The Imprint warred against Kieran with its thankless tenacity.
And he put up a decent resistance, but the thing was too frenetic and tireless. Taming this insufferable pattern of brilliance was a losing struggle. It had regained something significant—its energy was dense, inexhaustible, and excessively heavy, making Kieran's control feel flimsy.
The incredible heft of it all weighed down Kieran's mind, especially his Mystic Gate.
The Compendium spat out impressive amounts of mystic essence to continue saturating the boy's mind, but it felt pretty pointless. The Runic Design's rebellion was a war fueled by an unwavering juggernaut—defiant and continuous.
'You've got to be kidding me! Hekaina didn't tell me anything about this.'
Kieran groaned and groused mentally, with his mouth clamped shut in unnerving focus. Grunts of exertion reverberated throughout the empty office, and mystical essence suffused the air.
The two mystical essences of uncanny resemblance became intertwined in a complex weaving of obscure intent, but the intensity of one was inferior to the other.
From what Kieran sensed and experienced, he couldn't subdue this Imprint even with the Compendium's help.
A shame.
The Imprint offered benefits that could shore up his weaknesses and eliminate a greater of his concerns before the Trial of Inheritors began.
Frustration blossomed within Kieran. Being denied the joy of success evoked something dark and terrible within him. His grunts began to sound guttural, like a wounded beast or a demented and demonic creature.
Wisps of his Will began to manifest, crudely weaving into the stream of mystic energy rotating in a brilliant blue sphere between his hands.
Still, the Imprint rebelled, warred, and overcame, slamming against its mystic prison until fragments of the sphere broke away.
Some of the Mystic Ciphers flickered and dimmed, their presence becoming hard to sense.
With a groan, Kieran dispersed the technique, panting. He took a whale's gulp of air, clutching his head. He had no idea Imprints carried, or maybe represented, a trait and accomplished it to an extreme.
This kind of tenacity was legendary and unheard of!
This took the idea of giving words power and meaning to a new extent. One Kieran barely understood.
'Is this what Hekaina had to subdue with the Imprint of Might? Well, if this crap is this tenacious… how mighty was that Imprint?'
Granted, Kieran understood he and Hekaina were not peers when it came to wielding, understanding, and teaching the mystic arts. If someone requested help understanding what a Runic Design was and how they were created, he could only return a wry and perplexed smile.
Hekaina had completed her Enlightenment, whereas he had yet to complete Awakening. No, he had yet to even Advance.
Kieran scoffed bitterly.
"That'd be like comparing a rock to a diamond. Or copper to steel."
The Imprint seemed to dance tauntingly in the air. Bouncing jubilantly without touching the ground, spinning happily while mysteriously keeping an unimpeded orientation of its mystical lines.
It was a spectacle Kieran wished to understand. But his aggravation overshadowed his fascination. Perhaps he wouldn't be so sour if he wasn't frustratingly short on time. It seemed to be the pattern these days.
Something would have to give. Either Kieran would… or something would suffer in the future. As one person, Kieran couldn't hope to accomplish everything alone. This much was made abundantly clear through different experiences.
Though Hekaina was no help to him now, Kieran did have help. If she was still here. Agatha had little reason to stay in one place; she was welcomed everywhere. Given that he was absent for two weeks, she was likely not in the city or perhaps the entire kingdom anymore.
Didn't hurt to try, though.
With the help of the Compendium, Kieran forged a mystical signal and projected it as far as he could. That didn't rely on him, not entirely. The Compendium burdened itself with a majority of the task. And with its help, the range of the mystical signal became impressive.
A whopping three kilometers in every direction.
'At least you're good for something.'
Kieran glared darkly into space, but that was all he could do. The Compendium wouldn't allow him to manifest it into the physical world. He had tried, and he was adamantly denied.
The signal began fluctuating violently as if rebelling and reacting to Kieran's deprecatory insult towards its current ability. The roots of the alert thrashed about, causing him a massive headache.
"Okay! I get it. I'm sorry. Will you stop it? If I don't succeed, you don't succeed either. Or paths to power will be cut off."
A mutual but begrudging understanding was met, and the Compendium ceased its sabotaging ways.
Kieran waited. Seconds turned to minutes; before it could turn to hours, Kieran quietly inspected the Runic Design. If Agatha couldn't answer in the end, then this would all be for naught.
Wasted time essentially.
'I have nothing better to do. Let's learn…'
The Compendium had hurled baffling amounts of mystical energy into his Mystic Gate—amounts so vast Kieran questioned how long it had been accumulating this energy. And it had done so without opening its pages.
What would spill out if the Compendium did open?
Kieran frequently questioned what hid inside the Compendium and how it would end up being beneficial to him. He abandoned that line of thought, however, because the archaic book commonly ignored his inquiries.
Once his Nine Supreme Ciphers had finished reforming, Kieran cautiously peeled away the layers of significance embedded in the line, incorporating his memory of the damaged parts.
'Before everything was realigned, though the Imprint felt exuberant, it could barely resist. I should have imprinted it in its damaged form. Probably…'
Doing so would have undoubtedly resulted in an inferior Imprint, but it was better than having no Imprint engraved upon his body, right? Kieran thought so, foolishly, of course. His limited knowledge couldn't support that guess.
What if it became worthless and powerless with no benefit. Or worse, broke!
That, Kieran feared, would have been an actual waste of time. One, because he did not know how to reverse engrave, disenchanting bodies in whole or parts. Two, because he didn't understand Imprints enough to create new viable ones. Three, he didn't know if Imprints could be overlaid.
Would a useless Imprint remain useless forever?
More than that, these Imprints felt too valuable to squander.
After interacting with the Imprint, Kieran felt these things—before their engraving—possessed a soul of their own. A primitive one that was incapable of learning and abided by the principle ingrained into the lines of its existence.
A confluence of knowledge and foreign understanding flowed into Kieran's mind once he activated his True Unveiling Eyes and Eyes of Profound Discerning. However, he had learned from Eni that the Supreme Ciphers were the looking glass of the Mystic Lord.
He had once called it the Great Philomath's Mystic Eye. Considering he was the one that created the technique, Kieran reckoned the Great Philomath in question was Eni himself.
'What the hell is a Philomath, though? Is that a title?'
An innocuous question, but Kieran remained interested nonetheless.
His lackluster proficiency showed in his technique, but Kieran kept peeling at the layers with intent fueled by Eni's principles.
Hunger for knowledge, search for answers and question everything you do not know.
Every line inside the Imprint felt different, but there were a few identical lines and some bases that Kieran was familiar with. Those bases were eerily similar to the foundation of Eni's early Syllables.
'There are some similarities, but they're not exactly the same. These must incorporate the complex Syllables Hekaina, and Agatha referred to.'
Whereas the early Syllables were simple in their concepts and possessed streamlined mapping, the later Syllables were the total opposite. An inexperienced onlooker would find the latter syllables disparate with dissonant pieces.
But that's because they were. They were all piecemeal, forged from incoherent fragments of the earlier Syllables. But that was only true if you knew nothing about the Syllables. They did not follow any uniform orientation.
That is why the Ciphers had to spin and churn. The unique combinations of each spin could reveal something different when the right "word" was used.
Kieran tentatively cycled through the Syllables he knew. He was patient. Unlike his physical power, his mystical essence couldn't be rushed. A mistake would disrupt the entire process, and the delicate balance would dissipate.
His main class and subclass were similar in some ways but different in many.
Those differences were substantial. They provided lessons that blood power simply couldn't.
Cycling through the Syllables, Kieran obtained bits and pieces of knowledge. He soon ended up lost, however. But thankfully, his message received a reply in the minutes to come.
His mystical signature was traced and seized. Then a sharp pain made him wince.
'Book… remind me to never do this again.'
His world darkened, and his stomach jerked. This unusual situation produced a nauseating feeling accompanied by a splitting headache. However, it was all very worth it.
Using some technique unknown to Kieran, Agatha appeared through a makeshift Mystic Gate. One that allowed for transportation, not just the arrival of usable essence.
The beautiful and tantalizing Agatha stood before the wincing Kieran, a playful smile dancing on her lips.
"Ah, look who is finally back. I'm not sure where it is you went. But I've grown weary and lonely since I couldn't torment you. I'm glad I could be of some assistance to you right now, though."
Agatha's eyes fell upon the Imprint in Kieran's grasp. Something shimmered and glistened beneath her enthralling eyes.
"Is that why you called me? Do you only know how to reach out to me when you need something? Is that it? Typical. Don't worry. I'll help you, alright. We can't have our brilliant Mystic Light… dim in the head, can we?"
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