The Runic Artist

Nate stared at his painting. He’d chosen to go with this particular scene for a few reasons. Firstly, it was a piece he had wanted to paint for a couple of weeks now. The second was, it differentiated him from the other painters who seemed to all prefer portraits, be they of themselves or of the model in the centre of the room. But the main reason was because he’d found out that after the judging was done, the piece would be returned to him.

That was why he had chosen Kiri’s battle against Myles ‘Flash’ Lebas from the Guild Tournament. He had gifted his art to multiple people since arriving on Galle, both intentionally, like when he had painted Kiri’s family as a gift for her mother, and unintentionally, like when he had drawn a picture of Valeria in Helmfirth and given it to her on the spur of the moment. Even in the Capital he’d already given out some of his art, having painted two of courtesans from the Den of Desire so far. But he’d never done a piece of Kiri, for Kiri. He wanted to capture her in her preferred element, the heat of battle, bleeding and smiling.

The picture detailed the arena in swirls of colour, the crowd in the stands faceless but joyous, roaring their approval for the contest with raised arms. He chose not to detail Flash’s face, making him blurred as well, but the clothes and daggers were a perfect rendition of the man, courtesy of Nate’s vastly enhanced memory. Finally, there was Kiri, looking like some kind blade-legged spider with her six daggers flashing in the midday sun. He detailed her completely, making her the absolute focus of the painting. Even the colours of the paints used got brighter as they drew towards her. Finally, as was his preference for his art these days, he’d hidden two tiny runes in the painting. Joy and Calm were woven into the flows of the painting and while it would do little with only the ambient mana to use as a source, it would still give hints of both feelings. When he gave the painting to Kiri he’d add a method to power the runes.

Flicking away the notifications for the new rune achievements, he turned to find the assessor who had guided him in staring at his painting over his shoulder.

“It’s magnificent…what did you say your name was?” she asked, eyes flicking to him.

For the first time since he arrived in the room for the test, he took a moment to look the woman over. He judged she was a few years older than him. Early twenties was his guess. She had wavy black hair that was tied back in a ponytail and light brown eyes that seemed to grow brighter as she stared at him.

“Nate,” he replied with a calm smile. “Will they take long to judge the artworks?”

“Oh, no, they’ll be finished tonight. Your work is so…visceral. I can really sense the joy she takes in the fight. Is she your wife?” the woman asked coyly.

Nate laughed, “No. No. Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh at you. Just, out of the two of us, you’re more her type than I am. No, her name is Kiri. She’s my best friend and teammate.”

Nate paused for a moment then flashed a smile, “Sorry, I didn’t catch your name by the way?”

“Helen,” she replied with a smile. “Well, I look forward to seeing you in class. I doubt you’ll get below Advanced with that piece. If not, ask around for me. Maybe we can compare notes or practise together?”

“I’d like that,” Nate said before watching Helen leave.

“Now we’re talkin, Boss! You’ve been keeping it too tame lately! Even going to the Den and not gettin ya boink on!” Frick sent mentally as Nate headed for the door, letting the unigem guide him towards his last test. The Combat examination.

“Why are you so obsessed with my sex-life anyway? Are all goblins such perverts?” he sent back.

“Boss, I say this with complete honesty. I’m fuckin’ tame as goblins go. How do you think us little bastards keep surviving? By breeding. You ever seen a goblin orgy? They can last for a week, Boss. A week!” Frick replied, followed by another cackle.

“I’m never getting that mental image out of my head am I?” he responded with an audible sigh.

Frick’s laughter followed him all the way to the back of the University grounds where a huge colosseum-esque structure stood. The unigem guided him using its built-in map down a simple hallway and towards the edge of the field. The place was absolutely filled with students and it only took him a moment to realise there were likely second, third and fourth years present. They mostly sat higher in the stands in cliques, laughing and rough housing as they occasionally pointed at the fields below. Fields, because the area was divided up into four different sections. There was a sandy section, similar to the grounds they’d fought on in the Guild Tournament. Next to that was a grassy section, followed by a stone paved area, and finally a section of wooden bridges over a large pond.

He moved off to the side when he spotted Kiri, who was standing with Coralie, holding hands as they watched the stone-paved field. He moved over to join them and turned to see what they were watching. On the stone-paved field, Null was fighting what he assumed must be one of the instructors. Null Raoult moved like a striking viper that could hit with the strength of a gorilla. It wasn’t enough to ruffle the instructor, who Nate could quickly tell was slowly using more and more of his Stats as the fight went on. When he’d first joined the girls, Null had seemed slightly faster, but within thirty seconds the script had flipped and now Null’s opponent was easily outpacing the swordsman with his own hefty blade.

Nate couldn’t sense the change in mana when Null activated his first boosting Skill, even though he was within the eighteen metre range of his Awareness of the Runic Artist, but the change was obvious as Null recaptured the initiative, driving the instructor back. He managed to keep it up for another thirty seconds before the instructor allowed his Stats to catch back up and overtake Null’s, even boosted. The fight only lasted another ten seconds but Nate had noticed that the stands had quieted somewhat and he wasn’t surprised when the instructor announced Null as an Intermediate student. Still, that didn’t explain why the crowd had quieted so much.

He glanced at Coralie and Kiri, his expression clearly confused. Fortunately they both picked up on it and tried to talk over each other before Kiri laughed and went quiet, letting Coralie explain.

“He’s only the third student to get an Intermediate grade for Combat. Everyone else has been Basic. The other two were nobles as well. I think one might’ve been the third son of the Duchess of Kalevia and the other was the first son of some Baron.”

Nate nodded that he understood and Kiri gave him a shoulder bump before grinning at him.

“What took you so long anyway? We’ve been here for a while but I didn’t want to start without you.”

“Sorry. I got a bit carried away in the Enchanting and Art examinations,” he replied with a shrug.

“Oh yeah? Advanced in both?” Kiri said with a smug smile, intentionally ignoring the surprise on Coralie’s face. Whether that surprise was due to the Enchanting or the fact that he was taking Art, he wasn’t sure.

“Advanced for Enchanting. Won’t know my result for Art till later. Sounds like they’ll go through and judge all the art pieces at the end of the day. Should show up in my unigem though. Anyway, I am here now, so who’s going next?” he asked with a grin.

Kiri grinned back at him before giving Coralie a gentle push towards the grounds. The blonde haired Frozen Light Mage gave Kiri a coy smile before, in what was clearly intentional, sashaying off towards the assessors.

Kiri was clearly enjoying the show so Nate leaned over towards her and whispered, “Beauty before the beast?”

He raised his eyebrows at her in amusement as she tried to punch him, impacting his barrier.

“You take that back! I am not a beast!” she growled quietly while trying not to laugh.

They kept the rough-play to a minimum but he felt her try and use soul energy to bypass his barrier three times before they finally settled down to watch as Coralie moved forward for her turn.

“How did you do with Economics and Tactics?” he asked.

“Intermediate for both. Think I scraped through with Economics. Tactics was good though. It was one of Dev’s suggestions and I can see why,” she replied, eyes locked on her girlfriend.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s got a heavy focus on things like positioning, timing, angles, perception and deception. That sort of thing. They call it Tactics, but honestly, they could just as easily have called it something like Infiltrator Training. I’m decent at it, but mostly in a forest or grasslands. I failed out when we started on the ‘urban stealth’ test. Just didn’t know what I needed to look out for. Shush now. I wanna see how she does.”

Nate joined Kiri in leaning forward to watch how Coralie did. So did a decent proportion of the crowd. It was clear that plenty of the students were here for the purpose of information gathering.

Rather than face a swordsman, like Null had, Coralie was pitted against a male instructor who clearly wielded magic. She was also taking the examination on the pond zone, standing on one of the many bridges with the mage directly across from her on another section of bridge. Nate suspected that the extra wands strapped to the Assessors' vest were likely meant to give the spindly man options for swapping elements to better pressure the students. The battle started out with exploratory strikes, Coralie flinging icicles at the assessor while the Assessor used controlled sprays of water to redirect the icicles.

At first the Mage simply defended himself from Coralie’s attacks, but like with Null, as the test continued the Mage steadily raised the difficulty. The first was what Nate would’ve described as bullets of water. If it wasn’t for his high Perception, he doubted he would’ve been able to see them from this far back. Coralie responded by growing an armour of ice over her body. The water bullets splashed over the armour's surface, occasionally leaving small cracks that were quickly healed using the water leftover from the attacks. The Mage pulled out one of the wands sheathed on his vest which was used to launch arcing bolts of lightning which did only slightly more damage to Coralie’s ice armour. In response Coralie drew water from the pond, expanding her ice armour until the bridge itself started to creak.

Kiri stared at the contest, absolutely riveted. He, however, was noting the change in tactics used by Coralie. There was no sign so far of her Frozen Domain or her reflection-based teleportation skill. He wasn’t sure he saw the point in holding those back. Surely some of these nobles would’ve attended the Guild Tournament. Or at least sent someone to spy on them. Maybe Coralie had some other reason for holding back, but he wasn’t sure what it might be.

Eventually, Coralie grew her ice armour enough to break the bridge. Instead of falling into the pond she froze the surface and used it to start skating towards the Mage assessing her. The Mage responded by drawing his second wand and sending a wall of flames towards Coralie. That was apparently what she had been waiting for as she fell forward, vanishing into the ice below her as she reappeared out of a sheet of ice she’d hidden beneath the waters surface near the Assessor.

Kiri gasped while Nate smiled. It turned out Coralie was going all out after all.

Coralie’s Frozen Domain instantly came into effect, the bridge itself freezing around the Assessor. However, the Assessor didn’t become frozen, like everyone else Nate had seen caught in Coralie’s zone. A moment later a wave of water picked Coralie up, somehow resisting freezing, before dumping the Guild’s ice princess back into the pond. The fight didn’t last too much longer, as Coralie was caught up in swirling water that was clearly increasing in pressure, her ice armour slowly cracking. Coralie abandoned her ice armour, apparently able to use the reflections from within the ice itself to teleport back to the ice drift she had created while skating over the pond. Even as she appeared, a spear of water was hovering over her throat and she willingly surrendered.

Kiri beamed as the fourth Intermediate Combat grade was given. She winked at Nate before heading forward. He followed a moment later. He wanted to be closer anyway, so he could use Awareness of the Runic Artist to glean some of the Skills, Spells and Concepts being put on display. Identification was not going to happen unless he wanted to risk pissing people off, as he was yet to sense a single person that wasn’t veiled. He supposed, at this sort of level in terms of society, buying a veiling item was a necessary expense.

Even the instructors so far were hiding their Class and Levels, though he was almost certain all the Instructors he’d seen so far on the Combat grounds were at the very least level sixty. It was more likely most were in the seventies or eighties. He was basing that on comparing them with Deverell. The man had never revealed his Class or Level but he was pretty sure he was around level eighty with an Epic primary Class. These instructors seemed like they might be able to match up against Dev. That said, they could just as easily be holding back. It was too hard to tell and he wasn’t supposed to push himself too much in this test. Not that he really could. With all of his items consumed by his Conceptual Automation Skill in the Fourth Hell, he was kind of weakened. He didn’t have a Legendary Barrier bracer anymore. Nor did he have his Acid Wand or his Shadow Prison. That was basically all his aces gone. Worse, he didn’t have time to prepare for his opponent.

He was feeling a little concerned he might be forced into taking a Basic grade unless he wanted to reveal a bit more about his Spatial Skills. Which was another thing he wasn’t supposed to use to the fullest. A little teleportation was okay. A lot of teleportation was definitely not. That apparently included teleporting his opponents weapons or spells and redirecting them back at their owners. He was already thinking through his options and planning the best way to achieve an Intermediate grading when Kiri stepped up for her exam taking place on the grassy field. As his mind focused on the issue of his own assessment, he leaned forward to see what Kiri would do.