[Light]... So that’s what it looked like. All this time, I had seen reflections, adaptation, tricks, and fantasies, but this… the unbridled concept, given form and function exactly as intended. I feel a notification pop up, but I want nothing more than to continue to appreciate this new beauty inside me. It’s… perfect. A soft, glowing illumination, but one that I know contains the potential to light the world with its presence… I feel myself being shaken, and reluctantly withdraw from my Energy view.

Marie. =”-you alright? Hey! You there buddy?” She snaps several times in front of my face, even as I meet her eyes and frown slightly.

“Yes?” I ask, a little too curtly.

=”You’re glowing!”

“Yes I kn- wait what?” I most definitely am not.

=”Woaaaah… It’s your skin isn’t it? But just… here, take your shirt off!”

“I-” =”I need to see!” I start to protest before she takes matters into her own hands, wrestling the shirt off me despite my complaints. She fails immensely at doing it smoothly, and I end up batting her away and just taking it off myself. Her excited shouting has drawn what little attention there is to draw, and Lynn and Tom poke their heads out.

Lauren is noticeably absent. Good.

As Tom and Lynn come out to see what all the noise is about, their expressions change from bemused curiosity, to shock and surprise… while staring at my chest. It starts to make sense the moment I also look down, and find the center of my chest... is glowing.

“I’ll be fucking damned.”

+”What the he-”

=”That’s so coo-”

~”Put your shirt back on.”

[Congratulations! Energy Rune successfully created. ! -5 Maximum Energy. -25 Fragments]

I barely register the interested noises and words from the others in the face of this notification.

It cost… permanent Energy to do that? To glow? For fucks sake, I bet it also takes Energy to use! But... checking revealed that, no, in fact, it doesn’t. It’s just passively ‘on’ right now. So I can’t turn it off? I’m glowing forever? I check my Energy view again only to realize the answer to a much more important question I hadn’t even bothered to ask. The rune doesn’t use Energy, it produces Energy. A very specific kind, in fact, that glows with a bright, ethereal light. Where there was darkness within my view when my Energy wasn’t occupying it, I now can actually see the space. It’s mostly empty, but it’s like I suddenly have a torch in a dark cave. Most of the Light Energy is clustered around the rune that produces it, which currently resides… in my chest.

...Makes sense. Backing out of my Energy view, I find it very easy to move the new Energy around, and I can actually see it moving through my body. It gets brighter when close to the skin, and barely visible at all when in the core of my body, unless it’s somewhere thin like my hands or feet.

Marie in particular couldn’t stop exclaiming and gasping with what must be the same level of excitement a golden retriever feels when its master arrives home from work. I can’t help but smile at her antics; the energy and levity she adds brings the whole group a little higher.

I still don’t know how I can stop the Light production, but I can at least hide it. I can just concentrate the Light in my toes, and my shoe effectively blocks all the light. As fun as it would have been to declare my presence with a literal shining beacon, that would be very stupid and dangerous. In the worst case, I could probably break the rune again… like rip out a Fragment or something… but at the very least I’d have to restart the rune when I wanted it to produce again, and that takes no small amount of available Energy and time. I’m a little miffed that there wasn’t a skill notification with my success, but… ‘record not found’. Huh. I think I’m trailblazing here, so the system wouldn’t even be able to help me if I did get a skill. What use would a ‘Combat Proficiency’ skill be if the knowledge base it drew from was empty?

I always wanted to invent something, but I never would have guessed it would be ‘the ability to carve runes into my soul, using the destroyed souls of my enemies, that give me possible benefits’. Furthermore, this means that stuff like ‘Domination’ has been done before in this place, which isn’t terribly surprising given what the Shades do to people. It’s literally ranged Domination.

“Alright, alright. Light show’s over.” I don my shirt again, letting the Light slink off to my feet. Tom, who looks absolutely fascinated, nods with a smile. +”You’re going to have to teach me that one, lad.”

Lynn looks flushed and embarrassed as she follows Tom away, which I don’t quite understand. Maybe she’s into me, who knows. Can’t stand looking at that glistening bod? Unf.

Jokes aside, I turn to Marie. “Have I served enough to warrant a satchel repair?”

She smiles in return. =”I suppose you have… I can’t say I expected you to flash me for it though, haha!” I smirk slightly, rolling my eyes. Christ, and I had just broken myself of the pun habit. Someone always has to wear the mantle.

Marie takes the busted satchel into her hands and, within moments, fuses the strap back in place. She even goes through and methodically patches holes and reinforces areas that might have been a problem later.

“That skill you have is really something else. Do you think you could teach it?”

She frowns slightly, looking up at the ceiling. =”Could I? Maybe… but it would require you to know magic and be really really knowledgeable about how things work. Do you know magic? I mean, you were glowing earlier, so I assume you do, so mayb-”

“I don’t. Rav was going to teach me, but then I… got some uncontrolled Mana in my body and it messed things up pretty badly. I’ll need the village to be formed before I’ll be able to work with Mana.”

=”Psh. That sucks. Yeah, come talk to me about it when you can mess around with Mana without hurting yourself. Most of the Magic that exists in this world is controlled by runes, but not all of it. Runes help it keep a form, or so Rav tells me, but when you’re working with physical matter, it maintains the form itself. You use Mana to… push it around. Break the form. Does that make any sense?”

It does. Like how Energy responds to will, and can slowly change an inanimate object (or even an animate one, like in Kaythe’s case), Mana can be used to rearrange something. With Energy, the thing grows with you, becoming greater than it once was, but with Mana, you’re changing what already exists without adding. Different processes, but closely related. I’m a little confused how it could be done without runes, on account of Rav’s book literally saying they are required, but maybe this isn’t a spell? Maybe because it’s a skill, certain concessions are made? Are spells also skills? I should ask Rav.

I nod at her, unwilling to share how much of a revelation it was. “Thanks for the insight, I’m sure it’ll make more sense when I get actually use it.” Though, I have a theory about that. The issue is that I can’t generate my own Mana, I just have a lot of space for it. Wouldn’t a Mana rune fix that? But… then it would still be uncontrolled, so it would hurt me... just like drinking a Mana potion, so… would I need to combine it with the ‘Self’ rune? Can you combine runes to make more complex statements? Rav said they could flow into each other, and their designs seem to support that… but why would the Light rune produce Light I could control already if it needed Self? Maybe it’s implied?

Satisfied that I have little idea about this new system, I know I’ll need Rav around before I dare experiment with the Mana side of things. At least he could probably keep the stuff from killing me if it went badly. I’m not sure I’d be able to destroy the rune quick enough otherwise, and they don’t have a convenient ‘on/off’ switch. More importantly, I don’t know if destroying the rune refunds the Energy it takes, and I only have 45 left. I need to stockpile a lot more (and more Fragments) before I try anything too interesting. Which means: more hunting. More crushing monster souls.

But… my group is all broken up now. Rav is recruiting, and Lauren… I guess I could go with just Lynn, but she probably won’t want to do any combat until her bow is done. Well, I could… shit, Lauren has the only remaining Apprentice’s stone. Fuck everything. I hope Zathis doesn’t mind wasting time with me.