Jack woke up once again near dawn to the angered yowling of a hungry cat. He yawned and got out of bed.
"Yeah, I hear you. Keep your fur on, I'll feed you in a minute."
He yawned again while walking out to the kitchen, anytime he got started thinking about runes he wouldn't stop until he ran out of ideas. He hadn't gone to sleep until past midnight, and hadn't got much in the way of sleep. He barely managed to suppress a third yawn as he fed Lynxette and Ears.
Glancing at his ID bracelet Jack groaned at how early he had been woken up. Even if Clay showed up early he likely wouldn't be arriving for several hours. Still tired and greatly lacking sleep Jack headed back to bed. His desperate attempt for extra sleep was not rewarded. He lay in bed for half an hour before deciding that there was no point in trying any longer. He was completely awake and once completely awake it was impossible for him to go back to sleep immediately. As such he resigned himself and got changed into the school uniform.
Seeing as he had a few hours spare he might as well take the water sample full of odd organisms and ask Mrs. Mint about them. It took him a few minutes to find the box he'd stored them in since all of the ration boxes were identical. Once properly equipped he headed out. It was early in the morning but most of the teachers should still be in their various offices, preparing materials or doing various other tasks. Jack's dorm was sequestered back in the farthest corner of the Academy's grounds. The building holding the teachers offices was near the entrance and next to the parking lot. The two buildings were the farthest apart buildings in the academy. It took neatly twenty minutes to walk from one to the other.
It took a further ten minutes to find Mrs. Mint's office. The door to her office was open, but Jack knocked anyway before he entered.
"Hmm? Ah Jack, come in. What brings you here?" Mrs. Mint welcomed him.
"I had some spare time and wanted to ask you about something. Do you have a few minutes?" Jack walked over to her desk and asked.
"Of course, I have plenty of time. All of my students, you included, are out so I have no classes. And what with you all graduating soon I don't have to plan for any more classes at the moment." Mrs. Mint pushed the paperwork in front of her aside and continued, "What can I help you with?"
"I wanted to ask if you knew what this was, or if you'd seen anything like it before." Jack began as he placed the box of water in front of her, "This is a water sample from the Wild zone. I collected it on the 'field trip'."
Mrs. Mint studied the sample before her for a few seconds. She frowned and pulled out a magnifying lens to take a closer look before eventually responding.
"Yes, this is the reason all water outside the Remnant needs to be purified. We aren't sure what exactly they are, but these little things seem to disagree with our physiology. It's odd though... I've never seen ones of this size before. Most of the time they're to small to even see." She glanced up at Jack and asked, "Can I keep this? I'd like to do a few experiments."
"Sure, I don't have a use for it anyway." Jack replied.
Mrs. Mint studied the water for a minute before realizing Jack was still standing in front of her desk.
"Was there anything else you needed?" Mrs. Mint inquired.
"So, you really don't know what they are? Not just you, no one knows what these little microbe like things are?" Jack asked confused.
"No one knows. There was a great amount of research done on them when they were first discovered, but they found nothing. Or rather they found that they are not living cellular organisms, at least, as we understand them. They have no nucleus, no organelles, nothing a cell would have. But they exist and move like living things. The official result was 'they're some strange life form made solely of natural essence.'" Mrs. Mint explained.
"Hmm..." Jack considered this for a moment, "How strange. Well that was all I needed, I'll leave you to your research."
"Mmmm, yeah." Mrs. Mint absentmindedly waved him out as she turned back to the box of water.
It took another twenty five minutes to walk back to his dorm, Jack took his time looking at the scenery. It was late spring and the temperature was cool but not cold, most of the trees had their leaves back and the waved back and forth in the gentle breeze. The sky was full of large fluffy clouds, giving the normally featureless blue sky depth and character; truly a beautiful day.
It was quite an enjoyable walk back. Even though he'd only had a few hours of sleep he was somewhat reinvigorated and ready to do a bit more work with runes. Since he still had some time before anyone arrived he went to the 'living room'. It used to be a place for people to gather and chat or play games; used to be. Now it was a rune library, every surface held at least one book of runes or runic lore, most having two or three. There were very few places left to sit. All the chairs that originally resided there had been redistributed about the building to make room for more tables.
With the bit of spare time he had Jack intended to finalize his plans for his own runes, namely for the two he needed to rank up. He picked up a tattered old book the cover of which read simply 'Tamer's Runes'. This book was originally a textbook used in Conquest academy. Decades ago the variety of classes was almost double the current amount, however for the sake of efficiency and due to the death rate many classes had been weeded out. The tamer class had always had a low death rate, but due to the inefficiency of having to physically transport all of a tamer's creatures -not to mention the cost of feeding and housing- they had also been disbanded.
The book Jack had was the last edition, published only a few months before they had removed it from the curriculum. It was both a source of inspiration and a reminder for him. With his constitution, his attraction of wild beasts he could easily become a tamer. However he could not raise or transport many creatures. While becoming a tamer was attractive it truly was impractical.
Jack found it and read it purely out of curiosity originally, however towards the end of the book was something that had fascinated him. Tamer's were well aware of their shortcomings and had sought ways to counter them from their inception. In this, the last tamer textbook, there was a section that explained how they were trying to develop a new rune that would allow them to 'recall' their tamed beasts into their bodies in a similar manner to summoners. Included in this chapter was a diagram of their prototype rune.
Of course a rune alone means nothing, and with only a little searching one could find news articles detailing the result of the tamer's desperation after they learned there would be no more tamers. There were only two results of the usage of the prototype rune, explosion or horrific fusing and mutation. The rune was banned and the majority of the texts involving it were burned.
Jack felt it was quite a pity, while the rune most certainly couldn't be used as is, with a little editing it could become an 'open summoning' rune. The rune was designed based on summoner's runes to begin with. A summoner's runes were all based upon real, living creatures. Once one was engraved when used it summoned a facsimile of the creature it was designed after. Not a true living being but the essence of one. Thus even if a summoned creature 'died' it could be 're-summoned'. Since it was not an actual living being it would simply dissipate upon death and another identical creature could be summoned, provided the summoner had the essence. The difference of the tamer's empty sigil was that it did not contain a 'pattern' that would be summoned. It was intended to take in a creature and store it. The problem was, unfortunately, the purpose and use of the rune. When they tried to absorb a full living creature into something meant to only contain the basic pattern of something that was not even alive there were naturally only two outcomes.
While it couldn't be used for the original purpose there shouldn't be any problem for it to take in a summoned creature; as such Jack's plan was to reach Rank-4 was to engrave two of these 'storage cells', create an advanced rune that could transfer summon patterns from one runic pattern to another, and then connect them all with his controlled random summoning rune. His intention was to form a system whereby he could pick and choose and swap out summons based on the current circumstances. Not only that but also to be able to swap out weak previously permanent summons with continuously stronger ones. A truly ambitious plan that if successful could revolutionize summoners, making them indisputably the strongest single class.
Still he had to be certain the runes would work, and with such thoughts he had been refining the design for the storage cell for the past year and a half. He was now confident that it would serve its function, or at the very least, not kill him. The only downside, as always was the immense complexity of the rune and the amount of essence required to engrave it. While two thirds of his essence would be more than enough that was only for one. He needed to engrave two of them to reach Rank-2. Therefore he would need to cultivate for quite a bit of time after the first delaying his ascension. The thought of lagging behind because of this was somewhat painful, but he'd resolved himself. He intended to engrave his second rune sometime in the next week, before the final exam. He also wanted Rust to have a look at it before he did so, perhaps there was some flaw that he'd missed, or worse introduced, that he hadn't noticed.
As he gave one last glance over the final draft of the rune there was a knock at the front door.
'Well, time for yet another busy day' He though as he went to answer it.