“Organic materials accept enchantment readily. Wood, bone, natural fibers.

  Processed metals resist; every adjustment requires more force, more precision, more mana.

  Beginners learn this after wasting their first reservoir.”

  — Enchanter’s Practical Guide, Chapter 3: Material Selection

  The Erika figurine sat on the TABLO surface, its golden Durability rune catching the workshop lights like a tiny accusation. I’d reinforced a wooden carving of my crush to be harder than steel, and somehow that felt like the least embarrassing thing I’d done tonight.

  Perspective was a funny thing.

  As I munched on a Jeup Bar? I found in the kitchen, I placed my hand on the figurine, focusing on the warm sensation beneath my skin. My mana channels had regenerated during my Cassette gig and thankfully I didn’t need mana for anything.

  It’ll be a pain when I’ll be forced to use spells on gigs. No enchanting after throwing fireballs all night.

  The dissolution process was familiar now; I pushed, felt the equation reverse, watched the golden mark flare and fade.

  Just wood again.

  Fresh mana dust went on next; the glittering powder clinging to the carved surface like frost on a window. I let my eyes unfocus, staring at the book without looking directly at it, and the text crystallized into meaning.

  The page had changed.

  Where the Rune of Durability had shown me patterns of reinforcement and stress distribution, the Rune of Piercing displayed something different.

  The Rune of Piercing does not protect. It creates a mechanism of stored potential, a reservoir that fills and waits, and releases in a single moment of directed purpose.

  Because I was tired, I had to read it twice, struggling to study the implications.

  Unlike passive runes that fuse with material and draw ambient mana to maintain their effect, the Rune of Piercing establishes a cycle: accumulation, threshold, release. The enchanted object becomes a vessel, drawing mana from its environment or its wielder until capacity is reached. Upon impact, or upon the wielder’s focused intent, the stored energy discharges.

  Okay. So Durability was like... insulation. You applied it once, and it just worked, reinforcing the material continuously.

  Piercing was more like a battery connected to a trigger.

  The effect upon release is not one of sharpening or hardening. The burst creates a localized field that temporarily disrupts molecular cohesion in the target material. For the duration of contact, measured in fractions of a second, the bonds holding the target together weaken. The enchanted object does not become sharper. The obstacle becomes softer.

  I sat back, staring at the ceiling as my mind processed this. What I enchant doesn’t get sharper. The target gets softer.

  That was... actually terrifying when I thought about it. Armor didn’t fail because the bullet was stronger. It failed because, for a split second, its molecular structure forgot how to be solid.

  The apprentice must understand: this is not destruction. The cohesion disruption is temporary, lasting only as long as the mana burst sustains it. Once depleted, the target material returns to its natural state. What remains is the hole.

  “What remains is the hole,” I repeated aloud. “Very comforting.”

  The book’s text shifted, revealing the equation.

  And I immediately understood why this was going to be harder.

  The Rune of Durability had maybe six variables I needed to solve for. Object dimensions, material properties, mana distribution patterns, reinforcement locations. Complicated, yeah, but easy to guess and fumble around.

  The Rune of Piercing had... more.

  Storage capacity. Charge rate. Trigger threshold. Focus geometry. Burst duration. Discharge efficiency. Recovery time before the cycle could begin again.

  Each variable interacted with the others in ways that made my head hurt just looking at them. Increase storage capacity and you needed more time to charge. Decrease burst duration and you needed better focus geometry to compensate. The trigger threshold had to balance between “too sensitive” and “won’t activate when you actually need it.”

  I looked at the figurine, at the tiny carved dagger in miniature Erika’s hand. The dagger. I needed to focus on the dagger.

  Not the whole figurine; that would be like trying to turn an entire rifle into a penetrating round. The rune needed a point of application, a specific geometry where the cohesion disruption would manifest.

  I leaned closer, studying the miniature weapon. It was maybe two centimeters long, carved with surprising detail, the edge actually coming to something resembling a point. Whoever had made this figurine, and I was still pointedly not thinking about the System manifesting it specifically to embarrass me, had put real effort into the tiny blade.

  The equation demands focus; the book reminded me as I let my vision blur across its pages. Intention shapes the variables. To enchant without purpose is to create instability. Know what you wish to pierce, and the mathematics will follow.

  Right. Intention.

  I placed my hand on the figurine, my fingers carefully positioned so my palm covered the tiny dagger, and tried to focus my mana the way I had with Durability.

  The dust glowed. The connection snapped into place.

  And the equation appeared, but wrong.

  Well, not wrong exactly, but... scattered. The variables floated in my mind’s eye without structure, refusing to organize themselves into something I could solve. Storage capacity demanded attention while simultaneously rejecting the values I tried to assign. The charge rate fluctuated wildly depending on factors I couldn’t identify.

  I pulled back, gasping, my mana guttering like a candle in wind.

  “What the hell?”

  The book’s text shifted, almost smugly.

  Passive runes accept imprecision. The material compensates; the ambient mana smooths inconsistencies; the enchantment stabilizes itself over time. Active runes demand precision from the first moment. The mechanism must be complete before it can function.

  I stared at the words, frustration building in my chest.

  With durability, I’d been able to feel my way through, adjusting as I went, letting the equation guide me toward a solution even when I didn’t fully understand the mathematics. Trial and error had worked because the rune was forgiving.

  Piercing wasn’t forgiving. Piercing required me to know what I was building before I built it.

  I took a breath, forcing myself to think instead of just feel. Okay. Start from the beginning. What did I actually want this rune to do?

  The dagger was tiny. Decorative. It would never actually be used to stab anything, so the practical applications were limited. But that wasn’t the point; the point was learning the rune, understanding the mechanism well enough that I could apply it to things that mattered.

  So. A tiny dagger that could pierce... what?

  Intention shapes the variables.

  I focused on the dagger again, but this time I didn’t immediately push mana. Instead, I held an image in my mind: the blade pressing against something solid. Wood, maybe. Or leather. Something that should stop a blade this small.

  And then I imagined the moment of release. The stored mana discharging. The target’s cohesion failing, just for an instant, just at the point of contact.

  The blade sliding through like the obstacle wasn’t even there.

  I pushed my mana into the dust.

  This time, the equation assembled itself differently. Still more complex, still demanding, but organized now. The variables had context, purpose, and meaning derived from the intention I’d provided.

  Storage capacity: small. This was a tiny blade with limited surface area for the rune. It couldn’t hold much.

  Charge rate: moderate. I wanted it to refill reasonably quickly, but not so fast that it drained ambient mana conspicuously.

  Trigger threshold: impact. Physical contact with resistance would activate the discharge.

  Focus geometry: point. All the energy concentrated at the blade’s tip, the smallest possible area for maximum effect.

  Burst duration: minimal. A fraction of a second was all it needed; any longer would waste energy.

  The variables locked into place, and I began solving.

  It was harder than Durability. So much harder. Each adjustment I made rippled through the entire system, changing values I thought I’d already fixed. The charge rate affected the storage capacity, which affected the burst duration, which looped back around to affect the charge rate again.

  I lost track of time, my mana draining in steady increments as I worked through the mathematics, failed, pulled back, and tried again. The exhaustion from earlier settled into my bones, the adrenaline crash combining with mental strain to create a fog that made every calculation feel like wading through Jeup paste.

  But slowly, agonizingly slowly, the equation resolved.

  The variables stopped fighting me. The values stabilized. The system crystallized into something that almost made sense, a mechanism waiting to be inscribed.

  I pushed the final solution into the figurine.

  The mana dust flared, not golden this time but a bright silver that made me squint. The light traced lines across the tiny dagger, forming patterns more intricate than the Durability rune had been, loops and whorls.

  The light faded.

  And carved into the blade, almost too small to see, was a silver mark.

  The Rune of Piercing.

  I slumped back in my chair, my mana completely empty, my head pounding, my eyes burning from strain and sleep deprivation.

  A notification appeared.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  [Rune of Piercing - LEARNING IN PROGRESS]

  Progress: 18%

  Estimated time to completion: 9 hours

  Eighteen percent.

  My first attempt at Durability had gotten me to twenty-one. This rune was genuinely harder; the mathematics more demanding; the precision required leaving less room for intuitive fumbling.

  I looked at the figurine, at the tiny silver mark on its tinier dagger, and laughed.

  Here I was, not so far away from morning, having survived a PMC firefight and an emergency window exit, learning to enchant a wooden carving of my crush with armor-piercing magic while an alien intelligence occasionally mocked me.

  This was my life now.

  I should probably get some sleep.

  Instead, I reached for the mana dust pouch, checking how much remained. Enough for several more attempts, if my mana would regenerate fast enough. The book had said the sixty-hour window was because my body couldn’t handle continuous magical strain, but short sessions with breaks should be fine.

  My body disagreed.

  The exhaustion hit like a physical weight, pressing down on my shoulders, making my eyelids heavy and my thoughts sluggish. The adrenaline that had carried me through the Guild and the train ride home had finally, completely, abandoned me.

  The apprentice who overextends invites failure, the book offered, its text shifting into view as my eyes unfocused. Rest is not weakness. It is preparation for the work that remains.

  “Even the book is telling me to sleep,” I muttered.

  I didn’t move from the chair.

  The workshop was quiet around me, the hum of climate control and the distant sounds of the house settling the only interruptions. My TABLO sat patient and solid, my Orbital dormant, my crates of expensive materials still waiting to be properly organized.

  Tomorrow. All of it, tomorrow.

  I dissolved the silver rune with the last dregs of my mana, watching the mark flare and fade, returning the figurine to simple wood. I’d need to practice again once I recovered, needed to push that eighteen percent higher before the sixty-hour window closed.

  But not tonight.

  I made it upstairs on autopilot, muscle memory carrying me through the familiar path while my brain operated at maybe ten percent capacity. The house was dark and silent, Mom and Comma long since asleep, no one aware that their son and brother had spent the evening accidentally facilitating corporate warfare.

  Probably better that way.

  My room welcomed me, and I collapsed onto the bed without bothering to change out of my soul-bound gear, the hoodie still wrapped around me like armor against dreams I didn’t want to have.

  Sleep came fast.

  A music hit me like a physical assault.

  Bass frequencies vibrated through my skull before I was fully conscious, dragging me from dreamless sleep into a world where someone had apparently decided that noon on a Saturday was the perfect time to experience Pawadai’s entire discography at volumes that violated at least three noise ordinances.

  I groaned into my pillow; the sound was swallowed by the relentless punk-rock tsunami emanating from somewhere down the hall.

  Comma’s room.

  My holoband was somewhere on the nightstand, and I fumbled for it with eyes still glued shut, muscle memory guiding my fingers to the Pulse app.

  Me: turn it down please

  I waited. The music continued, the vocalist screaming something about corporate oppression and systemic inequality with such raw energy that told me he’d never actually experienced either but had very strong opinions nonetheless.

  Then my holoband buzzed.

  The volume increased.

  Not subtly, either. The bass went from “aggressive” to “seismic,” an escalation that could only come from someone who’d seen my message and decided that compliance was for people who weren’t fourteen-year-old menaces.

  Another buzz. A message notification.

  I opened it to find a meme. Leyla Najjar, the founder of Najjar Bionics, captured in what was clearly an unauthorized press moment, her chrome-streaked face twisted into an expression of pure disdain, her tongue stuck out at whatever reporter had annoyed her enough to abandon corporate decorum.

  Comma had added text above and below the image:

  “WHEN YOUR BROTHER ASKS YOU TO TURN DOWN YOUR MUSIC”

  ”BUT YOU REMEMBER HE ATE YOUR JEUP BAR”

  I hadn’t eaten her Jeup bar yesterday, right? That had been three weeks ago, and I’d apologized, and she’d claimed she was over it.

  Apparently not.

  Me: I’m sorry, I’ll get double the ice cream?

  “Comma!” I yelled, throwing off my blankets and stumbling toward my door.

  The word vanished into the wall of sound, absorbed by distorted guitars and drums that seemed offended by the concept of rhythm. I could have screamed until my throat bled, and she wouldn’t have heard a thing over the sonic assault she’d weaponized against me.

  I let out a yawn that turned into a groan halfway through, accepting defeat with the grace of someone who’d survived worse things than his sister’s musical terrorism in the past twenty-four hours.

  Fine.

  I was awake now anyway.

  I shuffled toward the bathroom, letting the familiar morning routine carry me through the fog of insufficient sleep.

  The tactical pants I’d fallen asleep in were wrinkled but functional, my hoodie still wrapped around me like I’d been expecting combat even in my dreams. I splashed water on my face, stared at my reflection, bloodshot eyes, hair that had apparently staged its own rebellion overnight, and tried to remember what day it was.

  Saturday. Midday, judging by the light filtering through the bathroom window.

  Which meant...

  I pulled up my system interface, navigating to the magic section with a growing sense of dread.

  [You can unlock more runes in: 51 hours]

  Fifty hours.

  I stared at the number, slowly grinding through the implications.

  When I’d selected Durability, the timer had started at sixty hours. I’d learned it, then immediately selected Piercing when the counter hit zero. Now I had fifty hours until the next unlock.

  But the book. Dante was collecting the book in... I counted backwards. Wednesday delivery, seven days to return it, that meant...

  I had until Wednesday around 3pm. Roughly five days, fifty hours until the next rune unlocked.

  I’d have time for a third rune.

  “I’m an idiot,” I announced to my reflection.

  I’d been so focused on the sixty-hour lockout that I’d assumed I could only learn two runes before Dante came knocking. But the lockout only prevented me from starting a new rune; it didn’t stop me from finishing the current one faster.

  If I pushed hard on the third rune, I could have three. Maybe four, if my body could take it? Except that would push past Dante’s deadline, so realistically three runes total.

  Three runes instead of two.

  Math.

  My eternal nemesis had actually worked in my favor for once, and I’d been too dense to notice until now.

  The Pawadai assault continued from down the hall, but I barely heard it anymore. I was already moving, getting breakfast. Uh, brunch? Anyway, after eating, I was heading for the basement stairs, churning through possibilities.

  Durability for defense. Piercing for offense. And one more: Binding? Force? Fire? I’d figure that out later. Right now, I had a rune to learn.

  The workshop greeted me with its familiar chaos: crates still waiting to be organized; the TABLO sitting patient and ready, the SSS-tier book exactly where I’d left it.

  And on the table’s surface, the Erika figurine.

  I stared at it for a long moment.

  The system had provided this specifically. Emotional connection strengthens the learning process, the book had said, and the alien intelligence running my life had apparently decided that my embarrassing crush was the optimal emotional anchor for magical education.

  But I’d already used it for Durability. I’d already pushed past the initial awkwardness, already accepted that yes, I was learning magic by enchanting a tiny wooden sculpture of a girl who was way out of my league.

  Did I really need to keep using it?

  The figurine’s carved face seemed to judge me, that confident half-smile suggesting she knew exactly what I was thinking and found it amusing.

  “Screw it,” I muttered, turning away from the table. “Screw the system and its object of significance.”

  I walked to the corner where my scrap materials were piled, the leftover bits from old experiments, the salvage I’d collected before I had access to real resources. Most of it was junk, but somewhere in there...

  My hand closed around a piece of metal.

  Thin, maybe fifteen centimeters long, with an edge that had been ground down at some point for reasons I couldn’t remember. Not a proper blade, just a strip of salvage that happened to be vaguely blade-shaped.

  I carried it back to the TABLO and set it down, examining the edge under the TABLO lights. The metal was dull, scratched, clearly never intended for cutting anything more demanding than air. But it had an edge, which was more than the figurine’s decorative dagger could claim.

  Time to test.

  I grabbed a sheet of synth-paper from my supplies, the cheap stuff weaker than actual paper, and held it up with one hand while positioning the metal strip with the other. The classic sharpness test, the kind every tinkerer knew from their first day working with blades.

  I drew the edge across the paper in a smooth motion.

  The synth-paper bent. Folded. Crumpled slightly where the metal pressed against it.

  Did not cut.

  The edge caught on the material’s surface, dragging rather than slicing, leaving a faint impression but nothing resembling an actual incision. I tried again, adjusting the angle, applying more pressure, and achieved nothing but a slightly more pronounced crease in the paper.

  “About what I expected,” I said, setting the paper aside.

  The metal was dull. Functionally useless as a cutting implement. Which made it perfect for testing whether the Rune of Piercing actually worked.

  I sprinkled mana dust over the edge, watching the glittering powder cling to the metal’s surface. I let my eyes unfocus, finding the book’s text, and worked.

  The equation appeared differently this time.

  Not wrong, exactly, but... resistant. The metal didn’t accept my mana the way the wooden figurine had. Where wood was organic, flexible, willing to work with intention, the salvaged steel was stubborn, its molecular structure set in patterns that had been established long before I’d touched it.

  And the edge itself presented new challenges.

  The figurine’s dagger had been tiny, decorative, with a focus geometry so simple that “point” had been acceptable definition. This metal strip had an actual edge, fifteen centimeters of it, and the equation demanded I specify exactly how the rune should interact with that length.

  Did I want the entire edge to carry the effect? That would require more storage capacity, more mana, and a longer charge time.

  Did I want to focus on a single point? That would be more efficient, but then most of the edge would be useless.

  I tried to split the difference, distributing the rune across the full length but with concentration points at regular intervals, and the equation rejected my solution with the mathematical equivalent of a slap across the face.

  My mana groaned. I pulled back, gasping.

  Okay. Okay, different approach.

  I thought about what I actually wanted this piece of scrap to do. Not theoretically, not in the abstract sense of “pierce things,” but specifically.

  Cut paper.

  That was it. That was the test. I wanted this dull, useless strip of metal to slice through synth-paper as if it was actually sharp.

  The intention crystallized, and I pushed back into the equation.

  This time, I focused only on the edge. Not the whole blade, not multiple concentration points, just the thin line where metal met air. The storage capacity could be minimal; synth-paper wasn’t exactly demanding. The charge rate could be slow. The trigger threshold needed to be in contact with resistance, the same as before.

  But the variables still fought me.

  The metal’s stubbornness bled into the mathematics, every adjustment requiring more force, more precision, more conscious effort than the wood had demanded. I felt like I was trying to write with a pen that actively resisted being moved; each stroke requiring concentration that drained my already depleted reserves.

  Minutes passed. Maybe longer. I lost track; the world narrowing to the equation and the edge and the desperate need to make this work.

  My mana dropped to a trickle.

  Then to dregs.

  Then to the absolute bottom of whatever reservoir existed beneath my skin, the last shreds of magical energy I possessed being pushed into a solution that still felt incomplete, still felt rough, still felt like I was forcing a square peg into a round hole through sheer stubbornness.

  The equation resolved.

  The mana dust flared silver, tracing patterns along the metal’s edge, forming the intricate loops and whorls of the Piercing rune. The light faded, leaving behind a rune so fine it was almost invisible.

  I slumped forward, my forehead nearly hitting the TABLO, breathing like I’d just sprinted up eighteen flights of stairs.

  “Okay,” I wheezed. “Okay. Test time.”

  I grabbed the synth-paper again, holding it up with trembling fingers. The metal strip felt different now, like I was aware of the trigger in a way it hadn’t been before. I could feel the rune’s charge, that stored potential waiting for release.

  I drew the edge across the paper.

  The metal bit into the synth-paper instantly; the resistance that had stopped it before simply... failing. The edge slid through as if the material were butter instead of polymer-reinforced fiber, smooth and effortless and—

  Stuck.

  About a fifth of the way through the cut, the blade stopped. The effortless slide became resistance again, the edge catching on material that had remembered how to be solid.

  I stared at the partially cut paper, at the clean incision that had turned into a jagged tear where I’d tried to force it through without the rune’s assistance.

  “Oh.”

  I facepalmed hard enough that it actually hurt.

  “Of course. It softens the target for a fraction of a second. It doesn’t actually make the blade sharp.”

  The rune had worked exactly as designed. The cohesion disruption had triggered on contact, weakening the synth-paper’s molecular bonds, letting the dull edge pass through without resistance. And then the burst had ended, the stored mana exhausted, and the paper had returned to its normal state while my blade was still inside it.

  A sharp blade would have completed the cut before the effect ended. A sharp blade could have used that fraction of enhanced piercing to slice through things that should have stopped it.

  A dull piece of scrap metal just... got stuck.

  The book’s text shifted into view as my eyes unfocused from exhaustion.

  The student demonstrates an understanding of the mechanism while failing to grasp the obvious implication. The Rune of Piercing enhances existing capabilities. It does not replace the fundamental requirements of the craft.

  “I’m not dense,” I muttered at the book. “At least… well, I’m just tired.”

  The distinction is noted, but not relevant to the observation.

  “System, I know you talk to me through the book.”

  Silence.

  The text remained static, offering no response, no acknowledgment, nothing but the faintly smug implication that an alien superintelligence found my struggles entertaining.

  I pulled up my interface.

  [Rune of Piercing - LEARNING IN PROGRESS]

  Progress: 27%

  Estimated time to completion: 13 hours

  Twenty-seven percent. Nine percent improvement from my first attempt, achieved through significantly more effort and significantly less dignity.

  At this rate, I’d need... way more time than I had. Each attempt draining me completely, each one fighting against materials that didn’t want to cooperate, each one teaching me lessons I should have figured out before wasting mana on scrap metal.

  “Screw my life,” I announced to the empty workshop. The Erika figurine sat on the table’s edge, watching me with that carved half-smile.

  Emotional connection strengthens the learning process.

  Maybe the system had a point after all.

  TODAY’S CHAPTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY The Erika figurine

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