Yana and Zafer were still standing in the cold meadow, staring at each other.
Moon has completely replaced the sun by now and although it was reflecting the moonlight, darkness prevailed by a lot.
Not to mention the fog.
All in all, continuing the fight now would be too difficult
Zafer was too physically exhausted anyway.
But Yana didn't know this.
She recalled her axe into the Void. Zafer has gotten way faster and more unpredictable.
Fighting him in this darkness would be way too risky for her.
"I have no intention of seeking you in the darkness. The next time we meet you better get stronger, or it might not end like this".
Zafer placed his axe on his shoulder, "and how will it end?"
Yana turned around, "I might give your head to Sir Simra and ask him to take me in as a replacement".
Her soft voice vanished as the last words were covered by the cold breeze.
She was gone.
Zafer finally threw himself on the ground. His muscles reveled in pain.
It felt good.
Soon after that, he threw up.
Part one:
The next morning Zafer experienced major muscle soreness but continued his journey anyway.
He managed to light a fire despite the cold weather and moist air, baked his food, and used the charcoal to brush his teeth.
After that, he immediately continued his journey.
The village where the rune library was located wasn't that far after all and it took him only 1 more day to reach it.
The distinction between this town and any other he visited before was obvious even before entering the village's parameters.
An uncommon number of dead birds were lying on the ground and no animal seemed to touch their corpse.
Zafer didn't understand why, and he also didn't want to entertain his curiosity.
He believed it might be some bird disease.
Individuals with significant and well-defined anomalous pools tended to fall ill less often than the average person.
However, when they did become sick, their condition was much more severe and harder to treat, often being fatal.
Even a mere cold could kill a paladin if he managed to catch it.
Aside from the dead birds, there was another weird thing about the people in this village.
They couldn't understand him, nor could he understand them.
The concept of any other language existing besides his native was unimaginable to the point of thinking that the folk of this village were cursed or underwent a mutation that affected their vocal cords or brain.
"Why are you asking about him?", someone finally spoke in a way he could understand them.
It was a woman working in the garden around the house.
"Oh! You understand me!", Zafer exclaimed, "he told me to visit him in his library".
The woman opened the door of her house, speaking incomprehensible words to someone else in it.
"You are Zafer?", he nodded.
"Igen", she called out again, and after only a couple of seconds, a man appeared, probably her husband as far as Zafer could assume.
He was very bulky and had a dense black goatee beard.
He also had a couple of long black hair strands at the back of his head tied into a ponytail. The rest of his head was bald.
Nevertheless, the most distinctive feature of his was his mustache which was longer than his beard and was just hanging like that, as well as his yellowish skin colour.
Now Zafer knew there were people with different skin tones and that it was dependent on sun exposure and inheritance.
For example, Ika's skin color was light grey, almost completely white, while Wiza's skin was slightly tanned, but it was always a spectrum between white and black.
He never saw someone whose skin color had a yellowish hue and wasn't sure if this was some kind of unique trait or a consequence of being exposed to yellow-colored food.
You are what you eat, that was what Ika kept telling him.
The women left, and the man introduced himself as Hok after which he let Zafer in the house.
It was a humble old-fashioned home and household.
They ate the crops they personally grew and the cattle they personally raised.
They immediately went downstairs into the basement. It was filled with food supplies for the upcoming winter.
Nevertheless, that wasn't the end. There were other stairs leading even deeper.
That was the rune library.
It still looked as if it belonged to the house with similar aesthetics, just newer.
It consisted of only 1 room and tens of bookshelves filled with books.
Rune books.
Some shelves were labeled with a rune name like "Purge IV", "Purge III", "Anointment", or "Everlasting", while some were labeled with names like "Hydra", "Skank", "Lee Thal" and so on.
The "Execute V" section was empty with accumulated dust.
That was the rune that Hydra, Skank, and Zlatko wanted to get from Key Em's Axe 33.
Once Hok and Zafer reached the opposite side of the room they could see Mint sitting at a very large and thick table with a couple of books arranged on it.
Mint had his head buried in one of the books as he applied ink to its empty page.
He suddenly lifted his head surprised and cheered up by Zafer's presence.
"Hey! You came!", he straightened himself on the chair, "what took you so long?"
Zafer smiled, "oh well, you know. My shoe kept getting unlaced".
This was a common slang expression implying that it didn't matter.
More importantly, Zafer couldn't help but stare at Mint's desk in awe.
"Are you writing a rune?", he bent over the table to have a better look.
Mint laughed, "No silly! I'm only rewriting them. But I wish".
"What's stopping you? You are very creative and can surely think of something!", Zafer wanted to encourage him.
He was after all older and felt the duty to act accordingly.
Mint shook his head, "that's way too complicated. I don't know anyone who can do something like that".
Zafer took a seat across Mint, on the other side of the table, "don't be like that. Who was then the first to write these runes?"
Mint shrugged his shoulders, "I wouldn't know. I never dealt with the history, but whoever was it, they had to be incredibly smart".
Zafer frowned, "well, I heard there are scripted who are developing a multi-S-mail".
Mint waved with his hand, "those scripts are peki-leki compared to runes".
Zafer could not evaluate the complexity of a code since he knew nothing about it. He only knew that runes contained longer codes.
The book that lay open in front of Mint was full of weird symbols and scribbles that Zafer couldn't understand.
That was the ancient language, and although there were some signs that Zafer recognized back from writing S-mails, their usage here seemed to be something completely else.
At this time Hok appeared placing a plate of cookies and a glass of milk on the table for them to enjoy.
The cookies were very dry.
"By the way", Zafer swallowed a bite, "why can't he understand me? Or anyone in the village?"
"They just speak another language", Mint responded stuffing a whole cookie in his mouth, "and my bad for not introducing him! His name is Hok. He is the owner of this rune library and a very low-ranked member of the Nubis province".
Mint was a regular guest at Hok's house since they worked together but was not a bit publicly supportive of the Nubis faction's ideology.
"Alright…", Zafer pondered for a moment.
"Yes", Mint continued, "This rune library has an agreement with the Nubis province to store and sell runes to them. I'm not sure how it happened or if Hok is happy with that though".
Zafer smiled nervously, "Isn't it a bit risky for me to be in a Nubian rune vault? They know my face".
Min, casually waving a cookie in his hand, dismissed the concern, "Not at all. All the runes here are either duplicates or low quality".
It made sense.
No paladin would keep their most valuable runes in the same space others had access to.
Even if they were from the same faction.
Zafer asked, "What do you mean by bad quality?"
Mint leaned back, "You know how anomalies and artifacts are measured in Verms? For all anomalies it's referred to as the intensity, except for the A-9 and Ar-9. They are measured in quality", he explained.
Ar was the abbreviation for Artifact and A for anomaly.
Zafer listened carefully so Mint continued.
"You see, the Adjustment is a very unusual anomaly. It's the only anomaly that can't be improved. Whether it was about an euclid or a regular anomaly".
Zafer ruminated for a second, "But doesn't that mean that people born with a regular A-9 are useless? If they really can't improve their anomalous strength. Quality I mean".
Mint was satisfied with his explanation, "Yes! That's true!
"So all these scriptmen like you were born with an euclid A-9?"
Mint smiled awkwardly, "Well, no. Anyone can be a scriptman since it's a form of written language. Just like anyone can learn to draw. I think what you referred to are parchment donors, not scriptmen".
Zafer tilted his head, "I guess. But aren't scripts and parchments the same thing?"
Mint tried not to sound smarter, "yes, about that. Parchment and scripts aren't the same thing. That's a common misconception".
"A parchment is the processed skin of someone with the Adjustment anomaly A script is what we create when we apply ancient language to that parchment. Simply said, parchment is useless while the script has a purpose".
Mint was actively learning the ancient language, which meant that he was a scriptmen, but he was also born with a euclid A-9, which meant that he was also a parchment donor.
Zafer could also learn the ancient language and rewrite runes like Mint but he will never be able to donate his skin for parchment since Zafer wasn't born with an A-9 anomaly.
Mint continued, "Artifacts, no matter the anomaly they were derived from, can take various shapes. For example, Artifact 11, the Almighty Eye, often appears as a pair of sunglasses, but it can also take a different form. However, the Ar-9 always takes the form of a parchment, since that's the whole purpose of its anomaly".
Despite Mint being one year younger than Zafer, his knowledge of scripts and runes was impressive. Zafer never expected someone younger to be so bright.
After mastering the flame flower cultivation from Ika, Zafer saw this as the perfect opportunity to learn about runes and the Anomaly 9.
"Well if A-9 can't be defined with intensity, then what is meant by quality?"
It was difficult to understand what exactly a Verm stood for, but a vague explanation would be that the more Verms one has, the stronger output and the larger quantity of techniques were to be expected.
For example, Mio's Iron Fist anomaly had more Verms than Zafer's, meaning his hand grip was stronger.
The Adjustment was a passive anomaly. It was only useful as an artifact (the parchment). What was the difference between the quality of A-9? Why were more Verms better?
Mint explained, "You are born with a regular Iron Fist, right?".
Zafer nodded.
"The more Verms your Anomaly measures, the stronger your grip will be. I was born with an A-9 measuring 13 Verms in quality and as I said, I can't increase it. I'm stuck at 13 Verms".
Mint continued, "That means that when my skin gets peeled and transformed into a parchment, its quality will also equal to only 13 Verms. Does it make sense?".
Zafer nodded. He didn't see himself as a dumbass, but curious.
"A 13 Verm and 17 Verm parchments look the same, but there is a huge difference".
Zafer was glad that Mint got to the point, "So what is it?"
"Well, it's a little bit difficult to explain to someone who never wrote any other code except the S-mail, but to put it bluntly, the 17 Verm parchments support bigger and more complex codes".
Zafer frowned in confusion, "so… the difference is the size of the paper? The size of the parchment?"
"No", Mint cut his off, "The size of the parchment doesn't change, but higher quality parchments are denser with… let's call it 'essence.' Think of it like adding honey to water. The more honey, the sweeter the water. The more essence in the parchment, the more complex codes it can support".
Zafer could grasp this metaphor.
"So, does that mean for example that a rune like Purge IV can also be written on a 2 Verm parchment, but it would take 1000 of such parchment pages".
Mint paused again.
"No. Like I said, the size of the paper doesn't matter. The surface doesn't matter".
A moment of silence reigned.
This knowledge wasn't vital to Zafer in any obvious way, but Mint felt sorry that he couldn't explain it better, and Zafer was too deep in his stubborn rabbit hole to give up now.
"You see, the minimal parchment quality for it to be used as a vessel for any rune was 7 Verms. The size of the code and the number of pages needed to be assembled to write them has nothing to do with how complex and heavy the code is".
"It's really all about how complex the purpose of a code is. If the code's purpose is like an S-mail, to copy text on another sheet of parchment, then it doesn't require a high-quality parchment".
"However, if you want your code to seal the souls of people or extract anomalies from someone's body, that code would need a very high-quality parchment".
Zafer nodded, "I see. But what does that have to do with these low-quality runes? They are already transcribed on parchment. Why not use them?"
Mint crossed his legs enjoying Zafer's ambition, "There is another important difference, especially when we are talking about runes. For a rune to be functional it needs to be transferred onto a weapon. That is something I know how to do, but it's a process that can fail or succeed, and it doesn't depend on me but on the parchment quality".
"7 Verms parchment can support runes, but the success rate was so low that it was almost close to 0%, while the quality of 23 Verms meant 99%".
Zafer frowned trying to comprehend these odds. He wasn't good with math.
Mint recognized this silence and explained.
"That meant that 1 in every hundred runes should fail, but those are good odds".
This was way easier for Zafer to understand than the previous concept, "so that means that 24 Verms equal to a 100% success rate!"
Mint squinted in contemplation, "Well… that's the correct way of thinking, but a parchment of 24 Verms doesn't exist, so…"
Zafer was baffled for a second.
He understood that the occurrence of euclid anomalies was rare and that the occurrence of a euclid 24 Verm anomaly is even rarer.
But to say that something like that doesn't exist… or did he mean something like that just didn't happen yet?
"How can you be so sure?", he asked.
Mint leaned back once again, "This might awaken some confusion, but there actually is a way to increase the quality once the skin of the A-9 bearer is peeled and transformed into the parchment. It's done by using something we call Krale".
This meant that Mint's skin could still produce only 13 Verm parchments, however, that quality could be increased via Krale.
"Krale? What's that?"
"It's a perplexing process, but the main ingredient is unicorn's horn".
Zafer's eyes widened, "Unicorn horn?".
"Yep. That's what Krale is made out of".
"Okay…", Zafer let him continue.
Although it was common knowledge among higher paladins that unicorns were a crucial part of their lives, many regular people and even young paladins considered it to be nothing more than a myth.
That was partly because unicorns were bred in private facilities, mostly outside of Pashtrik.
That was to protect their endangered species.
Unicorns bred rarely, produced a low number of offspring, and also died upon the removal of their horn.
Given the soar in paladin activity, the unicorn population was almost impossible to increase.
"Anyway, Krale can boost a parchment's quality, but only up to the next bottleneck. So, from 7 to 11, from 11 to 13, and so forth. Nevertheless, a parchment with a quality of 23 Verms can't be improved to 24 no matter what, which meant that 23 Verms was a limit".
Zafer mulled this over.
The idea of limits existing… It struck a chord with him.
Many relied on the hope that no ceiling existed on what they could achieve, in order to keep pushing forward.
Skil talked about how his life purpose was to end the mutation disease that has taken countless lives and destroyed many families.
He was sure that someday he would write a code that would cure the disease, but what if that wasn't possible?
What if the code for curing that disease was so complex that even a 23 Verm parchment could not support it?
After all, no human becomes a God. Right?
Mint shrugged his shoulder unaware of Zafer's silent philosophy.
"All in all, increasing the quality of a parchment was possible but very pricey. This was the main reason why parchment donors such as myself were valuable, which reminds me of the main reason why I invited you here".
Zafer perked up.
"There are runes that can only be applied to Miyalin weapons and those that can be put on whatever. Some runes, like the Purge, function better on specific weapons like an axe, while others are best suited for swords".
Mint leaned forward, eye sharp. "Nevertheless, there's a special class of runes which can be applied to anything with a 100% success rate. Do you know which runes I'm talking about?"
Zafer shook his head.
He had seen the "special grade" section in the Book of Runes and Curses, but the complex descriptions had discouraged him from reading further.
Mint continued, "It's 2 runes. Anointment and Eucharist. The Anointment rune protects a weapon from breaking in case any other rune-implementing process results in a failure".
Zafer listened carefully.
He didn't know that weapons can break if a rune fails to get implemented into it.
This made the Krale even more important.
Imagine losing your 14-rune axe because the 15th-rune failed to implement due to randomness.
Special grade runes weren't special grade for no reason.
"And what does the other one do?"
"The Eucharist increases the number of rune slots. Normally, any object can hold only six runes. Each Eucharist rune unlocks one slot for a new rune".
Zafer got stuck in his thoughts.
This concept changed the way he thought his rune-collecting journey would look like.
It meant he'd have to invest in runes that would help him in combat and also spend time and money on Eucharist runes just to make room for the others.
"Wait, how many runes are there for Miyalin weapons?"
Mint answered immediately, "15".
Zafer was calculating in his head.
If a weapon could only hold six runes naturally, he would need nine Eucharist runes to max out his axe.
"That's a lot", Zafer was indeed shocked to discover this.
When a weapon holds all 15 runes it becomes a Divine and unlocks a special ability.
This was the main reason why people strived to collect each rune on their weapon.
Mint agreed with Zafer.
"Yes it's a lot, but the amount of money that needs to be invested into a Divine isn't what represents the problem for most paladins, but the fact that some runes are very rare, like the special ones I just told you about".
Mint stood up and retrieved a thick book from his desk. It looked like it had at least a thousand pages. He set it in front of Zafer and flipped it open.
"This is the Eucharist rune. It's the most demanded rune you need 9 per weapon. Check this", he flipped through some random pages
Each page was filled with dense ancient text and intricate code. Zafer's eyes glazed over at the sheer amount of information.
"I mean someone has to rewrite this 9 times only for a single Divine! Not to talk about how long it takes to collect all these parchments!"
"How long does it take?", Zafer asked sincerely.
Mint leaned back.
"Well, it depends on how many people contribute and what part of their skin they are donating. For example the most common is forearm skin, but back and legs can work as well".
Zafer was baffled, "what do you mean how many people? Can't someone just continuously regenerate with a potion or repeater and generate however much parchment is needed?"
Mint laughed, "No, never. If a parchment donor uses Repeater or a red potion to heal their skin, it will permanently decrease in quality over time".
The A-9 was indeed a very unique from other anomalies.
Its value in Verms can't grow, but only plunge.
This made sense since the Priest and Skil always had bandages wrapped around their forearms
"What?! So, how do you go about it then? Just wait until your skin regrows?"
"Yep. We just wait until it heals naturally. Drinking or eating some natural products can enhance the healing process without endangering the quality. Like these cookies", he pointed at the empty plate of cookies from which they ate.
"I usually drink milk since they are very dry", he lifted the empty glass and then placed it back on the table.
Hok brought only one glass.
The cookies were meant for Mint.
Zafer blushed, "wait they were meant for you?!"
Mint exploded into a burst of laughter, "Don't worry about it, though I'm surprised you managed to get them down your throat with no milk".
Zafer smiled in embarrassment, "I'm training my saliva".
He was joking of course.
Mint laughed.
"Anyway, the point is, you won't have to worry about hunting down runes here. In this rune library, you'll find most of what you need".
Zafer scanned the bookshelves around him.
"May I see your axe?", Mint asked.
Zafer summoned his axe without a second thought and handed it over. There was no need not to trust him.
Mint accepted it carefully, using a thickly folded kerchief.
He carefully observed the colorful strings that danced within the Miyalin blade.
As a skilled scriptman, that was all Mint needed to identify the runes already present.
"Your axe doesn't hold the Anointment rune. I will treat you to it".
Zafer straightened up, serious., "No, you've worked hard to rewrite. I'll pay".
Mint chuckled. "You can't afford it."
"How much are they sold for?", Zafer asked bracing himself.
"The standard price for an Anointment rune is 500 000 units".
Zafer's mouth fell open.
He only had the 200,000 units, gifted by Ika. That wasn't even close.
"Well... I don't know what to say," Zafer finally managed. "Thank you."
"It's my pleasure. You won't have to worry about losing runes now, and even if a rune fails, you'll be safe".
"I heard the Numen faction's officer Oma didn't have an Anointment rune on his half-Divine axe when a 23 Verm grade rune failed. His axe broke. Apparently, he had a bit of a breakdown".
Zafer laughed out loud. That breakdown had to be a beautiful sight.
The implementation of the Anointment rune occurred the day after, but he stayed 5 days in total, sharing stories talking with Mint and even trying to with Hok.
As a token of gratitude, Zafer left his Book of Runes and Curses with Mint. Though Zafer had grasped the basics of runes, the complex explanations were still beyond him. But Mint might find value in it.
He was in any case sure to repay Mint with real money.
The good thing was that he had a place to acquire it. The grinder Semi and Knuckles have been working on.
As soon as he collects enough money, Zafer promised to come back to this library and buy many runes for his axe.