"You-You... You want to learn my magic?"
What did Ciri just hear? A demon of chaos and darkness wanted to learn the god of order's magic?
"I do not think there's anything wrong with that."
Joshua did not understand why Ciri was so shocked even though she had already been in a state of fear the entire time.
"There really isn't."
Aside from a few sects, many mages in the world believed in multiple gods to diversify their magic.
Their faith had nothing to do with their strength because the gods only provided the seeds of magic. In order for them to bloom, it all depended on the mage's own learning.
Thus, most of the people in this world treated the gods as a tool to learn magic rather than faithfully worship them. Ciri belonged to that group.
If there was something that mages really worshipped, it was called "knowledge".
Ciri pulled out a wooden statue from her robe and placed it on the ground as pale white light appeared on her fingertips.
A few swipes on the ground later, a pale white magic circle radiated around the wooden statue.
"Just touch the statue with your hand."
In Ciri's world, the ritual was something everyone would go through when they were six years old. Regardless of their innate talents, they would be implanted with all kinds of magical seeds.
It was a necessary procedure in order to live in the human world, just like an ID card on Earth. A person would only be considered a citizen if they had one.
That was also the first time Ciri had ever hosted such a ritual. She was a novice who had not even gotten her second-level magic certificate yet. Hosting the ritual aside, to think that the target of her ritual was actually a demon!
If the god of order really existed, Ciri really hoped that divine wrath would not fall upon her.
That was the first time Ciri actually prayed to the god of order.
"Like this?"
Joshua did not sense any danger from the magic circle Ciri had drawn up. The magic power in the circle itself was minimal just like the Torch spell earlier.
So, Joshua just touched the wooden statue with his hand.
A pale white glow begin to gather at Joshua's fingertip and entered his body through the wooden statue.
The light grew stronger as the entire room was filled with shimmering particles. Once everything entered Joshua's body, he found something extra in his vision.
A series of complex words and symbols became visible to Joshua the moment he opened his eyes. There were at least hundreds of them, and the symbols were not of any language that Joshua knew, yet he could understand the meaning of the words.
The first character represented "1", and the second one, "0", alongside symbols for "A" and "B".
"Are these symbols in my eyes... runes?"
With a wave of his hand, the runes disappeared. But with just a thought, they appeared before him again.
Joshua had seen the runes before, and many of the prince's inventions contained a large number of those symbols. The runes replaced cogs and gears for the operation of his magically-powered machines.
"Yes, they are Runes of Order."
It worked... Ciri never thought a demon would be able to receive a seed of magic.
That allowed Ciri to breathe a sigh of relief. At the same time, it gave her a small sense of accomplishment.
She was the first person in this world to get a demon to receive the magic of order! It was... something that even her rich sister could not accomplish.
"How many runes can you see? You will need two for it to be considered a passing grade. Three is excellent, and four means you are a genius."
Ciri repeated what her first magic teacher had told her. It was the very same teacher who awakened her magical powers.
One needed to know that she was a super genius who could see five runes when her powers first awakened.
"How many?"
Joshua looked at the large array of symbols before him once again and roughly estimated that there were at least two hundred.
"Two hundred plus," Joshua said.
"What?!"
After she put in great effort to calm her fear with pride and contentment, Ciri fell into a stupor when she heard Joshua's reply.
There were two standards for measuring the power of a mage. The first was the amount of magic within the body, and the second was the number of runes one had.
A magic rune was the most basic element in constructing a spell. In order to use a powerful spell, aside from the required vast amount of magical power (mana), one also needed to be able to arrange and chant hundreds or even thousands of runes.
The acquisition of runes depended on the mage's own learning process, their so-called "knowledge".
Ciri had only mastered about twenty runes, and that only came after her travels in the past five to six years. However, what was the deal with the demon before her?
Two hundred plus?!
If he was not lying, the knowledge he had was even more than the archmages in the Council of Seven in Norland!
"This..."
The shock Ciri suffered made her forget that she was actually in a dangerous situation of being abducted by demons as she watched the series of runes appearing before Joshua intently.
Ciri recognized a few of the runes, and one of them meant "air". She had used the rune to construct the Shockwave spell earlier.
"A periodic table," Joshua said.
"A... what?"
"Nothing."
With a wave of his hand, the faint white runes before him disappeared.
It was just an elemental periodic table Joshua had arranged from part of the runes. The runes worked exactly like Chinese characters as different combinations formed different meanings.
From the test earlier, Joshua was sure that not only could he set the runes to only be visible to himself, but if he so desired, he could also show it to others.
Constructing magic with them aside, Joshua realized that the nature of the runes was exceedingly similar to something he was very familiar with.
It was... computer language—the type of advanced C++ language with a language library!
As he thought of that, Joshua, who was a game designer and a part-time programmer had a daring idea.
He could create a system using the runes! In any case, Joshua's memory was so overpowered now. Not to mention, he had also worked in Microsoft for a period of time.
There was no need to fret about having no system to act as a cheat code after crossing over! Joshua could just write one himself. Be it WIN98 or WINXP, Joshua knew how to make one out of the runes!
While it may take some time, creating a simplified version was not a problem in Joshua's mind.
Only then did he realize that the magic in this world was such an interesting thing.
"Ciri, were you happy learning magic?"
Joshua's new discovery led him to ask such a question.
Happy, why would she not be happy? That would have been Ciri's reply before she met Joshua since she would be the creme of the crop in terms of magical talent, but...
Now that she saw the series of runes before Joshua, which she had never seen before, the urge to forget about learning magic, and just pack up, go home, and get married suddenly welled up within her!
However, that was dependent on Joshua being willing to let her go.