After a frugal and substantial meal, Isaac was in a much better mood. He did not know how to cook very well, and he had not succeeded in making dishes in this world without utensils. His only meals were fruit.
So Artiel's meal was delicious for him and he devoured it entirely. Although made up only of vegetables found in the garden, a bit of stale bread, and a bit of stewed jerky, it was way better than what he had eaten in a long time.
He was almost in tears, the meal was so delicious.
Although Isaac had spent the day creating his grimoire, the two teenagers had not stood still and had started to build the start of what could be called a house. Rebecca helped chop down and chop tree trunks with her magic while Artiel told her what to do and took care of the more sensitive tasks.
They made a good team and the work had progressed well. A pile of logs had been placed near the camp in preparation for construction.
Isaac decided to let them rest that night and got up.
- "We will start your training tomorrow ... Rest" he said finally smiling.
- "Master, please do not bother yourself with me. This place is already a very good place for me to learn on my own. I don't know why, but here, my powers are much easier to use than in the village" she replied.
"Hm? Maybe because of the concentration of mana around. Would that be possible, or because of a rune?" Isaac thought.
- "That's good, so keep going" he said before leaving silently, rising into the air.
He didn't want to stay any longer and watch the two lovebirds exchange shy glances. He felt like he was holding the candle for them. He wanted to go away and quickly.
Once he got far enough, Isaac opened his spellbook to the first page, a smile on his face. He then began to write runes allowing him to quickly access a specific page by infusing a certain frequency of mana. This done, he then proceeded to attempt to create a magical inscription.
This operation was completed much more easily than he thought. Immediately, illegible characters were written on the page. He tried first to try to decipher but quickly gave up and moved on to the following pages.
Each page contained a special rune or node with a specific ordering with a special name. AND, IF, NOT, OR nodes as well as various instructions appeared in the grimoire and after a whole four hours, half of the pages were already full. Once the basic instructions were completed, he created pages to immediately summon arcana or runes like Hell wave or Lockdown just by saying their name as a trigger.
The smile on his face only widened after he finished the inscriptions and looked at them page by page. With this spellbook, he could create runes or arcana really as if he were coding an algorithm.
He didn't wait to test and started with a new rune of logic. Using his mind to write the grimoire, he found it hard enough to get used to this way of doing things, but after about thirty minutes his mind started to memorize the pages and gradually got faster and faster.
In front of him, a rune of logic grew larger to reach ten meters and became more and more complex. Becoming more complex than any runes he had ever created. He had tried to improve the magic reactor rune and re-adapted it to create the equivalent of a cannon. After all, he had done it before.
However, this cannon was much less chaotic and more precise, more controlled and above all, the consumption and use of mana was much more efficient. He decided to import the rune directly onto one of the pages of the book before trying something else to create.
"This book is really going to come in handy in the future," he said to himself.
Throughout the night he pursued and created numerous derivative runes. A rune for creating a prison and emptying the mana inside, useful for capturing mages and preventing them from doing magic. The principle was quite simple, it was a containment rune and multiple sub-runes absorbing the mana inside and preventing the mana outside from entering.
When the sun rose, Isaac flew to the camp where the two teenagers were already standing. Seeing him arrive, they gestured to Isaac to greet him.
- "Slept well ?" Isaac said.
- "Yes !" they replied.
- "We are going to begin today ?" Rebecca said with shining eyes.
Isaac then came over to smile and nodded. They turned and walked away from the encampment before the elf turned.
- "Good! We'll start with the basics! The mana ..."
Throughout the day, Isaac began lessons on the fundamentals of magic as he perceived it, he tried to explain his theories and his thoughts. But alas, the young woman could not understand her master, although she tried with all her might.
After all, she had not had the same education as him, where he had received notions of physics, chemistry, arithmetic and mathematics although with shortcomings, the young woman had received no scientific training. She knew how to cook, cultivate a vegetable garden, hunt and heal wounds.
In terms of survivability alone without magic, she beat him completely, and that Isaac knew full well. He had foreseen that his education was not compatible with the teaching he wanted to give her, so very quickly, he changed his method.
Instead of asking her to figure out what a manicule was, he asked her to try and feel the energy around as if she were in a lake or a river. The water representing the manicles and the currents that it must manipulate in order to do magic.
From this visualization, the young woman could gradually understand what he was talking about. She was already pretty far along for Isaac when he noticed the sun was starting to set and decided to end the training and returned to camp.
Once a delicious meal had been devoured, Isaac continued his experiments with the reactor logic rune and continued to add new functions and correct parts of the rune, with the help of his spellbook.
With a single thought, the inscriptions relating to what he wanted appeared in front of him and made his life much easier. Thus, his research advanced much faster.
Their routine continued like this for about a week.
By the end of that week, Isaac had completed the Reactor Rune and even managed to halve his size without compromising his performance or the amount of energy produced. For her part, Rebecca was advancing calmly. She had managed to create runes once the principle was understood and had finally been able to assimilate the essence of what mana is, how to control it and how to breathe it.
At the same time, she brought to Isaac important knowledge about the manipulation of mana and its internal circuit. The young woman had explained to him that over the years after using her magic, she had gradually managed to feel more precisely the essence and extent of her mana vessels.
By the time she was fourteen, she had started expanding or retracting her circuits in addition to being able to concentrate mana in a particular area, which Isaac already knew how to do.
At this point, Rebecca was now able to trace simple runes to create wind and cast spells faster and more accurately. Indeed, by learning how to create runes, her mind also sharpened and trained to structure her emotions and thus structure the way with which to formulate spells and to create them.
So now her fireball could be summoned and thrown instantly and in chain. She had also managed to understand the basics of magical optimization and be able to use minimum mana for maximum effect. Especially when extending her mana circuits.
As she trained to manipulate the manicles, Isaac trained internally trying to catch up with his apprentice in manipulating the internal circuits. But unlike her, after a week he still couldn't do it. After all, she had eighteen years of experience ahead of him. So he focused on his spellbook and runes.
After that week his grimoire was now full and he had to add more pages by manipulating the plant again to "grow" new leaves. In all, the book had reached 120 pages in total with 95 completed.
Spells, arcana and runes, everything was recorded inside. There were also the blueprints for the Rune Reactor, allowing him to summon it in seconds simply by infusing mana into the Grimoire model. You could say that by now the grimoire carried the equivalent of a nuclear arsenal in addition to a runic and arcane computer development kit.
With this, Isaac was thus able to create a new containment rune allowing him to create a complete protective layer blocking physical elements and radiation and waves. Of course, this rune had the disadvantage of blocking everything, including light and thus creating a black wall.
Nonetheless, this shield was perfect for protecting the grimoire, so he decided to replace the rune of protection in place with the new one immediately, giving the grimoire a full black color.
They were all eating around a small fire. Isaac devoured his dish vigorously while Rebecca and Artiel watched him do it before looking at each other with a nod.
The young man suddenly coughed, attracting the attention of Isaac who looked up, his gaze intrigued and curious. "Hm? They want to talk about something," he thought as he put his plate down and cleaned his mouth.
- "What is it ?" he finally said with a smile.
With still a little hesitation, the young man turned to Rebecca who began to resume.
- "We just wanted to know ..." she said before stopping.
- "Go ahead. I'm not biting" he said, seeing her hang with a smile.
- "Uh ... how old are you?"
Isaac gasped when he heard the question. "Huh?"
- "Of course, if you don't want to answer, that's okay! It's just that you seem to know a lot of things and therefore, we thought you are probably very old. And then, you are an elf. ... so ... "Artiel hastened.
"What do I have to tell them?" Isaac thought. It was a tense question. Should he tell them his real age, 21? Or should he give them an age that would make sense to a master mage elf? He didn't know, but when you think about it, it didn't matter much. After all, his age probably didn't matter more to them since they already considered him a very competent person.
However, he saw a downside. He was sure they would repeat it to the other villagers and once the information was in the area, the elders might risk taking it down. In a society where the elders have the last word, this was inevitable.
In the event that he gave them an exorbitant age, it would only reinforce their sense of inferiority, and Isaac would then have to keep carrying around titles like 'Honorable Master' or 'Excellency' and he really didn't want them.
Isaac then put his index finger to his lips with a smile.
- "Secret" he said quite simply.
- "Very well ... Sorry to have bothered you for so little" replied Rebecca with a slight disappointment in the tone of her voice.
- "You have tried, it is a good quality for a mage to be curious. But be careful, like all that is in excess, too much curiosity can be dangerous" added Isaac before asking his dish. "Thanks for the meal! I'll go back to my experiments," he said standing up.
Immediately the two nodded. During the week, they had learned the hard way that Isaac should never be disturbed during a magical experiment. If they didn't have a very good reason, his mood was quite sullen. Rebecca had paid the price the next day during their training with the severity tenfold of her master.
Isaac then flew into the air, a smile on his lips. This week with Rebecca was very informative and since he had managed to top up his reactor as best he could, he had some free time again.
Without wasting time, he opened the garden control window and pressed the inspection window for the garden runes and in particular the famous rune of logic.