I glanced at the fox before I replied, after a moment of thought, "Structure," I said. "The Inscriptions, I think, are built like a body. Each one has a purpose, and they work together, the same way muscles and bones work together."
I pointed to a cluster of scripts at the center of the breastplate. "This is the... heart, which should be the central script. It connects to all the others, coordinating them."
I moved my finger to a line of script that ran along the edge of the pauldron. "This is a conduit. It should carry power from the heart to the limbs, keeping them moving."
I looked at the gauntlets, which contained fine, delicate scripts etched into the fingers. "These are receptors, and I believe they interpret the commands from the chip and translate them into movement."
The fox tilted her head. "That’s amazing, Elric. You’re learning to read it."
I nodded, "I’m learning to see it. The growth of my Inscription gives me the potential to learn these new Inscriptions, and I only need to see them to begin understanding them."
I began to copy the scripts onto the floor, using a thread of the Loom to trace the patterns into the metallic ground. It was slow, painstaking work, but I could feel the knowledge settling into my mind the way water settles into dry soil, and I was loving every moment of it.
My soul was much more powerful than when I was an Acolyte, and learning and comprehending had never been easier.
[Inscription: 43 → 45 → 48 → 51]
The notifications flickered in the corner of my vision, but I ignored them. I was not doing this for the numbers at this point; I was doing this to understand the intricacies behind magic.
As I carved the Inscriptions into the ground with my lightning threads, there were moments when it seemed my Anima wanted to flow down the threads before they were absorbed by the threads.
I did not spend a lot of time thinking about these peculiarities; I kept carving.
Since I was not bothering to create a perfect working script as I etched on the ground, I made many errors, but the fox turned out to be a capable assistant, and she covered her tails with lightning and wiped across the parts of the floor that I had covered with Inscriptions, and erased them. In a few seconds, they became cool, and I could continue etching.
When she was done, the fox sat beside me, watching in silence, not interrupting, and a thought entered my head, and I borrowed her eyesight, and I froze, before I nearly slapped myself.
It was hard to describe what her eye sight felt like, but it was as if there were endless filters inside them, and for a moment I went blind due to the influx of too much information, and as if the fox knew what I wanted, the myriad of filters began to vanish, leaving only one, and the script I was carving in the ground suddenly shot into focus, and I nearly stumbled.
I closed my eyes and canceled the senses; sometimes, there was something like too much of a good thing. The degree of accuracy she was giving me was what I would need if I were carving a high-end script.
Now that I was practicing, I did not require such an in-depth vision, but then I paused, called her vision again, and forced myself to work despite the discomfort of having the script feel like it was pressed against my eyeballs.
I figured that it was better that I become used to working with this tool than to postpone it to a later date. I could start learning how to carve perfect scripts since this sight made it almost impossible to make mistakes if I mastered a script.
All my progress seemed to have been erased as I began carving the scripts once more, but slowly, I began to regain my previous confidence as I worked, and I was becoming better at it.
Hours passed, or maybe minutes; time was strange in this place, and in my present state, I was not in the best mental state to think about something as ephemeral as time.
A part of me was waiting for the hammer to fall and the attention of the Sovereign to fall upon me, but it seems that I had a lot of time to focus on Inscriptions if I did not do anything as foolish as announcing my presence to the entire damned facility by blaring out the voice of the fox.
With all this time to my hands and a soul that seemed to devour knowledge without ever being satisfied, I studied the breastplate until I understood its structure, then I placed it aside until I was able to trace the lines of every pauldron without looking.
I paused for a moment to allow my mind to rest, and perhaps an hour passed before I opened my eyes and continued my studies and focused on the gauntlets until their patterns became as familiar as my own heartbeat.
I reached for more materials, and I realized that I had just finished studying all the Inscriptions inside the armor. One glance at my status screen showed me what hours of learning had given me.
[Inscription: 51 → 59 → 60 → 67]
In one single stroke, I had crossed the threshold of the Acolyte Tier into the Adept Tier level for Inscription, and my breath escaped my lungs in shock.
You have to understand, Auxiliary skills like Inscriptions were something that took mages a long time to learn and master. Engravers were extremely valuable because of the incredible challenge it was to master Inscriptions to a high level.
However, I seemed not to have met any barriers in my learning; my soul seemed capable of swallowing all sorts of information without the restraint any normal mage would face.
I had been focused on the combat capabilities of my body and may have disregarded its learning capabilities a little too much.
Breathing harshly with excitement, I became determined to solidify my understanding of the Inscriptions I had just learned from the armor.
Walking to an empty section of the ground, I bent down, and with one of the bone spikes, I began carving inscription after Inscription on the ground, focusing on perfecting each script.
I worked until the spike shattered, and I picked up the next one and continued until all the spikes were gone, and I had poured all my knowledge to the ground.
On my knees, I closed my eyes and could not help the large smile that covered my face.
[Inscription: 67 → 75]
The fox nudged my hand. "Elric. Look."
I opened my eyes and saw that the breastplate was glowing, the Inscriptions I had traced into the floor were flickering, pulsing with the same rhythm as the armor.
It would seem that I had not just copied the patterns but triggered a resonance with the armor. I had gained the secret of this armor.
"I think I understand," I said.
The fox’s ears perked up. "Understand what?"
"I think I know how to speak to them."