The ambient mana in the air ignited around Nate as he activated Conceptual Insight. The mana had shifted towards space due to the overwhelming presence of his construct. But space wasn’t what he needed now – what he needed was life. He had considered using his Life Drain runic array on himself, but he could already tell it wouldn’t be enough to save Britt. He’d die himself before she was restored. Trying to wait for Evindal was an option, only it wasn’t. Who knew how long the Platinums would be fighting and Britt was already dying. The other option was to use Kiri as the source, but a glance at her told him that she was running on dregs as she fought to finish off the Spear-wielder. He couldn’t tell how much soul energy she had to spare, her Skill for hiding her soul energy was too strong for him to overpower without focusing on it. That was ignoring the wasted mana and soul energy if she contested it. Null wasn’t an option either, as even now, Nate was not confident he could brute force the man's natural nullification aura. The only option left was to create an entirely new rune. One that didn’t function by exchanging lifeforce. But to craft a new rune he needed time. Time that Britt didn’t have, so he would have to use his Life Drain rune just to slow her demise. It would be a race against the clock.

  Splitting his focus he created the Life Drain runic array, letting it pull from his own body to try and keep Britt from slipping closer to death.

  Frick hobbled over next to him, the blue goblin looking truly worse for wear.

  “Anything I can do to help, Boss?” he asked quietly.

  “Help Null finish his fight. Kiri doesn’t need it.”

  Frick stumbled away, the Familiar on his last legs. Nate could sense the tether that bound the Spirit to the Familiar Contract was fading. His Familiar would likely end up banished for a little while, until the little blue goblin had recovered his soul energy in the Spiritual Realm. There was nothing he could do to help Nate with this.

  Focusing back on the task at hand, he created his Journeyman-tier Sigil for Life out of mana in front of him, even as his own life leaked away to keep Britt from dying. With the three days before they had left the Capital, three days travel to the Dungeon, two days inside, and then another two days spent on their return trip, his Conceptual Insight Skill had ten days worth of mana stored in it. Not enough to push his Life Sigil to Grandmaster, but it should suffice to bridge the gap to Master. Activating the aspect of his Skill that forced the revelation of a higher tier Sigil, he watched as the Life Sigil transformed before his eyes. It grew. That was the best way to describe it. It grew in complexity, shifting into flowing whorls that looked more like a fractal, or perhaps the growth of a cell. The tiny shifting symbols inside of it were like the organelles within a cellular structure. The thought struck him that his Conceptual Insight Skill forced a Sigil to evolve, and that the imagery on display was the absolute truth of Life. The transformation completed and he waited for the Divine Translation spell placed on him by Arikanvil to interpret the Sigil and inform him of his success.

  Nothing happened.

  His mind froze for a fraction of a second before he focused on committing the shape and symbols to memory. It was a flaw in the Divine Translation spell that he had not considered in almost a year. The information contained within was based on Arikanvil’s own understanding. It recognised Sigils because Arikanvil recognised those Sigils. Arikanvil did not know a Master-tier Sigil for Life, or at least, he did not know this variation.

  Nate was as certain of that as he was that this was a Sigil for Life. Ignoring the possibility that his Conceptual Insight Skill could have failed, the other portion of the Skill that helped him identify Concepts hummed strongly with its recognition of the Concept of Life. With the ambient mana drawn to the geometric shape, it was influencing his surroundings. The grass was growing, shifting, evolving at a visible rate, changing in colours in patches, other parts growing longer, or denser. Even Britt seemed to be benefitting, though in her case it just seemed to assist in keeping her from passing. He noticed she changed far less than the grass, but she still changed. Her hair, normally blonde, had shifted to green. He could sense that her fingernails and toenails sloughed off as they changed into a gooey fluid. The reason came to him quickly. Soul energy. Britt’s mental idea of who she was, what she should be, was guiding the Life affinity mana. The grass lacked that sense of self and so was at the mercy of the mana. But Britt’s hair had changed. Her soul energy was leaking away as she died and her extremities had already lost some of that energy. Enough that there was nothing to guide the Life affinity mana and it had run wild.

  Between his Life Drain runic array and the Master-tier Life Sigil, she was dying slower. If he was going to heal her he needed more than just Life. As she died, her soul energy was seeping away as well. A reflection of what had happened to Kiri, though on a far slower scale. Because of that he couldn’t rely on Britt’s remaining soul energy to reinforce what the ambient mana around the Sigil was already doing. Her body could warp, mutating into something else as the life energies rampaged unrestrained. He needed her mind. He needed her to guide the healing. Even now he was forced to focus his Life Drain runic array closer to her Class Core and her mind, where the soul energy could still guide the process. All it was doing now was giving him more time, which is exactly what he needed. But if he messed this up, it would be Britt that paid the price.

  His conflicted mind went through his options again in the space of a few seconds. Healing, if he could hold out for Evindal, would solve the immediate problem. That was still a big if. Alternatively, he could push further than he had planned. He was confident he could do something like inscribing a rune into Britt’s skeleton. Perhaps even raise the tier of her bones. Such a rune would draw on her own mana. It had the added benefit of making her more durable, which, if she wanted to stay with him, was almost a necessity at this point. House Desmarais, whoever they were, had committed ten Gold-ranked combatants and a Platinum just to see him and Kiri dead. Would this loss deter them? Or would they come back harder? And that was just one Noble House. Even if they were a powerful House, there were others. Fabien had been the second son of an Earl. Based on the Inspector, they at least suspected Nate. Maybe they even knew it had been him but just couldn’t prove it. He had grown, but was he powerful enough to face down the combined might of multiple Noble Houses? The answer was no. Not yet, anyway.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Certainly, he wasn’t alone. Aisling, Luc, Evindal, Deverell, perhaps others from the Guild. They would support him. They had shown their willingness and the lengths they were willing to go to over and over again. Even now Evindal fought another Platinum, the grove that marked their battlefield off in the distance. But what about those like Britt, those caught up in the whirlpool of his existence. She would be associated with him, no matter what she did. And unlike Null, she didn’t have the Class, Stats or Skills to resist. She had tried, and this was the price. Her beaten and broken body.

  The solution was obvious. He could make her stronger. Crossing the System by removing her Class Core was off the table. The last System Challenge had almost killed him. That was a die he wasn’t willing to roll. But there was the option he was considering. He could alter her body.

  As he understood it, the Class Core served three functions. It turned mana into processed mana by some mechanism he had yet to figure out. It stored and gave access to the various Skills provided by Classes. And it distributed processed mana throughout the body to create the effects of Stat enhancements. He was certain of that last one, as after Kiri’s Class reset, she had lost all the additional Stats that had been provided by the Classes on her original Class Core. She had reverted to a baseline state. That meant the presence of processed mana was what made them superhuman. In his case, that meant enhanced his memory, speed of thought and information processing while for Kiri, her speed and the ability to control her own soul energy. For Luc and Evindal, the ability to direct their mana in detail.

  There was a fourth layer. One that he had begun to suspect wasn’t directly related to his Class Core: mana affinities. They were based on the alignment of your mana with Concepts. Not processed mana – just mana. That had led him to wondering about what would happen if two people had the same Stat, but different physical forms. Would a five year old with a strength of one hundred be as strong as a fully grown adult? He was certain that the answer was no. That was the path to helping Britt he was considering. Making her strong enough to survive whatever there was to come. Strong enough to heal herself. He could alter her – his first attempt at living art.

  But if he did this, he would be making the decision for her. She couldn’t consent, and who was he to think he knew what was best for her? In the end, that mattered more. It had to be her decision. He could make the offer once she was hale and healthy. With his decision made, he got to work on the actual rune that he would use to save her life.

  The Life Sigil had already faded but he brought it back to life with a thought, Conceptual Runic Creation creating the scaffold as the Skill waited for his direction. Extracting half a dozen mana gems from his spatial storage, he began to draw on them as he crafted a new rune. Life was at the centre, surrounded by two Sigils for Soul and two Sigils for Mana. Soul was present to reinforce Britt’s flagging soul energy. Mana was needed to define the source of power. He didn’t think it would have drawn on her soul energy to power itself, but he couldn’t be certain, so he erred on the side of safety.

  Most runes Nate created were ultimately circular in nature. It made the design easier, made the centre of the rune clearer. Funnelled the mana where it needed to go. But this rune had to be different. Living beings were different. Britt was not in the shape of a circle, and given the lack of soul energy in her extremities, he wanted to make sure there was an even distribution of power.

  He sensed a rush of wind behind him and then a few seconds later, the presence of Kiri and Null stumbling into his sphere of awareness.

  “What can I do to help?” croaked out Null.

  Nate just shook his head as he focused on his work.

  He couldn’t only sense the area the swordsman occupied, Null having left his nullification aura above his skin. But he could hear him perfectly well.

  “I’m going to help Evindal,” stated Null, like a man walking to the gallows. “He can heal Britt.”

  “That’s suicide,” Kiri muttered, glancing at the titanic copse of trees and the ongoing explosions occurring within.

  “I know…but she’s my best friend,” Null muttered, stumbling into a jog as he ran for the forest created by Evindal.

  Nate wanted to say something but his attention was already divided between maintaining the Life Drain runic array and creating the runic array that he hoped would save Britt. The rune taking shape in front of him was like nothing he had ever done before. He had to constantly add or remove Sigils as he transformed his idea for the rune from a circle, to a rectangle, then breaking it down further into a humanoid shape, before the final revisions to make it align to Britt’s exact shape. In the end, it had over a dozen Sigils for Life alone.

  The rune was almost ready, but he was starting to feel lightheaded. Britt’s chest started spasming, widening her punctured lung. He was reaching the end of what he could sustain with his own body as the source for his Life Drain runic array. Realising he was going to pass out before he succeeded, he frantically tried to come up with another way to stabilise Britt. Kiri stepped forward, offering her hand, and he took it, both her physical hand and the implied consent. His Life Drain runic array switched to pulling from her and he directed it towards Britt’s skeleton. The rib piercing her lung clicked back into place and he was forced to direct some of the energy to prevent her lung from filling with blood.

  He sensed Kiri wobble behind him and knew that she too was coming to the end of what she had to give. It was now or never. With a final thought, he overlaid the runic array over the top of Britt and sent streams of mana from the mana gems towards it.

  Up until now, Britt had been lying as still and silent as a corpse. Her scream was so sudden and forceful that he sensed some of her vocal cords tear as she started thrashing violently in the crater that had almost become her tomb. At the same time, Kiri fell back, passing out as he severed the Life Drain rune from drawing from her.

  With Conceptual Intent, he guided the rune to direct life energy through the rune into Britt’s body, while he spent over ten of his intents fine-tuning the Soul portion of the rune to restore Britt’s own soul energy. With a flash of green light that shone through her skin, the rune became active. The mana drain was instantly evident as the rune tried to heal the damage done without concern for direction or focus, everything healing at once.

  With the Life Drain runic array now useless, he dropped it and drew on his memory, creating a small runic array using his incredibly weak Sigil for Sleep. It was enough, Britt slipping back into unconsciousness. Her body continued to twitch and shake as bones fused, skin sealed, organs repaired, and he honestly hoped she couldn’t remember the pain when she woke. But she was out of the woods. Her soul energy had stopped leaking away and he continued to feed mana from his gems to the runic array.

  All Nate could manage was a small smile. He was so spent, but she was alive. Now they just needed to wait for Evindal to finish his own battle. Nate had absolute confidence in his mentor. In the meantime, he would be at this for a while yet. The plethora of flashing notifications in the corner of his vision reinforced his opinion.

  Discord Channel

  Patreon with up to 20 chapters ahead of RoyalRoad.