For a moment, I paused, considering all the implications of the latest discovery, my mind filled with the various implications.

Eleanor spoke first. “Why don’t you show me what’s so special about this new skill?”

Spencer raised his hand. I counted twenty runes appearing in the air. Most of them were familiar, the only exception being the three central runes. But, the faint dash of nurture radiating from them was enough to identify them.

It was nothing more than a simple bolt, and when it hit the target, its surface was immediately covered with moss.

I shared a smile with Maria. “I don’t see what’s the big deal,” Eleanor said with a resigned tone. I opened my mouth to explain, but she continued. “And, I don’t care. You owe me five spars for canceling this one, though.”

“No way. You don’t get any extra,” Maria responded before I could.

“And, why is it?” Eleanor responded heatedly.

“I don’t want you cutting into my time.”

“No fighting,” I cut in, wanting to focus on the situation. “Eleanor, sorry about canceling. I’ll make sure you’ll have time for an extra sparring session. Is this alright?”

Her smirk was victorious, though I didn’t understand why she directed it to Maria. “I’ll take it,” she said before turning back and leaving, leaving three of us alone.

“You don’t have to give into —” Maria started, but stopped when I turned to Spencer. His discovery was too important to talk about other stuff. “Fine,” Maria murmured and she turned to Spencer as well.

“So, the discovery?” I asked. “How did you do?”

“You don’t want to focus on the spells he has?” Maria asked. “Especially since it must be at least an Epic skill? The things it could add to our growing spell database alone… It’s Epic, right?”

“Actually, Legendary,” Spencer corrected. “Lattice of Bloom, to be particular.”

“Interesting,” I said. “But, theory and process first, practical later,” I responded. Maria seemed unhappy about that prioritization, but I didn’t blame her. She always favored practical. “Take a seat, and tell me how that development came to be.”

He took a seat and pulled a crystal from a pouch. It was a small, familiar material, but it was brimming with enough mana to make a faint glow emanate from it. Moreover, to my senses, it actually pulsed gently, like a living thing. “This is the product that allowed me to trigger the change,” he said.

I took it. Its crystal nature meant I couldn’t use my Observe perk, but at this point, that wasn’t necessary. My Nurture was enough to give me a general sense. Almost a hundred runes, laid in a repeating hexagonal pattern, every single one picked from our growing spell database; except the one in the center with a subtle growth energy.

The crystal was too small to measure the distance between runes directly, but the pattern still looked familiar. Especially since I was the one that taught him. “Then repeating pattern?” I asked.

“The one you use for the mana delivery pipes, based on the Navier-Stokes equation,” Spencer said. “It worked better than I hoped once I forced the mana to transform into growth energy, it acted more like fluid, functioning even better than mana pipes.”

“That’s very good,” I said. “That means, if we can set up transformation stations to transform mana on both ends, we can solve our delivery problem. Right now, we are limited to a few miles only —” I added, but stopped when Maria gestured to me.

“Let’s focus on one problem at a time,” she said, too used to me jumping off tangent.

“Sorry,” I said, then turned to Spencer. “The structure is interesting. Repeating pointlessly, but it’s a good way to trick the System.”

“Exactly,” he said. “I based it on your theoretical guide for the Blacksmiths for how to get the Intelligence variant.”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“You might try to revise it,” I said. “We still have no success on that end.” Then, I smiled. “Still, I’m impressed that you pulled it off in merely a week.”

“It’s all thanks to you, professor,” Spencer tried to correct me. “I don’t think any other material would have even held that many runes together, weakened or not, let alone actually feeding from Nurture. Then, there’s the spell database for runes and how to use them. Without them…”

“It’s still your achievement,” I cut in. “The world would have been a much better place if material and information could be just piled up to create innovation without the touch of a genius. Amazing work.”

“Thanks, professor,” Spencer said, smiling. I could actually feel the relief radiating off him, something that had been absent for a long time. His continued setbacks while the others repeatedly succeeded didn’t have a good impact on him. Seeing it change was a good thing. “I still can’t believe I pulled it off.”

“I can,” I replied. “It was only a matter of time.”

“Thanks, professor.”

“How about the class upgrade?” I asked.

“Already went through two advancements before I arrived,” he said. “One Intelligence every two levels, and one Essence every level.”

“That’s a decent jump. Congratulations,” I said. Earlier, the limited stats might have been a negative, but now that I learned about the process of Ascension, I was starting to see the strategic merits of a lower stat total. Not exactly a perfect tradeoff, but much better than a drawback with no redeeming advantages.

“Enough chitchat,” Maria cut in. “I want to see what this skill can do? I need other Legendary spells to compare,” she said, then turned to me. “The ones that are better than your focus-really-hard spells.”

I chuckled at the way she summarized Wisdom casting, not that I blamed her.

Spencer shrugged. “Don’t get your hopes up too high, Lady Maria. The skill seems to be mostly focused on growing crystals while maintaining runic patterns. It’s more like an enchantment than a spell-based one, but it has some remote spells to help. The one I cast was the most complex one I could access right now.”

“The number will increase as your skill improves,” I added, not wanting Maria to lose her hope too much. “But, a semi-organic material that can etch runes. That sounds promising.”

“I already have some ideas,” he said. “But, I prefer to do some tests before I go through them.”

“It’s your call,” I said. “Put together a proposal once you have a better direction. But, I have two tasks for you in the meantime.”

“Whatever you wish, professor,” Spencer answered, his fervor unmistakable.

“Don’t get too excited. You might find it boring. First, I need you to take over as the manager of the spell database. It needs a better indexing system, not to mention a better way to validate the existing and new information.”

“That’s an important job,” Spencer said.

“Hey, I didn’t say they are not important. But, you have to admit they are not exactly glorious. I wouldn’t blame you if you want to follow the footsteps of the others and take a more visible role.”

“No, I’m more than fine with it,” he said. “I have already fought too many times to make it an objective. I won’t turn my back if it’s necessary, but…” he added, then his voice faded. I could feel him feel ashamed of his decision.

“Don’t worry, it’s perfectly rational,” I said. “Believe me, I’m jealous. If I have the luxury of choosing it, I’ll pick exactly that.”

“Thanks, professor,” he responded, relieved. “How about the second task?”

”I want you to go through Farmers interested in a safe desk job, and see if any of them could awaken Intelligence variants, and train them in basic maths until they could calculate my formulas. I need people that could validate my models and other stuff.”

Maria smirked. “Hey, what about me?”

“People that are not fully occupied with half a dozen vital tasks around the base, responsible for all our shields and high-end firepowers, whose absence would grind everything to a halt” I responded. Maria was clearly fishing for a compliment, but I saw no problem fulfilling it.

“Don’t forget amazing and beautiful,” she added.

“How could I forget it?” I added, giving a mock bow. “Would the lady forgive me?”

“Maybe. I need to think about it for a while,” she added, smug satisfaction radiating off her strongly.

“Perfect,” I added. “Though, having a high number of people with lower stats means I need to find a way to dissect the problem into smaller pieces. It’ll be an interesting challenge?”

“Would that be a big problem?” Maria asked. “I thought that’s your expertise.”

“True, but that doesn’t make it easy, especially on a seemingly-holistic area like spells and runes. It’ll take a lot of work to identify a viable path, but once we do…”

“You have some interesting ideas, don’t you?” Maria asked.

“You have no idea,” I said, then turned to Spencer. “But, that could wait for some time. Now, it’s time to explain how those crystals work.”

“With pleasure,” Spencer said as he took another crystal from a different pouch, this time unmarked. He flooded it with his mana, blue slowly turning into a green shimmer as the crystal slowly reshaped into a more orderly entity, runes appearing inside its structure. “The key,” he began, “is treating the crystal not just as a mana medium, but as a mediator, a living interpreter between the conceptual Nurture skill and structure imposed by the spell runes…”

With that, it turned into a lecture that lasted more than four hours, where both I and Maria took copious amounts of notes and peppered Spencer with questions. But, once that ended, my mind was already filled with many ideas.

Including a way to completely revolutionize my creations…