Chapter 639: Sandy Dunes [Bonus]

Chapter 639: Sandy Dunes [Bonus]



Sylas took a step back, looking at things from a macro perspective.

'Hold on.'

His thoughts reached into the Madness Key and he pulled Szorn out. Was it a risk? Most likely. But Sylas felt that it was a worthwhile one.

"Ah, young master."

"Separate 100 Runes of the first layer into the Foundations. Eliminate all exact repeats."

Szorn blinked before hurriedly nodding.

As expected, Szorn knew the Runes like the back of his hand. Then again, they were just projections and not real drawn Runes. Szorn didn't seem to have the ability to communicate with the world like Sylas could.

Familiars could only interact with the world based on a connection with their masters, and Sylas had yet to even formally take Szorn in.

Soon, there were only about half of the 2300 Foundations remaining.

Sylas' eyes flashed as he scanned them.

"Good. Now eliminate all mirrored Foundations."

Szorn obliged and now there was just another half remaining.

"Now eliminate all translations."

This time, more than just half vanished. Instead, there was only over a hundred Foundations left. These were the truly unique Foundations. And even among these, Sylas could see several that were only slight tweaks of one another.

Mirrors and Translations were things that Sylas had learned both in middle school and just this past day. Ironically enough, they both applied to geometry.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

The entire point of Rune Essence was to hone a sixth sense that allowed one to hear Runes. It was only after that that you could begin to zoom in and catch the details.

There was a reason why in school teachers might often lie to younger students in order to dumb topics down, smoothing them over and only looking at them from a macro lens before teaching them the truth later on down the line in greater detail.

Sylas was precisely a younger student, but now he was trying to grasp those details far too early before he understood the bigger picture.

And when he ran into a wall and couldn't quite grasp the Runes the way he wanted to, he actually doubled down and went to studying the ten Strokes.

Sylas was nothing if not stubborn. He sat there for a very long while, churning through the same thoughts, but his progress was mind-numbingly slow.

Even as the morning sun was coming up, Sylas hadn't made nearly the progress he thought he should have. He thought that he had found a shortcut, but he felt that his progress might have even been much faster if he studied the Runes as a whole one by one.

Trying to understand the small pieces of the armor was like trying to piece together why an engineer tried to put a screw in a particular place on an engine without even knowing what cylinders were.

For all Sylas knew, one of these Foundations he was observing now was meant to play a key role in the function of the third layer, while he hadn't even come to understand the second

layer yet.

How could he expect success?

Sylas shook his head.

He had realized that truth after the first hour, but he had kept going because he knew that the longer way wouldn't give him enough time. Sometimes you had to make the stupid decision just in case it panned out, and this time, it didn't seem like he was going to be so lucky.

Just as Sylas had this thought, he felt a spike of danger warn him.

Despite his slight exhaustion, he hurriedly moved just as a vicious pincer tore through the roof of his carriage.

Sylas accelerated back and barely out of the way, but the scorpion creature was so large, and his carriage room so small, that he was inevitably harmed by the impact.

He was sent flying backward and crashed through the wooden walls of his carriage and out into the sandy dunes they sleighed across.