When it came to matters like this, Sylas had no ego. In reality, if you asked him outright, he might claim that he had no ego at all. Maybe others might think that it manifested in such a way, but to Sylas, he just felt that there were things that were and things that weren’t.
The fact that he was better than most he came across, and his actions reflected that, had little to do with how arrogant he was. He just wasn’t the sort that cared to waste his time equivocating and sugar-coating things.
So when he started building up the foundation of his knowledge, he didn’t feel like he had a bias. There was nothing too level for him. Even if it was meant to be a children’s book, he read it without prejudice.
One of the first things he read was precisely that, a picture book introducing the concept of Rune Master. It must have been created for toddlers, and most of what it wrote was obviously intuitive to Sylas by now. But as expected, there were some things that weren’t.
The picture book had a huge emphasis on what it called the “language of the world.” It broke down Rune Mastery in the same way you might teach a child the alphabet, talking about it like it was the universe’s way of communicating with its people.
It was a fascinating concept, and it really entrenched for Sylas why learning Ancient Ithkuil had changed his Rune Mastery prowess so substantially.
Now he understood more intimately that the reason was rooted in him finding a language that was closer to the language of the universe than the one he was used to. That allowed him to communicate his Will to the Runes with greater ease.
But on a deeper level than that, it seemed to imply that a large part of the bottleneck in drawing, controlling, and understanding Runes was actually having a method of distilling those meanings into words that you could quickly and efficiently understand.
It was no wonder so much had changed for him when he first truly understood the essence of what it meant to be a Scorpion. When he did that, the Strokes came more naturally, and they fell into place as Foundations with greater ease, and thus built up into complete Runes more smoothly.
After discovering this, Sylas began to question his method in deploying Runes. Was he relying too much on his talent? Was he skipping steps in Rune deployment he shouldn’t?
Sure, Rune Spark allowed him to casually cause Runes to form on their own. But how much should he rely on that versus the precision real, tangible thoughts could give him? Maybe it was only after he truly grasped and was able to convey the essence of those thoughts, that his Rune Spark Mastery would begin displaying its true might.
Or at least, greater might than it was already displaying.
It was a truly shocking conclusion to reach, and yet Sylas grasped all of that from one children’s book that would have taken him half a minute to read at most with his current stats. In the UniForm Andromeda, it didn’t even take him fractions of a second to scan through the entire thing.
No, not only did he scan it, but he digested it fully. This was the power of Andromeda… and it somewhat left Sylas feeling intoxicated.
So he continued.
There was no simple book on Rune Mastery that Sylas didn’t read. There were a shocking number of children’s books on the topic, and it was only after he went through the tens of thousands of them that he moved on.
By the fifth or so, he had already been reading what felt like the same book over and over again, but the monotony didn’t get to him. He had sunk into a state of such focused discipline that he somewhat felt like his old self again.
Only after he finished them all did he move on to more complex books. But even then, they were designed for teenagers or laymen on the topics.
For most, this would usually be their starting position, and Sylas read through these even faster than the children’s books. The foundation the children’s books gave him allowed him to analyze and incorporate the more complex knowledge with greater ease.
Like he had a strong foundation, building on it was as easy as breathing.
This was when he began to grasp more complex topics, like the paths of the Runes and just how many paths they could take.
It made him realize that Runes were truly everywhere, but there were just a few main paths that broke off into countless others.
Rune Masters were mostly divided into what were called Combatant Rune Masters, Formation Rune Masters, Blacksmith Rune Masters, and Alchemy Rune Masters.
The first dealt in Rune Armors similar to the Scorpion Warlord Armor, though most often far weaker. These would also include Mancers who used Runes as their main form of Skill deployment. So on and so forth.
The others were quite obvious in their form and function, but various branches within felt endless.
Formation Rune Masters could either specialize in deploying large-scale formations for the sake of defending stationary targets, but there were other paths of Formation Rune Mastery that allowed more free-flowing deployment. This latter form tended to bleed into the capabilities of Combatant Rune Masters quite a bit.
Blacksmith Rune Masters could take a more conventional path, or they could be like Old Brama, dealing in technology and mechanics.
Alchemy Rune Masters could do anything from helping Aether Herbs to grow, to creating Elixirs for Genes or Healing, all the way to even being Poison Rune Masters.
These things were so simple and approachable, but Sylas had never seen them laid out in such an easy-to-understand way. Information that most took for granted, he ate up almost voraciously. He just couldn’t get enough of it.
And that was when he began to get into things that truly piqued his interest.
He couldn’t possibly follow every path there was, but what was the best way for him personally—as Sylas Grimblade—to make use of his talent?