During the first delivery of materials, I was very irritated and that didn't happen because I wasn't present during it, it's because I didn't have much time with the box where a part of the material from the death and fire element was.
Resources like this are considerable treasures as they are rare, but for me the wooden box it was in was an even greater treasure. Although it is risky to have a rune arrangement on the box, but the arrangement was not simply engraved from it, somehow the arrangement divided into how many wooden boards were inside the wood.
This is the first time I've seen something like this, normally I would need to open the tablet to see the runes, but thanks to my eyes I can admire the work of a master. Even if the person who did this is not a real runemaster I believe he deserves to be commended for the runes so well made and the process that I have no idea how to engrave the runes into the wood.
I looked very carefully for a flaw in the wood showing that it was split to mine so that the runes are engraved and then glued back together, but that wasn't the trick. I also thought that the runes were engraved with aura or mana that penetrated the wood without harming the outside of it, but that would make the wood that is displaced by the engraved runes stay inside the wood as well, but that also didn't work because there was no rest wood over the runes it took me quite a while to check all the runes looking for wood scraps at the ends of the runes but I didn't find anything after several hours.
I was focused on this mystery for a long time until Mia approach.
"The runes are inside the wood, it's no use staring at them because you won't see them which is a shame because these are really pretty runes."
Mia is right to praise the runes, this four-part rune arrangement is beautiful in many ways. Not only do the runes give me an incredible impression of the intension stored within them, the flow of energy between them is beautiful to watch, it's not that complicated, but the strength and speed of the flow tells me that even if one of the tablets was broken but not completely destroyed this flow would still remain functional as long as the box was kept in the form of a box.
The more than one rune that can connect with another rune for the rune array to keep working, this is a high-level technique but doing it with so few runes and an amazing level. The intent the craftsman put into each rune is so strong and heterogeneous gaining the ability to be flexible without losing the core effect of the rune.
"Who made this rune arrangement?"
"I don't know, but I do know that the person who made this rune arrangement had a lot of patience and probably the element of life and fire or at least one of them."
"Why?"
"Because of how it was made, you may have already noticed that this wood is perfect without a single point denouncing that it has been altered. This is achieved in a very long process because if it is made with a set the wood is not so normal."
"When a tree is growing, a warrior or mage carves runes into it and cauterizes the newly carved wood with the fire element, but these runes are not engraved on the surface of the wood, but underneath an area where the bark has already been broken, usually afterward. from this the element of life comes so that the trunk of the tree believes above hiding the runes."
"This is a very complicated job for the wood to look natural, the error rate in this type of project is very high and that any step that is made outside the tolerance margin which by the way is very small, the rune arrangement will not work."
"So, they literally wait for the tree to grow to cut the wood so they can have runes inside it?"
"Too little glamor for you? Not everything has a 'cool' solution, often the work is boring and poorly paid but your product is very special. These runes are not simple, they can create a special mana trail that can be followed with this detector here, without it is very difficult to find the trail created by the rune arrangement and as it does not only feed on the mana of the air but on the material inside out of the box the smugglers cannot detect this trick."
"But what if they move the materials out of the box?"
"Not everything is perfect, but it is very unlikely that this will happen until we reach our target, but this is plan B we will still try to subdue Akin and use him to track and capture some members of the box cult will be there to confirm our information."
"But if Akin dies, are we just going to follow the box?"
"Yes, but as I said before the box can fail, Ulric. Just so you know this box you are holding and only one of the boxes that contains runes, and expensive to make them more like they are made on a large scale we can use more than one for missions of great importance like this one."
Considering that they can be reused the cost of using it shouldn't be that difficult. When I put the box back in its place and filled it with materials, I saw the rune arrangement start to work, it didn't take long for it to start leaving its mana trail behind.
This man is quite interesting, its blue color is quite normal there is nothing different about it, but it's like seeing a shaky blue line instead of a river flow in the air or blue mana sticking to the surface of something like paint blue.
It seems that the change in mana frequency has made the rune array's trail stand out in the wild, but honestly, I only see this because I'm close to it if I was several meters away, I wouldn't be able to tell this mana by mana from nature.
"Have you finished playing with the boxes? Put her in her shoes and finish packing we don't have much time until Akin's men show up to take the materials, I don't want anything wrong happening today, we can't have them suspecting this shipment."
Raven focused on the mission as usual and I won't piss her off so she started packing up all her materials. And when I finished that I left and went towards my observation point to keep an eye on everything, this time I'm accompanied with Volkan.
"You owe me a boy, the dumb goat even tried to be here to get you in trouble."
"Thanks, Hammer. But shouldn't you be inside in case something goes wrong, are you the defensive mage of the group?"
"They don't need my protection and it's not normal for a mage like me to be among traders either. I would have to dress up as a builder mage that would stand out in my group, it's not normal to put a builder mage in danger like in a smuggling scam."
"Good point. What do you think the goat wanted to do?"
"Probably criticizing you and making a negative report to stay on your record, this obviously won't work with our leader, but it will still stay on your record and could hinder you in the future if you're being considered for a high-level position. negative from a team member says you can't work well with the idiot."
"This seems like a pretty dumb plan since I don't plan on staying in the army, but it gave me a good idea to screw with him. What would happen if a team member received a lot of criticism in the report from three members of their group."
Even without looking at Volkan I know he's smiling at my idea, the last few weeks the goat has been pretty annoying to him after he realized that Volkan and I had become friends.
"Who would be the third person?"
"Shield, she might not have anything against the goat but if I ask her, I think she can tell the 'truth' in her report. It's a shame that our reports will only be read in the future when the war is over, this is really useful work if nothing bad happens in the mission the reports other than our leader's will be locked up for years."
"If you were in charge of multiple teams like ours, would you really want to read a report from each team member? You would multiply a number from like six large reports to dozens of them, we are at war nobody wants to be mired in paperwork right now."
"True, but back to a more important matter. You think we're going to have to use plan B or Akin will be subdued, to be honest I don't know how she's going to control someone like him."
"Curse, poison and runes a mixture of these three can put even a blue-core warrior or mage under the control of others. With time a curse can be very powerful, Akin won't be able to escape if they have time to set up his prison, not every prison has to be external."
"That sounds pretty violent."
"Because is. If our ultimate target wasn't a bunch of crazy god-worshipping freaks intent on killing many innocent people, this kind of tactic wouldn't be allowed by the army. Bunch of hypocrites, pretend to condemn violent tactics but when the target is much more violent, they allow the use of cruel violence."
"I can't say your point is wrong."
"Look, they're coming."