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You see, Frank had some mental problems, depressing thoughts assaulted him throughout most of his life, slowly making him lose his sanity. Frank always wanted to become strong to make these thoughts go away, but no matter how hard he tried, he was always depressed, and this made him even more depressed.
He was a cheerful and carefree boy when he was little, but something happened that made him become like this when he was in school.
For some reason, every person around him started avoiding him: his best friend, his girlfriend, every person in the school, even teachers. When he was walking outside, passerbys would walk away from him, watching at him in fear. He didn't know why, he didn't do anything bad, he was an ordinary boy. His studies were normal, his physical capabilities were normal - he was normal in every way you would think of. His life was absolutely normal until that moment.
He was very scared, he didn't know what to do, he blamed himself for what was happening, so he started studying harder, thinking that if he was smart, people will look at him normally again.
But it didn't happen, the more he studied, the smarter he became, the further away people have kept from him. He finished the school early because of his hardwork and entered the college, thinking that people from different place will treat him normally.
And they did, for the first month, after which they started behaving as the people from his school were.
He wasn't dumb, he started seeing something he didn't see before. The people that he met for the first time would treat him good, but the more he sees that person, the more fear will that person feel when meeting Frank. But he didn't know why, still.
The only thing that was keeping him somewhat sane was his family, that was treating him good no matter what others thought about him.
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Depressing thoughts started appearing in Frank's mind, slowly eating him from the inside.
His aura begun growing steadily.
But then, suddenly, everything became still. Frank's face turned blank, no expressions could be seen on it.
«What pathetic exuse of a human I am?»
«Always crying like a little child, so weak and emotional.»
«Living being should live for the sole purpose of life, life is a greatest blessing, what am I doing by thinking about death?» Frank started showing signs of extreme anger on his face. He was so, so angry at himself.
«Why are these depressing thoughts always in my mind? No matter how infinite this place is, it's still an artifact - if I become its owner I can easily see everything going on inside.»
«See, it was so easy to find a purpose for life, no need to have depressing thoughts inside my head.»
«So, LEAVE ME ALONE!»
Like a bolt of lightning have stroke his head, information flowed into Frank's mind once again. But it wasn't painful anymore.
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[{Insanity} has been erased]
[{Fear} has been erased]
[{Determination} has been erased]
[{Hunger} has been erased]
[{Nascent Aura} (Tier 1) has been transformed into {Growing Aura} (Tier 0)]
[{Serenity} has been revealed]
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[Growing Aura]
[Tier 0]
[Aura of a being at the beginning of it's own way]
[Serenity - every being subject to this aura will have their negative thoughts cleared away.]
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Frank found his mind so clear, he never felt so refreshed before.
Wave of exhaustion hit Frank, so he closed his eyes, falling asleep immediately.
*************
Frank woke up a few days later, feeling like a new person. Depressing thoughts didn't trouble him anymore, he could enjoy his life now.
'I'm finally free' thought Frank, enjoying the quietness in his head.
His new aura was exploding out of his body constantly, with no effort from Frank. It felt like it was always with him all of this time, but he just couldn't see it before.
It wasn't as strong as his Fear or Insanity, but it was natural, he didn't need to control it, because this aura was him and he was the aura, so it knew what to do by itself.
The aura wasn't dangerous to Frank, it couldn't be. It was HIS own aura after all.
With a simple thought from Frank, the aura took a form of The Seeker and seeped into the knife, binding it to himself. The Seeker wasn't a simple [Tier 1] weapon anymore.
'Disperse' thought Frank, and The Seeker have turned into his aura, not visible with a naked eye, but still as deadly as before.
«What a neat ability» whispered Frank. He didn't know why, but he just felt like trying to do this, maybe it was his intuition, or his aura trying to teach him how to use it. Most likely the later.
Quickly going out of his trance, Frank begun remembering the contents of the book. The book was big, it had at least 100'000 words. There were mostly simple theories, but some advanced theories were written there as well.
After reading this book, he had a new understanding of the world around him.
He stood up from his bed, walking closer to the campfires in his room. Looking in the fire closely, Frank saw some small, worm-like orange runes floating in there. He knew that these runes were the Fire Runes of elemental type, and the campfire was a sort of the Runic Artifact.
It was tierless but still an artifact. The Campfire like this could burn for as long as there's energy in the surroundings, and there's a lot of energy in ECURA, so they could burn for all eternity.
Their principle was simple: the Energy Runes in the surroundings go into the Fire Converting combination (Energy+Fire, with Energy runes in the core) inscribed on a flammable material and transform into Fire Runes. The efficiency wasn't big - 10 ER into 1 FR, but it was still impressive.
It was possible because the Energy Runes have the ability to turn into any rune, and any rune can be turned into Energy Rune. But the transformation could only happen naturally or through artifacts, you can't transform raw ER into different runes by force. There're some runes that ER can't transform into, but there was no information about them in the book.
Most of the runes in the Runic Multiverse were energy runes, because the void produces a lot of them, so Runemasters have learned a lot of combinations which use them.
Concentrating his thoughts on the Fire Runes, Frank tried moving them by telekinesis, but was shocked to find that he had no telekinesis anymore, the command was performed by his aura instead.
But Frank wasn't discouraged, his telekinesis wasn't that strong anyway, and controlling his aura was almost effortless, so he thought that it was for the better.
The runes were taken under control by his aura easily.
Frank formed a hexagonal-triangular-prism-like combination, with 7 fire runes (6 on the edges and 1 on the apex) and 1 energy rune in the center of the hexagon. This combination was one of the Attack Combinations and was called a Fire Blast.
With the urge from Frank's aura, Fire Blast started shining and then bolted into the wall, exploding and creating a scorch mark there.
'Hmm, the strength isn't bad, it was the simplest Attack Combination, but it's strong enough to kill any monster I've met before, aside from Centipede and Gluttony, but they're residents, so it's fine' thought Frank, while gaining an understanding of the ECURA's difficulty. It wasn't that the first floor was too difficult, it was just him who was being weak.
'The Gnawed Leaf have troubles petrifying my innards because my soul is from Science Multiverse and isn't made out of Soul Runes, this might be a problem' thought Frank while trying to find ways of solving this problem in the book.
He didn't find anything, the author of a book was from the Rune Multiverse, so he haven't met this problem before. But Frank thought of a different approach.
'I can't use petrification fully, so I'll just not use it. It'll be more effective to just use The Gnawed Leaf as a storage of Life and Stone Runes. I can make a lot of rune combinations using them, especially from Life runes, they're pretty rare in this place, there no ‹living› beings reside' Frank contemplated about this a little more before trying a combination.
Frank formed a little humanoid from stones in his room and used a Stone Golem combination on it. The combination was formed from Stone, Life and Energy runes. The Life runes formed an icosahedral, in the middle of each edge of the icosahedral lied a singular Energy rune and the triangle formations of stone runes were lying in the middle of each side of icosahedral, the formation expended 12 Life Runes, 30 Energy Runes and 60 Stone Runes.
For a person who doesn't know about Runes, this combination will look like a gray gem, just like the one Frank took from the golem he defeated. But the combination he created looked more polished and artificial, because the gem the golem had was a natural Stone Golem combination. Runemasters took inspiration from nature when they have started using runes, obviously.
Natural combinations are considered as artifacts, because natural combinations don't crumble without runemaster's control and the definition of the artifact is a stable combination. Such artifacts are known as the Natural Artifacts, they usually don't have many functions, but the ones they have are very strong. The Stone Golem Heart (Natural Stone Golem combination) allows the user to control stone runes with almost no effort.
Natural Artifacts are used for creating strong Runic Artifacts. The Stone Golem Heart, for examle, is great for creating Runic Artifacts that control large amounts of Earth and Stone runes to build structures very quickly and cheaply.
The Stone Golem Heart can be used for obtaining large amounts of Energy Runes as well, because it generates Stone Runes regularly Runemasters often use Energy Converting combination on it, allowing them to have an endless amount of ordinary runes always with them.
But Stone Golem Heart is one of the rare Natural Artifacts, so not many Runemasters have it.
The one that the Frank has is the worst quality one. It produces Stone Runes very slowly, so the Golem that Frank had fought could only control stones around it and couldn't use any combinations, it didn't have any intelligence either, so Frank was very glad that he didn't meet the high-tier Golem.
Anyways, enough about Stone Golem Heart.
The combination that Frank had created was very stable, like Frank had practiced its creation many times before. It was a perk of the beings from the Science Multiverse, they learn and adapt faster than beings from other multiverses, Frank's soul was very strong compared to ordinary Runemasters as well.
Having created the Stone Golem combination, Frank used his aura to urge the combination to activate, after which the combination have seated into the torso of the stone humanoid that he had made before.
Using his aura, Frank locked the combination in the stone, engraving it there. He had created his first artifact.