CH495 Redirection

***

"What's the chance we're wrong, Master?" Udara asked.

"Unlikely." Alex shook his head.

"The elves," he said. "Even after helping the Lightbringer party… even though their town's higher-ups wanted to get in Eleanore's good graces… all they could provide was rudimentary knowledge on the subject."

His lips curled.

"As for their excuse…" Alex sneered. "Even if it really was that simple, considering how much fervour they showed towards Eleanore, they could've had their Lightbringer parties elsewhere acquire the knowledge."

He scoffed softly.

"The fact that they didn't proves it isn't something easily acquired. Not only that, it's not something even a big town's power would be willing to spend resources to obtain."

Alex's eyes sharpened.

"And if even a governmental entity doesn't want to pay the price, you can imagine how steep that price is… especially when, in their view, it would've earned the settlement a High Elf's favour."

Udara's brows furrowed even more.

She looked at Alex with growing concern, while he stared out the window, his expression distant.

"What are you going to do now, Master?" she asked.

"I can no longer just sit around and wait until I gather the knowledge I need," Alex replied solemnly. "I need to return to my roots."

His voice lowered, steady and resolute.

"I'll have to try to slowly acquire what I need using the limited information I already have."

He exhaled. Then he looked at her.

"I won't be able to crack everything—that would be impossible. But it'll still be better than waiting."

"Don't worry, Master," Udara assured quickly. "We'll surely be able to acquire the knowledge you need."

"I have no doubt," Alex said. "But until that happens, at least this way, I'll be able to use Rune-Tech again… even if only to a limited extent."

His focus shifted.

It retreated, narrowing into the reflection on the window's glass.

Alex stared into his own eyes, a hard determination settling into his gaze.

'That's it.'

'At my core, I'm a systems engineer.'

'I've designed multiple complicated systems. I've cracked plenty of others too. Why should this be any different?'

He gritted his teeth.

'I'm not like the others. My speciality doesn't lie in something like talent. It lies in my identity and experience as an Engineer.'

'And as an engineer… I shouldn't be sitting around waiting for someone to spoon-feed me.'

His eyes gleamed.

'I'll feed myself.'

Suddenly, Alex smiled brightly.

It was as though the fog before his eyes had finally cleared.

"Thank you," he said, making Udara blink in surprise.

"But I didn't do anything." Udara tilted her head.

Alex only smiled wider.

He stepped closer and braced his hands on the armrests of her chair, leaning in until their faces were close enough that he could feel her breath.

"You listened," he murmured. "That's more than enough."

Then he kissed her.

When their lips finally parted, he rested his forehead against hers, his eyes never leaving hers.

"Udara… really. Thank you," he said again.

A grin bloomed across Udara's face.

After Alex coaxed her back to sleep, he returned to the sofa in the living room and pulled up the projector screen on his Beta Bracer.

'Now… let's see if this will work,' he muttered.

"Duplicate, then reset the Simulation Function's formation," Alex prompted OmniRune.

The simulation program on the bracer's screen shut down. In its place, a special runic code appeared—one that quickly assembled into a circular runic array.

The code duplicated itself.

The screen zoomed in, focusing on one of the formations.

Under Alex's solemn gaze, segments of runes were systematically stripped from the array.

These were specific codes—primitives that tied the program to Pangea's laws… memory anchors… and special alterations made to the formation over time by both Alex and OmniRune.

In essence, OmniRune returned the Simulation Function back to its base form.

Then, it activated the formation.

Alex held his breath.

'Here goes nothing…'

He was banking on the formation still working.

Even though it looked newly created, it was essentially a virtual rework of something that had already existed—and already functioned.

It was a stretch… but he was hoping Verdantis would recognise it as the same program, and allow it to run.

Mana drained from his body through his arms as OmniRune attempted to activate the reworked formation.

The screen went blank.

Then—

A familiar interface appeared.

Alex's heart jolted.

'No… not yet.'

'I can't celebrate yet. I still need to confirm.'

Excitement surged through him, but he forced it down.

"Cast a fireball spell," Alex prompted.

Just as OmniRune had done hundreds—if not thousands—of times before, it conjured the required runes and attempted to assemble them into the spell formation for [Fireball].

Crack—!

Shatter—!

This time, before it could succeed, the spell formation shattered into fragments.

Alex's heartbeat spiked.

"Do it again," he ordered, forcing himself to stay calm.

OmniRune obeyed.

Crack—!

Shatter—!

The same thing happened.

"Again," Alex ordered.

Crack—!

Shatter—!

And for the third time, it shattered just the same.

"Ye—!" Alex almost screamed.

He caught himself at the last moment.

'YES!!!'

He shot to his feet, pumping his fist and roaring soundlessly in celebration, refusing to wake his wives.

He jumped and silently raged like a lunatic until the adrenaline finally burned out, and he dropped back onto the sofa.

Still, his head tipped back on the chair rest as he stared at the ceiling, laughing quietly under his breath.

'I did it!' Alex celebrated. 'I can't believe it was so simple… I can't believe I didn't think of it until now.'

Alex had succeeded in something deceptively small, yet monumentally important.

He had successfully attuned the simulation function specifically to the laws of the Verdantis Plane.

In other words, he had managed to simulate—no, emulate—the plane itself.

Which meant any digital test he ran inside the simulation would now behave exactly as it would in Verdantis' physical world.

Slowly, his excitement cooled.

His eyes sharpened.

'That's the easy part,' he reminded himself. 'Now comes the grind.'

Alex opened the cross-referencing library OmniRune had compiled—built from comparing runes against sigils using its records of the same spells cast on both Pangea and Verdantis.

A kind of dictionary… mapping runes to their suspected sigil counterparts.

Then he had OmniRune upload the basic sigil knowledge Eleanore had acquired from the elves.

As expected, some of OmniRune's suspected pairs were wrong.

But most were right.

In fact, the incorrect pairs weren't due to a flaw in OmniRune's logic—it was simply working with limited information.

Now that Alex had a stronger reference base, the real work could finally begin.

With the new sigil knowledge, OmniRune was able to narrow down the suspected rune pairs for sigils that had previously been completely unknown.

Now, it was just a matter of identifying which pairing was correct.

And there was only one way to do that.

A long, exhausting grind.

Testing the effects of different sigils and runes—over and over—in spells until they matched.

***

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