Chapter 107: Synergie [Check author’s notes!]

[Check author’s notes!]

The “bad” rune wasn’t bad; it was a stabilizer. A leash. A cage. Something you paired with the dangerous ones so you could actually survive using them.

He pulled out the rune in his hand and inspected it once more.

***

[ᚱ- ᚪᚾᚳᚩᚱ] -Anchor.

Legendary Rune.

Suppresses Mana Flow

Dampens Spell Output

Reduces magical volatility.

***

“This is the answer. I can already see it. Most runes have disgusting passives that make them hard to use. Too volatile, too dangerous, and can harm oneself. With Anchor… things change. The dampening of spell output might be disadvantageous when you read it for the first time. But it never said anything about dampening the ’power’ of the spell itself.”

Kael’s brain ran ahead, stitching ideas together faster than his hands could build them. Output didn’t mean impact. It didn’t mean efficiency. It didn’t mean the property of the spell. It meant… what, exactly? Maybe it meant size. Maybe it meant wasted flare. Maybe it meant all that useless “heat” that didn’t translate into force.

He immediately began analyzing and coming up with new theories on how to use these runes.

Looking at the gauntlet in his hand, he only had one socket to release the energy out of.

One palm. One exit. One trigger.

That was why he’d been stuck with the fire rune alone: you either held it and got cooked, or you mounted it and lost control.

But the rune [Heft] and the rune [Anchor] weren’t attacking runes. But we’re supporting runes…

They didn’t need to be in the palm. They didn’t need to be the “mouth” of the spell. They needed to be in the line, part of the circuit.

He looked at his gauntlet that extended from his hand to his elbow and realized he could do something with that.

His gaze traced the length of it. Steel. Leather lining. The slots and seams he’d created by brute improvisation. It wasn’t pretty, but it was his.

He pulled out Brokk’s hammer and began hammering at the gauntlet.

The sound was small in the open corridor, still a sound, still a risk, but not the deep ringing clang of real metalwork. Brokk’s hammer didn’t need brute force. It needed intent.

The goal was simple: to create two new sockets along the arm. One of them was designated for the Octagonal¹shaped Anchor. And the other for the Pentagonal shaped [Heft.]

He worked carefully, keeping his blows controlled, feeling the metal yield and re-form like it was soft clay pretending to be steel. A notch here. A groove there. A locking lip that would hold a rune snugly without shaking loose when he moved.

After hammering a bit and making sure that he wasn’t too loud, since he didn’t need to hammer with ’force’ when using Brokk’s hammer. He finished with having created two new sockets.

The gauntlet looked different now, less like a glove with a gimmick and more like a tool designed with purpose. A forearm braced for something bigger than a single spell.

However, he didn’t place both Heft and Anchor yet.

He paused, breathing slowly, feeling the faint sweat at his neck dry in the stale air. Because testing mattered. Because rushing meant learning the hard way.

“Let’s see the dampening effect first…”

He placed the Anchor rune first at the socket at the back of his arm, near his elbow. It was a high position that felt like it was the place that a legendary rune deserved.

The stone clicked into place like if it belonged there. The moment it seated, Kael felt a subtle shift, not heat, not pain, but the sense of a channel being shaped, a path being forced.

****

[Congratulations, you are the first to discover Rune Synergies on the first floor of the Reverse Tower.]

+1 Int

[Anchor is perfectly synergistic with [Fire] Rune.]

[Current Synergy of runes [100%]

****

“Oh… that’s something new…” Kael thought.

Synergy. Not just stacking effects, but the system acknowledges that the runes liked each other. That there was an intended pairing hidden under all the “trash output” nonsense people complained about.

He aimed his hand up at an empty corridor and activated the fire rune.

He didn’t point at something valuable. Not yet. Just a wall and empty space, something that wouldn’t scream and attract every red dot in the building.

He could immediately feel it. A good portion of the mana, though it was quite small, seemed to funnel into the upper part of his gauntlet. There was a ’heat’ of sorts that he felt, nothing harmful, but it felt like the heat that would come out from an electrical object that was functioning well.

It was smooth. Like the mana wasn’t fighting him anymore. Like it wasn’t trying to take the shortest, dumbest path and burn him for daring to use it.

Then the rest of the mana moved to the palm. And the fire rune activated.

A fireball, this time the size of a grown man’s fist instead of the usual bowling ball that the Fire Rune shot out and flew with incredible speed forward. Far more impressive and faster than before, far more controlled.

It didn’t wobble. It didn’t bloom uselessly. It snapped forward in a straight line like a thrown stone.

However, when it landed on a nearby wall, it simply spread all over it. Burning nothing but the unfortunate wall, and left a small dark singe on it.

The wall didn’t crack. The building didn’t shake. The fire just smeared and died, leaving a blackened mark like someone had pressed a hot iron to concrete.

“That’s pretty good…” Kael thought.

Control mattered. Speed mattered. And if he could add impact to that, he’d have something that wasn’t just scary-looking.

He then pulled the heft rune and placed it on the second socket, this one near the wrist.

***

[Synergies of runes [Anchor]+ [Heft]+ [Fire] 85%]

[The material being used loses too much mana, lowering the synergy rate. The Rune Gauntlet’s ’damage and effect’ output has been reduced by 15%]

***

“So, the lower the synergy, the lower the effect… but 15% shouldn’t be that much, let’s see what changes.”

Kael aimed with his right arm forward like some superhero.

And immediately, he regretted doing that pose.

The moment the mana drew from his body, he felt like his mind went blank for a fraction of a second; he wasn’t ready for that much draw.

It hit deeper than the fire rune alone, like a sudden siphon, like his body had been tugged through a narrow ring. His vision sharpened and dimmed at the edges simultaneously. A tiny, ugly reminder that “double mana consumption” wasn’t a joke.

The runes heated in sequence. Meaning they activated one after the other, starting from the top of the elbow, wrist, to the palm.

Anchor allowed the mana to go forward without taking any dangerous paths. Heft gave that mana a different property, and Fire, translated that mana into a fireball still the size of an adult’s fist.

Yet it felt like it was launched from a cannon instead.

Kael’s entire shoulder felt like it was about to be ripped out of its socket as the spell shot forward.

The recoil wasn’t heat, it was force. A punch traveling backward up his arm, through bone and tendon, trying to yank his shoulder apart. He staggered a half-step, boot scraping, teeth gritting as he kept his arm from whipping wide.

The fireball landed against the wall, the same wall, and instead of simply spreading all over it, it cracked the entire wall, the vibration and the sound of the blast was loud enough that Kael felt like he woke every living thing in this building with that action. Dust puffed from the cracks and drifted down in lazy sheets.

While the wall had cracks and fractures all over it.

This was with reduced power.

This was with bad quality material, merely steel and some basilisk scales.

And this was without Kael having ever learned magic.

Kael stared at the damage, chest rising and falling a little heavier now, not from exhaustion, but from that stunned, greedy realization that he’d just turned “trash” into a weapon.

“Holy shit, this is awesome.”

The words slipped out before he could even dress them up with sarcasm. For once, it wasn’t bitterness. It was pure, sharp satisfaction, because the tower could throw anything at him, and he’d still find a way to make it work.

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