The hairs on my nape stood on end. The environmental mana in the observatory buzzed as it reacted to Byrne's runes, and the thin layer of water inside the granite bowl made small waves. I forced my body to stay still. The effect created by high-rank runes resembled the Lich's area spells too much for me to be comfortable. Fortunately, an instant later, the sensation disappeared.

I leaned forward as the surface darkened and became still as a mirror. My stomach turned. [Foresight] told me to stand back, but my monkey brain prompted me to touch the surface.

Byrne shook the last strands of mana from his fingertips.

The portal was complete.

"As I was saying, there are two forms of teleportation. Gentle teleportation and violent teleportation. Gentle teleportation is easier to pull off because the arrival portal serves somewhat as a landing strip. Violent teleportation, on the other hand, requires a lot more mana due to the fact that you are connecting two places that shouldn't be. You might think that magic doesn't follow the rules of locality, but that's not completely true," Byrne said, looking at the granite bowl with an inscrutable look. "There is only one difference between rune language and human language. Spoken language unfolds over time in a linear manner, and when done, it vanishes. Speech exists only as it happens, and you can't rewind or jump ahead. The runic language, however, doesn't unfold through time, or even space, but through an extra dimension of causality special to magic."

I raised an eyebrow. Half of Byrne's lessons were extremely practical, while the other half started to delve deep into almost-metaphysical matters. His explanations of runeweaving grew more abstract and speculative, and when I asked for clarification, he just hit me with the same old 'only someone whose brain is wired to speak runic language would understand.'

"Are you telling me time travel is real?" I asked.

"I'm saying it doesn't technically clash with the baseline rules of magic, not that it's necessarily possible or even viable." Byrne shrugged. "Take it as a mental exercise to understand magic better. The less you treat it like a manifestation of natural laws, the better you will understand it. It's hard to put it into words. It's like describing depth to a blind person, you technically can with the right words and metaphors, but the experience of depth is a completely different phenomenon."

There it was again.

Byrne threw a ball of paper into the darkened surface of the granite bowl, and it disappeared without breaking the water's surface. The ball instantly reappeared five meters from us through a similar granite bowl, with the same momentum, and then fell to the floor.

The trick was as cool as the first time I saw it.

"Why are you telling me all of this? It's not like I will be able to experience runic language," I pointed out, retrieving the paper ball. It had no signs of damage.

"If you had a secret for seventeen years, you'd be dying to tell someone." Byrne returned to his desk with fast strides.

My 'secret' had lasted less than a year before I told Elincia, so he had a point.

"Let's talk about something more interesting. Magical topology," Byrne said, flashing a wad of paper he probably spent the night writing.

Teleportation across small distances was like throwing a stone through a door—or a window. Long-distance teleportation, on the other hand, was more akin to launching a spaceship into a really small asteroid in the Oort cloud through the gravitational wells of thousands of stellar bodies. It required a lot of fine-tuning, a lot of energy, and, in the case of Byrne's first arrival at Ebros, a lot of luck. The numbers made little sense to me, and more than once, I suspected Byrne was making things up. Things connected through 'magic' didn't make a lot of sense.

Byrne gave me an apologetic look.

"It's not that hard. Runeweaver Baram anchored Earth and Ebros, so the magical fluctuations shouldn't be much of a concern in a long-range, gentle teleportation," Byrne said, like he was reading my mind. "We only have to account for the Fountain, the flow of passengers, and maybe some constant. Do you remember anything about fluid dynamics?"

Regrettably, I did.

With some help from [Foresight], I sat at the desk and helped Byrne revise his teletransportation theory. Despite Ilya's worries of Byrne constructing a magical meat grinder, the math he was showing me was consistent with his theory of long-range teleportation. There was no doubt he had spent the last decade and a half trying to come up with such a machine. He'd even used himself as a test subject during his first attempts.

That didn't prevent me from extracting as much information as I could from him.

"Will you be able to runeweave if the System crumbles?" I asked.

Byrne gave me a strange look. The wrinkles in his forehead created three deep crevices. He had aged a lot since I saw him in the office of Connor & Connor, and part of me suspected that despite the anchoring, the timeframes of Earth and Ebros were still slightly out of phase.

"Will you be able to do it?" I asked again.

"You are thinking the System is the intermediary for my runeweaving."

"Isn't it? Didn't the Avatar give you your powers?"

'Will my runeweaving survive the System collapse?' I thought.

Byrne remained silent, as if measuring his options. He always did the same when I asked him difficult questions. Since Ilya had told me to assume the old man knew about my runeweaving powers, I've been working to prevent a second Janus incident. Most of it was gathering information about runeweaving, but I also wanted to know what Byrne's plans were for his portals. So far, he hadn't given me any reason to believe he wanted something other than helping evacuate the people of Ebros.

"Once you learn a language, it's impossible for someone to take it from you," Byrne finally replied. "The Runeweaver class is more like a translator between written and sign language."

If I knew I was going to deal with this, I would've majored in linguistics.

I continued working to hide the fact that I was there to ask questions.

"When are you going to tell everyone that the world is ending?" I asked.

Byrne raised his eyes from the page he was revising and gave me a quizzical look.

"When would you do it?" He turned the question around to me.

"When the signs of the end are unmistakable, but even then, will people listen?"

Even if the world were going to become a Corruption wasteland, some people would want to keep their political or economic power intact. Leaving for another world would be a huge risk to their position.

"You are missing something important. In this land, there is a title more important than king and high priest," Byrne said with a smug smile.

[Foresight] connected the dots in an instant. In hindsight, it was obvious. Throughout the continent's history, there has been a messianic figure above Zealots, people who appeared out of nowhere to fix things and create mythical weapons and armor.

"You are going to tell them you are a Runeweaver."

Byrne nodded.

"Don't you go thinking I've been doing things haphazardly, Robert. I know I plan to create the greatest refugee crisis in the story of Earth and Ebros. It will be dangerous. It will be costly. And it will reveal Ebros to the people I swore to keep it hidden from, but in these times, one has to be pragmatic. It's better to have a human-tainted world of magic than none at all."

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

I understood that Byrne referred to Earth humans when he said human-tainted. He sighed as his eyes returned to his notes.

"I'd like to think our people will join to withstand the calamity. Picture it. Earth uniting to save interdimensional travelers. That would be quite the sight," he said, suddenly in a better mood. "You are going to make everyone so mad for being the first earthling to score an elf girlfriend, though. Don't fret. I can introduce you to a good marketing agency. I have an idea to clean your image. Imagine this: Robert Clarke, Patron Saint of the Beastgirls. The Internet guys will build shires with your name on them."

I handed Byrne a sheet of paper with the values of possible trajectory curvatures depending on the Fountain's expected remaining energy a decade from now and the interference of the portal itself. Luckily, our teleportation would be gentle. The arrival point was a portal Byrne had already prepared inside one of his properties.

If Byrne succeeded in his plan, the Hamptons would become the most interesting spot on Earth. The memory of Ilya scolding me popped into my mind. I needed my own plan and my own countermeasures.

All this time, [Foresight] had been telling me Byrne was truthful, and it wasn't like he could rewrite the runes in my manapool. Every time I met him, I made sure everything remained the same. Despite the reassurance of my abilities, I couldn't bring myself to fully trust him. Still, I couldn't not help him.

What if his solution was the right one?

"Those look fine," Byrne said. "I got told you gave a lecture for the Library. You are all the rage around here these days. The old man from the Artisans Guild has been pestering me, asking why I had been monopolizing you."

The lecture on 'mechanical wonders' had turned into a handsomely paid series that lasted a whole week, and the Archivist of the Artisans Circle, a man as old as time, had seemingly fallen madly in love with me. Of course, my lathes and milling machines had gotten a few detractors who wrote heavy-handed letters to my room at the instructors' quarters. It would take some time until they made up their mind on the usefulness of the machines, and it wasn't like a sufficiently experienced craftsman couldn't replicate their functionalities with a lot less effort.

"Do you have a problem with me sharing those?" I asked.

"As long as you don't teach them to make guns and napalm, I'm fine. We already have plenty of ways of killing each other in this world," Byrne replied. "Well… not that it matters. In time, they will be able to just search it on the internet. Now that I think about it, it was a good idea to make them familiar with the things on Earth. It will make it easier for them to adapt once they arrive. Maybe, introducing functional portals for civil use within Ebros will make the population less wary of them when it comes to the time to flee from Corruption."

"Portals will mess up the trade routes."

Byrne raised an eyebrow and gave me an amused look.

"Now you are talking like a proper noble," he said. "Well, that's enough for today. As much free time as it seems I have, I also have to manage my Circle."

I gave the granite fountain a last look, using [Rune Identification] to determine what runes Byrne had used. However, when I focused on it, I got a strong headache and the eerie feeling that reality was shifting. I assumed my body wasn't yet ready for higher-rank runes. The System Avatar had told me I not only needed to learn the runes but also let my magic mature. I wondered what exactly he meant by that.

Byrne accompanied me down the bronze stairs, and we left the observatory. Halfway through the workshops of the Arcane Circle, we parted ways. I jumped in the elevator and returned to the base floor. The sight of the library was still as impressive as the first day I crossed the main gates. Lyra Jorn deserved this, not a position as a kindergarten teacher in a backwater town like Farcrest. I hoped we could exchange places.

The silver lining was that I had learned one or two important things. Byrne's portal network was interesting. Portals, like enchanted items, were independent of their creator, which meant they were something I could use if things went wrong.

My mind sent me back to the Farlands during the Monster Surge, and I held onto that feeling for a moment. The need for survival. I still wasn't sure why Byrne was teaching me so much about runeweaving, but I was going to use that to survive. In the end, the closer I stayed to Byrne, the better I could see any betrayal coming.

The dark thoughts followed me as I walked through town, but at that point, I had decided to accept them as part of the basic survival kit.

On my way out, I grabbed a hand-bound book one of the Preceptors at the Artisans Circle had prepared for me. The Preceptor was a bald, stocky Master Craftsman with a long red beard and a perfectly spherical belly who specialized in hard non-metallic materials. Despite the fact that I couldn't use [Identify] on him, nobody was going to convince me he wasn't a dwarf.

I brought the hand-bound book to the office branch of the Farcrest Alchemists Guild and wrote Ginz a short missive.

I know Elincia had been telling you to throw away all those Forest Warden Roots you have lying around, but you were right to keep them. This book might help you make something useful of them. I have a student who is a Puppeteer. You should try to make her something. Maybe as tall as Virdian, flexible as Nokti, and as cute as Shu.

Then, I put everything in an envelope and asked the receptionist to ship it to Farcrest as soon as possible. Ginz was going to hate me. Sure, he would appreciate the information, but he would despise the fact that I put another project on top of the dozens he was juggling with Lyra Jorn.

My mind wandered.

Rup didn't just control her puppets but also protected them. That was her biggest weakness. Each hit received by her puppet syphoned part of her mana. The greater the hit, the more mana she lost. Of course, with a destroyed puppet, she couldn't fight, so not protecting it wasn't an option. Therefore, the answer was a more durable puppet, one that didn't need to rely on Rup's barrier. The Forest Warden Roots were the best material I could think of. At the orphanage, only Izabeka, Risha, and I could reliably cut it.

Satisfied with my work, I left the workshop and began making my way towards the Academy.

The fact that the destruction of the System wouldn't erase my runeweaving creations felt like a light at the end of the tunnel. Mana Draining was our best weapon against magical threats, and manufacturing a million Clarke&Ginz Smoothbore Blasters wasn't out of the picture if things went incredibly wrong.

As I took a detour to a butchery, I wondered if I should start enchanting metal caps with the Force-User-Direction-Bind runes in my free time. I bought the cured ham Firana liked and returned to the street.

Firana was mad at me, so I thought her favorite ham would bring her back to her usual jolly mood. The fact that I had grown closer to Leonie and the other girls didn't sit well with her. Then, when I told them they would have to learn Morse Code to use the communication device, it didn't make things any better.

Down the street, I entered a herbalist's store and bought tea for Talindra's upset stomach. She had been absent three days, which was worrying, considering she could brew herself medicine with her Herbalist skills. When I brought it up, she said not all potions worked for all ailments, which was technically true.

I returned to the Academy without further delay, left the ham on the table in my room, and crossed the empty teacher's lounge. The women's quarters were on the opposite side, with their own private bathroom at the end of the corridor. Ebros was generally egalitarian regarding gender, but Imperial Knights seemed to have special rules of decorum.

I knocked on Talindra's door. "It's me. I brought you something."

Talindra's wooden cogs clacked against the floor.

"Do you use the robe even on your day off?" I jokingly asked as the door opened, trying to lighten the mood.

"Are you the kind of person who judges others by how they dress?" Talindra gave me a weak smile.

"You aren't?"

Talindra moved to the side and let me through. She was pale as paper and had dark circles under her bloodshot eyes. The room wasn't as barebones as mine. In the corner, underneath a clump of lightstones, was a brewing station. One of the walls was covered with a rack of dry herb bundles. Heavy wool blankets rested on top of the bed, with a huge bookshelf and a leather armchair at its feet. It was very cozy and smelled nice.

"Ghila's aura might be upsetting your stomach," I said, closing my eyes. "I'm almost certain she's two rooms to the left right now."

Talindra sat on the bed, taciturn.

I noticed the towels and the currently empty puke bucket between the bed and the nightstand. She didn't seem any better than the day before.

"Have you thought of asking one of the Healers of the Nature Circle to look at you?" I asked.

"I'm fine. I just need to rest," she replied, with forced nonchalance.

[Foresight] was having none of it. Talindra's tells were clear as day even without the skill. She avoided my eyes and wrung her hands against her chest. I've seen five-year-olds who lied better.

"At least let me have Wolf look at you."

"I told you I'm fine. Really." Her voice quivered.

I knew her well enough to tell that she was hiding something important. Ebrosian Rob pushed Earthly Rob aside for an instant.

"I swear, Talindra, I'm going to use [Identify] on you, and if you have any strange status, I'm dragging you to the doctor," I said, putting my best disappointed teacher face.

"No! Don't identify me!" Talindra jumped up, protecting herself with both hands.

Ilya's words echoed in my mind.

You should be more tactful.

"If you say it's fine, then it's fine, but if you need anything, I'm right here," I said, looking for her eyes. "I meant it, Tali. No matter how major or minor your problem is, no matter how busy I am, I will always have a moment for you."

My words might not have had the expected reassuring effect because Talindra started sobbing. My mind rushed. Most sicknesses and diseases were treatable with potions and magic, but there were conditions that couldn't be cured with magic. Mister Lowell had perished at the hands of one of them. Maybe she had one of those. Should I tell Byrne to open a small portal to Earth and have her checked in a hospital?

Talindra wiped her cheeks, but the tears kept coming.

I sat on the edge of the bed and took her arm, encouraging her to sit beside me.

"What's wrong, Tali?"

Her chin trembled, and she hesitated. Her eyes filled with tears. Finally, a shaky whisper escaped her lips.

"I'm pregnant, Rob."

I froze like someone had cast [Stun Gaze] on me, my brain short-circuited, [Foresight] went offline, and for a moment, I didn't know what to say.

"Pregnant with a baby?" I mumbled.

Talindra cried even harder.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.