As Joren returned to the village, he made his way to Glenn's house to hand over the wolf. When Lauren opened the door, she was shocked to see him riddled with many injuries. She immediately went to fetch some healing potions and medicinal herbs which he gladly scarfed down.
A warm comforting sensation doused his entire body. He could feel his wounds closing and his fatigue being eaten away. Most wounds disappeared without a trace, but others were too deep and left scars. Lauren cried saying that if they had a healer, then the scars could be healed as well. But Joren didn't care about that, he liked the scars and thought it made him look tough.
After chatting for a bit, he noticed that Glenn wasn't home. Lauren told him that Glenn had to take care of something urgent and would be home around the evening. He had asked what Glenn was doing but she didn't know the answer to that. So, he put the wolf in the shed which had a cooling system using mana, courtesy of Brok the dwarf, had some fun with Lauren, and went back home.
Arriving home, Joren was greeted by a nice long juicy kiss from his mother who was just in the kitchen making lunch. His mother was very clingy, he didn't mind it though. Outside of the weird phenomenon that makes the women around him sexually attracted to him, she was just very clingy. He chalked it up to him being missing and a slave for five years.
After greeting his mother, he went up to his room where he saw Grace packing her belongings. She was now sixteen and that meant she would be joining the academy soon. The look on her face was a mixture of happiness and reluctance.
"What's wrong?" He approached Grace and sat on her bed, looking at her with eyes full of concern
"Oh, hey Joren. It's just...I don't want to leave." She sat down on the bed next to him and rested her head on his shoulder.
"But didn't you always want to go to the academy? Don't tell me you're getting cold feet?" He plucked her forehead
"Ouch! No, I'm not getting cold feet! I truly do want to go to the academy, but that means I won't be able to see you anymore. We just got you back and now I have to leave. It's not fair! But I also know that this is for my future and I can't let this chance pass." She explained shedding a few tears.
"Are you crazy? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! The Royal Academy rarely accepts commoners. I understand how you feel and trust me, I don't want you to leave me either. But I also know this is your future and I don't want you to throw it away for me. Imagine how Gloria feels, she only knows I'm alive thanks to the letters we've sent. She hasn't seen me in almost 8 years, and it will be 12 by the time I join the academy. I'll also be there by the time you're in your final year so it will be fine." They hugged each other and stayed that way for a few minutes before breaking away.
"Thanks." Grace kissed him on the lips and hugged him once more.
"No problem. Now let's go and eat lunch. I'm starving!"
After finishing lunch Grace went outside to practice while Joren went back to his room to work on his project. Joren hasn't only been training for the past almost three years. He had a side project he was working on but had to temporarily put it on pause because of his lack of information.
About eight months ago, he managed to acquire some knowledge that would allow him to progress with his project. He pulled out a book from his bookshelf that read "Arcane Magic" and took out something from his bag that was right next to the bookshelf, his slave collar.
You see, because of his past life, Joren has read many fantasy stories that had certain types of servant contracts or something that made a person loyal to another, one of them being the vulva tattoo also known as the succubus tattoo.
Using the slave collar as a reference, Joren wanted to see if he could replicate the function of the collar but in the form of a tattoo instead. He also wanted to change and create certain functions that would be beneficial to him in the long run. He learned that the slave collar works because of a bunch of runes placed on it so using the book, he managed to uncover what runes it uses.
Opening the book, he flipped the page where it was titled "Sigil's and Runes". A rune is a written form of arcane magic that allows for certain actions to be done more easily or to enhance something without the user exerting a lot of their strength. For example, if a sword has a rune of strength and sharpness, all the user has to do is pour mana into the sword and the runes will automatically activate causing the sword to become stronger and sharper. On Joren's workout equipment, there are runes of adjustment and abundance. The equipment will adjust to the body size of whoever is using it and once the workout becomes easy, the abundance rune will increase the intensity or weight depending on what they are doing.
A sigil is a type of marking specific to an individual. They can be made of many types of spells across all three types of magic. A sigil is basically a more enhanced rune but its functions are limited to whatever the user made it for. An example is, someone uses a rune of strength with a rune of protection. They then combine it with their fire element and place it on their shield. Now whenever they use the sigil on their shield, a barrier of flames will surround them and it would have a strong defense, but the shield overall doesn't have enhanced strength nor does it have enhanced protection.
The slave collar's main function is servitude, if the slave acts up, the collar will punish them inflicting pain on the person. Joren wants to take all the functions of the slave collar and create a sigil with them. But he also wants to create different versions of them. One for the women he will end up having. Those would simply be loyalty sigils and won't impair them in any way. The next one he wants to create will be a master-servant sigil. This one would function as the loyalty sigil except it would have a function to slightly harm the servant if they act up. Lastly, he wants to create a slave sigil which is self-explanatory.
"To create a sigil, one needs to create the shape out of their mana. Once that is complete, one would need to put the type of magic they want to use in the sigil, and if done correctly, the sigil would be completed." Joren read.
While it sounds simple, it's harder than it seems. The sigil Joren wants needs to be small enough to go on the navel which means he's condensing a ton of mana into a small area. Then he has to put a spell in that condensed area and if it doesn't work, the sigil would just break down. He also has to put the functions of the slave collar in the sigil and since he doesn't know that type of magic, he has to use the slave collar as a catalyst. It's basically like writing code on a computer.
'Okay, take number 1,999, let's do this!' He took a deep breath and once again tried to create a sigil.
He first formed a ball of mana between both hands and condensed it until it was the size of a golf ball. He then started shaping the mana into a heart with wings for aesthetic purposes. He could have gone with something simpler but, why do that when you could make it look cool? Once the shape was formed, the mana started going haywire.
The sigil started pulsing and cracking sending sparks of mana flying. The energy was unstable and looked as if it was about to explode. Joren concentrated and tried his hardest to get his mana under control. Arcane magic was different from Elemental and Aura magic. While they required the user to exert their own magical powers, Arcane magic was created and learned through research and development. It's basically the science of this world.
After a grueling 10 minutes, Joren finally stabilized the sigil. The next part was the hardest, programming the sigil. From the book he had about Arcane magic, Joren learned many things including Runes, but it wasn't anything special. In fact, you couldn't call his usage of runes actual runes, it was more like he understood their application and could mimic them but fully create them.
'Phew, okay, time to add it's functions. The first one should be absolute loyalty without taking away their free will. I just don't want people close to me to stab me in the back or relay any information about me.' He added his mimicked version of the Loyalty Rune. Integrating it into the entirety of the sigil took 10 minutes. One slip-up could force him to start again.
'Next is the servitude rune.' In actuality, there is no such thing as the servitude or loyalty rune, it's actually the rune of intertwining. Depending on how you use it, it can have many different functions, so much so that people just label them as different runes.
After another long 10 minutes, he finally integrated the servitude rune. Joren went on to add a few more functions to the sigil. A function where it harms the person on his command, a function where it could protect the bearer from slight harm, a function for him to know where the bearer is, a function that makes the bearer immune to mind probing as long as they are of the same or stronger than the person doing the probing, and lastly, a function that allows him to kill the bearer on command.
Once he was done, he actually didn't know how to confirm his creation. There was no "Click enter to confirm your sigil" in the instructions so he was kind of confused.
"Umm? I'm done." Nothing happened
"Complete" Silence
"Confirm." The sigil was still between his hands
"What the fuck! How am I supposed to 'confirm' my magic? Do I need to put it in my mind or something?" At that point, the sigil flew from his hands and went into his head.