A Couple Days Later…
Lee Seng sat in the living room with papers all around him. He snapped out of it and yawned. "Ahhh, I spaced out, again." He stretched and collected the papers around him, noticing something totally different. He had drawn a couple of runes he thought he had forgotten about.
'Noct.' Lee Seng stared at the dark rune with eyes behind. Without much thought, he raised his hand and did the movement. He didn't feel anything happen. He lowered his hand and sighed. 'Of course it doesn't work. It's an Earth rune made by the great Runic King.' He moved the paper aside and flipped through the others.
Lee Seng spent the last couple of days researching anything and everything on the Deimons. There were always Deimon leaders at advertisement events. The D31 faction was great for the city and many people wondered if their earned money from the juicers were being put back into the city to foster a great relationship with the city and its people.
"I must be tired cause I'm drawing old runes again." Lee Seng whispered as he looked at three balls branching in different directions. It was a crude drawing, but the rune's information came up like Lee Seng remembering random facts. "Tears… Why did I draw this?"
[Tears: Earth Rune | Magic Attribute: Wind | Effect: A strong gust of wind whips around in an area, lowering vision for an amount of time.]
'A distraction rune.' Lee Seng thought. The AI had pulled up the information without him even saying anything. It was like the AI was collecting all of the information he had in his brain and compiling together so it was easier to process. 'I can't use any of these runes… Why did I draw them?'
He flipped through the pages and noticed less and less words. They were replaced with runes and then suddenly switched back to writing. It was like Lee Seng was put into a trance. The door beeped and opened.
"Whew!" Evan huffed, pushing into the cool room. Ritsuka, Liz and Manny shuffled in after him, closing the door. "It's hot today. It's a blessing we got A/C for days like this."
"It was even hotter in Daros. I don't know why you're complaining about the heat here." Ritsuka commented, taking his shoes off. The others followed suit, bringing food to the kitchen.
"How's it going, Lee?" Liz asked wandering over to Lee Seng. She peered at his paperwork and noticed a lot of runes and scribbled information. "Are those runes?"
"Yeah." Lee Seng answered a bit distant.
"Why did you draw runes? I thought you were gathering information."
"I… dunno." Lee Seng answered. He moved to the last page and noticed it wasn't runes at all. It was parts of runes all meshed together in a strange drawing. "When did I do this…?"
"It looks like a map." Liz told him. He snapped out of it and looked up at her.
"You think so?" Lee Seng asked. Liz nodded and sat next to him. She pointed at the three balls with branching paths.
"It seems like these might be some sort of starting or exiting points that branch out to this one here." Liz explained. "The paths all lead to rune-looking areas. Where did all of this come from anyway?"
"I'm not sure. I was researching and then I kind of spaced out hard. I came to and saw that the information I was gathering about D31 was mixed in with all of this rune stuff." Lee Seng set the papers down and rubbed his eyes. "I think I need to take a break."
"Why don't you go lie down for a bit?" Manny suggested. "I'll get you for lunch." Lee Seng nodded and stood up, letting out another yawn. Liz stood up and made her way to the kitchen counter with chairs.
"Where's Olivia and Keng?" Lee Seng asked, moving over to stand behind an empty chair.
"They're at the library. Olivia and Keng are looking for runes." Manny answered.
"If they were gonna look for those stuff, I should've went with them." Ritsuka sighed. "I wanna look at runes again…"
"You should send them pictures of the runes you sent then, Lee." Liz suggested. "Maybe they'll find something with them?"
"They won't." Lee Seng shook his head. "The runes don't match up with each other at all. They're all runes Uncle taught me."
There was a pause. Liz, Evan, and Ritsuka looked up at Lee Seng while Manny stared at the bag in front of him.
"Nikolai did drill those runes into you." Manny broke the pause. He continued unpacking the contents in the bag and setting them on the counter for the others to put away. "Honestly, if you think about it, why did he do that? It wasn't like you could use most of what he taught you."
"Maybe he secretly wanted to share what he was working on with me." Lee Seng shrugged. "Anyways, they don't need to know the runes I drew. I know most of them by heart at this point. Uncle drilled runes into my head like he drilled mathematical equations." He began to turn to walk into his room when it finally clicked. "Runes are like mathematical equations. How could I forget?"
He spun around and went back for the papers. He knelt down and pulled all of the rune papers out.
"There he goes." Manny whispered.
"What did you figure out?" Ritsuka asked.
"I remember Uncle telling me each rune was a number of sorts. Its how I learned most of the information so fast." Lee Seng explained. "It gets more complicated when you start learning all of the advanced runes. They start becoming math equations. So, when we got to Uncle's runes he made, they became literal math equations that involved way more thinking."
"I'm amazed you even remember that." Manny commented. Lee Seng grabbed a blank sheet of paper and started to jot down math equations.
"If we put all of the math equations together…" Lee Seng whispered. "What would we get…?" The page quickly filled with numbers and letters. Ritsuka and Evan moved over and stared in awe at the page of math equations.
"What're you going to do with all of this?" Evan asked.
"If I solve it all… maybe it'll give me the rune I'm trying to think about." Lee Seng answered.
"Ugh, I'm gonna have to watch you do math for thirty minutes?" Ritsuka turned away. "I rather figure out lunch."
Lee Seng went for quite a while, smelling food cooking while Evan and Liz sat on the couch. The TV turned on and the two watched TV while Ritsuka and Manny cooked. Olivia and Keng eventually came back and noticed Lee Seng was deep in some strange math equation.
"What's he doing?" Keng asked.
"Math." Ritsuka answered.
"He's almost done with it… I think." Evan glanced over. Keng and Olivia waltzed over, noticing the many pages of numbers on the page.
"Wow… That's a lot. Why is he doing this?" Keng looked at Evan and Liz.
"He was drawing runes while he was researching earlier." Liz motioned. "He said something about the math equations will give him the rune he's thinking about." Keng cocked his head and shook it. He straightened himself out and planted a seat on the couch.
"That sounds like too much work." Keng sighed.
"Did you guys find anything about that rune the D31 has been using?" Manny asked.
"It's nothing the library has." Olivia answered. "We even decided to go all the way to the Guild for information and got nothing there either."
"That means they definitely have a runic mage in their ranks." Evan sighed. "That'll be fun…"
"GOT IT!" Lee Seng slammed the pencil onto the table. He lifted the paper up into the air and looked at the answer. He smiled for a couple seconds and then frowned. "Did I do the math right…?" He grabbed the other papers and scanned through it. "This looks right…" He pulled the paper with the answer and continued to check. "If it's this then that means…"
[Answer: Trina's Last Wish]
"Train's Last Wish… I think I remember that one. It was the stars one, right?" Lee Seng grabbed a random sheet of paper and flipped it. He drew the rune, noticing his own energy fusing with the paper. "Why is it doing that…? It's never done that before… Paper shouldn't—"
Stars exploded all around the apartment, flickering past the physical space. The stars twinkled as the group gasped.
"What's going on?" Ritsuka asked.
"What did you do, Lee?" Evan asked. Lee Seng and the others started at the stars around them in awe.
'How is this possible?' Lee Seng wondered.
[Trina's Last Wish | Magic Attribute: Celestial | Effect: Call down upon a star that grants you one wish. | Wish Effects: Physical, Magical, Buff, Debuff…]
'A support-type spell that has an effect based on what the user wants… Why did it do this though…?' Lee Seng wondered. His eyes began to burn, causing discomfort. He clutched his eyes, letting out a grunt.
"Little, Fox. It seems like you've figured out the trick." An ethereal, low voice spoke. "I've been waiting for you to call upon me… Now, where are you?"
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om