It had been a month since Loki had become a Sequence 8: Swindler and he had experimented a lot with his new abilities, and one particular use of a seemingly random ability stood out.
Or at least Loki thought this ability was responsible for giving him the soft power to work with runes.
'Eloquence or Charm.'
It was the first power that was granted to him by the potion, the ability to appear like he was a cut above the rest, the ability that made him more pleasing to the eye had an unintended side effect.
It also made him more affluent in any language he spoke and by extension runes.
Loki could see and read runes like never before.
Although the potion did not give him any extra knowledge about the runes, he still could use whatever he had with much more 'eloquence' than before.
If before it felt like writing runes was scratching shapes and letters on paper, now it felt to him like he was writing cursive.
And not the cursive doctors wrote on their prescriptions, but the cursive an expert in calligraphy drew. It was an art form.
This had one more unintended or intended side effect.
It allowed Loki to study and understand runes and see how flawed other people's works were, he could naturally point out what parts of given arrays of runes were faulty or inefficient because they were not eloquent.
Loki was overjoyed and he'd spent the last month doing nothing but studying various alchemical objects he'd purchased and right now he was working on a rather expensive project.
Loki used a thin chisel to carve out runes in the handle of the object and just when Loki felt everything was perfect a soft blue glow emanated from the rune he'd just carved indicating perfection.
'Phew, I'm glad that worked, although it was risky to try and modify the broom, it's rather nice to see it all meld together properly.'
Grabbing the broom by the handle, Loki looked at the extra runes that had been carved into it with pride.
'At least it isn't exploding.'
Loki then left the broom in his hand, letting it fall, and when it fell, unexpectedly instead of hitting the floor, it floated right by his side, bobbing slowly as if it was waiting eagerly, waiting to be used.
"Test one commencing.", Loki announced and a few scritch scratches came from behind him.
Loki then sat on it and as soon as he did he felt a warm sensation travel across his body, this was the work of the fire charm rune he'd engraved onto the broom.
"Temperature is perfect and the comfort level has increased.", Loki said, which caused something in the room to produce scratching noises again.
As soon as Loki stabilised himself he leaned forward to fly but stopped himself just in the nick of time.
'I might crash if I test this inside.'
"Cancel test one." Loki voiced out loud and more scritching and scratching followed.
Lokki then grabbed the parchment that was hovering beside him along with a ballpoint pen that was writing on it.
"Alright, at least the writing style of the Dictation Quill is legible. It was a lot worse in the beginning."
The pen worked in a simple manner, once carved with the runes for mind, Loki could access the body of heart and mind for the pen, after that all he had to do was use his Beyonder ability to plant a suggestion to affect it with an intent, so that he could control how it moved.
The movement part was handled using runes that described the Levitation Charm.
So when combined together, the mind runes controlled how the levitation charm was to be used and the pen automatically did what Loki willed it to.
Loki was happy with his progress with runes over the last month, he had learnt a lot of things and had created a lot more things in the process.
But that was not what Loki's final aim for studying about runes was.
Pulling out a silver crystal that glimmered under the light from his pocket, Loki looked at it with a little bit of confidence.
His aim was to use the dawn paladin characteristics he'd gotten out of the ring of harvest and make an item that could help him in the future using it.
'I wonder if I can purify 'it' using this.'
Although he didn't know much about crafting items with Beyonder characteristics he was still a little confident in being able to make something half-decent because he could try multiple times.
As he could always use the power of the grey fog in the sefirah castle to destroy the item and get back the Beyonder characteristics used in it since the characteristic itself couldn't get destroyed.
'I have a month left, hopefully, that's enough.' Loki shrugged and went back to drawing his plans for the item in question.
On another side of the country, a blond witch looked at her sister and her parents.
"How did you get this?" The man asked with unhidden caution.
"Does it matter?" the little young girl said with amusement. "Sis brought it for me after all, so don't I get the final say?"
"Don't be in a rush Asty." The woman spoke with similar caution. "If that man was responsible for it, you can't take it Asty."
"Mom! I told you it wasn't him!"
"Then why don't you reveal his name?"
"Because I don't want to drag him into this! This is our problem! I don't want to involve a third person into it."
"Daphy whatever it is, we're Greengrass, we can't leave without giving him our thanks. For such help, it would be against the balance to not pay him back."
"....I already did." The girl mumbled.
"Huh? What did you say?" The man asked since no one heard what the girl said.
"I already did. I gave him a paper crane."
Immediately everyone's eyes opened wide in shock, but while the adults were dreading it, the little girl looked at her sister in excitement.
"Sis!! Are you telling the truth!!!? You really gave away a paper crane to him!?" The little girl asked shaking her sister, a big smile adorning her face.
"Daphne! What have you done!?" The lady asked with shock.
"I did what needed to be done." The girl said defiantly.
"WAAAA!!!!! Sis you're so bold!!!" the little girl exclaimed.
"....my daughter…" The man said with some disappointment and worry.
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