Chapter 104: Chaos
Runes
What are they?
No one really knows.
Even in the novel Ash read in his previous world, their origins were never revealed.
Maybe the author planned to unveil the truth later, maybe it was a part of some grand twist yet to come—but Ash never lived long enough to reach that point.
Now, after transmigrating into this new world, Ash has come across some scattered mentions of the Runes in the Academy’s old history books.
But gathering useful information wasn’t easy—the knowledge about the runes were hidden across countless books filled with myths, vague theories, and irrelevant details.
Only a few fragments of the books were of any real use.
Still, Ash managed to piece something together.
With his photographic memory and sharp analytical mind, he connected the dots scattered across dozens of texts.
Though what he found couldn’t be called truth. Not completely.
But... it was a theory.
A theory built on documents discovered deep within ancient ruins scattered across not just the world, but possibly the entire universe.
According to it, in ancient times, the method to fuse with the Runes was known to a Ancient Civilization.
That Civilization had manifested various ways to harness the Runes power, shaping it into Runic Magic, intricate spell arrays, powerful formations, and even embedding it into arts like Alchemy and Blacksmithing.
But then came the fall.
All those sacred methods were either lost, destroyed, or buried under the ashes of a tragedy that erased the entire ancient civilization in a single night. No one knew what truly happened.
A civilization that once thrived with impossible magic and unmatched knowledge vanished without leaving a clear trace.
With it, the secrets of the Runes—and the individuals that mastered them—were buried in silence.
In the chaos of their destruction, countless Runes were scattered across the universe.
Over time, the world moved on.
Generations passed.
Civilizations rose and fell.
People forgot.
The myths turned into fairy tales, the truth became fiction, and the memory of the Runes faded into nothing more than whispers.
But not everything was lost.
Over time, fragments of that ancient civilization were rediscovered.
Ancient structures, half-decayed records, broken mechanisms still etched with runic symbols—they revealed glimpses of what once existed.
Among them, scattered clues pointed to something incredible—something that made scholars and magic users question the very roots of their own magic system.
Because according to the limited texts recovered from those ruins, the ancient civilization held a secret so powerful, it could shake the foundation of everything humanity believed.
Runes.
Finding the information about the runes, the magic scholars of present time were intrigued, they purged everywhere to find the runes but it was in vain, they did not find them.
So they created Runic Magic imitation according to what they can piece together.
Soon more information was discovered .
According to the information found in these ruins, that ancient civilization had possession of 20 Runes.
They were the source of the civilization’s unimaginable power.
Each Rune had been absorbed by one of twenty individuals who stood at the pinnacle of existence, forming a ruling council that led the civilization like gods walking among mortals.
Their power was absolute, their authority unmatched.
But the civilization received a piece of information that shook their foundation to the core.
The source of this information was unknown.
Perhaps it was a divine revelation.
Perhaps stolen knowledge from a realm beyond reach.
Magic scholars didn’t know, but what they knew was that ’Ancient civilization was shocked’.
What truly shook them to their core... was the discovery that twenty-five Runes existed in reality.
Yes—five Runes were missing.
The ancient civilization, upon discovering this truth, descended into a frenzy.
They couldn’t accept that their control was incomplete, that power still remained out of their reach.
In their desperation, they launched a purge across the universe—scouring galaxies, plundering dimensions, tearing through time itself in search of the remaining five.
Yet despite all their efforts, the missing five were never found.
And then, as if cursed by their ambition, their civilization fell.
Whether they were destroyed in the process or by some unknown force, no one knows.
Their theory—that five more Runes remained hidden—was never proven, and the truth died with them.
Time marched on, and the Runes turned into myths—legends told to children, bedtime stories about divine power and forgotten wars. Most people dismissed them as fiction.
But not everyone has forgotten.
There were still beings—ancient, timeless, and hidden in the folds of the world—who knew the Runes were real. Beings who remembered what the world had tried to forget.
And they were still searching for the Runes.
***
Meanwhile, on the Dragon Continent...
Where Ash’s lifeless body rested in silence, something strange was quietly happening.
Unaware of it all, the King of Unicorns lay asleep near Ash’s body, completely still.
He didn’t notice the faint ripple in the air, nor the soul of Ash slowly drifting out of his body and floating just above it—soft, transparent, and barely glowing.
Ash’s soul looked like a hazy version of himself, but his eyes were dull, empty. He wasn’t conscious. Whatever was going on, he wasn’t aware.
He had died. And now, his soul was resting in a deep slumber, lost in silence.
But there was something unusual about it.
Five glowing symbols hovered faintly in Ash’s soul, their shapes constantly shifting and changing, making it hard to recognize exactly what they were. Like pieces of a forgotten language.
Like living marks that couldn’t stay still.
They were Runes.
Then, without warning, two of them suddenly reacted—the Rune of Life and the Rune of Stability.
They flared up, glowing brighter than the rest. And in that moment, it was as if the world itself paused. Words began to carve themselves into the space around Ash’s soul—like they were being written straight into the air, into reality itself.
A status window appeared in front of him, even though he wasn’t awake. Even though he wasn’t alive.
---
[Checking Condition 1 : The soul is mutated.]
[Hidden Condition 1 : Fulfilled]
[Checking Condition 2 : The soul belongs to a boy aged between 12 and 20.]
[Hidden Condition 2 : Fulfilled]
[Checking Condition 3 : The soul carries the Rune of Life and the Rune of Stability.]
[Hidden Condition 3 : Fulfilled]
[Checking Condition 4 : The soul is bound to the system.]
[Hidden Condition 4 : Not fulfilled]
[Error detected!!!]
[Error detected!!!!]
[Process halted...]
[Searching for alternatives...]
[Clause 23 of @$#$@$ located: If three hidden conditions are fulfilled, process may proceed.]
[Resuming process...]
---
Then out of nowhere, the space in front of Ash tore open—completely silent, completely unseen.
Not even the King of Unicorns noticed. It was as if reality itself didn’t want anyone to see what was about to happen.
From the crack in space, a dark mist flowed out.
It wasn’t just dark—it was darker than any demonic energy, it filled with death. The mist twisted and coiled until it shaped itself into a strange, ancient-looking symbol.
Without hesitation, it sank into Ash’s soul.
[Acquisition of Rune of Death: Confirmed.]
Rune of Death quietly merged into Ash’s soul.
The crack in space closed up as if it had never been there, and the words in the air faded away like dust in the wind.
Silence returned.
***
Just as that mysterious moment unfolded, far beyond the material world, something even deeper began to unravel.
The tangled strings of fate and destiny—those invisible threads crisscrossing like an endless spiderweb stretched across time and reality—started to break apart.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
Snap.
One by one, the threads gave way.
The change was so intense, so chaotic, that even the imaginary realm around the Web of Fate itself began to tremble. It was as if the very blueprint of existence had been struck by a force it couldn’t withstand.
Fate, in all its ancient wisdom, tried to correct the sudden distortion. It tried to weave the strings back, to stabilize the pattern, to make things right.
But Ash—completely unaware of what he had done—had already thrown everything into deeper chaos. His presence alone, or rather, his soul’s transformation, had shattered the balance even further.
And now, the web was such a mess, such an entangled disaster, that even those who could once peek through its secrets dared not try.
Not that they ever could see clearly when it came to him.
Because from the very beginning, Ash had been an Anomaly.
---
"It’s a mess..." an old man muttered quietly under his breath.
He sat motionless, cross-legged in the void, deep in meditation. Blood streamed slowly from his nose, his eyes, his mouth—and even his ears—yet he didn’t flinch.
His breathing was steady, calm, almost unnaturally focused. Even with the pain threatening to break him, his eyes remained shut.
"Everything is twisted," he whispered. "That Anomaly ruined the entire order of things."
His voice was low, strained, but heavy with knowing. He wasn’t just speaking out loud—he was laying down truth.
"Now... even those arrogant angels will feel it. Those high-and-mighty beings, always watching from their heavenly palaces, always searching for the Runes across realms—they’ll sense this shift too. Just like the demons."
"They’ll come crawling out, trying to trace the origin of the disturbance..."
He took a long, sharp breath, blood trickling down his chin.
His words carried weight like a prophet writing history before it happened.
"But they won’t find anything. Not this time. Because the only method they had—the only way they could track something from afar—was through fate itself. And fate doesn’t work on an Anomaly."
He smiled bitterly.
"And now that the Web of Fate is in this state... Anyone who tries to use it will suffer backlash, just like me."
His voice was quiet, like a man speaking to ghosts.
"They’ll send scouts, angels in disguise. Warriors across the universe. They’ll try to search manually now, chasing shadows in every world."
The old man’s head tilted slightly upward, as if he was seeing something no one else could.
"It’s all getting worse. Sure, in a way, it’s a blessing—those angels won’t focus their attention on Akumia now. But if they do descend into this world... then for the world’s sake, he better remain silent. He better stay hidden. He must do nothing that draws their eyes."
He stood up slowly. The air shifted around him.
"I need to find him—before they descends. Who knows what kind of mess the anomaly might cause next..."
And with those words, the old man—the Seer of Fate, the whisperer and Amelia’s grandfather—vanished from the void without a trace.
His destination: Starlight Academy.
***