Chapter 639: Sandy Dunes [Bonus]
Sylas took a step back, looking at things from a macro perspective.
'Hold on.'
His thoughts reached into the Madness Key and he pulled Szorn out. Was it a risk? Most likely. But Sylas felt that it was a worthwhile one.
"Ah, young master."
"Separate 100 Runes of the first layer into the Foundations. Eliminate all exact repeats."
Szorn blinked before hurriedly nodding.
As expected, Szorn knew the Runes like the back of his hand. Then again, they were just projections and not real drawn Runes. Szorn didn't seem to have the ability to communicate with the world like Sylas could.
Familiars could only interact with the world based on a connection with their masters, and Sylas had yet to even formally take Szorn in.
Soon, there were only about half of the 2300 Foundations remaining.
Sylas' eyes flashed as he scanned them.
"Good. Now eliminate all mirrored Foundations."
Szorn obliged and now there was just another half remaining.
"Now eliminate all translations."
This time, more than just half vanished. Instead, there was only over a hundred Foundations left. These were the truly unique Foundations. And even among these, Sylas could see several that were only slight tweaks of one another.
Mirrors and Translations were things that Sylas had learned both in middle school and just this past day. Ironically enough, they both applied to geometry.
He had touched upon the concept in the Secret Realm he visited, but it wasn't until now that it truly set in for him.
"Good. Now according to my instructions, eliminate the rest. I want all those that differ by half a Stroke gone. All those that have segment eliminations gone. All those that are combination Foundations gone."
Szorn obliged and soon there were only 51 Foundations hovering in front of Sylas.
'Yes. This... this I can do.'
If he could manage to bring these Foundations to 40%, or ideally 50% Mastery, then he was confident that he would be able to draw any one of the Runes of the first layer with speed.
And the most complicated of them... he had already mastered.
For reasons he didn't quite understand, Gralith had only demonstrated the drawing of one Foundation for him, leaving everything else up to projections and Szorn.
The one time Sylas observed Gralith, he was able to instantly push the core Foundation to 40% Mastery. It almost felt like Gralith was purposely slowing Sylas' progress down.
But Sylas didn't mind it. The knowledge was enough for him.
He had a servant bring him a brush and several blank scrolls. In the Inheritance Crystal, he had grown a fondness for this method of Rune instruction, so he didn't hesitate to do it once
more.
He stared at the Runes hovering before him for a long time, trying to capture some of the magic he had seen from Gralith.
Focusing on the simplest of the Foundations before him, his sights grew intent.
Szorn watched silently from the side, shaking its eyeball.
Sylas was clever, but he was maybe too clever for his own good. The reason Gralith could embody the nature of the Strokes and Foundations so well, even easily "dumbing" them down so that Sylas could observe, was because he had already reached the pinnacle of mastery.
The reason Gralith hadn't done it again was because he could see that Sylas was too sharp. If he started growing reliant on observation and copying, then he would weaken his own feel for Runes.
The entire point of Rune Essence was to hone a sixth sense that allowed one to hear Runes. It was only after that that you could begin to zoom in and catch the details.
There was a reason why in school teachers might often lie to younger students in order to dumb topics down, smoothing them over and only looking at them from a macro lens before teaching them the truth later on down the line in greater detail.
Sylas was precisely a younger student, but now he was trying to grasp those details far too early before he understood the bigger picture.
And when he ran into a wall and couldn't quite grasp the Runes the way he wanted to, he actually doubled down and went to studying the ten Strokes.
Sylas was nothing if not stubborn. He sat there for a very long while, churning through the same thoughts, but his progress was mind-numbingly slow.
Even as the morning sun was coming up, Sylas hadn't made nearly the progress he thought he should have. He thought that he had found a shortcut, but he felt that his progress might have even been much faster if he studied the Runes as a whole one by one.
Trying to understand the small pieces of the armor was like trying to piece together why an engineer tried to put a screw in a particular place on an engine without even knowing what cylinders were.
For all Sylas knew, one of these Foundations he was observing now was meant to play a key role in the function of the third layer, while he hadn't even come to understand the second
layer yet.
How could he expect success?
Sylas shook his head.
He had realized that truth after the first hour, but he had kept going because he knew that the longer way wouldn't give him enough time. Sometimes you had to make the stupid decision just in case it panned out, and this time, it didn't seem like he was going to be so lucky.
Just as Sylas had this thought, he felt a spike of danger warn him.
Despite his slight exhaustion, he hurriedly moved just as a vicious pincer tore through the roof of his carriage.
Sylas accelerated back and barely out of the way, but the scorpion creature was so large, and his carriage room so small, that he was inevitably harmed by the impact.
He was sent flying backward and crashed through the wooden walls of his carriage and out into the sandy dunes they sleighed across.