The lecture wound down after nearly two hours of dense explanations, demonstrations, and a few controlled explosions that earned nervous laughter from the students. When the final diagram faded from the crystal board and Dalan dismissed the class, the students filed out in murmuring clusters, some still debating resonance ratios, others already arguing about who’d miscalculated torque constants.

  Ludger stayed seated near the back until the hall emptied. He rubbed his thumb along the edge of his glove, brow furrowed in quiet confusion.

  Sculptor, he thought again. Why is that?

  He could still feel the faint residual hum of the class in his mana, the aftertaste of theory, equations, and rhythm. But nothing about what he’d done felt like “art.” He’d reconstructed components, not sculpted statues. The System, however, clearly disagreed.

  Maybe it saw intent differently. Maybe precision and form mattered more than purpose. He wasn’t sure, and that uncertainty itched at the back of his mind.

  Footsteps approached, steady and confident. Dalan came striding down the aisle, wiping his hands on a cloth with a grin that barely fit on his face. “Vice Guildmaster!” he said, the pride in his tone impossible to miss. “I hope that wasn’t too dull for you. Mechanics can seem dry until you see the beauty in it.”

  Ludger stood, brushing the faint dust from his coat. “No, it was interesting,” he said honestly. “More than I expected.”

  Dalan’s grin widened. “I knew it! You’ve got the look of someone who understands precision. The moment I saw you watching those joints, I thought, ah, another mind that appreciates structure.”

  Ludger tilted his head slightly. “Tell me something, Dalan.”

  “Hm?”

  “How did you get into all this?”

  Dalan blinked. “Into… teaching?”

  “No,” Ludger said, tone steady. “Engineering. How did you start?”

  Understanding dawned, and Dalan’s posture shifted. The pride in his voice softened into something warmer. “Ah. That.”

  He leaned against the edge of the desk, looking at the half-assembled golem arm beside him. “When I was a kid, my father worked in the foundries. I used to sit outside and watch the old golems carry slag out to the cooling pits. They looked… alive. Not like tools, but like giants made of purpose.”

  He smiled faintly, lost in the memory. “I wanted to make one. Didn’t know runes, didn’t know mana, didn’t care. I’d just take bits of wood or lumps of clay, carve them into shapes I thought looked right, and imagine them walking. My mother called them my wooden soldiers.”

  His voice took on that quiet passion that only true craftsmen carried. “Eventually, one of the academy tutors saw what I was doing and gave me a chance. My first real lesson on mechanics. The moment I understood how motion translated through gears and rune circuits, I was done for. I didn’t want to just build toys anymore. I wanted to build life.”

  Ludger listened without interrupting, his expression unreadable but his mind turning fast. So that’s it, he thought. He started as a sculptor before he became an engineer.

  The System hadn’t misread him after all. It had traced the same path, creation for the sake of form, not function. A child’s imagination made manifest through precision and shape.

  “That explains a lot,” Ludger murmured.

  Dalan chuckled, misinterpreting the tone. “Explains what?”

  “Why your machines move like they’re alive,” Ludger said simply.

  Dalan’s grin returned, bright and genuine. “I’ll take that as the highest compliment, Vice Guildmaster.”

  Ludger gave a slight nod, hiding the faint smirk tugging at his mouth. “You should. Not many manage that.”

  He turned toward the door, hands slipping into his coat pockets. The faint hum of the new class still lingered under his skin, subtle but steady, the kind of knowledge that built itself through practice, not study.

  Maybe the System wasn’t mocking him after all. Maybe it had simply recognized the truth: creation, no matter the form, started with the hands of a craftsman.

  Ludger spent the rest of the morning walking the academy’s corridors, the echo of Dalan’s passion still turning somewhere in the back of his mind. The mechanics wing eventually quieted down as classes dispersed, leaving only the faint hum of engines and the rhythmic clang of tools from nearby workshops.

  By the time the sun had climbed past its zenith, the light filtering through the high glass windows had shifted to a pale, golden haze. That was when a messenger approached him, one of Linne’s apprentices, informing him that her afternoon lecture on rune theory would begin shortly in the central hall.

  He followed the apprentice across the courtyard, the stone paths humming faintly beneath his steps. The academy here felt different from Dalan’s domain. Less metal and heat, more silence and precision. Every wall bore etchings of sigils and glyphs, some ancient, others shifting faintly as if alive. The air itself seemed heavier, charged with static mana that pricked faintly against his skin.

  The lecture hall was smaller than Dalan’s, more like a temple than a classroom. The benches curved around a low platform of polished obsidian, and along the walls hung large rune circles that pulsed slowly, forming a quiet rhythm of light.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Ludger took a seat toward the back, crossing his arms. His expectations weren’t high. Rune theory, at least by Imperial standards, was mostly tedious memorization, origins, line symmetry, and the usual lecture about “mana intent shaping reality.” He doubted he’d get a new class out of it. Then Linne stepped to the center of the platform.

  She wore her teaching robes differently from Dalan, neater, formal, every movement deliberate. “Rune theory,” she began, her tone calm but commanding, “is often mistaken for simple inscription. It is not. It is language. A rune is a sentence written directly into mana.”

  Her words cut through the room like a scalpel. Ludger raised an eyebrow. Not a bad start, he thought.

  Linne continued, walking slowly as she spoke. “The first runes were born from instinct, not knowledge. Primitive mages drew marks to control what they feared, fire, wind, death. They didn’t understand what they were doing, only that symbols could command mana to obey. Over centuries, those symbols evolved. Tribes codified them. Academies refined them.”

  She gestured toward the wall, and a glowing line of runes flared to life in sequence. The light moved like a story, early symbols carved into bone and clay, later merging into elegant, complex circles.

  “But despite all progress,” she went on, “a rune’s strength still depends on the person who writes it. A healer’s glyph will mend what a warrior’s will burn. The same mark, the same form—yet shaped by intent.”

  That caught Ludger’s attention. His eyes narrowed slightly. Intent over technique, he thought. Same as mana shaping.

  Linne turned back to the class, her gaze sweeping across the rows of students. “Runes are mirrors of will. When you inscribe one, you don’t command mana, you negotiate with it. That is why every rune is different when carved by a different hand. That is why two mages may write the same glyph and create opposite results.”

  Around him, the students scribbled furiously, but Ludger didn’t move. He just sat there, one finger against his chin, his thoughts running faster than his expression betrayed.

  Maybe this lesson wasn’t as boring as he’d assumed. There was a logic here, a philosophy, even. Runes weren’t tools; they were reflections. And if he could understand how to mirror his will through them… perhaps that was another path entirely.

  Still, he doubted the System would hand him another class for just sitting through theory. He had to apply it.

  His gaze drifted to the glowing circle Linne had just drawn midair, the sigils pulsing faintly in rhythm with her words. He didn’t plan to interrupt, but his fingers itched. He could already see how those runes would behave if carved into stone instead of air. How the geometry would change if he used the ground’s mana as the conduit.

  Linne’s voice carried on, calm and firm. “The mark does not define the result. The one who writes it does. That is why the League advances—not because our runes are superior, but because our mages understand their own will.”

  Ludger’s faint smirk returned. Understanding your will, huh?

  He leaned back, eyes fixed on the glowing runes as they shifted across the wall, and decided to keep listening, for now.

  From under her desk, Linne crouched briefly, then hauled something up that made Ludger’s eyes snap open.

  It wasn’t a scroll, or a carving board, or a runic wand. It was… a typewriter. Or something like one.

  The machine gleamed silver and black under the mana lamps, its frame lined with etched sigils that pulsed faintly whenever her fingers brushed the keys. Thin veins of light ran from its base into the obsidian floor, linking directly to the array beneath the lecture hall. The whole setup looked halfway between an instrument and a weapon.

  Linne set it down with care and smiled faintly at the ripple of whispers spreading through the students. “This,” she said, “is what we call a Runic Compiler. A little piece of modern insanity.”

  She placed her hands over the keys and began to type.

  Not random strokes, measured ones. Each click of the machine produced a small flare of light that hung in the air above her head, glowing letters forming in suspended arcs.

  The words shimmered, rearranged themselves, and solidified into recognizable runes. Ludger leaned forward instinctively. Every rune clicked into existence like a keystroke translated directly into magic. The air vibrated with power as several of the floating symbols began to hum, drawing mana into themselves. Linne continued typing faster, her fingers a blur, and the fragments began to merge.

  The runes fused seamlessly, combining heat glyphs with airflow, compression symbols with ignition parameters, and in the space of seconds, a glowing sphere of orange light appeared midair. It radiated gentle warmth, like a miniature sun.

  She hit another key. The color shifted to deep blue, and frost began to crystallize along the nearby railing. Students gasped softly.

  Linne smiled, clearly enjoying their awe. “Runes are language,” she said again, her voice rising above the rhythmic clatter of keys. “And this is what happens when we give that language a syntax. The Compiler allows us to write, test, and combine runes with the precision of machinery.”

  She typed another sequence, and half the glowing characters dissolved, replaced by sharper angular ones. The warmth and cold vanished, replaced by a faint vibration in the air that made every hair on Ludger’s arms stand on end. A static charge, contained lightning. The whole room hummed.

  Linne slowed her typing and gestured toward the floating glyphs. “With this,” she continued, “we can craft controlled effects without etching stone, carving metal, or wasting reagents. Each symbol has its root in the same ancient runes, but their form and interaction depend on the writer’s logic.”

  Ludger could barely hide the mix of astonishment and disbelief flickering across his face. A runic machine. He’d seen plenty of enchanted tools, but nothing that mechanized the creation of spells themselves.

  Students were watching her with the fervor of disciples witnessing a miracle. The sphere above her desk pulsed once, then gently split, half the air shimmering with heat, half frosting over with ice.

  Linne stopped typing and let the machine hum quietly, smiling like a performer ending an act. “Remember this demonstration,” she said. “Runes aren’t limited by shape. They’re limited by imagination. And imagination, unlike mana, is infinite.”

  The room broke into applause. Ludger didn’t join them. He was still staring at the machine, jaw tight, mind racing.A typewriter that wrote spells.

  He had to fight the urge to reach for his sand pouch right there.

  If that thing can compile runes… then what would happen if I fed it earth-aspected mana directly? Or geometric runes?

  He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to lean back, masking the gleam in his eyes behind a neutral stare. Whatever the League had built here, it wasn’t just progress. It was the first glimpse of something dangerous.