5.7

Holding onto his anger had never gotten him anywhere in his entire life, not with Ryan, not with Alex, and certainly not with Alice. August was well aware that letting it simmer inside of him was a poison that ruined everything it came into contact with. He knew all of that intellectually, but it wasn’t an easy thing to just overcome.

Fortunately, the general circumstance was grim enough that it helped him take hold of it—what a weird thought.

“I’m stuck on an island, I can’t just refuse to summon people, and Kalter is inherently an asshole,” August muttered, crystalising his thought process. “It’s not going to change, so I can’t get caught up worrying about it—move on.”

August opened his eyes and reset his focus. He had roughly an hour before he could summon anyone, so they would need to wait that long no matter what he did. Rather than sit around and mope for that time, he could do something productive, like taking stock of what materials he had for his pursuit of making containers with pottery.

During his endless hours of digging the [Summon Pit], he’d dumped everything into his inventory. That included dirt, grass, roots, and clay when he’d gone deep enough. It hadn’t been a particularly large amount, mostly because it was harder to break up than the soil, so he’d quickly begun avoiding it when possible.

August turned and angled himself in the direction of the pit, pretending not to notice how the two Voithos turned to watch him. He stopped at the edge and crouched down, squinting into its bottom—the runic pattern that hard engraved itself into the walls while the summoning had occurred was still present but had clearly eroded a great deal. A thousand tiny patterns that he couldn’t make sense of. August planted a hand on the edge and then slipped down into the pit, bending his knees to catch himself.

Even that close, the patterns were indecipherable. August knelt down, removing his [Wooden Shovel] from his inventory and jamming it into the patch of clay he’d studiously avoided last time he was here—August was quickly reminded of just how much he hated digging.

The clay came out in clumps that felt odd in his hands. It compressed in his hands, but it was also dense enough to have something of a real weight to it. It was also dry, and after enough force, it began to break off into smaller pieces—he had a vague understanding that moulding clay required it to be wet first. August dropped it into his inventory and then started anew.

He could distantly hear Rittan and Kalter talking to one another, and over the course of minutes, the tone of the conversation had changed from a more rapid back and forth to a slower, more reasonable exchange.

August amused his idle mind by studying the strange symbols engraved in the dirt. They were reminiscent of both the metal ring that had capped the pit he’d originally woken up in and the black cube he’d pried out of the [Efkini]. They seemed to be written in streams, with most of the lines flowing vertically, small gaps between each thin column.

“[Analysis],” August said, squinting at a tiny trio of lines.

A rune that has been etched into the soil with mana, it is damaged and unrecognisable.

System Unlocked

Rune Library Available

“Rune Library?” August muttered, pausing for a moment.

He opened the [Menu] before navigating into [Progression] and then into the menu that had been empty the last time he had checked it—[Runes]. Disappointingly, it was still empty, and he scrunched his face up at getting so excited over it.

“Damaged and unrecognisable,” August repeated, squinting at the symbols on the wall until he found one that was more intact. “[Analysis].”

His mana bar dropped further, down to the halfway mark, but he got something a little more substantial out of the trade this time.

A rune that has been etched into the soil with mana.

[Energy Storage I] Unlocked.

August rechecked the [Runes] Menu, and sure enough, it had its first entry, [Energy Storage I]. When he selected it, a single line of text emerged.

A rune designed to contain multiple forms of energy, compatible with; Mana, Kinetic Energy, Thermal Energy, Electrical Energy.

“Contain multiple forms of energy?” August murmured. “It’s a battery?”

August searched the pattern on the wall, trying to find more runes that weren’t damaged or eroded before he spent another quarter of his mana—[Analysis].

A rune that has been etched into the soil with mana.

[Energy Connector I] Unlocked.

He sought out the new entry in the [Runes] Menu.

A rune designed to transfer multiple forms of energy, compatible with; Mana, Kinetic Energy, Thermal Energy, Electrical Energy.

If this first rune had been a battery, then this must have been the mana equivalent of a wire? He searched the patterns for a moment, trying to find something to confirm his guess. In several places, there was a [Energy Storage I] rune directly above or directly below a connector. But the [Energy Connector I] rune was also just about everywhere else he looked, sandwiched between any number of unique and strange symbols.

August spent the last quarter of his mana on a final [Analysis].

A rune that has been etched into the soil with mana, it is damaged and unrecognisable.

“Annoying,” August muttered, leaning in to see why it hadn’t worked.

A tail on one of the lines was missing at what had to be a millimetre—apparently, that was enough to render it unrecognisable. He checked on his now empty mana bar, wondering, not for the first time if he could somehow speed up its return. Between the half an hour it took to [Tame] a level one monster while it fought to break free and the steep cost of [Analysis], he needed to figure something out. As it was, every time his mana regenerated back to full and then stopped at the cap, he began wasting it.

Maybe if he could figure out how to use the runes, he could leverage the [Energy Storage I] to start storing his excess mana?

“Something to think about,” August sighed, lifting his shovel back up and jamming it into the clay at the bottom of the pit.