Chapter 300: Summoning A Demon
[The user has discovered a new knowledge book, [Runes and Glyphs: the Fundamentals] , under the [Runic Arts] magic system. Will the user like to consume this knowledge book? Yes/No]
Jason’s lips curved into a grin once he saw this tab! This was fucking new! Jason had no idea the system could do something like this, and he had to ask!
’Have you always been able to consume books for knowledge?’
The system responded easily.
[The system is not capable of consuming all forms of knowledge. The system can only consume knowledge related to any general Magic System that the user has acquired an Affinity for. For example, the user possesses a Magical Affinity to both the [Runic Arts] and the [Arcane Arts]. Therefore, should the user possess any knowledge books related to these arts, then the system will be able to consume these books and upload the knowledge directly to the user’s brain. The user should please keep in mind that consuming the knowledge does not mean he will immediately gain a perfect understanding of everything within the books. The user will only possess the knowledge, and he would still have to practice and cross-reference through the knowledge he possesses in order to increase his understanding.]
Jason nodded along with a grateful look on his face. The system’s message told Jason that this skill was a lot like having a photographic memory. Even though someone with a photographic memory memorizes all the information in a book, that doesn’t mean that they immediately understand everything in that book. They would still have to go through the information one by one before they could understand what they read. So putting the information directly into Jason’s mind would be the same as giving him a photographic memory.
’Good, at least I don’t have to go through the entire book. I can just absorb all the journals that I got from the Lich and slowly learn everything while Azrael teaches me.’
Jason’s smile widened at this thought, and he immediately asked Azrael what they needed to do in order to begin.
....
A few minutes later, Gina came into the living room with a plate of pancakes in one hand and a glass of juice in her other hand. Gina knew that Jason was still hungry, so she tried her best to make something that she knew she couldn’t fuck up even if she tried. And since she made pancakes almost every single day for breakfast, she was more than skilled enough not to fuck it up! But the moment Gina got to the living room, she stopped in her tracks as she blinked at the scene in front of her.
The living room couches and center table had been moved to the side by a few of Jason’s subordinates, and Jason was sitting cross-legged in the middle of a large circle that had been painted on the ground with some sort of black ink. Azrael was moving around Jason slowly, and it was using a brush to slowly paint various symbols across Jason’s back with the same black ink. A thought suddenly came to Gina’s head once she saw the symbols and circles, and she couldn’t stop herself from blurting it out.
"Are you summoning the devil?"
"Why the fuck is that the first thing you thought about?"
Jason couldn’t help but chuckle when he heard Gina’s words, and Gina was shocked that Jason would even ask her something like that! Why wouldn’t she think he was summoning the devil when she comes in and sees something like this! Her boyfriend was sitting in the middle of a summoning ritual circle, and he was having ritualistic marks drawn on his body! Gina had seen this exact same plot in at least ten horror movies!
"You can’t really blame me, can you? I think this was how they summoned the demon in one of those old horror movies. I think it was called Arabella or something. If a possessed doll suddenly starts chasing me with a knife, I’ll never forgive you."
Gina walked into the room with the pancakes and juice, and she placed them on the floor close to Jason and knelt just outside the edge of the ritual circle while asking.
"So, what’s all this for?"
Gina looked over the circle that Jason was sitting in. It was a wide circle that was almost two meters in diameter, and there was a strange black light pulsing from the ink they used in drawing the circle. There were various symbols and lines drawn in different parts of the circle, and Gina felt curiosity filling her body as she wondered what these lines meant. Jason raised his hand to give Azrael space to complete a long rune that circled around his body, and Gina watched the black line with a slightly suspicious look on her face as she listened to Jason talk.
"It’s a special branch of magic called Runic Arts. I need to use it to bond with my new weapon, but I just started learning it, so Azrael here is helping me to draw out the runes and glyphs."
"I... see. That gives me more questions than answers, honestly."
Gina still didn’t look very convinced about the Runic Arts, and Jason couldn’t blame her. Anyone would be surprised if they saw a literal skeleton drawing black lines on the body of their lover. If not for the fact that Jason knew about the usefulness of Runes and he knew that Azrael would never try to do anything outside his orders, then Jason would have also been worried. The runes and symbols being carved on his body were far stranger than Jason thought they would be.
After absorbing the first journal from Azrael’s collection and gaining all the knowledge from the book, Jason had a basic understanding of runes as well as how they were created. In essence, runes were magical carvings created from a special ink that could only be produced by Rune Crafters. The ink is produced by sending your mana through a special Rune Brush that every Rune Carver creates for themselves. The brush converts the mana it receives into ink, and the ink is used to draw glyphs. As for the terminologies used, Jason also had a basic understanding of those. The simplest terminology in Runes is the Glyph. A Glyph is a single stroke or line drawn using the Rune Brush, and a combination of various Glyphs is what creates a Rune. But sometimes, a Rune Crafter would use the words Glyphs and Rune interchangeably since they could mean the same thing.
Rune Crafters are those who can create Runes, and Incantations are special words spoken while pouring magic into a Magical Rune in order to activate it. Different Rune Casters have been known to use different incantations to activate the same Rune, but according to the book, the incantations have to mean the same thing before it would work. This is why most Rune Casters are encouraged to learn a special language known as ’Aruna’. This language is the simplest known language in the Primordial Expanse, and it is capable of compressing a lot of meaning into a very short sentence. For example, an incantation that would take a hundred words in English could be said in only five or six words in the Aruna language, and it would still have the same meaning.