flow would lose a lot of its effect and would become chaotic. However, there was no disturbance in the chains. They were sucking in all the chaotic energy and imposing order over it.

I knew this. Warden felt the vision surreally familiar.

"This is not darkness," June said thoughtfully. "Even though they act similarly."

"Can you zoom in on the intricacies of the chain?" Warden asked.

"I can, probably," she said. "But it'll be difficult for both of us, though."

"Do it."

June clutched his palm tighter, her eyes glowing more intently as sweat beads formed on her forehead. A stabbing pain pricked the back of his mind the very moment she transferred the new data. But Warden held on.

As he had imagined, the chains were made of complicated intricate runes, duplicate runes spinning and interlocking together to make a complex system that was just too much for their minds to handle.

June gasped, her eye ability getting a drawback.

"Deeper," Warden grunted, as the pain in his mind intensified. It was almost unbearable, as if something was pinning a cold nail into his head. "I need to see one elementary form of the rune."

"Brace yourself," June said, gritting her teeth. "I can only manage one look before one of us passes out."

The obscure rune marks flowing with energy, no they were literally made of energy. As the vision went deeper, Warden didn't just find some ancient intelligible language, but geometric forms as well. Mostly octagons and hexagons, each one layered with the runes in symmetric form.

"I can't anymore," June said, gasping for breath.

The vision ended as soon as it began, but Warden felt like he spent an abnormal amount of time in it. Even though the vision ended, his mind still hadn't woken up, locked inside, still interpreting the meaning of the runes.

[+2.0 Mind.] [+1.5 Mind.]

[+1.0 Mind.]

...

[+3.6 Mind.]

Then it all stopped and Warden opened his eyes to find June staring at him, blood dripping down from her eyes.

"Are you alright?"