Return of the Runebound Professor

Chapter 8: Moxie

There were a lot of places that Noah wanted to visit, but he elected to return to his room. Before he started wandering around and exploring this new world, he was determined to get a better grasp of exactly what he could do.

Todd and Isabel had said that people only got seven Runes per level, but Noah had eight. Something told him that the massive Sunder Rune was most certainly not normal. Drawing any attention to it would have been stupid, so he’d have to find a different way to learn about it.

Once Noah got back, he sat down on his bed and pulled out Vermil’s book, flipping through it until he found the Ash Rune again. Like he’d thought, it was a Rank 1 Greater Rune. He found the Wind Runes next.

“Why did Vermil choose to make a bunch of crappy Wind Runes instead of good ones?” Noah asked himself. “It sounds like he came from a pretty good background, so shouldn’t he have had access to whatever it is that people need to make better Runes?”

Noah chewed his lower lip in thought. Back when he’d fought the monkeys, he’d felt energized after killing them. He hadn’t paid it much attention at the time, but the energy had felt similar to what had struck him when he’d looked at the Runes in his mind. That must have been what Todd had meant about getting energy from killing monsters.

He closed his eyes and reached into himself again, descending into the darkness of his mind. With a rush, Runes sprung up all around him. Their energy slammed into his psyche once more, but he was ready this time.

Noah pointedly avoided looking up at the enormous Rune he knew was floating above him, instead studying the Wind Runes before him. As he focused on them, he realized that even though they were all the same Rune, they felt slightly different.

Three of them shimmered with the exact same intensity of light, but the other two felt emptier. The light coming from them was a few shades lighter, and the pressure they emitted wasn’t as strong.

Still, the three that felt full didn’t show any signs of evolving or getting stronger. Noah turned to the Ash Runes. Now that he was looking for it, he could almost instantly tell that both of them were nearly empty.

Despite that, they felt dozens of times stronger than the filled Wind ones. Noah nodded and let his consciousness pull back, returning to the real world.

“Okay,” he said to himself. “Killing monsters is one way to get more energy in my Runes. Lesser Runes are easier to fill, but they’re weaker. That means, if I want to get stronger, I need to get rid of all my Lesser Runes if possible. Then I need to fill up my Runes with energy and figure out how to combine them – and also find out if Wind and Ash is actually a useful combination.”

Noah grinned. It was nice to have a goal beyond ‘avoid getting killed’. There was still far too much that he didn’t know, but at least he could start to make out a path through the trees. He leaned back and his hand brushed against the gourd at his waist.

The smile flickered and faded.

“Shit,” Noah muttered. “I completely forgot someone tried to murder this dude by giving him a poisoned healing potion. That probably meant that they’ll give it another run when they realized the potion didn’t do its job.

He sat, staring at the wall and pondering, for a total of five seconds. Then he shrugged and hopped to his feet.

“I’ll deal with that when it comes. I couldn’t even begin to figure out how many enemies Vermil had, so for now, the best strategy will just be to keep an eye on anyone trying to offer me snacks. Until then… it’s time for some science experiments.”

Noah extended his hand, picturing the Ash Rune in his mind. Gray lines traced through the air above his palm, interweaving and twisting together to form a complicated pattern in the air before him.

Wind magic I get. You cut things up. Maybe fly around. But what am I supposed to do with Ash? Blow dust at people? Actually, for that matter, how does magic work at all? I get that Runes give access to it, but can I literally do anything I want within its domain?

Noah imagined a cloud of ash swirling up from his hand, but nothing happened. He didn’t even feel any draw on the magic. He pursed his lips and lowered his request to just a few grains, but it met a similar result.

After a few more minutes of trying to figure out how to work the Rune, he shelved the idea for the moment. There were still more urgent things to investigate.

Noah dismissed the Ash Rune and pulled up Wind in its place. With a single mental command, the air above his palm started to churn. Thin whisps of white energy swirled in a tight sphere.

It dissipated, and a light wind rustled Noah’s hair as he directed it through the room. Noah’s grin stretched wider and he pictured the energy picking him off the ground. His clothes rustled, but nothing happened.

Noah’s tests caught the stacks of papers he’d so carefully put together several hours ago, tossing them all across the room with a single, misplaced gust. His grin flickered and he let his fingers drop, releasing the magic.

He cursed, but his eyes lit up as another idea struck him. Noah focused on the papers, squinting slightly in concentration, and imagined dozens of strands of wind reaching out and restacking his papers.

Some of them started to rustle. They shifted lifting into the air and flying through the room, mostly in the direction that he’d pictured and – nothing. The wind he’d been manipulating dropped away, vanishing without a trace along with the Rune floating above his hand.

Noah blinked as papers fluttered down all around him. He envisioned the Wind Rune again, and it sprung to his palm instantly. Tilting his head to the side, Noah repeated his command.

This time, it worked – albeit not nearly as well as he’d hoped. The wind was anything but accurate, and instead of forming several discrete and neat stacks of paper, he made a raggedy pile in the corner.

A minute later, that Rune vanished as well. Noah’s eyes narrowed. He imagined the Rune once more and it appeared on command, as if playing a game of hide and seek. Noah gathered a ball of wind above his palm and waited.

Approximately a minute passed, and the Rune vanished once again. Noah called the Rune forth once again and repeated the exercise. This time, it barely got to twenty seconds before the wind vanished. Another attempt got to eighteen seconds on the dot.

Noah pictured the Rune once again, a sneaking suspicion already building in his mind. No Rune formed above his palm. He could envision it perfectly in his mind, but the magic stubbornly refused to do anything more.

He shifted his mental request to Ash, and the Rune appeared instantly. Noah let it fade away, pursing his lips in thought.

Five Wind Runes. Three attempts lasted around a minute. The other two didn’t last as long. So each Rune is an individual power source, and the ones with less energy in them last less time. That means that someone that really wanted to specialize in using Wind would have to have more Wind Runes, or they’d run out.

Noah let several minutes pass, then tried picturing a Wind Rune again. It flickered to life in his palm, but it sputtered out almost immediately after using a tiny gust of wind. Attempts to call it again met with failure once more.

Okay, so recovery does start pretty quickly, but it’ll take a little time to get the energy back. It’s like the water in the bucket refills back to the point that I had it filled up to in the first place.

Noah knelt, adjusting the mess of papers in the corner of the room until it was roughly symmetrical again. It was nowhere near the level of organization he’d had before his experiments had started, but at least it wasn’t as much of an eyesore anymore.

He sat down, chewing his lower lip as he tried to process everything he’d learned. There was a lot, and it wouldn’t be something he could come to a conclusion on in a single day. In addition to learning exactly what he was capable of with his current Runes, he needed to figure out how to replace the inferior Wind Runes and what possible replacements and combinations would work. On top of that, there was the Sunder Rune.

That one might have priority. Maybe it’ll give me some hint as to what keeps reviving me when I die. I’m going to be royally pissed if I just go up and die permanently out of nowhere. I do not want to wait around in line for the next thousand years and end up losing my memories. Perhaps there’s a library that I can reference.

Noah stood and strode out of the room without a second glance. He headed through the halls of the T building and out into the evening air. The sun was well on its way to dipping below the horizon, but there was still more than enough light to see by.

He made his way back to the map of Arbitage’s campus and searched through it. Within a few minutes, his efforts were rewarded and he spotted the library. It was nearly at the center of the school’s campus, several buildings away from where he currently was.

“No time to waste,” Noah said to himself, setting off along the road toward it.

Tall, intricate buildings lined the road alongside him. Many of them sported massive statues or detailed carvings along or emerging from their walls. Students and teachers became more numerous on the streets, heading from building to building and clogging the roads up as they stopped to talk.

Noah plastered a confident, slightly irritated look on his face that he’d learned from years of trying to push through hallways. He kept his gaze firmly fixed in the direction he was going and walked at a brisk stride.

People stepped out of his way, clearing a path through the campus. Even though Noah knew it was ridiculous, every single time someone seemed to give him anything more than idle glance, the back of his neck prickled.

Despite his reservations, Noah drew up to the library uncontested. The massive building blocked out the sun completely, standing easily six stories tall. It had an enormous, sloped roof supported by plain stone columns.

A wide staircase led up to dozens of small doors lining its entrance. Students and teachers alike poured in and out of the building. Noah blended into the crowd, walking up the stairs and through the doors.

The inside of the library smelled like paper and lilac. He’d expected such a large building to be musty, but it was surprisingly refreshing. Before him, rows upon rows of bookshelves stretched into the distance.

On either side of the entrance were two long counters. What he presumed to be librarians sat behind the counter. Many people headed past them and into the library proper, but a large number of students had gathered near the counters, making long lines for most of the librarians.

There was a section at the very end of one of the counters where the lines were much shorter, and many of the librarians weren’t helping anyone. Several men and women in robes identical to Noah’s stood in the area. A sign hung from above it, identifying it as a teacher only zone.

Ah, teacher privileges. I wonder if we get free coffee here, or if administration wasted that budget on the football team and are making us pay for it. Either way, no lines. Perfect.

“Hello,” Noah said, walking up to a short, male librarian with a large bald spot and receding hairline in the teacher section. “I’m looking for some reference books.”

“I’d be happy to help,” the librarian said with a professional smile. “What kind of references?”

“Something basic on Runes,” Noah said, watching the librarian’s expression carefully to make sure nothing he said seemed ludicrous. “Intro level, specifically on combinations or modifying the Runes someone has.”

The librarian raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to answer, but a sharp burst of laughter from behind them interrupted him. Noah turned as a ginger haired woman roughly his age lowered her hand from her mouth, still grinning. Three gold bars glistened on the left shoulder of her uniform.

She had features that Noah had never seen on Earth. Her skin was like smooth, waxy bark and her eyes had a crescent curve to them. She was beautiful, but in a haunting manner that immediately set Noah’s hair on end. A metal plate, matching the one Vermil had carried, had the name Magus Moxie inscribed on it.

And, judging by the cold twinkle in her eyes, Noah got the feeling that she didn’t like him at all.