Vin sat on the uncomfortable metal couch, staring intensely at the waterskin in his hands. He’d already done this once, but back then, he hadn’t realized just how dangerous what he’d attempted truly was. Now that he knew one slight lapse of focus could have dire consequences…

  Taking a deep breath, he pushed all that nervousness away. Not only was he so much stronger than he used to be, he had entirely new abilities at his disposal. Just like Shia recommended, he allowed himself to slip into the calming black space within his own mana with Introspection, doing his best to leave his worries behind with his flesh and blood form up above.

  Once he was surrounded by that oddly comforting void that he knew was his, he focused on his magic sense and reached out, knowing exactly where the waterskin was located. Sure enough, the moment he tried expanding his senses he felt his void press against something foreign, almost as if asking him if he was sure about what he was doing. Willing it to connect, Vin flinched as his empty void was suddenly filled with a gigantic, glowing runic structure.

  He immediately noticed a few things that he hadn’t back when he’d looked into Alka’s sword. First was the fact that the runic structure was very much active. He could sense the live mana pulsing through it, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt if he made the wrong move he would not only unleash some unknown backlash upon himself, but potentially damage the artifact as well.

  Second was that this runic formation turned artifact was far more dangerous than the one within Alka’s sword had been. He truly had lucked out that the spell he’d grasped at with amateur fingers all those weeks ago had been designed to do nothing more than allow the sword to better interact with magic.

  In fact, there was no way to be sure, but he had a hunch that the unique nature of that spell had actually helped him succeed in his reckless endeavor back in the Sacred Forest.

  Shaking the distracting thought from his head, Vin walked around the pulsing formation, carefully eyeing up the different runes. Unlike when a fellow mage drew out a formation for him, somehow, parts of this one were almost cloudy. As if the artifact itself refused to show him its inner workings for free. Vin knew from experience he’d have to risk interacting with portions of the formation in order to see just how those cloudy portions worked, and therein lied the actual risk with what he was attempting.

  Create Water… That’s not so bad, right? Even if I end up summoning a gallon of water within my own lungs, Shia can probably fix that. That’s why she’s here after all.

  Vin couldn’t see her, but he knew that Shia was carefully monitoring his meditating form, waiting for the first sign that something had gone wrong in order to yank him out of Introspection or intervene. Knowing that he had someone watching over him was actually a huge help, and Vin grabbed that thread of comfort, keeping it close as he began his investigation.

  This… this piece represents Volume, he started, stepping closer to the formation and carefully tracing the runes with his eyes. Here we have Temperature… I think this is something about Pressure…

  Thanks to the incredible book he’d discovered within the library, Vin had improved his knowledge of basic runes quite drastically. Even so, it wasn’t long before he ran out of portions he was certain of and was forced to move onto the cloudier bits. Holding his breath, he stepped even closer, running a hand along the thrumming formation.

  Immediately he yanked it away, sensing he’d accidentally done something he shouldn’t have. He waited a few seconds to see if Shia would pinch him, the agreed upon signal that he needed to exit his skill and wake up seeing as pain was still the only thing he could detect from his body at the moment. But when nothing came, he shrugged, willing his racing heart to slow down as he once again returned to the glowing rune, trying to be even more gentle.

  All these different portions of the structure I’ve been messing with… they work together to make up the rune for Water, he realized, somehow getting a powerful sense of wetness and liquid from interacting with the rune. The moment the thought struck him, the cloudiness surrounding the rune cleared up, and Vin gasped as he realized this one rune made up nearly half the entire runic formation.

  Guess that makes sense, seeing as it’s a spell to make water in the first place.

  His confidence growing, Vin had to physically hold himself back from speeding through the rest of the formation. He knew his recklessness was a bad habit, and he’d be damned if he let it mess him up when he was this close.

  Shia would never agree to help him with something like this again if he were to do something as foolish as kill himself.

  It was pretty much impossible to keep track of time in the strange black void that was Introspection, but Vin did his best to move slowly as he unlocked the other secrets held within the artifact. Twice more he nearly triggered something by accident, and only his quick reflexes and impressive focus attribute allowed him to direct the black void surrounding him to clamp down on the rune, fighting back against its erratic pulse and stopping the backlash before it could truly begin. One pleasant surprise that he hadn't considered when choosing Mana Well as his latest passive was that his increased mana density essentially gave him more strength down here while using Introspection. The black void basically was his own mana pool after all.

  Mentally thanking his past self for his passive choice and dumping so many points into focus, Vin continued his thorough examination. Finally, after what felt like hours, he stepped back, taking in the unveiled formation in all its glowing glory. All his careful work had paid off, and he found himself standing before what he now clearly understood to be the runic formation for Create Water.

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  Going to take a snapshot of the formation with his Iron Mind passive, Vin paused. Unlike the other spells he’d learned, he was already deep within his inner mana pool where he needed to recreate the spell. And directly in front of him, was an already existing formation that he understood inside and out thanks to his meticulous investigation.

  Why bother remaking this from scratch?

  Seeing as he had a healer watching over him, Vin decided to try something he’d never even considered before. Taking in a deep breath, he focused on the unveiled formation, tapping into several of his abilities at the same time.

  Using his high focus to push back against the pulsing formation that didn’t like being touched, he used the flexibility of Runic Recalibration and his own skill in Introspection to gently coat the foreign runic structure in an impossibly thin layer of his own mana. He barely had enough to finish the job, but he managed, if only just. Once that was done, he tapped into Iron Mind, cementing his mental image of the runic structure and preventing his mana from changing shape as he gently pulled it away from the live structure. Neither the mana nor the runic structure were truly solid objects down here in this strange void, so he was able to carefully pull his own copy of the formation away without issue. Once he’d separated it completely, he dragged his copy of the structure over to an empty area away from the artifact, setting it neatly in place.

  As soon as it was far enough away from the artifact, he let his intricate and thin mana layer collapse in on itself all at once, transforming from an outer shell of the formation into an exact replica of the Create Water runic structure in an instant.

  Vin stumbled backwards as the formation roared to life within his inner mana, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt he’d managed to copy the formation, just like that. Grinning to himself, he withdrew from the artifact, watching the pulsing and chaotic rune vanish from his inner sanctum. That done, he finally let his skill end, opening his eyes and finding himself once more within his flesh and blood body.

  Flesh and blood and soaking wet body.

  “Shia?” He asked, glancing down at the massive pool of water under him. He looked as though someone had dropped a river on his head, and there wasn’t a single speck of his body even remotely dry.

  “I take it you learned the spell?” Shia drawled, the elf sitting a good dozen feet from him and looking just as wet as he was.

  New spell learned! Tier 1 Water Spell (Create Water). 5,000 exp gained.

  New magical affinity discovered! Water affinity. 10,000 exp gained.

  “Yepp, looks like it,” he chuckled, raising an eyebrow at the soggy elf. “What on Earth happened?”

  “Well, things were pretty uneventful for the first hour or two,” Shia admitted. “You pretty much just sat there as if you were in regular meditation. I could tell you were doing something to the artifact, but not specifically what. Then all of a sudden, the artifact flared with mana, and basically exploded with water.”

  “That would explain all the water everywhere,” Vin admitted, giving the frowning Druid his best apologetic smile. “Sorry about that Shia, I think I know what happened and should be able to prevent it the next time.”

  “Hmph,” Shia grunted, finally standing up and stretching. “I will say, the fact that you managed it at all is incredible. I know you already no doubt want to push your luck and try for one of the lesser artifacts, but let’s take five for now. I’ve been basically staring at you for the last couple of hours, and I think I’ve earned a break.”

  “Sorry, that had to be boring as all hell,” Vin winced, trying and failing to imagine himself staring at anything for a few straight hours.

  Other than a runic formation of course.

  “Oh don’t worry, it wasn’t a total waste,” Shia admitted, waving away his concern. “Half of me was watching you, but the other half was working on a new spell I’m just about done with. For my level 25 passive I picked up Split Focus. It lets me literally divide my attention between two separate tasks. Excellent for working on runic formations in the background while going about your daily life.”

  “Wait, what? That sounds amazing!” Vin exclaimed, staring at the grinning Druid in shock. “Why didn’t I get that offered as an option?!”

  “I don’t know, maybe the System doesn’t think you’re very good at multitasking,” Shia laughed. “Anyway, you shouldn’t go around comparing your own abilities to others. My master always warned me that was a dark road that nothing good ever came from journeying down.”

  “Fair enough,” Vin sighed, doing his best to shake off his jealousy. As awesome as splitting his focus flawlessly between two things sounded, he couldn’t exactly complain when his own passive had saved him from a few backlashes and allowed him to flawlessly copy a new runic formation in a single shot. He had no doubt he would have been able to learn the spell normally like all his others, but his nifty little trick must have saved him hours of careful work. If he could pull off the same thing with one of the stronger artifacts, it might even save him entire days of painstaking effort.

  “So what have Scule and Reginald been up to all this time?” Vin asked, gingerly getting to his own feet and stretching. Metal couches were far from comfortable, and he winced as he rubbed his backside.

  A high endurance could only do so much after all.

  “You know, I haven’t actually heard from them in a while,” Shia said slowly, turning to look toward the room they’d gone into. “One downside of Split Focus is that I can task each half of my brain with something, but then I tend to ignore other things that I would have normally noticed.”

  “Hold on. You’re telling me you haven’t seen or heard from Scule in a few hours... And you’re only just now realizing this?” Vin said, staring at her.

  “Don’t put this on me! I was busy watching you!” She argued, her face heating up. Rushing over to the open door, Shia peeked her head in before spinning around. “They’re gone!”

  “Of course they’re gone! It’s Scule!” Vin said, completely unsurprised by the Rogue’s disappearing act. As much as he loved Reginald, the rat was still technically the petian’s animal companion, and he had no doubt Reginald felt obliged to do whatever it took to keep Scule out of trouble. “We don’t have time to argue, we need to figure out how they got past the warriors Myndra posted at the door and find them before-”

  The sound of someone knocking on the door interrupted him, and the two of them froze, turning toward the unexpected noise like deer in headlights. Before Vin could come up with any sort of plan or excuse, the door swung open and Myndra stepped in, staring at him with her usual displeased face.

  “Nohral wants to talk to you about a… small problem he’s been dealing with.”

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