The Runic Artist

The walk to the dormitories, which consisted of a number of one to three storey buildings behind the University classroom buildings, had been uneventful. Seeing the gathered Guildies standing outside on the grass near the squat building that was to be their home for the next four years made him suspect that the lack of issues they’d encountered so far at the University was coming to an end. That, and the smoke leaking out of one of the windows.

Null was the first to notice their approach and grimaced.

“Which of you did they go after?” asked Null once they were closer.

Nate pulled out his unigem at the question, activating his room assignment map. It only took a couple of seconds to realise it was his room that had smoke billowing out the window.

“Mine,” he replied, patting Kiri’s shoulder to try and calm her down. His best friend looked absolutely furious. She looked him in the eyes and he could see she was more than willing to go stab some people to get revenge for him. He gave a slight shake of his head and the fury abated, even if she continued to seethe. Coralie moving over next to her seemed to help a little and he started to walk towards his room to see the damage with the rest of the Guild members in tow.

It was about as bad as he expected. The entire room had been torched. There were scattered pieces of burnt wood that might have once been a desk, bedframe and chest. Almost nothing remained of them though. Even the stone walls were blackened with soot and ash from the intensity of the flames used. Whoever did this was decently skilled with fire was his first thought. The room looked unlivable.

“You can stay in my room,” offered Kiri, apparently reaching a similar conclusion to him.

“No, it’s fine,” he replied, a small smile on his face.

Kiri looked at him in confusion, mostly because of his reaction, he suspected.

“Everyone talked about the friction between the Nobles and the Guild. I was beginning to think that the comments were overblown. Besides a few snide remarks and glances, it all seemed pretty tame. This is just proof that we,” he said, including everyone, “need to be careful and stick together while we’re here.”

He glanced back at the burnt out husk that was his room, “I came prepared anyway. I’ll clean this up and start setting up some protections. Let me know if anyone else needs them as well.”

He was about to get started when he noticed a young woman approaching from the building next to theirs. Another dormitory, unless he missed his guess. Rather than approach him, she moved towards Null. She looked uncomfortable, based on his assessment, though he found it hard to blame her since she was approaching a group of eight individuals standing outside a burned out room.

“Hi,” she said, brushing a lock of her straight brown hair out of the way as she got close enough to them to be heard without yelling. “I…umm, saw who did it. To the room that is.”

She glanced at Null with her deep brown eyes, apparently more interested in his reaction than anyone else’s. Null gave her an encouraging smile and nodded.

“It was Fabien Lussier,” she said quickly. When none of them reacted she continued, “second son of the Earl of Dralogne.”

Again, none of the Guilders reacted and the woman huffed, “Do they teach you nothing about the Nobility at your Guildhouse? He’s a second year and a staunch supporter of the second Prince’s faction.”

Nate finally spoke up, “That’s interesting, but why would he target us? Or me, I suppose.”

The woman just shook her head, uncertain as the rest of the Guilders watched on, “I don’t know.”

An uncomfortable silence descended for a few moments before Null broke it, flashing a smile at the woman and asking the question she apparently had wanted to be asked all along.

“Apologies, what’s your name?” the swordsman asked.

“Daphne, Daphne Alarie,” she responded, preening under his attention. Nate supposed he could understand the appeal. Null was, to put it lightly, a specimen, as they would’ve said back on Earth. All chiselled and smooth muscle, topped with brown hair and eyes.

“Thanks for the info, Daphne. We’re going to try and sort this out for now, but maybe we could meet up some time?” Null offered, the man clearly aware of the effect he was having.

Daphne nodded quickly with a smile before giving them a wave and heading back to her own dormitory as the Guildies turned back towards the burned out room. That didn’t prevent Nate from sensing Daphne’s glance back at Null twice through his sphere of awareness.

“So, what are we going to do?” asked Kiri, her simmering anger leaking into her tone.

Nate had expected the group to turn to Null for directions, but instead six sets of eyes flicked to him, Kiri’s still staring at the burned out room. It only took him a moment to understand. The Adventurer’s Guild, at its heart, was a group that focused on combat, regardless of method or form. Fighting strength was the most important thing to their members. It was how you rose through the ranks, how you completed jobs, how you proved your worth. Given that, in their eyes, Kiri and himself were their strongest members, leadership should therefore default to them. It was an odd feeling for Nate, knowing that these people, who were almost strangers to him, were willing to heed his words and take his advice so readily. He could respect that it was both an honour they were bestowing on him, as well as a responsibility. Or maybe he was overthinking it and they were just willing to do what he asked since it was his room that got firebombed.

“Leave it for now,” he said. “We need more information. We know nothing about the political factions at the University. Nothing about why I was targeted or if it was me they were targeting and not just any member of the Guild. Let's spend a few days getting the lay of the land.”

Null was the first to agree, “If that’s what you want. It might be a bit hard, but some of those from the merchants faction will probably speak to us. You sure you don’t want our help with your room?”

Null glanced into the room at those words, pointedly noting that there was basically nothing left of the furniture in the room except burned logs and ash.

“It’s fine,” Nate replied with a smile. “And thanks for the support everyone.”

Coralie smiled, first at him, then at Kiri, “We’re the only members of the Guild here among hundreds of the Nobility and the wealthier merchants. We need to have each other's backs.”

After everyone nodded their agreement and a few pats on his back, the group dispersed towards their rooms, leaving Nate with Kiri, who’d refused to leave.

“I can help a little,” she offered.

“Nah,” he replied with a grin. “Was going to make Frick do most of the work anyway.”

At his words the little blue spirit slipped out of the Familiar Contract and looked over the room.

“What a shithole, Boss. Let’s get it done!”

What followed was a waste of mana in his eyes as he cleaned up his room. He was forced to use multiple runes to clean the damage. Using Imbue Intent he was able to realign a Wood Gathering runic array to the Subconcept of Burned Wood, which was enough to collect most of the ash. It was mana intensive and further ate into his mana stockpile, but he was confident he had a way to resolve that issue now. The soot on the walls required an acid wash, which left the room stinking even as it cleaned the burnt markings from the stone. Finally, he used a new runic array utilising his recently acquired Smell sigil to clean away the acidic and burnt smells from the room. Blasting it with a Wind rune left the place smelling like grass and salty sea air.

The whole thing took less than thirty minutes but left him with dregs in his remaining mana gems. Kiri stayed with him the whole time, just keeping him company, for which he was appreciative. Seeing that he had it all cleaned and handled, she left for her own room with a smile, though Nate didn’t miss the still simmering anger in her eyes. He had a sneaking suspicion that Fabien Lussier was going to run into some unexpected issues with his own room very soon.

With the room cleaned, Nate walked in and closed the door, pulling the expensive bed he had purchased, along with the bedding, out of his spatial storage ring. Sitting down, he sighed and looked at Frick as he pulled out a small piece of wood with a rune engraved on it. The sound rune was linked to the barrier rune on his robe by Empowered Runic Artistry and using Runic Creation and Imbue Intent, he created a sound barrier to keep any noise from escaping.

“Confident you can do it and no one will notice?” he asked his Familiar.

“Very, Boss,” Frick replied with a toothy grin. “Be sneakier than a married man in a brothel.”

Nate rolled his eyes, “I’m serious, Frick.”

“Me too, Boss. I found the mana vein, as you keep callin’ it. They’ve got spots along it where they can get down there via the sewers to investigate and do maintenance. I just made a small pocket nearby using your Earth rune. Can teleport in and out now. It’ll get you the mana you need.”

It was something Nate had wondered about since his first venture into the different districts of the Etruan Capital. The ambient mana density varied in each district, with the Slums and the plains beyond the city being almost a mana wasteland. The Merchants district, which was where the Adventurer’s Guild was located, had been better, but still a far cry from the mana density in Helmfirth. Finally, the Nobles district, which was where the Royal University was located, had been on par with Helmfirth while the Royal University itself was a cut above.

That might have made sense, if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes what happened when you created overlapping regions of mana gathering. The simple fact was, they competed with each other. If he put four mana gathering arrays at the corners of his room, the centre of the room would have the lowest density, while the highest densities would actually be at the middle of each of the four walls. The places where the mana gathering fields overlapped the most. Sure, there were other ways to potentially prevent mana escapage, like mana barriers, which is what he’d sensed around each of the districts, overlapping with the gates that separated them. But that still left the problem of getting the mana into the districts.

Frick had thankfully validated his suspicions. The Etruans had set up massive enchantments below the ground. They likely had mana gathering arrays set up throughout the plains around the city. Maybe even some out off the coast. Those enchantments were sucking in as much of the ambient mana as they could get their hands on, then pumping it into the city where it was either collected into mana-gems, distributed into the Districts or, he suspected, used to recharge Dungeons. Once inside, the mana barriers kept it from escaping. The cost to set it all up must have been exorbitant, but at the end of the day, it gave the Royal family, and he supposed the Nobility, absolute control over how mana was made available within the Capital. He did wonder if the Nobility shouldered some of the cost to set it all up. That didn’t matter so much to him. The only thing he cared about was the opportunity it presented. If he could put a couple of his mana gathering arrays near the mana veins pumping mana throughout the city, he could syphon off enough mana for all of his projects. The grin on his face was brilliant as he handed over one of his mana gathering arrays, filled with ten empty mana gems, to his Familiar.

“Do it,” he whispered.

A moment later Frick was gone, having used True Teleportation to go set up his mana collection operation. Step one was done. Now it was time to fortify his room. Taking out his notepad he got to work.

*************

Fabien sauntered into the common room he shared with his three fellow Nobles. His smile was radiant as he brushed his shoulder-length red hair over his ear. It was so rare he got to let loose. Torching the commoner’s room had actually been fun, rather than a chore. The fact that he was going to benefit from doing so was just the icing on the cake. He’d been surprised when he had received the request. Surprised and amused. They were beneath him, but useful, and perhaps to them their proposal felt like an equivalent exchange.

Well, they were wrong. Maybe they felt it was equivalent, but for him, it had been as easy as breathing. Sure, it cost a little mana, but with his Epic Class and associated Skills, unleashing flames hot enough to scorch stone had been easy. His Mana Reserve was almost refilled already and it had only been an hour. More importantly, with the damage he’d done, he doubted they’d manage to clean the room before the night was out. Even the cleaning staff would take an hour to undo the damage he’d done and finding a replacement bed at this hour was never going to happen. No, the dumb commoner was going to end up sleeping on someone else’s stone floor. The single beds given to the commoners was a snub at the Adventurer’s Guild that most of their members were too dumb to recognise. That was what came of poor breeding and poorer education. The best part, though, was that this was just the first request. He was looking forward to continuing to make that man’s life hell. He just wondered what the guy had done to anger them so?

*************

Headmaster Verian Thavian Mazet stared out of the window of his tower, observing the Royal University in all its glory. It was beautiful. An island of green in a sea of yellow. An emerald gem set into a golden band. The jewel of Etrua. Others might disagree, favouring the Royal Palace, but he looked down on their works. The Royals tried to strike a balance between the sand and sea, a message on who they were and what they stood for to any who visited. But the Royal University was his brainchild and over the past decade he’d done away with the sand, making the grounds more reminiscent of his homeland. More beautiful. The results spoke for themselves. His success led to some of the Nobility seeking to copy his designs in their own estates within the Capital. Poor imitations, in his eyes, but imitations nonetheless. It was a form of influence, and all influence was worthwhile. All influence was power.

“Are you sure you wish to allow this when we are so close?” he asked the only other person in his office.

“It’s beneath our notice. Interfering would raise questions and now is not the time for questions. We are barely past halfway. Let the children squabble,” came the deep voice from behind him.

Verian considered their words for a few minutes, his mind roaming through the implications and potential issues caused by either path. Interference or feigned ignorance. In the end, he agreed. Feigned ignorance it would be. Would the children run to the Guild Platinums, or try and resolve the issues themselves? Either way, it wasn’t the university’s problem, and so long as it didn’t get out of hand, it wouldn’t interfere with their plans.

“As you command,” he replied, going back to admiring his University.