It was early in the morning. I sat in front of an old desk at the abandoned library inside the branch office of Farcrest's Alchemist Guild with a stack of paper and a quill in my hand. Traveling half the city each time I wanted to do proper runeweaving was a huge time sinkhole, but my world-saving endeavors required privacy, at least for the moment. People would have to know the truth about the Corruption cycle eventually. When? I wasn't sure. If I told them too early, I would be taken as a madman. Too late, and there would be no time left to take action on the matter. The only thing that soothed my worries was the fact that Ebrosians were well accustomed to magical disasters.

There was also magic. Not the modulated powers conferred by the System, but the real thing that lay beyond the mana pools. Magic was an incredible source of hope.

I cleared my thoughts and dove into the work.

Byrne's worst-case scenario was that corruption would peak in the next twenty years. He wanted to finish his teleportation machine in less than half that time. His numbers were only slightly more dire than Abei's predictions, so it seemed like a good approximation. If I had to guess, Byrne didn't expect the System to fail until he could carry out his plan.

First, I wrote a letter to Elincia. After a solid paragraph of corny remarks that she seemed to like very much, I told her about Wolf's ideas of paving the way for a non-System industry. I avoided going into details in the rare case that the letter was intercepted, but I hinted that it was a pressing matter. Elincia knew me well enough to notice. I advised her to take anything between one and three kids with a knack for mana manipulation and try to figure out how to create the protective bubble required to brew at least low-toxicity potions.

I pulled another sheet and wrote a letter to Lyra. Pushing mana into [Foresight], I made a list of machines and Systems I wanted to adopt at Whiteleaf Manor in the short term. She'd probably tear apart my plans, but she knew more than I did about managing a fief.

The bright part was that most of the systems I wanted to make public were already in late prototype stages. Orcs' dislike for the System came with an upside; they really liked machines. Besides, for the past two years, Lyra had been probing my brain like she was an alien hungry for knowledge. This letter was just a 'we should really speed up things'. I punctuated the letter by telling Lyra to use her best judgment.

Knowing that we could maintain some sort of normalcy even if the System fell gave me the peace of mind I really needed. Firana was convincing her Scholar friends to spread the word that I was willing to show the technical advances of my homeland to the Artisans Circle. I expected an invitation any day now.

At Ilya's request, I outlined an essay about non-System solutions to improving productivity in the hypothetical scenario of Class shortages. It was more of a mental exercise than a guide to solving real problems, though. Class shortages weren't a thing in Ebros. The System must've had a subroutine that offered or assigned the most needed Classes based on population needs.

At least in a rough fashion.

Healers were scarce and tended to gather in wealthy areas.

Honestly, getting rid of my secrets felt nice. Maybe my initial reluctance to become a public figure was unfounded.

With the plans for our safety net underway, I focused back on my duties as a teacher.

The mid-term selection exam was approaching, and Astur had decided to speed up the evaluation process. Usually, the field exercise took place near the end of the first year, when the cadets were more or less used to the intensity of Academy life. I couldn't shake the picture of Zaon telling me the rumors of deceased cadets during his first year. The safety measures at the Academy were severely lacking, but when I brought up the matter during an Instructor Council, Astur told me that generations of cadets had done just fine with the current methods.

I put the leftover paper away and brought a sealed box to the table. With a sliver of mana, I unlocked the enchanted lock and pulled out small pieces of various metals and woods. I also had a bunch of cheap bracelets, earrings, pebbles, and other things that were easily enchanted. Metal was the best material to enchant both because of the high enchantment threshold and because several runes had metal affinities.

Knowing that runes were concepts in the magical language made affinities feel strange.

I channeled the Rune Encyclopedia and opened it on a random page.

Force. Elemental Rune. Rank I. [Rune Identification]: This rune represents the primal magic energy. Affinities: Bone, Iron, Silver. Mana Threshold: 1500.

I wondered what the relationship between Force and bone, or Force and silver, was in the grand scheme of things. Runes were a non-human language, so maybe for the ancient beings that developed the runic language, that relationship was clear as day. Maybe it was a System thing to make it artificially easier to engrave Force runes into useful materials.

"Let's focus," I muttered.

My initial attempts at runeweaving revolved around a central effect rune surrounded by modifiers to make it work as I intended. Byrne's philosophy of Runeweaving, on the other hand, relied on the communication of the parts involved. That way, one could enchant heavy enchantments in objects with regular enchantment thresholds. When I asked him why 'masterwork' items had a higher threshold than regular items, he just smiled and told me it was hard to understand without a great attunement to the rune language. He told me that a person could easily tell the difference between smooth and rough surfaces, just like seasoned runeweavers could see the quality of enchantable surfaces.

Metaphysical traits made me feel queasy, like I was looking down a huge cliff from the edge, so I focused on what I had control over: small pieces of metal and a Rune Encyclopedia now twice as thick.

My old self would've thought about a communication system like two cups connected by a string. I would've tried to cram all the runes into a paired set of bracelets or earrings, probably with little success. Byrne had taught me his trick. I had to break the problem into small chunks, and then break those chunks into even smaller ones. The workhorse of Byrne's philosophy was the signal authenticator enchantment that allowed communication between enchanted items.

Magic signals were a bit more chaotic than electricity, so establishing what signal triggered what enchantment without interference was really important.

Byrne used sound or light wavelengths to authenticate most of his enchantments because it was less time-consuming than other methods. Sometimes he even used magic pulses of a certain power with proper receptors. Bind, Couple, and Link, for instance, were too heavy to put in every authenticator enchantment. The downside of wavelengths was that they were finite, so he had to be really cautious about which ones he had already used to not creating artificial interference. The upside was that Scholars had a great memory.

My idea for a communication device was a five-way 'radio' array that allowed me and the kids to talk in real time while being a few kilometers apart. Distance was a huge deal for enchantments. The Twin Rings still worked even though Elincia and I were a couple of hundred kilometers away, but both had fully powered Guide-Link sub-enchantments, which seemed to increase the range of the connection.

Magic, in essence, was energy, so a five-way connection was more demanding than two rings that tug at each other.

It would be impossible to cram the enchantment in a single bracelet, so I grabbed ten bracelets and five earrings and sorted them before me.

"Receiver Bracelet, Transmitter Bracelet, Earpiece. Five transmitters connected to four receivers each. I need to use the Couple rune if I want long-range communication. The earpiece can use a free pulse if I authenticate the signal from the Receiver Bracelet. But… a five-way Couple might be too heavy if I want to have any range," I muttered, running the numbers in my head. Buying masterwork bracelets with a higher enchantment threshold was always an option, but there would be moments when I would have to runeweave with whatever I had at hand. It was better to get used to it. "A five-way array requires ten lines, but if I couple the transmitter bracelets to a central relay, I can do it with five. A central relay can be bigger, like a backpack with a metal plate inside carried by a comically muscular half-orc teenager."

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I spent the next two hours tinkering with my design until I was sure everything was min-maxed so the Couple rune had enough power to connect the bracelets to the central relay over ten kilometers away. The current limiting factor was the transmitter bracelet. There was technically room for improvement; for instance, I could split the transmitter bracelet into a message encoder and a transmitter connected through a free pulse, but adding a third bracelet was kind of overkill. One way or another, I couldn't see the gadget getting more than twelve or thirteen kilometers of range without severely redesigning it or giving everyone a backpack antenna. I doubted any of us would break away more than ten kilometers from the 'radio backpack'.

The most sophisticated part of the array was the central relay. The five transmitter bracelets were connected to five receiver plates in the 'radio backpack'. The receiver plates sent the signals to the central emitter, which had enough strength to send a non-Couple signal to the other four receiver bracelets. The main problem with the central relay was that it had five receivers who could send signals simultaneously to the emitter, creating a mangle instead of a clear message. I needed the signals to behave in an orderly manner.

At first, I thought about giving each signal a priority rank. The solution was simple and easy to implement, but it led me into a whole new set of problems. Firana would hate me if she knew I gave Ilya's messages priority over hers. The same applied the other way around. Besides, a distress message could get buried if messages from a high-priority rank kept coming.

"First come, first served, then," I said, unaware of how difficult it was going to be to convince a few pieces of metal to have temporal awareness.

The central relay grew heavier, but in the end, everything seemed to work. At least on paper. Luckily, Byrne was very interested in conditional control and enchantment states, so I knew how to implement a simple traffic light system for the incoming messages. It required an absurd amount of underpowered Stockpile, Detect, and Activation runes, but until I learned more obscure runes like Synchro, Resonate, and Reverse, I was trapped with subpar solutions.

In the end, Rune Debugger told me that my mess of cross-enchanting was, at least, grammatically correct. Nothing was going to explode, although I wasn't sure if the end result would have the functions I expected. The bigger the enchantment, the more things that could go wrong, and even a single wrong logical gate could turn my faux radio gadget into a brick.

Seeing my blueprint, I knew it would take hours of enchantment just to engrave all the runes.

"I know things have been going too well lately, but please. Make this work."

With a sigh, I grabbed one of the bracelets and began engraving the runes through will alone. Midway, I decided it would be more important to start by creating a diagnostic tool, a modification to the transmitter bracelet design that would allow me to test any part of the array separately, which I engraved on a new bracelet. Then, I created a copy of the diagnostic tool so that I could try to overload the central relay. Since it was impossible to resume an enchantment halfway through, the first bracelet was junk now, so I grabbed a fresh one and\ started working on the first transmitter bracelet.

The work was repetitive to the point that it became soothing. Enchanting dozens of tiny runes had a therapeutic effect that only a handful of people in the continent's story had experienced. My mind wandered, and I invariably went back to Byrne and the System Avatar. Both of them had decided how to fix the Corruption mess. I was the only one without a bulletproof plan.

"Maybe I need an elegant answer," I muttered. "...elegant like the formulas of classical physics. More elegant than Byrne's ark and the Avatar's hotfixes."

I engraved runes for a few more hours before I noticed how much my back hurt. The sun entered the room at a strange angle, and I realized I had been in the same position for too long. The communications device was halfway ready. Maybe six more hours of runeweaving, not counting any potential re-dos. Underpowered runes were faster to engrave, but there was a limit on how fast one could runeweave. Longer strings required both more time and exponential amounts of mana, which made Byrne's method genius. The longest string I enchanted in this project was a part of the sorting mechanism to arrange the arrival of the messages. Fifteen runes long wasn't that much, considering the complexity of the gadget.

I was stretching my back when I heard the footsteps outside. It was the branch leader walking down the corridor outside the door. The footsteps grew louder, but he rarely met me in person. Instinctively, I threw a [Mirage] over the table and used [Mana Mastery] to grab a book from the nearest shelf. The branch leader knocked on the door.

"Lord Clarke? Someone wants to meet you."

Book in hand, I turned the key and opened the door. A very thin man with sunken cheeks and heavy bags under his eyes was standing in the corridor. He wore a green robe with the impaled wolf of the Farcrest family embroidered on the chest. Despite his fragile appearance, I knew the man was strong as a whip. Alchemists and Healers aged extremely gracefully.

"If it's Firana, Zaon, Ilya, or Wolf, you can let them through, Rowan."

The kids were the only ones who knew I was at the Guild.

"You don't have to remind me of the details of your request, Lord Clarke. My memory works well. It isn't the Imperial Cadets who want to meet you," Guildmaster Rowan replied with an annoyed voice. "Philliep Ansel Greymarch of Valdaria expects you in the reception area."

I blinked. That was a very fancy name, and I had no idea who it belonged to.

"Who is this gentleman?" I asked, wondering how long I could safely make him wait.

I had evidence to hide.

"One of the sons of Guildmaster Toran from the Greymarch Merchant Guild. Not the heir—one of the youngest," Guildmaster Rowan said before nervously asking, "You'll meet him, right?"

I nodded, wondering what a merchant family wanted with me and how they found me.

"Just give me a minute and I'll be there," I said, closing the door before Guildmaster Rowan could follow me inside the library.

In less than a minute, I sorted the enchanted bracelets and tucked them away in their magically sealed box. When I opened the door, Rowan was still out there in the middle of the corridor, looking worried.

"Will you tell me if the Greymarch pup means business?" he asked.

"I will."

"Really?"

"On my honor."

The Guildmaster gave me a satisfied smile and guided me downstairs.

The guild branch was different than the first time I had visited. Somehow, the old building had experienced a resurgence. The floor planks didn't creak, the old railing looked like it had just been cut from a single piece of giant oak, and even the cracks in the ceiling that made a whistling sound when the wind blew at a specific angle had disappeared.

I quickly came to the conclusion that Kili's brother was a better Mender than I expected.

"How's Wren doing?" I asked as we walked down the stairs, silent as phantoms.

"The Mender's work has been satisfying. I shouldn't have doubted Lord Clarke's appraisal of the situation," the Guildmaster said with his best businessman voice.

I couldn't tell how much of it was exaggeration. [Foresight] largely depended on the System to make readings, and I knew for a fact that the old man used several enchanted trinkets to hide his mood. Throwing off merchants' readings was good for business.

I let the Guildmaster guide me towards the reception, where a tall young man was sitting in one of the soft leather armchairs, playing with the hem of his capelet.

"Lord Clarke," the young man jumped to his feet as soon as he saw me approaching.

"Lip?" I replied as my eyes fell on the handsome face of Firana's partner in crime.

I exchanged a surprised glance with Guildmaster Rowan.

Philliep Ansel Greymarch, son of a renowned merchant family, Lip for short.

"Firana didn't mention...."

"Firana is so focused on her goals that she often forgets the more mundane things. It's charming, really. She told me I would find you here." Lip interrupted me, sitting back in the armchair and giving me a mischievous grin. "It's settled. I spoke with an Adept of the Artisans Circle, she spoke with a couple of Preceptors, and they are excited to host a lecture about the mechanical wonders of Connecticut. These are all the possible dates before the midterm selection exam."

Lip handed me a rolled piece of paper. Something in his voice made me think it had been a lot more difficult than speaking to an Adept. Less than a full day had passed since Ilya persuaded me to carry out her psy-op, and even with the clarity of mind [Foresight] gave me, I was caught by surprise. It wasn't even lunchtime. Firana must've told him yesterday afternoon, so Lip only had a few hours to convince everyone this was a good idea.

"Thank you, Lip, but it wasn't necessary to do it so quickly. I'm here until the end of the year, so we have some time," I said, examining the schedule.

He gave me a curious look.

"Firana said as soon as possible…" he stopped himself and smiled. "Ah, I guess she can be like that. Well, the work is done. Can I take you out for lunch, Lord Clarke?"

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