It was dark, and hard, where Azrael was. He shifted, trying to find a comfier spot in the small space he’d made for himself using [Void Shaping] in the pile underneath the bridge.

Once he’d realised that there was no way to escape he’d taken the only remaining choice and dived downwards, into the lake. The water had absorbed much of the heat from the fireball, while the steam provided impromptu cover that protected him from the eyes of the guards, thus allowing him to escape under the bridge.

It was here, that he’d decided to bunker down, shaping the stone to create a hidden room in the stone pile. The only contact to the outside world were little breathing holes, each smaller than his pinky. It was hot, it was stuffy and it was cramped, but at least it was safe.

After the blanket of steam dispersed, Azrael had heard much shouting from the bridge. From within his hidey hole he could only speculate what was happening. Still, he felt the wave of divine energy sweep over the area twice. It passed over his protected soul and he remained undetected. Eventually they left, concluding that he was either dead or that he had escaped.

Left with time on his hands Azrael had a decision to make. He could either accept that entering the city was too dangerous, or he could try once more. Though, when he thought about it he didn’t really have that much of a choice. He was going to enter that city, whether they wanted to or not.

It wasn’t so much that he needed anything in the city, or that he wanted to avoid a longer route. It was the principle of the matter.

It was like telling a child it couldn’t have cookies and then hiding the cookie tin on top of the cupboard. The child would get in either way. It would find immense satisfaction in outsmarting the adult. The cookies were just a bonus.

In that same way he’d been denied access to the city. He was going to get in and he was going to get a souvenir. Maybe something important; something that Holy Empire would miss.

And no, he was not being petty. Again, it was just a principle of the matter.

With his course charted, Azrael now focused on something that had been bothering him for a while now – the ‘hook’ left behind from the binding spell at the bridge entrance.

Gently using [Mana Manipulation] to move his mana through his body Azrael combed through it, eventually finding what he was looking for. To [Mana Sense] the thing looked like a clump of squiggly mana, attached to the outer layer of his skin. While seemingly inert at the moment, it hooked onto him like a briar, if said briar had also been covered in a super adhesive.

Giving the clump of mana a small shove with his own mana caused him only a little discomfort, but when he tried to forcefully rip it off his body instinctively doubled over in pain, causing his head to bang against the stone wall in front of him. Releasing his grip on the mana clump Azrael felt the pain subside. He waited a while more, before carefully examining it again.

The clump he noticed wasn’t so much a mess of tangled mana like he’d first suspected, but a close-knit weave of runes. Slipping into [Meditation] he closed his eyes, accepting the greater clarity of the rune weave that the Skill gave him, at the expense of muting his other senses.

Like a difficult maths problem, the rune weave sat in front of him. By following the flow of mana through the runes he was able to read it.

Paradoxically however the swirls, lines and squiggles were as confusing to him as they were familiar. His title {Rune Master} helped him parse out the basic meaning of the runes, with the title granting him ever growing clarity and understanding of a rune the longer he focused on it. It was the actual spell and spell structure that he’d never seen before that caught him. In a way it was like remembering bits of a dream. In some abstract way it made sense, but he was continually left doubting himself.

Even after going through the rune sequence several times Azrael felt he barely understood what was going on. For the most part the spell seemed to be a single IF statement. If a specific rune was in his vicinity, or rather the vicinity of the spell, then the spell would let out a weak pulse of mana. Otherwise it would stay inert.

Azrael felt it was safe to guess that this rune was tied to some sort of alarm spell, seeing as a magic alarm at the gate had gone off the moment he’d tried to pass over the threshold of the bridge.

Azrael’s brow creased. How had they gotten the spell on him though? They’d never had the chance to tou… oh. The line.

There had been a hook and a line in this spell.

A hook to catch, a line to bind. The line had done more than just bind him in place and restrict his usage of [Shadow Step]. It had bound the hook to him. Azrael frowned. Perhaps net was a better word than line. There had been a net of runes covering the entrance of the bridge, lined with hooks.

Since he had tried to enter the bridge without a pass – possibly enchanted to let one pass through without triggering the spell – the web had caught him, binding him in place. When he’d torn the rune web by jumping through the shadow realm it had left a ‘hook’ caught in him.

The hook was a means of tracking and identifying him with magic. Though grateful that it wouldn’t impede his skills and magic in any way, it was still an unwanted inconvenience.

With the understanding that the rune structure had to be removed in order to safely pass through the city, Azrael began to explore the structure for how it was secured.

In the end Azrael managed to puzzle that together, but the answer came along with another shocking discovery.

Almost half of the runes were superfluous, being there either as place markers or with several large chunks of runes being replaceable by a single more efficient rune. As someone who had studied coding and had managed to make the status plate, such garbled, cluttered, inefficiency was almost a sin. That meant that at least half of the mana powering the entire structure could be better used elsewhere, either to power more complex structures, or saved to make a smaller more efficient rune structure.

Still shaking his head at the travesty of such a crime, Azrael carefully began tracing along the sequence with his own mana, effectively hijacking the runes and taking over control. With a little bit of gentle easing and carefully applied force he began rewriting parts of the structure, editing some points while inserting the occasional extra rune.

With a final twist of a single rune the entire rune sequence collapsed, breaking open like a lock. The mana, without the runic structure to keep it together began to disperse, but Azrael controlled it and instead imbued it into the stone wall beside him. With a flex of his will a hole opened in the wall. A notification blocked his view.

Congratulations!

For deciphering and disassembling another mage’s runic spell you have gained a level in ‘Runist’.

END +1 DEX+2 INT+2 WIS+1.

Azrael let a small smile creep up onto his face. It was nice to be rewarded.

As the wall opened cold night air rushed in, causing Azrael to shiver slightly. He stirred uncomfortably, stretching his limbs, and relieving some slight cramps.

Outside was dark, the sun having set in the time he’d been hidden away. Azrael judged that he’d been working on the rune structure for at least a few hours, meaning that night had well and truly fallen. It was a good a time as any to start moving again.

Carefully Azrael slipped out of his hidey hole and took off across the water, towards the city. He didn’t bother closing up the hole he’d slipped out of, preferring to preserve his mana.

Like a ghost he travelled across the lake’s surface, traveling just alongside the bridge, a phantom amongst the reflected stars. The bridge had few travellers so late at night and the magic lampposts on the bridge only darkened the shadow he travelled along.

Unseen and unnoticed he reached the island at the center of the lake, huge walls of stone rising straight out from the water to greet him. With how cleanly and flawlessly it rose from the ground Azrael suspected the work of Geomancers or earth mages.

Azrael summoned an [Earth Spike] straight out of the wall as he approached it. It was only a moment later, when he was perched on the protruding spike that he thought of the existence of possible wards.

Scanning the wall with [Mana Sense] did indeed reveal lines of runes running across the wall, unseeable to the mundane eye. Some he recognised were made by the same runist that had worked on the spell at the bridge, while others obviously also contributed. Azrael wasn’t sure whether it was the style or the mana that helped him differentiate the different runists’ work, but there was something distinct about each one’s. Distinct enough to another runist perhaps.

Still, just like the rune spell at the gate the long repeating chains of runes here had flaws in them. They weren’t even that impressive either. All of them were basically just low level detection type spells. They detected extreme impacts, marked individuals and a few other things.

Looking at the runes he realised that there was no reason really to expect more on the walls. Nova Lux was located at the center of the known world, where the magic levels were lowest. The walls themselves were so massive that any spells more powerful or covering a greater surface than the occasional bit of wall would cost astronomical amounts of power to run.

Furthermore, most higher tiered crafters would probably be out near the second ring, searching for rare and powerful materials. The final aspect was that not everyone had an infinite library on lesser runes transferred straight to their consciousness to peruse at their pleasure. In a way the precision and scale that these runists had achieved through their own efforts was already amazing in itself. But amazing wasn’t good enough to stop Azrael.

Drawing upon some of his fairly diminished mana pool Azrael fed it into the wall, carefully avoiding areas that had runic structures on them. Then he used [Void Shaping], supplementing his low mana reserves with the energy of the void. Under his touch the stone wall melt away before him, like butter before the sun.

The walls were a solid two or more meters thick, draining the last remains of his mana pool. Still, he made it inside uncontested, emerging onto a paved road that ran alongside the wall.

He looked back, at the massive hole he’d made in the wall. The stars in the lake sparkled mischievously. He had no mana to fill the hole back in again. He narrowed his eyes at the offending cavity, before turning to look up and down the deserted road.

Hopefully nobody would notice.

He looked at it again and grimaced. Who was he kidding? Of course somebody would notice.

He just hoped that he was far enough away by the time it was discovered.