You can’t drain Spirit. The more you weave its runes, the brighter it burns.

  ~ Andre

  The next morning, Sarah awoke refreshed, and noted that her health points had replenished while she slept. She was again greeted by a message box as soon as she woke up.

  Daily Quest replaced by Path of Ancients Tutorial 1.

  “Great, but give me a minute. I need a shower and some food.”

  In reply, another message box appeared.

  Initiating Path of Ancients Tutorial 1 dream sequence.

  “Path of Impatience more like it,” she growled just before her vision went black and she felt herself fall back onto the bed as her mind was swept away.

  The darkness was replaced a moment later by bright lights, and she looked around to see where the system had dumped her this time. After the crazy challenge dungeon, waking up in a random place was no surprise. Landing in a classroom was.

  Sarah eagerly studied the room. She'd never gone to college, but the large room with desks arranged in stadium seating looked like the quintessential college lecture room. She stood alone, halfway up the rows of student seats.

  All of the desks faced a large table at the front of the room, with huge dry erase boards covering the forty-foot back wall behind it. The air smelled faintly of chalk, although there was no chalkboard in sight, and had that musty book smell of libraries.

  The classroom setting made sense, but wasn't she supposed to have a teacher? Sarah slowly descended the flight of short steps toward the front of the room and approached a long, heavy teacher's table. When she drew within a couple paces of it, new message boxes appeared.

  You have taken your first steps along the Path of Ancients. Soon you will unlock enough of your bloodline potential to begin wielding the latent power it possesses. Before that time, you must understand how such power is used.

  “Bring on the training montage,” Sarah grinned as more text scrolled past.

  Runes are a vital component of harnessing your bloodline power. Runes draw from the power of a soul’s Spirit. This first tutorial will teach you some of the basic symbols used as foundational elements.

  “Huh.”

  She hadn't expected the tutorial to dive right in and start with something like runes. She'd expected maybe a handbook, info about what the different ranks and stats meant, and maybe even hints as to what she was supposed to do with this new power. Instead, she was getting runes.

  She thought back to the strange symbols marked around the vault door, and the glowing symbols Mai Luan had been drawing in the air that caused that crazy explosion. That explosion that somehow changed her and opened her mind to the system's influence.

  Those runes drew from Spirit? Did that mean Mai Luan was powering her glowing runes with her own Spirit, or had those two opened safety deposit face boxes have anything to do with it? Sarah hadn’t managed to break through the invisible barrier until she threw Dr Maerwynn’s face mask.

  Her soul.

  Huh. Eirene had not used any runes, and neither had Dr Maerwynn, but Mai Luan’s reaction to the thrown soul suggested runes would draw power from it upon contact. Fascinating.

  The only runes she had seen so far had been evil, except for that symbol that had appeared over her leg before fading away when she got that stat-enhancement rune.

  So runes could be good to. Hopefully. Sarah pushed aside her whirling thoughts and focused on the additional text that continued to scroll past. At the same time, images began taking shape on the whiteboard, as if an invisible hand was starting to draw.

  Maybe she had a teacher after all. Sarah approached the boards, studying the images and text with growing interest.

  To begin, we consider foundational symbols related to each of the basic body stats. You have already experienced the Rune of Flowing Motion, a rune created by combining several basic symbols to boost your Agility.

  More information about stats was good. Hopefully she’d get a clue about willpower and Talent meant. As the voice read that message, symbols that she recognized as pieces of that stat-enhancement rune were drawn on the board. So combining those symbols together created what the system called the Rune of Flowing Motion?

  Poetic, and super cool. Learning about symbols that could directly impact her stats was awesome. Maybe spending all those free points to buy the tutorial would net her a lot more gains in the long run.

  A row of symbols quickly took shape on the board. First came a symbol made from three curling lines that spiraled out from the center, which was labeled as the Triskele. Next came the symbol of the feather, which was labeled as the Feather of Ma’at.

  Many cultures have symbols that resonate with each physical stat, and those symbols can be worked into runes to draw Spirit power to fuel improvements to that stat, under certain circumstances.

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  That made sense, and hopefully the tutorial was about to explain what those certain circumstances were. She'd seen the Triskele spiral before. It was a Celtic symbol, wasn't it?

  The feather was not familiar, and she had no idea what Ma’at meant. Then came another symbol that was clearly Chinese, and beside that was sketched a stylized leaping hare. Interesting, those last two had not been included in her stat-enhancement rune.

  Did that mean that runes did not have to incorporate all of the symbols? If that was the case, how had the final combination been decided? Was it just pure, random chance?

  She seriously doubted it, but had no point of reference to figure it out. The voice continued after a brief pause as additional symbols appeared beneath the first group.

  Next stat: Strength.

  Sarah leaned forward, studying the new symbols. The first was a strange, blocky pillar with flared corners and crossbars stacked above each other near the top, labeled Djed. Next came one called a Celtic trident that looked like any other trident, as far as she could tell. It was followed by a weird stick with a bent head and a two-pronged hook at the bottom, labeled a Was Staff. Finally came a simple triangle, pointing upward that did not get any special name.

  “Basic symbols indeed,” Sarah muttered.

  Toughness followed, and the symbols were a little more interesting. First came the interlocking links of the Eternal Knot, which Sarah did recognize, followed by a Chinese-looking symbol she did not. Then came a five-petaled Lotus and a Celtic cross that was a heavy cross with a circle through the middle.

  That made her grimace. It seemed like a pretty religious symbol, more than the other ones on the board. It was not the same type of cross used by her religiously-fanatic parents, but similar enough to give her pause.

  Willpower came next, and it was even more interesting. After another gibberish-looking Chinese character came an Egyptian stylized eye called the Eye of Horus. She’d seen that one in a movie once. Strangely, the next symbol was the Lotus again. Could basic symbols be used to represent more than one thing? That was super confusing. Who came up with that plan?

  Willpower also included what looked like a stylized flame symbol, followed by a more complex one that looked like several triangles stacked on top of each other, some pointing up and some pointing down, called the Sri Yantra. That sounded like something from India.

  Sarah studied the symbols, trying to memorize them and make sense of why they were included in each category. She'd gotten decent grades in school, but those symbols called to her in a way math and science and English never had.

  It looked like the symbols were a mixture of Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Celtic, and probably other cultures she hadn't picked out yet. It seemed complex, but incredibly interesting.

  After a couple more minutes, the room around her flashed to blinding white light without warning. When her eyes adjusted, she’d left the college classroom behind and now stood in a huge stadium.

  It looked like a track and field meet was going on, and she stood in the middle of the organized chaos. The air was warm, with a hint of asphalt.

  All around her, people were running, jumping, throwing javelins, pole-vaulting, and more. Much more, actually. As she slowly turned around, trying to figure out what was going on, she spotted gymnastic events too.

  A hugely-muscled guy was twirling his body around a pommel horse, while a very petite woman was doing impossible things on an uneven bar. Another woman was doing backflips on a narrow balance beam, and three separate people were tumbling and dancing their way through floor routines on huge mats.

  A message box popped up in front of her.

  Even basic symbols can contain power. Study the effects of various symbols when applied to simple souls.

  “Object lessons. Cool.”

  Her gaze was drawn to a woman doing a triple jump. The feather symbol tied to agility flashed on the woman's leg for a second. As soon as it did, the woman’s pace increased, she moved with additional grace, and when she threw herself into the jump, she posted the best distance of the day.

  Interesting. Sarah again turned slowly, studying the various competitors. As her eyes landed on each one, a basic symbol would flash somewhere on their body. Each time it did, their performance improved. Sometimes a great deal, and sometimes a little, but always an improvement.

  That Rune of Flowing Motion she’d won had combined a few basic symbols, and it granted her a full ten-point boost to Agility. It looked each basic symbol by itself could provide a smaller but still noticeable boost.

  It was fascinating, and she lost herself in her observations, slowly turning, looking from one athlete to the next, picking out the basic symbols that would flare briefly on their bodies, and then study the effects.

  A few minutes later, another message box surprised her.

  Time to test your retention. Call out which stat each symbol is improving. You have one second after seeing a symbol to identify the related stat. Rewards based on performance.

  Sarah bit back a curse. She hated tests.

  Before she could think of a way to protest, her eyes fell upon a woman leaping up to the uneven bars. The spiraling Triskele symbol appeared on one of the woman's arms, and Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. That was one of the few she felt confident about.

  “Agility,” she cried aloud, then cringed and glanced around.

  No one paid her any attention or reacted to her shout. It was like she was invisible. She should have realized that earlier. No one had glanced at her once the whole time she was standing there.

  Correct. One of one.

  She smiled. Easy peasy.

  Then she looked at a man working the pommel horse, and a triangle symbol appeared on his back. Which one was that?

  She wasn't sure, and hesitated, trying to think.

  No choice made. Fail. One of two.

  “Give a girl a second,” Sarah muttered, then chuckled to herself. The system was giving her exactly one second, but she had needed another one. She focused. “No more mistakes.”

  She might hate tests, but she loved rewards from the system path. She did not want to miss out on any. A knot of runners sped past just then, and a Lotus flower flared on one of their stomachs.

  “Toughness!” Sarah exclaimed.

  Incorrect. Fail. One of three.

  “Lame,” she growled, then remembered the Lotus had been listed under both Toughness and Willpower. “Trick question,” she exclaimed, but still rubbed her hands together as she focused, intent on not missing any more.

  Despite her determination, she did miss more. Over the next several minutes, symbols flashed faster and faster across different competitors, forcing her to pick the correct stat instantly. She got some right, but not enough.

  Her annoyance grew, as did her focus. She stopped caring about anything else, vision zeroing in on each symbol, her mind poised to identify it, her entire body tense with anticipation and the drive to win.

  Slowly, her success rate climbed until she was guessing correctly seven out of ten times. Better, but still not enough.

  “What’s the good of having a Willpower stat if I can’t memorize a few symbols?” she muttered, willing her mind to work faster.

  Something deep inside of her responded, like finding an extra mental gear, and everything seemed to sharpen. Time seemed to slow as symbols appeared, and the board with the list of symbols popped into her mind with startling clarity.

  That made it simple to pick the correct stats, and she got every last one right, even the tricky Chinese characters. She was so engrossed in the challenge that she was surprised when another message box popped up in front of her.

  Sequence complete.

  Plus 3 to Talent. Talent increases from E0 to E3.

  Plus 3 free points.

  New ability: Basic Rune Sensitivity 1. Plus 5% improvement learning new symbols and basic runes per level.

  Sarah whooped with victory as a wave of warmth rippled through her heart and mind. Another new ability. Nice! Getting bonus free points was awesome, and levels in her Talent rank seemed like an even bigger win.

  Maybe the tutorial would even explain what Talent meant so she could properly celebrate.

  Everything around her froze, like a movie getting paused, leaving everyone totally frozen. A pole vaulter was stuck mid-vault, his pole bent almost double, a girl doing a tumbling routine was frozen in midair, upside down, and nearby runners were locked mid-step.

  As much as she was getting used to the idiosyncrasies of the path, that was still jarring. Another message appeared.

  First course complete. Initiating second course.