(Back to the present - floor 30th)
Samael slumped tirededly to the hard cold dungeon floor and sprawled with his arms and legs spread wide open and a huge grin was plastered on his face.
"Oh, you are in a good mood today. Is your progress that good? " Martha asked Samael.
Samael responded with a huge grin and a slight nod.
Ever since Samael realised that his chances of using magic or aura were questionable, he had been very dissapointed. But instead on wallowing and drowning in weakness, he had started undertaking a vigorous body training program.
Everytime after his parents cleared a new dungeon floor, he would start his training sessions.Hauling and dragging heavy boulders until he fainted, doing push ups until his bones creaked, groaned and his muscles teared up became his daily life. He would wake up from pain in the middle of the night and tears would stream from his eyes as he silently groaned and gnashed his teeth.
When his mother wanted to heal him using some sorcerer tricks, he would decline. He wanted to remember the pain and helplessness. His other intention was to kick his will power and perseverance up a notch to the level it used to be when he was on earth as a killer.
His parents had first disapproved of his bloody and self harming training tendencies but after each and everyday he would do it again and again. The determination they saw in him was unnerving and unrelenting. So they had decided to support him instead of standing in his way and as such, they had come to a consensus decision to tell him about another path to power. A path that could be utilized even without aura or magic power - Runes.
Samael had been so thrilled about such a path and the more he had learned about it the wilder his ideas and plans had become. The path of runes! This path had changed everything, he had slowed down his body training and started to spend every moment of his time studying runes day in and day out.
Runes were another source of strength mostly utilized through runic inscriptions especially in weapons, accessories and armor. There were runes of strength, speed, stamina, weight, multiplication, illusion, darkness, light, fire, water, snow, ice, lightning and many more.
The intension of his parents was for him to have an added advantage in combat through weaponry, armor and accessories by efficiently inscribing runes that suited him flawlessly without having to ask someone else for help. Self sufficiency and independancy, that was what they were installing in him. When he became good enough,he could even invent runes of his own.
If they ever even hoped to leave the dungeon and live their lives again, they needed to be strong - Samael included. So strong such that they could dictate their own choices while also securing their own wellbeing without any problems. Besides, Samael needed enough strength to protect himself, they won't be always there for him.
There was also another way for utilizing runes and that was to inscribe them on one's body instead of a weapon in a procedural ritual called body inscription. The only problem with this method of rune utilisation was that only the dwarves could do it but they refused to share. This method was their most guarded secret. Wars had even been waged and rivers of blood had flowed for this secret but the dwarves always prevailed and kept their secret to themselves.
Even after thousands of years, all the other races in Fellos still had no idea how the dwarves did it. Every attempt they made ended in utter failure. So this meant that if a non dwarf rune master lost his/her weapon in combat, his/her chances of defeat exponentially increased.
Coming back to utilizing runes without aura or magic, the other way of inscribing runes was through soul energy. Soul energy as in using energy from the soul.But this method was frowned upon in both continents because it involved absorbing the souls of the deceased inorder to grow more powerful.
In simple terms, soul energy worked differently from both aura and magic. One obtained aura and magic power from absorbing mana while soul energy was obtained from absorbing the souls of the dead.
The reason all the races did not openly indulge in soul energy utilization was that souls in general were associated with their gods. The ancestral warriors and mages from both continents had left down rules to their descendants to never mess with the souls of the dead. There were even rumors that If they did, that would annoy the gods and that was tantamount to destruction.
Samael did not care about their rules. He needed strength and fast. All other paths to power were closed for him except for rune utilisation through soul energy. Besides, there was the possibility of such rules being a load of bull! If not, why did these so called ancestors leave behind the soul energy utilisation techniques for their descendants if those descendants were to be prohibited from using them.