Surprisingly, Victor's lessons for Valeria didn't take long. It seemed that the 'contract' and the energy that was used did much more than just empower her body and ensure eternal youth.
The High Priestess soaked up Victor's teachings like a sponge, she became even more capable, and that detail put a satisfied smile on Victor's face.
Valeria herself was surprised by this too. Things now seemed much clearer to her, it was as if a limitation imposed by the world had been removed, and she could do much more than before.
'Is this what it means to overcome your humanity?' She couldn't help biting her lips in ecstasy; it was a very intoxicating feeling.
Finishing his business, Victor left this place for his wives to take over. He already did more than necessary, and it was time to enjoy his vacation.
...
Yes... He was supposed to enjoy his vacation, but the moment he set foot in Nightingale, he was told that Scathach wanted to see him. Thinking it would be a quick thing, he went to visit Scathach, but...
'Why am I sitting here?' he wondered.
Victor, Siena, Lacus, Pepper, and Ruby were sitting on the floor next to each other while Scathach was standing in front of them.
"Hi, Kids. Today, I will be teaching about runes."
"..."
Victor's smile trembled a little, then he raised his hand as if he were at school:
"Master, I already learned about runes."
"Silence, stupid disciple, what you learned in hell cannot be described as Runes but demonic scriptures. The two things are completely different."
"Shishou, I'm sure I learned about runes," Victor spoke confidently.
"Oh? Write a word with runes then, and stop changing the language when calling me 'Master'."
"Okay, Magister." He spoke in perfect Latin.
Scathach's eyes glinted dangerously.
"...." Siena, Lacus, Pepper, and Ruby flinched before their mother's gaze. Despite being more 'familiar' with each other, after all, they share the same man and have a closer relationship than before, they still feel pressure from Scathach.
Lacus' and Pepper's cheeks turned redder when they thought about that 'perverted' detail.
'Oyakodon and Shimadon...' Pepper blushed furiously, her perverted mind going places it shouldn't right now.
Victor raised his hand in the air, and with his fingers, he wrote four red 'runes' in the air.
Scathach waited for the rune to be activated, but nothing happened: "... So?"
"That's just it." Victor declared, then added, "These runes have more effect when I use my authority as a demon king."
"... Haah ... As I said, Disciple. That's not a rune."
"..." Victor raised his eyebrow.
"What you have done now is demonic deed." Scathach creates an ice face, and writes something in the air, soon four 'scriptures' are written in the air.
"That..."
"It's divine scripture, it's the same thing as demonic scripture, but they're mostly used for the gods."
"The demons, and the gods have their own way of writing, and communicating, and that language has power, you've heard the saying; the words have power?"
"Yes."
"What happens here is an example of that, since you are a demonic king, the highest authority of hell, you can use these ancient languages to write laws, and demonic contracts, but this is not Runes."
"Runes is writing your intentions into reality, and for that we use languages that have power like demonic or divine scriptures."
"... Wait, in a way, Victor has already learned about runes, but only the 'language' in which this power works." Ruby spoke.
"Correct."
"Through the authority of the demon king, he is unintentionally using a special type of rune, the portals of hell, and the demon contract he made with Valeria is just that."
"He used the ancient language, and authority as a demon king made the whole process happen."
"Ugh... Does anyone sum this up in 20 words? I do not understand anything." Pepper grumbled.
"Mm." Lacus nodded in agreement with Pepper.
"Think of it this way, for the effect known as a 'Rune' to happen, we need to utilize an ancient language, intent, and power to shape the 'Rune' into reality. Because I have the authority of the Demon King, I am skipping the entire process, and going straight to the result."
"With that authority, I can't make other Rune effects like the storage bag created by the Alioth Clan, or the changes Scathach made to our armor and weapons."
"...Oh." Lacus made a face that understood what Victor said.
"That wasn't 20 words, Darling." Pepper snorted.
Victor chuckled and patted Pepper's head.
"Hehehe ~."
"What Clan Alioth does is an even more advanced and complex level of Runes because they are using his special power for that, probably only Alexios and Natalia can make runes that special in the whole world."
'Even the gods would have a hard time doing this, because this is something that mixes the concept of space, time, and runes.'
"And stop molesting my daughter, and concentrate on your homework." Scathach narrowed her eyes.
"How rude to call it molesting, I'm just stroking her head."
"Vic, do this to me too..." Lacus spoke with the voice of a mosquito.
"Sure." Victor starts stroking Lacus's head as well.
"Mm~."
Siena and Ruby's eyes slightly glowed blood red when they saw Lacus and Pepper's happy face.
Scathach did facepalm, she was wondering if she lost the knack of teaching her disciples. 'Am I getting softer?... This can't happen, right?' Her eyes glittered dangerously.
And the fours felt a foreboding coming over them.
"Pay attention now, or I will increase the training-"
"Oh?" Victor smiled interestedly.
"Not for you Victor! For my daughters."
"Tsk, petty."
The four girls shuddered, and quickly turned their attention to her mother.
After all, unlike Victor who would be only too happy to spar with an angry Scathach, they weren't like that! The only one who could handle this female dragon was Victor!
"Back to the point... Runes are essentially imposing your will and in fact, through various methods the most common of which is the three-way method, we utilize the three main essences of building a rune which are ancient languages, energy, and intention."
"Watch." With the ice wand in hand, he draws three different writings in the air, a golden script, a red script, and a blank script.
"Can anyone tell me what these scriptures are?"
"The letter patterns are the same as Victor and you showed us, so the red writing is demonic writing, the gold writing is divine writing, and the last one appears to be Nordic."
Scathach nods satisfied indicating she was correct, and asks curiously, "Do you know about Old Norse?"
"I don't know."
"How did you identify the words then?"
"I saw it in a comic."
"..." Scathach and Siena were speechless.
Victor just chuckled gently at Ruby's brutal honesty.
"Oh, now that you mention it, it looks like the designs shown in the Thor comics." Pepper narrows her eyes: "It's pretty similar to the enchantment Odin put on Mjolnir."
"Speaking of Mjolnir, do you think Victor would be worthy of wielding it?" Lacus asked.
"Probably." Pepper spoke.
"But he doesn't seem worthy enough." Ruby pointed.
"I mean, he might as well seduce the perverted hammer, and she'll do whatever he wants like a good little bitch."
Victor stared at Pepper with a speechless expression.
"I don't understand where this conversation is going, but I must ask, why do you think Thor's hammer is a girl?" Siena asked confused.
"I mean, anything Victor comes into contact with turns into a girl. I would be more shocked if it was a man."
"HmmHmm." Ruby and Lacus nodded several times in agreement with Pepper.
"... Okay... You've been watching and consuming a lot of anime lately, how about a break?"
"I refuse!" Lacus, Pepper, and Ruby spoke at the same time with a hardened expression and a deep voice.
"..." Victor just stared at the three girls with an expressionless expression, then he looked at Siena, and touched her shoulder.
"You are the most normal of them all."
"... Huh?"
"It's okay, I understand." He pulls Siena into a hug, and pats her head.
"Do you understand what - Ehhh?" Siena's face turned slightly red when she felt Victor's scent stronger, but that only lasted a few seconds, then she took a deep breath, and shamlessly rubbed her head on his chest.
'Degenerate pervert.' Pepper, Lacus, and Ruby snorted.
"..." Scathach just watched it all with veins popping in her head.
"Watch!" She landed on the ground, and the killer instinct exploded from her body.
"Y-Yes!" Like four startled rabbits, the girls practically jumped in fright, and quickly straightened their postures and looked at Scathach with the expression of a soldier awaiting orders.
Victor just looked at Scathach with a sunny smile that made Scathach's brow twitch.
"What?"
"Nothing, I just find that side of you quite attractive."
Scathach's killing intent visibly lightened, a hint of a smile appeared on her lips, and small imperceptible blushes appeared on her cheek.
"Stop the sweet words, it won't fool me! Now pay attention!"
"Yes~."
"..." Pepper, Lacus, and Ruby had to fight back the urge to roll their eyes, they wanted to know how much her mother became such a Tsundere.
"Back to the explanation, although they are written in different languages, each character here means only one thing; fire."
"Look and learn." Scathach makes some movements with his hand, and the three characters start to glow, in the next moment the scriptures seem to become more 'real'.
Victor who was watching all this with his dragon eyes just opened his eyes with what he was witnessing, in a somewhat barbaric way, Scathach was imposing his will on reality.
'This is interesting...'
Right after that, fire started shooting from each scripture, the demon scripture was the first to be activated, a huge ball of fire shot out of the demon scripture and flew towards the sky.
Then it was the divine scripture that went out an even greater fire than before.
When the Norse scripture was activated, the fire that came out was a normal fireball.
"By using my energy, and imposing my intention on the language, that language becomes Runes."
"Now, tell me which was the strongest?"
"The divine scripture." The five responded in unison, however only Victor added:
"But the divine scripture consumed much more energy than necessary, the same applies to the demonic scripture, the norse scripture seemed to be more stable."
"..." Scathach looked at Victor, specifically his dragon eyes.
"Correct. Do you know why the demonic and divine runes take so much energy from me?"
"Is it because you are not the same race as those ancient bloodlines?"
"...Explain why you think that."
"Intuition. When you used the runes, I noticed an incongruity in the way your energy behaved."
"...And you are correct." Scathach spoke.
Those eves are a cheat." Siena rolled her eyes.
Nobody commented on those words because they were feeling the same way.
"Leaving my husband's cheating existence aside-."
"Oyy!"
"Mother, please continue." Ruby spoke.
"Haah... As you can see, the more ancient, and important the language, the more the runes will have power, but don't think that just because you are using an ancient language, the effect of the rune will activate without consequences, the origin of the language is something that must be taken into account.
"As Victor pointed out, the divine and demonic languages took a huge amount of stamina and energy out of me, and I just made a simple Rune with them, imagine the amount of energy I would need to do something like that." Scathach raised the Spear towards the group, and soon hundreds of small runes began to glow all over the Spear.
"As a mortal, I always recommend using mortal tongues, because of this, in my runic workings, I usually use Akkadian, a dead language, or Old Norse."
"Master, how exactly do you set the intention in the scripture to become a Rune?" Victor asked.
"... This is something I'm curious about too, I didn't understand that part." Siena commented.
"Hmm... How to explain this..." Scathach touches the frown on her face, she seems to be thinking deeply, soon she replies:
"Do you need to listen to existence, and talk to him?"
"..."
"Don't look at me like that, I can only think of explaining it that way, because that's literally what I do."
"... Do you converse with 'existence'?" Siena asked confused.
"Hmm, the more correct saying is that I give an order that generates a trigger, and it appears in reality."
"... This is confusing..." Pepper mumbled.
"Indeed." Ruby nods.
"Master, is it possible to use Runes in combat?" Victor asked visibly excited.
"It's impossible."
"... why?"
"Working with runes is a delicate process, any loss of concentration when you are 'imposing your will on the world' can lead to catastrophes for yourself." "And as you know, in a fight every second counts."
"Because of this, runes are mostly used as support, or preconfigured in an artifact like this Spear."
"Wait, doesn't that mean we can't put several pre-installed ones, to be activated worth our energy?" Ruby pointed.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean pick up a weapon, and write fire runes, and then use our stamina to activate the rune instantly."
"...Oh, you're talking about built-in enchantment."
"Yes, it is possible to do that, but it is impossible to do it the way you said."
"Why?"
"Runes are not something that lasts forever, do you remember when I activated the fire earlier, the runes disappeared?"
"Yes..."
"That's what would happen to the item or the Ruin itself if you abused the enchantment."
"Oh."
"Remember that the Rune is something that imposes its will on reality, and this causes wear and tear both physically and for the material on which the rune was written."
"..."
"... If we had stronger material, could we do this?"
"Yeah, that's what I did with my Spear, but Victor... Writing runes on material is extremely time consuming, because mistakes are not allowed, it took me years to finish this Spear of mine."
"I had to carve each rune with extreme care, any mistake I would have lost precious material and possibly killed myself."
"..." Everyone broke out in a cold sweat, Runes is something very dangerous, they thought.
"Not to mention that using a rune-sculpted weapon like a flamethrower is extremely inefficient."
"Why?" Lacus asked.
"The fire that came out of the Rune might be relatively strong, but it's just normal fire, and stronger beings would barely feel those attacks."
"Oh." The girls understood now.
"So it's more efficient to use the runes as a passive support force, something like putting various spells to increase strength, senses, etc."
"Of course, remember not to overdo the enchantments, and you don't want to die, right?"
"...."
"Oh, one of the consequences of getting a rune enchantment wrong can be fading out of existence, so be very careful when doing long enchantments, and make sure you are 100% focused." She spoke with a gentle smile that made everyone shiver.
"... Mother, we haven't even learned how to write runes yet! Why are you saying this?" Siena asked.
"It is for you to remember. This is also a warning to Victor."
"Eh?"
"Toying with Runes without an experienced teacher around is extremely dangerous and will endanger not only yourself, but also the people around you." "I will teach you the way of the runes, who wants to learn?"
All without exception raised their hands.
"Good."
"Scathach's lesson is over." Victor spoke next.
The girls looked at Victor with raised eyebrows.
"What are you going to teach, Victor?"
"Something like that." Victor gets up from the ground, he walks a little distance, as he walks his arm starts to be covered by the water, and with a wave of his hand, a big cut appears on the ground, the hole is deep! And there wasn't even any kind of explosion, just cutting like a blade.
"..."
"High pressure water can cut diamond, I learned a way to imitate this high pressure."
"..."
"I will teach that too." Victor points his finger at a tree, then an ice sphere appears on his finger, this ice sphere begins to rotate at high speed.
"Bang." The ice sphere flies towards the tree, but instead of penetrating the tree, it simply explodes and covers the entire tree with ice, and in the next moment, the ice shatters, shattering the tree into thousands of pieces.
"Holy fuck... He didn't control the ice, right? He just shot it and it happened." Siena spoke.
"Yes... The entire process after firing the sphere has been automated." Scathach commented in visible disbelief.
'Has he already reached this level with ice control?'
"To Lacus, I will teach this." Victor's body transforms into thousands of bats, and the next moment he 'reappears' on the other side of the training area.
"I-I-Itachi skill!" Pepper stood up with her eyes shining.
Victor repeats the same thing he did before, and appears in front of the group.
"This is so cool!!" Pepper jumped making the mountains rise sway back and forth, up and down.
"Teach me! Teach me! Teach me!"
Victor smiles gently: "Calm down Pepper, I'll teach you too."
"Yay!"
Ruby walked silently closer to Victor, and held his clothes.
"..." Victor looked at Ruby, and even though her expression was neutral, her excited eyes couldn't be hidden.
"Of course, I'll teach you too, Ruby."
"Mm."
Victor laughed, it was adorable how clumsy she was at these things.
Victor felt his clothes being tugged at again, and saw Lacus and Siena's faces.
"I'll teach you too, but remember Girls, this is very difficult to do, you need to completely master changing your body shape."
"So I suggest focusing on your strengths first."
"... If it's so hard to do, why did you train it?"
"I spent 700 years in an enclosed space training, when I ran out of ideas what to train, I would go back to basics, and learn to better control my racial powers, and that opened up other avenues for me that allowed me to increase my strength."
Seeing Victor talking to her daughters, her face tightened.
'They completely forgot my lesson.' She sighs, and her gaze becomes kinder, the image of all her daughters talking harmoniously gives her a sense of peace. 'That's not bad... I actually like it a lot.'
"Scathach?"
"Hmm?"
"Are we going to go back to learning about runes??" Victor smiled gently.
She laughed lightly, "Of course."
...
Edited By: DaVo 2138, IsUnavailable