“Interesting,” August said, placing his blank block of wood down beside the outlines. “How hot is this thing going to get?”

“Without adding any setting runes to curate it, the amount of heat generated will default to the minimum amount needed to create the effect,” Melon said, “Which is probably not going to be noticeable compared to the ambient temperature surrounding us.”

“Not something to worry about then,” August said, tracing the outline of the light rune with his finger. “I suppose I’ll try to carve these out and then see if I can’t get around to making the tools that I promised everyone—sorry, but I’m probably not going to be much good as a conversationalist while I’m working.”

“That’s okay,” Melon said, stepping back a bit. “Perhaps I should go and assist Rittan with his work?”

“Go for it,” August said, offering a smile. “Thanks for all of your help, Melon—I’m sure I’ll have a million questions for you once I’m done.”

“Of course,” Melon said, visibly flustered at the gratitude. “I am happy to answer whatever you need—I’ll just—excuse me.”

Melon moved to leave, a kind of scuttling backstep before she turned and fled entirely, leaving him standing by the bench with the uncarved block of wood dangling in his hand. He watched her swerve back around one of the pillars when she realised she’d gone the wrong way in her rush and let out a quiet laugh when she shot a final, hasty look back in his direction to see if he’d seen the mistake. August kept half an eye on her as she joined Rittan and Haiko where they were working on the ceiling and found himself struck by the way her posture seemed to radically transform—almost as if just being in his vicinity had left her affected by increased gravity. There was a moment of strange realisation that he hadn’t even noticed it until they’d parted, and now that he actually thought about it, she’d spent almost the entire interaction affecting a lower height, one that far more closely approached his own. That left him to wonder if she’d done it on purpose and if there was a reason for it that wasn’t immediately apparent to him. Thinking back to his own interactions, the only thing he could use as a comparison was how he used to act around Ryna’s youngest brother—that is, ducking down, to talk to him at a level that hadn’t left him towering over the quiet kid, and perhaps unintentionally intimidating him in the process. Was she treating him like a child—something which could have been intentional or not, depending on whether or not any of the others had revealed his human age to her—or was she simply trying not to come off as intimidating? It might well have been something completely removed from either thing, like an unconscious attempt to avoid a conflict by making herself smaller or perhaps to settle her own nerves.

“No way to tell,” August murmured, forcing himself to turn back to the bench. “Better to forget it, I guess.”

August took a deep breath and then did his best to shrug it all off—the outline she’d made for him of the light-producing system was neater than the previous one, the short amount of practice clearly doing wonders for her. With the help of the batteries regeneration, he was already back to full mana, so he wasted no more time, placing the carefully cut piece of wood down flat beside the guide. One by one, he carved out the same series of runes he’d already done once before moving on to the first of the new ones. He set about etching a rough, practice version of the light rune into the face of the plank, making sure he had it down before actually carving it onto his artifact. Once he’d managed what he thought was a decent version of it, he waited for his mana to max out and then hit it with an [Analysis].

A rune that has been etched into wood with mana.

[Light] Unlocked.

August took his time moving through the menu, content to wait for his mana to regenerate enough to actually carve out the finished version of the rune on the artifact. He found the entry a moment later and turned his attention to the description.

A reference rune that describes the natural phenomenon known as light.

“Natural phenomenon,” August murmured.

The litany of questions he had in the back of his mind to ask Melon about when they weren’t so busy abruptly doubled—if there was a reference rune for other types of natural phenomenon, what was stopping him from replacing [Light] in this system with something else? Was he actually one reference rune—fire, lightning, or water, for instance, if they all actually existed—off creating a block of wood that produced the associated element? Without knowing the limits, his mind was throwing up hundreds of different possibilities. But the same question he’d asked Melon resonated in his mind—the [Light] rune might not have produced a large amount of heat by default, but he doubted a small piece of wood would survive something as powerful as a lightning strike coming out of it or the heat from producing actual fire. August had some trouble pushing it all aside and actually focusing on carving out the rune, but he managed it. He moved on to the [Continuous] rune and finished it without having to do any practice. The next one was one of the two setting runes he didn’t know, either diffused or medium; he couldn’t remember which one Melon had pointed to. He practised drawing the rune a few times, then once he had a good version of it and his mana had returned, he hit it with another—[Analysis].

A rune that has been etched into wood with mana.

[Diffused] Unlocked.

August sought out the entry in the rune library—

A setting rune that describes the overall shape of the output.

“The overall shape,” August said, furrowing his brow. “If diffused exists, then there’s probably something like—narrowed or focused? Concentrated, maybe?”

He wondered what the output would look like—a beam of light maybe, something like a laser pointer? Hard to imagine when he hadn’t even seen what [Diffused] did. He kept half an eye on his rising mana while he considered if a laser pointer would help them survive. If it was strong enough to blow a hole in their enemies—although there wasn’t supposed to be any real heat involved, so it probably wouldn’t help. Maybe a Gaian plane—if such a thing even existed—would fly overhead, and he could temporarily blind whatever jackass was piloting it.