Chapter 136: 136. The Journal.
Once they were done eating, Elena stepped out of the room to face off against the intruders heading towards the academy.
Meanwhile, Lucille and Orion walked straight to Sabrina's study room. However, upon arriving, they were shocked to see books and grimoires scattered all over the floor.
"What happened here?" Lucille wondered as she walked into the room with Orion trailing behind her.
Looking around, they could see burnt papers scattered everywhere, while the smell of burnt papers filled up the air.
Soot could also be seen on the floor, shelves, and ceiling, but in a corner of the room, the tomes and grimoires that had once been neatly arranged on the shelf had now fallen to form a mountain of books on Sabrina.
Sabrina groaned as she slowly stood up, and found Lucille and Orion standing in front of her.
"What happened here?" Lucille asked.
"I tried deciphering Bjorn's journal and this is what happened."
"It exploded?"
"Yes."
"What? You mean the journal is gone?"
"Huh? Gone? No, the journal is okay, nothing happened to it."
Lucille sighed with extreme relief after hearing Sabrina's words. She had been worried that the journal might have been destroyed, but it seemed the journal was still okay.
"But why are there so many burnt papers?"
"I tried duplicating the runes from the journal onto the papers to decipher them, but whenever I failed to decipher them correctly, the papers would explode. It's been like this since morning."
"But how come no one heard it exploding?"
"I cast a magical sound barrier," While trying to decipher the runes, Sabrina had cast a magic spell to prevent the explosion sounds from leaving her study room.
This way, everyone within the academy could continue their daily activities without knowing what was even happening in her study room.
Lucille looked around the room once again before turning towards Sabrina to see her dusting off the soot and dust from her body.
"So, what brings you by?" Sabrina asked.
She could guess the reason why they were here, but she decided to ask either way, just to be certain.
"We came to…" Lucille tried to explain, but Orion's words made her turn towards him.
"Is this the rune monarch's journal?" Orion noticed a small, worn-out, leather-bound journal on Sabrina's desk.
"Yes, it once belonged to Bjorn Ironside," Lucille replied before introducing Orion.
"This is Prince Galdur, and he is one of the top ten students in Stella Hall. He's here to help you decipher the journal," Lucille also introduced Sabrina, informing Orion of the classes she would teach him once classes officially began.
"May I take a look at it?"
Remembering that she had other things to do, Lucille excused herself from the room. "I'll be heading out now, if you two need anything, just let me know," Sabrina nodded in understanding as she watched Lucille leave the room.
After that, Sabrina swiftly cast a spell to return the books on the floor back to the shelf.
Once done, she noticed that Orion was still focused on the journal he was holding.
"I heard you were the one who designed the teleportation arrays used in the academy?"
"Yes."
"That's amazing. There aren't many students around your age that are capable of doing something like that. What gave you the idea to create a teleportation array?"
"As an adventurer, I always received quests that required me to move from one city to the other. As a prince, I could easily move between cities by taking a chariot, but as an adventurer, the only way to do this was by walking or learning high-tier spells."
"So, what did you do?"
"I decided to walk, but then I realized a lot of low-ranked adventurers did the same thing as well," Only nobles and high-ranked adventurers could afford to have a flying chariot take them anywhere they wanted in the kingdom.
Low-ranked adventurers and elves from humble backgrounds had to walk the long distance to wherever they wanted to go.
"But that was not all. So many elves in the kingdom also travelled on foot all the way from their village to support and cheer me up whenever I had battles to fight in the arena. It wasn't easy for them, but they kept coming from the villages they lived in to support me. So I decided to do something for them in return."
"By making it easier for them to move from one city to the other?"
"Yes," Orion replied and he continued to skim through the runes written on each page of the journal.
Sabrina noticed that Orion had barely lifted his head to look in her direction while he was talking to her, and it was understandable why he would feel this way.
"Deciphering the journal of a rune monarch looks difficult, doesn't it?" Sabrina asked as she walked closer to him.
She could see how focused he was on the runes written in the journal, but just like her, Sabrina knew it would be difficult for Orion to decipher the runes.
This just showed how amazing the first rune monarch truly was before he got killed by Salvatore.
Even Salvatore, who became a rune monarch, couldn't decipher the runes on his own before he died, so it would definitely be difficult for the both of them to do it as well.
However, Orion wasn't bothered by this. He didn't even reply to Sabrina's question. Instead, he was interested in something else.
"How have you been deciphering the runes so far?"
A smile spread across Sabrina's lips. She could see the determination in his eyes to decipher the runes before him, so she happily explained what he wanted to know.
"I rewrote the runes in a separate paper. There are a hundred pages in that journal, and each page has at least a hundred runes in it, so I deciphered the runes by rearranging them first, then fusing them one at a time. So once two runes were able to merge correctly, I would then merge the third rune to the first two and so on."
"But what happens if the runes do not merge correctly?"
"They would explode, and the remaining runes written on the first page of the journal would automatically replace itself with a new set of runes, meaning that I have no choice but to start all over again."
This was what happened before Orion and Lucille walked into the room.
It was also the reason why Sabrina hadn't deciphered the journal till now.
Orion nodded his head in understanding before turning his attention back to the runes on the journal.
"So, what do you think?" Sabrina asked. "Do you think you will be able to decipher the runes?"
"Yes, I should be able to decipher the first page tonight."
"Huh?" Sabrina couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You'll decipher the first page?
"Yes."
"Tonight?" She asked again.
"Yes."
"The whole page?"
"Yes."
Sabrina instinctively curved her lips into a smile. She couldn't believe what she was hearing.
'Did he just say he would decipher the first page of the journal by tonight?' She uttered in her thoughts.
'Impossible, these are the same runes I have been trying to decipher for months.'
'And he thinks he will decipher it in one night?'
'I know the winged chicken said he's surprisingly knowledgeable in runes, but even he shouldn't be that good at deciphering these runes, right?'
'There is no way anyone could ever decipher…' Sabrina's eyes widened in disbelief when she noticed Orion placing the journal on her desk before channelling his mana into the first page of the journal.
The runes on the yellow page glowed brightly before detaching themselves from it, leaving behind a blank yellow page on the journal, with the runes now hovering in the air.
With a gentle flick of his fingers, the runes arranged themselves in rows and columns with every single one of them glowing with a bright orange hue.
He moved his fingers again, and the rune at the top left corner, {Ansuz}, ascended higher than the others, then the last rune {Othala}, broke away from its position before merging with Ansuz.
The moment the two runes fused, their bright orange colour turned into a vibrant golden colour.
The sudden transformation into a golden colour meant that the runes had merged correctly.
If it didn't merge correctly, the runes would have definitely exploded and Orion would have had no other choice but to start all over again.
Orion continued to merge the remaining runes together, not knowing that his blue eyes had changed into a bright orange color.
This enabled him to be completely focused on what he was doing.
His movements were fluid and precise, allowing Orion to easily block everything around him until he was able to successfully complete what he was doing.
The golden runes in front of him instantly dissipated into tiny particles which fell on the blank page of the journal, filling up the page with words both Orion and Sabrina could easily read and understand.
With that out of the way, Orion flipped over to the next page to decipher a new set of runes, and Sabrina couldn't say or do anything because she was still finding it hard to comprehend what had just occurred.
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