"So, when you spoke of other runes…" Beth hinted.

"Exactly. What is contained in this room represents some of the greatest work of legendary crafters from across the universe. The rune-work present in these pieces is on a level that even Divines could not dream of achieving," he explained solemnly.

" 'Some of'?" Beth asked.

"Well, of course," he replied with a chuckle. "I'm powerful, young lady, but I'm not all-powerful. Perhaps if I were an Eternal or a Transcendent Pinnacle, I could make more grandiose claims, but I am not, so I do not."

"I don't know what that is," Beth replied.

"After Manumitted is Absolute Authority. After Absolute Authority is Eternal, and then after that is Transcendent Pinnacle," he explained.

"Oh, well…I see," Beth said, taking a moment to absorb that. She noticed after a minute, however, that the rest had gathered around a case on a table, so she walked over to find out what they were viewing. Zane followed her, giving a little sigh when he saw it, a sound full of the weight of long years and heavy emotion.

"Another old story?" Beth asked him, the others all turning to look at the man. Except for Fallon, obviously, as the man had likely heard the old stories, or more likely, been present himself when they were made, considering Mortaine claimed the gryphon was a traveling companion of Zane's.

"A very old story," Zane said, looking down at the case. In it were the shattered remains of a sword, a blade that Beth could tell was extraordinary even with the case in the way. The weapon had been shattered, the forces involved so great that the hilt had been twisted and mangled. Nothing had been done to restore the blade, but every single piece had been collected and laid out together, forming a strange semblance of a blade, all the pieces present, but not all of them fitting together anymore.

"What happened?" asked Sera.

"It was five thousand years ago," Zane began quietly, looking off into the distance. "There was a woman, in some ways similar to Beth, young and eager and having built her Mana Physique early. She was known as a great swordsman, even at a young age, and was involved in several…larger conflicts. Hers was not just the fight against beasts and the ever-encroaching changes of mana, she fought against nations and armies as well.

"There was a time, a certain year, when she was, for reasons I will not share, pulled deep into a war. These things happen at times, both wars and promising young talents getting pulled into them. She joined several battles, doing quite well for herself, before something happened that would write a legend that survives five thousand years later. She was caught out, in an awkward position, alone and without reinforcement. She held a critical gap that had no other defense, as the war had caused much confusion and shifting of priorities. She took it upon herself to stand in that gap, alone against an army, and try to prevent what would be a terrible, possibly war-ending, blow to her side. Little did the other faction know that the reverse would occur, and dramatically so.

"For three days and three nights, she held the gap, fighting in an area of extremely harsh terrain, holding a pass between two old, fractured mountains. It was an awful time, and people died, on and on, for days. On the dawn of the fourth day, the sky was a deep red, the color of old blood spilled on a patch of damp earth. On one end of the battlefield knelt Miranda, and at the other, with their backs to her, were the spent remnants of the enemy faction. Running. Running from a battlefield that had become a charnel house, a disgusting abattoir of rent flesh, torn organs, and chunks of bone, hip-deep in blood. Miranda was so coated in layers upon layers of the stuff that she was a dark red and black, the blood flaking off into powder and dust in great clumps when she moved. She held in her left hand that twisted hilt you see in the case, her right hand having been lost sometime during the fight. Still, she stood, pointing her blade at the fleeing foes and issuing them due challenge, daring them to ever face her again.

"For the sky on that day, for the blood that soaked the field and coated her so thoroughly, she was awarded the title The Red Dawn, acknowledged by the Path itself. She was one of the fiercest warriors I have ever known, one willing to dive headfirst into any danger, to face even the most impossible odds. Such a life has its dangers, and some two thousand years ago, she fell in battle, a fitting end for such a great warrior. Even at the last, the field was coated in the blood and broken bodies of her foes, a testament to her endless will and strength."

"She sounds like a remarkable woman," Beth said quietly.

"Fierce and crass and hot-tempered," Fallon said. "But gentle and warm, to those she trusted. Centuries pass as we gain new friends and lose old ones, but we remember. All the same, we always remember."

"But enough of that," Zane said, leading them across the room and out into the hall. "Let me take you to something that you'll find more interesting than stuffy relics."

He led them through hallways and rooms, a kaleidoscope of various styles and architectures, Beth still not sure whether it was a ship or a station. The pathways between the places and the rooms themselves seemed to suggest they were on a station, but there were several key indicators that stood out to her as saying that the place was a starship. She figured she might ask after they got to wherever they were currently going and saw whatever Zane wanted them to see.

After some fifteen minutes or so of walking, making Beth wonder just how damn big the ship or station they were on really was, they got to the room Zane wanted to show them. At first, Beth just assumed it was another sitting room, but that notion was quickly thrown out the window when Zane fully activated the room. A series of runes appeared hovering in the air, spinning around each other very slowly and floating at about head height. Beth gave the strange man a questioning look after making sure the runes weren't going to explode or anything of a more hostile nature.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"This," Zane said, gesturing around the room and at the runes, "is a clever little piece of engineering that Fallon and I developed some, oh, thousand years ago or so. We lend it out, from time-to-time, and have requests for its use almost constantly. Since you've come to see us, we figured you might as well make some use of it. The last two hearts you need, by-the-by, are in shipping right now, so you might as well hurry up and wait here."

"And what, exactly, is this room?" Sera asked, sitting in one of the chairs and examining the runes in the air.

"Well, it's a little complicated," Zane said, sitting down opposite the dragon girl and stretching out his legs. "Let me explain it this way; the room will present you a series of runes, and first you must be able to copy the form of them properly. After that, you have to find the missing rune or runes. The sequence presented, even the one hovering here now, is incomplete. After demonstrating you can copy the runes to a high degree of precision, in other words, demonstrating that you are capable of using the runes, then you have to fill in the missing sequence."

"So, it's a training room for runes?" Beth asked, eyeing the floating configuration a little skeptically.

"Well, yes and no," Fallon was the one to answer, tilting his hand left and right. "The chamber itself can, in theory, create just about any sequence of runes that are possible. It's a simulation chamber, in other words, and one that is more complex and complete than basically anything else in the Milky Way right now. Well, at least that we know about. The training mode, as it were, isn't the main function, but a secondary function that we use for novices to help them get their feet wet with runes. It takes confirmed good sequences of runes and then plucks one or more out, after which it will analyze any rune drawn in the chamber. After the people inside demonstrate they can copy the incomplete sequence, then it waits for them to provide the rune or runes to solve the full sequence."

"So, it's a testing room that can also train, basically," Beth said, getting nods from the two. "How do we know we're on the right track? Or, how can we even know what we're doing?"

"It's not a certification test," Zane said a bit fussily, rolling his eyes. "You can look up what the runes are and how to make them. Even if you know all the runes present, you have to be able to precisely copy them. Once you've got creating copies down, then you have to solve the sequence. Just because you can look it up doesn't mean it's easy; there's hundreds of quintillions of combination, at a minimum, and figuring out what you're looking at is the real challenge."

"Can we stay here a while and practice?" Sera asked, her interest certainly having been piqued.

"Take as long as you like," Zane said with a dismissive wave. He turned to Fallon and Mortaine and started some discussion about teleportation that Beth kept half an ear on as she and Sera and Blood started examining the runes.

"This seems easy enough," Beth commented, getting a frown from Sera.

"You know what this sequence is?" Sera asked.

"Well, no, but I'm sure we'll get it in no time," Beth answered rather calmly.

They did not get it in no time.

The puzzle, such as it was, was far more complex than Beth had thought. Perhaps part of it was that the first of the sequences that Zane had brought up in the center of the room was only six runes, which had lulled her into a bit of a false sense of security. She had assumed copying those six runes, in some form, would be fairly easy, but even that part they struggled greatly with. The room didn't have a requirement to create the runes out of mana, and they could, in fact, use any substrate or substance to do it, including just writing them down on paper, though that wouldn't work with the more complex runes they would be dealing with later. Beth wanted them to create the runes out of mana the way Zane had demonstrated, which added a whole other level of complexity to the endeavor.

They spent many hours just trying to copy the runes in a way that was satisfactory, but even after they had managed to get the six runes copied near enough that the room acknowledged their efforts, Beth had no idea what the sequence was supposed to do. She had recognized three of the six runes from her own studies, but the other three runes, despite being rather basic, were unfamiliar to her. Sera knew one of them, which took them up to four, but they had to search up the other two, and even when they had all six, Beth still didn't know what was missing. That was yet another complexity of trying to figure out the sequences; a sequence presented could very well do something without any additional runes added, so one then needed to think about what more could be done, versus what the sequence or model could already do.

It took them a couple hours to get it, but eventually a combination that Blood tried after they had discussed the sequence for a long while, an exhaustive while, worked. The six runes could basically make an enchantment that would increase a being's speed, but with a seventh rune that sequence became a solid acceleration enchantment, allowing someone to quickly burst forth from standing still to a high speed. As soon as the projection gave them the green light on that sequence, another appeared with eight runes arranged in a specific pattern. Sometimes, just the runes were enough to activate a certain effect, sometimes they needed to be written in order, and sometimes they had to be arranged in a very precise grouping to give a certain effect.

Beth leaned back in her chair with a sigh, rubbing at her eyes as Sera and Blood started investigating the new sequence. She listened to the conversation the other three were having, the topic sounding to be the same as what it was a few hours ago when they started. She frowned as they discussed some particular quirk of space and moving through it using mana to twist space before setting it back the way it was. It sounded a bit like what she did with Spatial Step but different in a way she couldn't quite identify. The basic explanation was similar, but when they talked about how space twisted, something that Zane was elaborating on at length with occasional sarcastic comments from Fallon, it didn't sound like what it felt like when she used the skill.

Spatial Step leveled up to Platinum[1]

"Woah," said Beth, attracting Sera's attention.

"What happened? Did you figure out the sequence?" Sera asked.

"No, I was listening to Zane talk about teleportation and I got a level in Spatial Step, and it's already in Platinum," Beth said.

"Oh, uh, that's, uh, nice?" Sera said, her eyes wide. "I haven't heard about something like that happening. Not for a skill at Platinum level at least, that's for sure."

"Well, I sorta realized that the way they're talking about teleportation is like what I do but different. I was thinking about those differences and how they work when I got a level," Beth explained.

"You have a knack for spatial manipulation," Zane said from across from them. "Not many would have been able to get a level like that just from listening to our discussion."

"I have a lot of spatial stuff now," Beth said with a shrug. "Well, I guess it's a lot. I mean, I started with no spatial skills and now I have five, and I learned several of them myself."

"Definitely some kind of affinity," Zane said with a nod.

"It's more your area than mine," Fallon said with an airy wave, returning to the discussion with Mortaine.

"Leave them for now," Zane said to Beth, standing up and waving at the other two. "The room will still be here in an hour or two; I want to test some things."

Beth shrugged and gave Sera a kiss before standing and following the man out of the room, only going down the hall a little way and into another room. This one was much more austere and had the feeling of a testing room much more than the room with the rune puzzles. Zane pressed a few buttons on a control panel and caused a small device to lift from the floor, one which created a little portal above it, before gesturing Beth to walk over with him and examine it.

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