Supreme Magus

Chapter 4431: Unique Combination (Part 1)

"Something that, luckily for us, Dhiral can’t conceive yet. An experiment under controlled conditions." Lith said.

"Is that really necessary?" Elina swallowed hard.

"Mom, unless you plan on keeping Surin and Dripha away from the other babies until they grow up, sooner or later they are bound to see the Rune Stores."

"No way! At that age, socializing is of the utmost importance." Elina replied. "I bet that if Manohar the First didn’t feel so isolated all his life, he might have grown into a good man. A decent man. A non-Manohar."

Marth and Ryssa felt the same and let their son spend as much time as they could with Shargein. Dragon Eyes allowed the Wyrmling to understand everything Dhiral said, while his unique upbringing allowed him to teach the baby boy just as much.

"Then we have only two choices, Mom." Lith said. "Either we don’t give the baby girls the Rune Stores and potentially cripple their magical education, or we let them have their toys and prepare for the moment Ely gets her hands on them."

"Let’s go with the second option." Elina sighed. "I don’t want Surin to endure unnecessary struggles. Also, maybe Ely can help us understand the danger the Rune Stores pose, and we can teach her how to use them properly."

Lith brought the baby girl to the room and sent Valeron to keep Raldarak company.

"Dya! Dada!" Elysia bolted to Lith’s chest. "Mished ya!"

She hugged him tight before flying around the room and welcoming everyone back.

"Good gods, Ely." Kamila chuckled as she peppered the baby girl’s face with kisses. "You haven’t seen us in minutes, not days. Are you becoming a spoiled little imp?"

"Nah!" Elysia dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. "Mished ya!"

"I missed you too, baby girl." Solus said, combing Elysia’s soft hair with her fingers. "Can you please tell us what you make of this?"

"Wah?" Elysia took the water Rune Store Solus offered her, sniffing, squeezing, and biting it.

"See? What did I tell you? It’s just a toy." Menadion crossed her arms in triumph.

"Or maybe it takes Ely more than three seconds to learn how to use an unknown tool without guidance." Lith replied

"If you ask me, she seems to have already mastered her craft." Menadion snorted as the baby girl squeezed the toy over and over.

"We’ll see." Lith sat back and smiled at his daughter. "Let her have her fun."

A few minutes of Elysia giggling and tormenting her new toy later, Menadion had the smuggest "I told you so" grin Lith had ever seen.

"Well, the good news is that thing is just a harmless toy." She said. "The even better news is that I was ri-"

Elysia had just let go of the Rune Store, but instead of falling to the ground, it was floating before her. Everyone present activated Life Vision to check for an invisible tendril of Spirit Magic, and discovered that the toy was soaked with water magic instead.

"That’s why Manohar the Second calls them Rune Stores." Lith inwardly cursed. "They work as a medium between mana and elemental energy. The concentric pattern of the runes allows the toys to retain their corresponding element even if supported by a minuscule amount of mana."

"Okay, maybe I was wrong." Menadion said. "But Ely has a powerful core for her age. How can we be so sure this isn’t just thanks to her natural connection with the water element? Conjuring water is the most basic-"

Elysia answered her question by conjuring a thick mist around the Rune Store that turned into a water bubble and then froze up a second later.

"Are you sure this is the hill you want to die on, Ripha?" Lith asked. "Aran and Leria are talented kids, but it took them one lesson and an entire day to do that."

"That’s because they don’t have a blue streak." Menadion said. "Also, this proves nothing. Dhiral said the Rune Stores are dangerous for Elysia. How is this dang-"

Elysia giggled harder as the Rune Store released a focused beam of intense cold that covered everything it struck in a thin layer of ice.

"Mom?" Solus asked.

The baby girl improved her control over water magic by the second, having the Rune Store fly faster and shooting more cold beams around at the same time. Elysia still remembered her parents’ instructions and only aimed at pieces of furniture away from her family members.

"Yes, sweetie?" Menadion replied as her eyes followed the toy’s increasingly powerful energy signature.

"Can you please shut up? I believe you have jinxed this house enough for one day." Solus said.

"With pleasure."

***

"How is that even possible?" Quylla asked while watching the footage of Elysia playing with the Water Store.

"I’ve scanned the Rune Stores with the tower, and I can explain most of what you’ve just seen. The rest is just guesswork that you have to take with a grain of salt." Lith said, and Quylla nodded for him to continue.

’I actually understood everything, but there is no way I can tell anyone I learned to use magic as a baby and I remember about it. My infancy is supposed to be no different from anyone else’s, not the second life of an adult.’ He thought.

"What I know for certain is that Dhiral waved the fabric of whatever the Rune Stores are made of to be an echo chamber for the first magic runes." Lith actually said while squeezing the blue toy and producing a sound that closely resembled Jorun.

"Yet the phenomenon is not limited to the sound. Each Rune Store constantly resonates with one of the first runes, allowing mana to easily bond with the corresponding element and be trapped inside the toy.

"The combination of the accumulated mana with the resonance effect turns a Rune Store into an elemental amplifier whose efficiency improves the longer you play with it and resets once all the elemental energy dissipates."

"It would explain why Ely’s chore magic got stronger over time, but not how she grasped the concept of multiple elemental states." Quylla pondered. "That’s supposed to be beyond her."

"And here we enter the realm of speculations." Lith lied through his teeth. "I believe that babies have a stronger connection to the primordial forces of Mogar due to their growing cores constantly absorbing fresh world energy, but they lack the reason to make use of their advantage.

"The Rune Store repeats the first magic runes in a form babies can understand, giving them infinite tries to establish a connection with each element of the world energy. Once a child reaches that connection, the Rune Store becomes a temporary vessel for a first magic rune.

"Just by playing with it, a child can get a feel for more runes, as it happened to me inside the Lodestar with the Dread Elements or to Elysia whenever she heard someone use first magic."

"I think he’s right." Friya said, knowing Lith was right. "The first rune of any element is the keystone of all its spells. Once you know it, the rest comes much easier."

It was what Tezka had taught her about the first dimensional rune, but Friya couldn’t mention that without going back on her word.