It turned out that Serenity could summon water. Unfortunately, he couldn’t control it very well, so he ended up summoning it to more or less fill a bucket that he dumped on himself. The fact that it went away if he didn’t maintain it was the only reason he wasn’t soaked and covered in mud. Instead, he was partially cleaned with streaks of dried mud.

It was better, but Serenity still wasn’t happy about it. Also, the water was cold. He knew he ought to be able to manage it at whatever temperature he wanted, but the one time he’d tried to summon hot water he’d ended up filling the bucket with fire instead, which resulted in needing to replace the bucket. He needed practice.

Serenity glanced over at Tirmanak. He was still busy with whatever he was doing, chanting and moving, almost like a dance. It sounded like Tirmanak usually maintained several different protective spells, since he was on his second round, which meant he probably wouldn’t be done any time soon. Serenity knew that meant he spent a good bit of time every day casting them, and he was probably having to repeat all of that now. Chances were good that Tirmanak usually kept fewer spells up when he wasn’t expecting danger, most people did, but Serenity was certain he was putting all of them up now. That meant Serenity had a little time to himself.

Serenity moved over to the front of the intact cell and examined the rune in front of it. Like all of the others he’d seen, it was damaged. Unlike the others, it looked like none of the wear marks actually obscured or completely broke any of the lines. That was probably why it actually worked.

The first rune in the sequence was clearly a mana collection rune. It wasn’t quite the standard rune Serenity was used to; instead, it had an entire secondary section that Serenity didn’t recognize. The mana collection rune was clearly how it had grabbed the mana from both explosions to power the shield. Serenity could see everything that was needed for the runework to use either ambient mana or a monster core or other form of mana concentrate. So what did the secondary section do?

Serenity fed a trickle of mana into the mana collection rune. He knew what the runework did, so it was entirely safe to test it.

The secondary section didn’t light up, even though an extremely weak mana barrier appeared in front of the cell. Serenity was confident it wouldn’t stop much more than a light tap; it certainly wouldn’t keep anyone contained, but he also wasn’t giving much mana.

So what did the secondary section do? It wasn’t a standard part of a mana collector, but it was clearly grouped with it as an input. It might be some form of control but it didn’t look like a good setup for that. It looked like another power input, just one that didn’t react when Serenity added mana. Maybe it was damaged and he didn’t notice the damage?

Serenity was looking for the damage he’d missed when he suddenly realized that it might actually be another power input. It wasn’t electricity, which was his first thought; he knew several ways to make that work and this simply wasn’t one of them. On the other hand, he had no idea what the runes for Essence were; no one used them, at least no one he’d ever worked with.

Serenity shrugged to himself; there was an easy way to find out. He ran some Essence into the rune. This time, the secondary section lit up to his Essence Sight while several portions of the normal mana-gathering rune didn’t; after the last of the runes he didn’t recognize, however, it was glowing to Mana Sight instead of Essence Sight.

Serenity quickly saved several pictures. He’d just found two new runes: Essence gathering and Essence to Mana conversion. He didn’t know how often they’d be useful, but the more runes he knew, the better. He could spend time later getting to understand them and translating them into his preferred runic script.

Serenity was starting to look at the next rune in the sequence when Tirmanak suddenly stopped chanting and walked over to him. “What exactly are you doing?”

That sounded a bit accusatory. Perhaps the shield activations were distracting? “I hope I didn’t disturb you? I was trying to figure out this runeset while I waited. I can avoid triggering it, if that’ll help?”

Tirmanak chuckled. “That wasn’t what interrupted me. Order’s Voice informed me that you’d completed one of the two conditions on your contract. I assume it’s the quest I gave you to investigate artifacts?”

Serenity blinked. He hadn’t noticed a quest completion notice, but he could have missed it.

“You hadn’t noticed.” Tirmanak sounded amused. “Of course you hadn’t. Very well, then. I’ll finish up what I was doing shortly; see if you can finish up quickly or copy down what you need to.”

Serenity chuckled to himself then pulled up his Quests screen and found it waiting for him.

A Past Built in Layers

Group Quest - Order’s Guild

No Time Limit

Variable Reward

Requirement: Wardsmith, Enchanter, or Runemaster

Many worlds hold artifacts older than the Voice itself. They may be buildings or they may be items. Find one and decipher it, then offer the knowledge to the Voice.

[Completed x2]

[Reward: Rune of Ambient Essence Gathering, Rune of Essence to Mana Conversion]

Serenity laughed quietly. As it so often did, the Voice had assigned the quest reward to be what he gained while finishing the quest. It clearly thought that he didn’t require any additional reward to get him to do what it wanted.

It was completely correct. Two new runes was huge; while he didn’t yet know what he’d be able to do with them, there were several possibilities that sprang to mind. More than that, they implied that there was an entire set of runes he didn’t know that could be used on Essence. He’d recognized most of the mana absorption rune, so he had an idea what the correct translations were to fit the new runes into his own rune language, but more than that, it gave him clues on where else to look for the runes others had developed.

There were some old reference works he’d fallen across as Vengeance that no one had been able to decipher, at least not completely. If he remembered correctly, some of them were the ones where he’d found the concepts that eventually led him to reverse engineering a runic language and then building his own, but that didn’t mean he’d gotten everything out of them that he could now.

Serenity went back to exploring the rune, taking regular pictures as he went. The rest was more like what he was used to; while he couldn’t identify who created the rune, he knew that the runic language it used was one he’d learned. None of the other runes were new to him, though several were modified strangely and he had to spend some time puzzling over whether the changes meant anything or if they were simply stylistic.

He was even fairly confident of what the original materials were. To be certain, he’d taken some samples from one of the inactive runes; it never hurt to have confirmation, and he was certain he could find a lab that could do the analysis somehow. He’d already done the magical analysis (the materials weren’t magically significant), but confirming their physical properties would be nice.

He actually managed to finish up slightly before Tirmanak did. It wasn’t that there wasn’t more he could do, but he’d done everything that needed the original rune.

When Tirmanak finally stopped spellcasting, Serenity stood up and walked over to him. “Ready to go find an unsuspecting acolyte?”

Tirmanak grinned back at Serenity. He seemed happier about it than Serenity felt. “Definitely. He won’t know the plan, but he’ll know how they got here. Who knows, maybe he’ll even know something important.”

Serenity led the way back to the stairs. Now that he knew where two sets were, he thought there was a good chance of a third set somewhere; they weren’t all that far apart. Still, this was the one the … “What do they call themselves? Aeonites?”

“Eternals,” Tirmanak supplied. “Yes, it’s ridiculous; most of them are really quite short lived, especially since they…”

Tirmanak stopped walking at the same time he stopped speaking. After a moment, he shook his head and stepped forward again. “Let’s hope that isn’t why they’ve abducted your people. Stealing lifespan is nasty enough when it’s between people; I don’t want to think about what it would be like if they could steal from a planet. Trying to steal power has to be more likely.” He sounded like he was trying to reassure himself as much as he was trying to reassure Serenity.

He wasn’t very reassuring. Serenity could very well imagine that stealing anything from Gaia could be dangerous, especially with her already damaged World Core. He absolutely had to stop them. Even if they weren’t the cause for the explosion he’d seen, what they might be doing sounded just as bad.

If only he’d been able to find out what happened in his original timeline! He’d tried, but he’d never known where to look and by the time he had the power to have a chance, anyone who knew anything was probably long dead.

Serenity pulled himself out of his thoughts; they were getting close to the top of the stairs. He glanced at Tirmanak then asked, “How do you want to handle this?”

He should have asked earlier; whatever they did, it needed to be coordinated.

“How good are you at staying unnoticed?” Tirmanak’s reply was soft; more than a whisper, but not meant to carry.

Serenity shook his head. He was terrible about it if he didn’t use his Sovereign form, and he really didn’t want to manage that sort of complex shapeshifting right now if he was going to have to talk to someone in his Mana Elemental form immediately afterwards. “Not great. I can, but…”

Tirmanak’s eyebrows arched, but he didn’t comment on what he must have felt. “Follow me, then. Leave some distance; I’ll move around to the other side of the acolyte once I find him. Draw his attention to you.”

Drawing attention was something Serenity was good at, and it made sense that Tirmanak would be good at staying unseen; he seemed to be a light-and-darkness mage, after all. Stereotypically that meant illusions or sneaking, and while Tirmanak was definitely not just the stereotype, it existed for a reason.

Serenity watched Tirmanak disappear up the stairs, and that wasn’t just an expression; as Tirmanak took the stairs, he seemed to fade out. He became a little fuzzy, then translucent, then transparent. By the time he was at the top of the stairs, Serenity could barely make him out, even when he knew where to look.

Serenity had seen similar Skills and spells before, but this was smoothly executed and impressive. Despite that, Serenity didn’t envy Tirmanak; they were simply different. He’d tried to learn stealth, but Vengeance had simply always been poor at it and he’d eventually stopped trying. Perhaps he’d try again at some point, but it didn’t bother him for now.

Realistically, he was strong enough that he could plan around his strengths and weaknesses; even against humans it would generally be enough, and against dungeons he simply had to not enter any that weren’t possible with straightforward combat. He didn’t really like cheesing them with his Sovereign form the way he’d had to when he ran into a few on Earth.

Serenity gave it a few minutes before he followed Tirmanak up the stairs. At the top, he didn’t see anyone so he headed towards the front of the building, where he caught a glimpse of burgundy.