As expected, Micky ran into another problem as soon as he moved up to an odd number of runes.

  The two simplest ways to arrange the symbols would be to either place them in a straight line, or to spread them out into a faux-triangular formation. Both options had their advantages and disadvantages, but Micky estimated that the first one was markedly worse.

  By keeping the symbols in a straight line, he could maintain the vertical symmetry of the enchantment as he pinned it into place at the top and bottom of the core, allowing him to continue stabilizing it with a perpendicular rotation – a narrow ring that spun around the runes.

  The issue was that this was the least scalable solution, as it didn’t make proper use of the core’s cross section. The size of his runes would have to shrink linearly as their number grew, until they became too tiny to draw or manipulate with any precision, and too flimsy to survive the pressure inside the organ.

  Of course, Micky would still need to find a way to shrink them later if he wanted to draw enough of them to enchant his core, but he wasn’t anywhere close to that level yet. Ultimately, he decided to go with the second approach, spreading the runes out into the most densely packed arrangement possible. That way, the size of the symbols would shrink more slowly as their number grew.

  Sadly, this solution came with its own issues.

  At first, he had to keep at least two of the three runes identical. This wasn’t going to be useful in a real application, but it helped during training by allowing him to retain the vertical symmetry of the enchantment. Even so, it was no longer possible to pin the runes down at both the top and bottom, since the axis of rotation only passed through a single contact point with the core.

  As a result, Micky ditched one of the connections entirely, greatly increasing the strain on the other one. The enchantment could still spin, but it required more caution to prevent it from detaching and rotating freely.

  With a heavy heart, he commenced a new round of training, slowly experimenting with various combinations of runes while improving his control over the flow. Growing proficient enough took another three weeks, and that was while sticking to symmetrical enchantments.

  It wasn’t until the end of his first month practicing full-time that he felt confident enough to try with three different runes.

  He chose to start with a structural integrity enchantment. This was one that he’d mastered before, though he’d previously used a version where all three of its runes were stacked on top of one another – in the same circle. That was arguably a more efficient way to achieve the same result, yet spreading the runes out and attaching them next to each other was good practice.

  ‘Okay… it’s not as bad as I was expecting,’ he thought, scratching his head.

  Micky had kept the integrity rune in the middle, attaching it to the top of his core. Meanwhile the hardness and absorption runes served as the two “legs” of the triangular formation. He’d done his best to keep their shapes, sizes and degree of overlap as close as he could to avoid making the enchantment too lopsided.

  It wasn’t perfect, because they were fundamentally different shapes that had to be joined together through their shared features. The enchantment inevitably ended up being a little bulkier on one side, making it harder to stabilize. Fortunately, the difference was just about small enough that Micky should be able to overcome it with enough practice.

  ‘Hmmm… I can probably get this done in another week or two, but the difficulty will keep growing as I add more runes…’

  Eventually, the unit cells would become completely unbalanced. He’d have to find another trick to deal with this when it happened.

  Shrugging, he decided to take it one step at a time. Diving back into practice, he focused on keeping the connection between the enchantment and the core as firm as possible so that it wouldn’t snap under its angular momentum. At the same time, he continued trying to compress the flow into an even narrower ring, keeping it as far away from the runes as possible to minimize the pressure on them.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  Over the first few days, he improved slower than he had expected, which didn’t bode well for the future. However, that all changed when a small accident occurred by the end of the week. His control over the spinning ring loosened at some point by mistake, causing it to drift lower by a few millimetres. Micky gritted his teeth, thinking that it was about to throw the whole organ into disarray and ruin the enchantment.

  And, well… he was right about that, but the exact manner in which the runes fell apart was odd. Raising an eyebrow, Micky replayed the accident in his head, trying to wrap his mind around the sequence of events.

  ‘The moment the ring shifted, the physical load on the enchantment plummeted…’

  The new position had obviously been better aligned with the lopsided symbol, supporting it. The only reason it had still collapsed was because the flow hadn’t moved evenly, introducing a new component of pressure perpendicular to the axis of rotation, snapping the enchantment off its connection and ripping it apart.

  This was interesting.

  Perhaps, Micky could compensate for the poor balance of the construct by lowering or elevating the ring to a better spot. It wouldn’t be easy, because the mana clearly “preferred” to flow by the middle of the core where its cross section was widest due to its high speed. Keeping it rotating elsewhere would take some effort.

  ‘It’s the only idea I’ve come up with so far. It’s worth a try at least,’ he decided.

  Doubling down on this promising new direction, Micky kept at it for another three weeks, eventually managing to draw not just the structural integrity enchantment, but several others involving three runes.

  Each arrangement had a slightly different shape, which required him to adjust the position of the ring. Fortunately, he slowly developed a sense for it after experimenting with different enchantments, eventually growing more confident that he could draw and stabilize any trio of runes he wanted.

  By the time that happened, he’d been working on the spell for about two months. His human body hadn’t remained idle either – he’d already granted new cores to Archibald, Orin, Freddy and the Starry Queen. He’d even made good progress passing the Moirais’ Decree to the Blue insects, though this part of Micky’s mind didn’t concern himself with that, concentrating solely on magiscript.

  ‘Time to add a fourth symbol,’ he thought, tossing a control rune into the mix. Control runes were simple enough that they could easily be stacked on top of any other rune, but that wasn’t the point of his current training, so he chose to draw it next to the others.

  With an even number of symbols, Micky realized that he could have the enchantment attached in two spots again if he wanted. However, that would require him to draw and join them in a suboptimal manner, manipulating their sizes, shapes and positions to align both extremities of the formation with the same axis.

  Ultimately, he saw no reason to do that, since this fix wouldn’t even hold once he added a fifth rune into the mix. Instead, he stuck with a single connection, opting to balance the enchantment’s rotation by playing with the spinning ring.

  The new shape was even more lopsided than before, to the point that he failed to stabilize it regardless of how much he varied the location of the flow. Luckily, Micky had already thought of a solution during the previous month, having anticipated this exact problem.

  Splitting the flow into two streams – another pre-casting exercise that he’d mastered a long time ago – he willed them to form a couple of independent rings, placing each at a different spot.

  It took a lot of trial and error to optimize the configuration. Controlling multiple flows while drawing and activating so many runes was mentally taxing, but he kept at it until the enchantment was stable enough to survive indefinitely.

  Succeeding with the first combination of runes took a full month, while adapting the trick to any arbitrary quartet of symbols took an additional three months.

  Eventually, a toothy grin found its way onto his face.

  For the first time since he began practicing Internal Runecrafting on Robari, he felt confident that his approach was fully scalable to any unit cell he might want to draw!

  Adding more runes would still increase the difficulty, of course, but he’d already overcome some of the most serious problems. From here on out, it was just a question of patience, perseverance, and lots of practice. Once his unit cells started containing dozens of runes, he would probably have to increase the number of rings, but he doubted that he’d ever need more than a handful.

  Overall, drawing the enchantment inside his core was always going to be much harder than doing so outside his body, but meeting the requirements for his artificial advancement was looking more likely.

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of myself,’ he thought, suppressing his bubbling enthusiasm.

  There were still some key roadblocks to clear. Namely, he had to learn how to turn his enchantments into permanent seals from the Vault, master a few new runes, and also figure out a way to shrink the unit cells as he drew them, so that he could fit enough of them along the walls of his cores.

  However, there was no denying that he’d already reached a very significant milestone – something that his Status promptly confirmed with a celebratory announcement.

  [Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Spectral Art: Internal Runecrafting – Refined -> Spectral Art: Internal Magiscript – Masterful!]

  Books 1 & 2 on at no extra cost, grab copies for your shelf, or listen to the audiobooks on .