Carrying the stone he received from Micheal, Lucas started his journey to the top of the mountain once again. He didn't have the runes to fly back, and even if he did, the snowstorm was so strong, he would be lost in a matter of seconds.
On his way there, he kept inspecting the stone and his own magic. The basic principles were starting to turn into something more advanced. All this time, he had thought of magicules as fixed, rigid, and unchangeable. Every elemental magicule was formed the same way, only the runes made them into what he wanted. Micheal showed him that everything he had been doing was using a crutch to run. Using runes made anyone capable of forming spells and conjuring elemental attacks.
But it was a fixed form, yes, if you reached a higher rank the spells would be stronger, even with the same runes. But besides that, there would be barely any difference. Micheal didn't use a single rune, only his prayers, yet with his magic vision, Lucas could see that his prayer didn't stimulate his core in any way. The idea that a Goddess existed that protected them and listened to their prayers didn't fall on deaf ears.
At first, Lucas thought that it would be ridiculous to have a Goddess that could listen to their followers, but Maria had said the same thing for her religion, the Order of Nature, so it could be true. He knew now that Maria wasn't extremely smart, but that didn't matter, he trusted her. The idea of a Goddess brought tons of implications to everything that was happening, but Lucas didn't have the power nor the motivation to bother with it.
If he were to believe Micheal then the Goddess could control his core from far away without any direct contact. There were tons of unexplained questions swirling around his head, but his journey had only begun, so there was still some time to think things through.
'Wait, wouldn't this be a massive breakthrough?'
'What are you talking about?'
'Advanced Magic!'
'I see, if we adopt Micheal's magical manipulation and take our time to form every combination of magicules, we could in theory perform every spell without any runes.'
'You see, is this what Elam wanted us to accomplish?'
'BUT, there's a massive downside, it took us a long time to figure out the composition of the magicule that Micheal used and we analyzed it during his spell. Besides the time it takes to form every possible combination of magicule, there's the issue of speed, runes are spoken but act fast. Using magicule manipulation, it takes a long time and willpower to form what we want, in an actual battle it would be almost useless. Unless we have a lot of time to prepare beforehand then it would be a risk to use this method.'
'Damnit, but wasn't Advance Magic praised for its flexibility and strength?'
'Then we haven't discovered it yet, it's as simple as that. We must've found a different method besides Advanced Magic.'
'Still, we completed Elam's task, that should be enough to keep going. Perhaps in order to learn advanced magic we first had to figure this out.'
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Elam was lying down on his couch, there was a bed, but he was surprisingly more of a fan of lying on the couch. Even he himself didn't know why not that he had ever thought about it.
"Hmm? Looks like the boy is coming back...", standing up from the couch he went to prepare some tea. He liked his tea to be made in a certain way and even created a small manual so that anyone with the basic knowledge of alchemy could create his tea. Although he called it tea, it was something quite different.
"I wonder if he did it.", Elam looked up at the ceiling, but his vision was focused on something far far away. "How many more would I have to do before we're done? A hundred? A thousand? A million?", Elam sighed before sipping his tea and laying back down on his couch.
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Lucas reached Elam's cabin, quickly entering to shield himself from the storm outside. Removing the snow from his clothes he looked at his teacher. He was asleep, or so it seemed, on the couch, there was a cup of tea on the nearby table, but other than that, there was no sign that anything moved.
'Was he sleeping the entire time?'
'Most likely, he looks like the guy to not give a shit about anything.'
Lucas had to wake him up in some way or another, moving him around didn't seem like a good idea, so he went with the easiest from his perspective.
"Sir Elam, I'm here, could you please wake up?"
For most of the past days, Lucas and Elam didn't really talk a lot, most of the time, Elam was asleep or not paying attention. This time he could see Elam simply turn around to show Lucas his back.
'Hahahaha, he's clearly ignoring you, I like him!'
'Shut up, let's just show him'
Lucas had been churning his brain on how to create the stone that Elam wanted. This time he didn't say a single word, merely following Micheal's way of magic manipulation. He created the same magicules as Micheal had and made sure to experiment before showing Elam.
The magicules were guided along his arms until they reached his hands and by using his willpower to make sure that the magicules didn't escape his grasp, he forced them together. As he had done it for a few times already, he knew what would happen next.
The magicules were forced to touch each other in the open air. The magicules started to bind themselves to each other. The elemental part of the magicules became hard, becoming an actual solid. Lucas had always seen the magic form into certain spells, but after seeing Micheal's work he knew it was possible to let the magicules into the air without it doing anything.
Combining these aspects made him capable of forming a stone of exactly 5 pounds. He was just done with his creation, proud of his achievement. After all, now he opened the door to using every spell out there without any runes though it was terribly slow to form the spells. Making this simple stone with barely any offensive capability it took 5 seconds to form the stone and part of his willpower to actually create the stone. Using it in battles would be a strange move.
"So you've done it, congratulations. To think you've used that method, how strange."
Lucas jumped back a bit, Elam was still lying down, but he knew exactly how heavy the stone was without him using any kind of rune. There was no sound, his hands covered the stone itself, Elam didn't touch it even. Still, he was capable of knowing that Lucas not only succeeded in passing his task, but also use a method that he found strange.
"How - ?"
"Now, now, you've succeeded in your task, good job. You deserve a reward since you used that method, tell me, what do you want?"