A soft gong sounded as he walked into the weapons and armor shop. It was a mid range store with a wide selection and a few runed items. Just what he needed.

First, Hugo headed over to the armor section of the store. He chose this store because each piece of armor only had one rune on it. He wanted to make his own armor and he figured that this would be a good place to get inspiration. The examples should be simple enough for him to be able to replicate this year.

There were four sets of runed armor on display. Hugo couldn’t afford any of them. The cheapest was thirty gold for a set with cold runes. He should be able to replicate that one soon, but he didn’t think that would come in handy very often. The next set was inscribed with a hardness rune that should also increase durability. That would be nice, but he already planned on having tough armor. The next set had a different rune on each part of armor. A few hardness runes, a light rune, a speed rune, and a stance rune. He didn’t know what the stance rune did, but he thought that the speed rune would be useful to learn.

The final suit of armor instantly became his favorite. It was a fire set, covered in runes that protected the user from heat and pressure. This was the perfect set to go along with his exploding ammunition. It would help him when making and using his exploding crossbow bolts. Too bad he couldn’t afford to just buy and use this set to learn the runes.

Still, it was good knowing what runes the local harvesters considered useful. Now he knew what runes he should ask his fellow apprentices to teach him.

Next he wandered over to the weapons section. There were seven runed swords, each with the sharpness rune on them. The final runed weapon looked very strange. It looked like a spear with a disk attached perpendicular to the pole. The note said it had an impetus rune inscribed on the rounded end.

“Do you need some help, sir?”

Hugo turned to see the shopkeep standing right behind him. He hated when they did that. Hugo said, “Yes actually, what does the impetus rune do?”

“When activated, it stops the movement of anything it is touching. The intended purpose is to stop charging monsters in their tracks,” the shopkeep said.

“Huh,” Hugo replied. That was an innovative application of magic. It didn’t seem very practical, though. The user would have to put themselves in the path of a charging monster. Then after the monster was stopped, they would have to switch to a weapon that could actually damage it. Awkward for a single large monster, terrible for swarms.

The look on his face must have shown what he was thinking because the shopkeep shrugged and said, “Yeah, there is a reason no one has bought it yet. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“Do you have any other inscribed weapons? I am partial to the crossbow,” Hugo said hopefully. He wanted to see if he could improve his main weapon with runes.

“No, we don’t have a runed crossbow, but we do have a repeating crossbow,” the shopkeep said and walked over to a different section of the shop. He showed Hugo the weird looking crossbow and said, “It requires a bit of strength, but this baby can put twelve bolts downrange in less than five seconds.”

Hugo took the crossbow from him and looked it over. There was a box on top for the ammunition, with a handle that recocked the string and loaded the bolts with the same motion. The stock was long and meant to press into a human shoulder. He would have to modify it to use it himself. “What’s the range?”

“Sixty yards.”

That wasn’t too bad. His own design had a longer range, but fired much slower. Hugo glanced back to the price on the display case. Six gold, eighty silver. “I’ll take it if you can give it to me for six gold, even.”

“I appreciate your patronage sir, but that is too low. Six gold, fifty silver and we can both walk away happy.”

Hugo shook his head. He was mainly buying it so he could disassemble it and steal the design. He said, “Six gold. I am leaving today and I still have to pay someone to modify the stock.”

The shopkeep hemmed and hawed, but eventually agreed to Hugo’s offer.

He didn’t even wait until he was home to take it apart. The other passengers on the train gave him strange looks, but he didn’t care. He was fascinated by the mechanisms inside. They weren’t overly complex, they accomplished a lot with the elegant design.

That night, Hugo wrote up the equations needed to make his own. He was about to start, but then he remembered that his mithril/titanium alloy was a better material for the crossbow leaves.

It was about time to decide what element he was going to pick for his second one. He had held off on making that choice earlier because he wanted to learn more about the runic domain first. Mithril was the only metal he would need for the foreseeable future. Even if he wanted to use gold to keep his runes from corroding, he knew that was easy to get ahold of. Hugo was leaning towards selecting titanium again.

He knew how the metal behaved, how it alloyed with mithril, and that it would be an excellent choice for his armor. He felt like armor and weapons would be important soon. He sat back and tried to tease out the facts that lead to this feeling.

He knew that the sentinels were going to take care of most of the heavy lifting in the efforts to save the cities, so why did he think he would have to be personally involved? The hedge mages and the splinter forces of Deva would have to be stopped.

If Lenna’s sets of armor were properly distributed, the hedge mages would cease to be a danger. Without the advantage of the shimmer casters, it didn’t matter if the hedgies had a few infiltrators in the sentinels. The attackers would be wiped out. Hugo didn’t need to contribute any more than he already had there.

On the other hand, the military forces from Deva were a big problem that he knew wasn’t going to have an easy solution. It would almost be easier if it was the whole military that was planning on attacking the other seven cities. Then Hugo could just focus on getting proof and giving it to the nobility. Despite how useless the nobility’s military were normally, in a fight of seven against one, the outcome would be a forgone conclusion.

The fact that only some of the military were engaged in espionage made everything muddy. The general was right. If the nobility got involved, they would just start playing politics. The prince of Deva would claim to have no involvement with them, and vow to root out the rebels within his own army. But since the splinter group was still accomplishing the prince’s goals of weakening the other cities, he would be slow in his efforts to disrupt their work.

The other city’s nobility would be hesitant to attack when Deva’s prince was seemingly working with them. It would be a mess.

Hugo nodded to himself. Someone would have to directly intervene. The splinter group in Deva would need to be identified and eliminated. The general promised to do that herself, but Hugo knew that she could use all the help she could get. That was the mission he was preparing for. That was the reason he felt impressed to start preparing for war.

He wondered if this was the effect of a higher intelligence stat. His subconscious mind seemed like it was making plans of its own. Was he working on solutions to his problems without needing to focus on them?

No. That couldn’t be right.

His lessons in the Blue Lion Academy specifically said that extra intelligence didn’t make you smarter. It helped you think faster and concentrate easier, but it didn’t help you think better. If Hugo was acting any smarter these days, it was just the result of learning from his many mistakes.

He mentally selected titanium and felt the choice solidify within his soul core. Next, he moved on to his other two selections. He didn’t know enough about the runic languages to make that choice. He should have enough knowledge to pick his frequency for the barrier domain though.

What would be more useful in the immediate future? Wards or black bolts?

Wards would be a great way to gather information. He could set up wards around key buildings and learn how many soulmarked were inside. On the other hand, they would be visible to anyone with mana sight and might get him caught.

The choice around black bolts was much simpler. It just killed. The high frequency mana was absolutely deadly and able to pass through some armor and walls. It was an excellent weapon. Hugo didn’t want to become a murderer, but if his mission was to eliminate enemy combatants, he might need it. The only drawback was the massive mana reserves needed to use it. And that wasn’t as much of a drawback to Hugo.

Reluctantly, he chose the black bolt frequency and looked over his stats.

Xhosa Bandile [Runic Domain]

Strength 21

Dexterity 21

Resilience 12

Regeneration 10

Intelligence 22

Wisdom 16

Charisma 10

Perception 12

Rank 12

445/1300 Points

Health 53/53

Mana 128/128

Skills: Mana Dart, Mana Vision 3, Inscribe 3, Fabricate 8, Solidify 6

Lingua: Isibhozo, Choice available

Frequencies: 400-700, 1016-1032

Elements: Mithril, Titanium

Hugo nodded to himself. It was looking good, but he needed to be better. He could see how people in big cities stagnated. Without killing monsters at the right tier, he would be stuck at rank twelve. He would have to figure out a way to raise that rank before he attempted to visit Deva.

The next day at the grandmaster’s compound, Hugo spent the day practicing the cold rune. It was more difficult than the gust rune had been, and he could see Zintle looking over and smirking every so often. Hugo was annoyed that he was forced to use aluminum because they didn’t trust him with mithril yet.

An hour before quitting time, he finally had it. The cold rune was complete and working marvelously. The clay tablet quickly cooled down and shattered from the cold. He dropped the ruined tablet off with the rejects, unconcerned about the loss. He just wanted to get better at runes and he didn’t see any benefit to showing off.

The skies had been getting cloudier and darker as the day wore on. It started sprinkling and Hugo decided to leave before the rain got worse. He mentioned to Klaus that he wouldn’t be in the next day. Klaus shrugged indifferently. He wasn’t Hugo’s minder. It was kind of weird that no one cared what Hugo did, but it was convenient because he wanted to meet with Colonel Mandisa tomorrow.

By the time he was halfway home, the skies opened up and a deluge of rain came down. By the time he got home, he was soaked to the bone and shivering.

Nobomi giggled when she saw him walk in the door. She handed him a towel and said, “Get dried off and you can help make dinner. Mom said we can eat on the back porch today.”

Hugo thanked her and dried off. He walked back to help his mother make dinner for everyone. She had to tell him how to make the chicken and ham pie while she worked on the fried rice. She wasn’t upset that he had to be reminded how to make it. She was just happy that he was helping in the kitchen without complaining.

When the rest of the family returned home, Nobomi met them at the door with towels and they carried the dinner table out back. The family sat under the awning and looked out at the herb garden as they ate. Everyone was in a good mood from the rare rainstorm and they sat and talked until it slowly petered out.

Hugo wanted that moment to last forever. He knew that he didn’t have to pretend to be Xhosa anymore now that he had contacted the sentinels, but he had no desire to tell anyone the truth at this point. He just wanted to bask in their love and affection.

...

“Xhosa Bandile to see Colonel Mandosa,” Hugo said after the ritual bow.

The guard in front of the sentinel building nodded and said, “He told me to expect you. Follow me and I will escort you in.”

Unlike their human counterparts, the sentinels in Paarl had their offices in the middle of the city. They had barracks, training grounds, and administration in a large walled complex. The architecture reminded him of the Blue Lion Academy’s stately and flowing lines. He bet that the human architects used the nox buildings for inspiration.

After a twenty minute wait in the colonel's antechamber, his assistant showed Hugo in. He was fairly certain that the colonel wasn’t even busy, but making people wait seemed to be a nox thing.

“Xhosa, thank you for coming today. Please take a seat.”

Hugo bowed with all four hands together and said, “Thank you for seeing me, Colonel Mandosa.”

“You are welcome. On to the matter at hand. I am assigning you to your own cell. There won’t be any work for you to do in the next few months. Hedge mages have never been much of a problem in Paarl and I doubt they ever will be. On New Years Eve I will station sentinels around our complex walls. Then I will give orders to kill any humans that approach and that will be that.”

“The general said she was worried about every city being infiltrated by hedge mages. Shouldn’t we at least attempt to track them down?” Hugo said. He was also concerned about the colonel’s casual mention of killing humans on sight.

He waved away the concerns, “No, it wouldn’t be worth the effort. The hedgies hate us nox, they wouldn’t approach even the greediest of my sentinels here. We are safe from them. The other cities are sure to need our help once the hedgies are revealed. Until then, it’s a non-issue.”

The colonel picked up a paper from his desk and said, “That’s not to say I will have nothing for you all year. The situation with Deva will be tricky. Our royalty have been at odds with theirs for some time. The general is going to have a difficult time infiltrating and stopping their attack there. Since that attack is the only one that matters, I have decided to help the general out.”

He handed Hugo the papers and said, “This is a dossier on the shimmer corps in Deva, everything we know about them and the culture in town. I am going to convince the general to get you a spot on their auditions in the sixth month. Until then, I want you to study that dossier until you can pass as a local.”

“I am already soulmarked, I can’t pass as a new recruit,” Hugo said.

He frowned and said, “Really? What domain?”

“Runic.”

He clapped his upper hands together and said, “Excellent. Runic mages are always in demand. Your cover story is that you are upset with your master holding you back and you want to break out on your own. We will still want to send you in around the same time so they are distracted with the new recruits and don’t look at you too carefully.”

“Alright, we can do that,” Hugo said. It still felt risky, but the colonel was pushing him in the direction he already wanted to go. “Will you be able to get me a referral from someone local? Even if it isn’t someone from the shimmer corps, a referral will help me gain their trust.”

Colonel Mandisa said, “I will see what I can do. Can you think of anything else you would need?”

Hugo thought about it, there was a lot he needed and could ask for. First things first. He said, “I would love the diagrams for runes. I am sure you sentinels know some useful ones. I also need some ranks. I am only rank twelve right now because I have to start over every New Year's. Can you sponsor me on a culling trip or send me out with some harvesters?”

He nodded and said, “I suppose. We can’t raise you too high, but it would make it more believable if you were at least rank sixteen. Yes, I can put you on a sentinel training run or two. The first one won’t be for two more months though. No point in going right now when there aren’t any new monsters spawned. As far as runes go, there are oaths we have to deal with. Our runists may be sentinels now, but they were trained by grandmasters and swore to keep secrets for their masters. Still, I will ask around and see what we can provide.”

Hugo nodded. That would have to be good enough for him. In the meantime, he would focus on his rune work. He would have to convince people that he had been doing this for years. He thanked the colonel for his consideration and got up to leave.

The colonel escorted him out of his office. Hugo almost gasped when he saw who was outside. At the last moment he schooled his expression and walked on by without acknowledging the visitor.