Chapter 77 Runes

"You wanted to learn about runes right? Then I shall teach you as much as I can before we have to part ways. How about it? Are you up to the challenge or will you scurry back to your life of normalcy?"

Hearing her words made me frown. I knew that my life before she had come was far from what could be considered normal, making her words almost hurt my pride.

I knew how much work I had put in to survive and even though I had become complacent afterward, my life was still not 'normal'. Yet even then, I could feel a part of my mind trying to defend my actions of not doing anything worthwhile for a whole week of my life, however, those thoughts did not grow any larger.

My rational mind told me that while her sentence might have not been correct in my case, it would have been correct if it was said to anyone else in this world.

This world was not nice to those who slacked off. It was a world where the strong ruled and the weak fought with everything they had to survive to the very end, yet not even their hard work and determination could save them from a towering dragon that could snuff them out with a sneeze.

Seeing my light frown, Blanca beamed at the opportunity to tease me further, yet she was fated to be disappointed because the second before she could say anything, she heard my voice enter her ears.

"Sure. You better not slack off the same you have been slacking off with the armor and weapon project." I replied, slightly pissed off at her previous words since they only reminded me of how lazy she was in comparison to me.

"Hey! I'm working on it!" She shouted back, yet her words weren't very convincing since I could accurately pinpoint the areas of her face that reddened at the mention of her laziness.

"Blah blah blah. Just get to your lesson already and stop stalling, or is it that the greate white snake, Blanca..." I paused for a second and looked at the ceiling of the cave with narrowed eyes before shrugging. "Whatever your surname is, has been bluffing about her knowledge this whole time." I continued with a smile on my face that portrayed innocence.

"Hmph. If you only knew my standing in the white snake tribe. Once you find out, let me assure you that you will be licking the soles of my feet." She retorted but after seeing no reaction, an indication that I didn't believe her, she could only sigh and get back to the topic.

"Runes are split into different categories. You have battle runes, tactical runes and enchantment runes, each one of them requiring an insurmounsable scale of understand before even being able to use any of them. While my power might not be great when compared to the standards off the elven and dwarven race, I am still a genius when it comes to the artichulation of information, something that makes up for my lack of speed when it comes to cultivation." She explained

"Cultivation? I remember you saying something about it a few months ago. What is it?" I asked as my curiosity peaked.

However, unlike what I had expected, I saw Blanca look at me with a serious expression rather than her goofy playful one. Now that she was taking this seriously, her aura had changed like the difference between day and night.

"While I'm curious as to why you are so ignorant about things like this since I'm pretty sure you come from a powerful backing, I won't ask you anything on the matter. Simply put, cultivation is the development of someones power to eventually reach a new plane." She explained, yet that only made me frown.

Seeing my confusion, she stopped my question with a raise of her finger and continued-

"While usually, cultivation would be the absorbance of ambient mana into the body to further enhance their mana core, the meaning can sometimes differ depending on the context. Cultivating a fire element means that one is improving upon the comprehension of it as well as their control. They are trying to sprout something deep inside themselves to eventually become 'heavenly geniuses.'" She explained, but instead of relaxing, my frown only deepened when the word 'heavenly' was mentioned.

'Surely the word heavenly is just a metaphor for great. Maybe this world is running out of words in their vocabulary to describe geniuses that have sprouted this seed she speaks of.' I thought with mockery.

Thought of becoming the Shakespeare of this world, creating words out of thin air to forever influence the languages across the planet flashed through my mind, yet after almost bursting out with a peal of cynical laughter, I forced myself to calm down and listen to Blanca once again.

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"Anyway, runes!" Blanca suddenly exclaimed and began thinking of what she wanted to say again. Talks of cultivation filled her mind, and rightfully so. It seemed like the only way to grow within this world was to cultivate, where that would be the cultivation of affinities, rules of the universe, or one's mana core. I on the other hand was not forced to use these methods to cultivate since I had the system that seemed to do everything automatically for me.

However, while others would have been exhilarated to see that they didn't have to cultivate the normal way, I knew the limitations to this ability. While at first, it might seem like you are winning the game of life, it is secretly a curse in disguise.

'This while level limiter thing is a little worse than I thought. My increase in power would be fast in the short term, but depending on how long it takes me to level up, it can very well become a double edged sword. Let's hope it doesn't get to that level though.' I let out an exasperated sigh.