Exile frowned as the new element clashed with the divine threads. ‘Shit! It’s becoming unstable!’ He cursed as he turned to Winter.
“Get out of here, now!” Exile shouted.
Luckily, Winter didn’t need to be told twice. She had already sensed that something had gone wrong as cold sweat dripped down her back from the energy leaking out of the rune. Exile nodded when he heard the door close behind her.
There was no way for him to escape. His concentration was the only thing slowing down the reaction. The moment he stopped trying to slow the reaction, the rune would explode. ‘All I can do is study what’s happening to understand the faults in the rune.’
Exile watched as the joint element eroded the divine thread used to make the shape of the rune. Eventually, one part gave way and the new element leaked out into the world. He cursed as purple flames burned brightly around him.
‘Damn it! I’ve got to drop my concentration and get away from this!’ He took a deep breath before moving in one swift action. His hands came away from the book at the same time as he sprinted away from the rune.
With his speed, he made it halfway to the door before the rune collapsed. Exile quickly activated several shield runes as he threw himself on the ground. The sound of shattering glass filled his ears as his shields broke one after the other in a fraction of a second.
The temperature in the room rapidly rose and plummeted as the purple flames raged. Luckily, it seemed the items in the workshop were protected by divine arrays. They flashed into existence as they contended for control against the rogue element.
Exile sighed in relief as the golden lines of protection swiftly contained the purple flames before making them blink out of existence!
“That was close. If it weren’t for those arrays, I could’ve been in trouble.” Exile shook his head as he stood up. He replayed those events in his mind and found himself growing excited over the potential of the new element. ‘Pure divine threads aren’t enough. I guess the next step is to create a stable container using threads of the same element.’
Exile chuckled at the thought since it was the only natural conclusion. The rune had to be on the same power level as the spell from the start, or it would just keep ending in failure. ‘Well, at least I know what my next move is.’
The door creaked open being him as Winter carefully poked her head in. “Is everything ok in here now?”
“Yeah, just a minor setback.” Exile chuckled. “Minor? That was terrifying!”
“Hm, I suppose it was.” Exile sighed before he narrowed his eyes at her. “Could you let the others know not to come in here until I’m done? I’m pretty sure if another incident like that happens, it will kill low-tiered players.”
“Sure thing,” Winter nodded before she hesitated. “I think that could probably threaten low-level tier twos as well. You might want to think about emergency safety measures you can activate to protect yourself.”
Exile smiled at her comment. ‘She’s right. Those arrays didn’t kick in right away. Who knows what will happen if the next attempt is unstable when I’m using the same element to craft the rune?’ He groaned because he knew the fallout would have to be worse. There was also no telling if he got lucky on how his attempt became unstable. ‘There’s probably a bunch of ways it can go wrong. What if it just exploded instead of leaking energy?’
There was too much that could go wrong with further experiments, so Winter’s suggestion was perfect. Once Winter left, it took Exile several hours to prep enough runestones to act as a barrier in an emergency. ‘Hopefully, that will buy me enough time to get out of the building.’
He stared at the runestones dotted on the path to the door. His idea was to activate the large number around the book first, then the others as he passed to slow down the flames coming after him. ‘Ok, now that the prep work is done, I need to figure out how difficult it is to create a rune with that element.’
Another process of trial and error happened as he fused the fire and darkness elements but struggled to weave them into a thread for the purpose of shaping a rune. Luckily, when he lost control, the element just fizzled out. Exile became so engrossed in his research into the new element that he didn’t even notice when his alarm went off.
Clay even entered to check on him, since he was due to take care of some things in the real world. But Exile was so focused that he didn’t even hear Clay calling out to him from the doorway. Clay felt like he could throttle Exile when he was ignored. However, he wasn’t willing to enter the building properly after Winter’s explanation of how dangerous it was. ‘Damn it, I’ll have to interrupt Mikari and make him go with me. There are several things he’s supposed to sign off on but he won’t be moving anytime soon.’
He grumbled as he slammed the door behind him. Silently hoping the noise would break Exile’s concentration and cause his new spell to go haywire again. ‘That’d teach him a lesson.’ Clay grunted as he stomped off to find the more reasonable one of the two brothers.
Meanwhile, a large grin was slowly spreading across Exile’s face as a purple, fiery thread exited his fingertips. ‘This is much more difficult than the divine threads. I have to split my focus into both elements at once and make them move together.’
‘The whole damn thing will be unstable until I make a complete rune.’ Despite how dangerous it was, Exile did not feel frustrated. He felt excited at creating an element that no other player he knew of had access to. ‘I wonder what new authorities it will lead to down the line?’
He couldn’t be sure, but he felt it made sense for these advanced elements to lead to obscure but powerful Authorities. He could only hope the ones his elements led to would give him an edge over other players further down the line.
Exile allowed himself a sigh of relief as the rune finished taking shape. He could feel the same power emanating from the empty rune that his earlier spell had let off. ‘This is going to work! It’s a shame that it’s technically a low-power spell for this element, but I’ll take what I can get for now.’
He began fusing the elements in his body like before. Slowly drip feeding them into each other as he circulated them around his body. A few hours passed like that as the process was much more difficult than before due to the sheer amount of concentration he had to waste on keeping the new rune stable.
‘Ok, let’s try this again.’ Exile held his breath as he slowly fed the divine energy for the spell into the rune. He silently stared at the threads as they came in contact with the mass of energy that matched it. He counted the seconds as they pressed against each other.
‘Yes! They’re not rejecting each other!’ Exile felt like jumping for joy, but there was still more to go yet. Another hour had to pass as he fed the energy into the rune before it was ready. The system pinged in his mind as a new notification appeared.
[You have created a new spell!]
[Name: Everburn Palm]
[Type: Cursed Flames]
[Cost: 40 DP]
[Description: Touch an enemy with this rune to inflict the Everburn curse on them. This spell burns the enemy for 5% of their HP each second and 10% of their current DP each second. The curse must be purified, or it will burn out when the enemy has no DP left to fuel its flames.]
Exile’s eyes went wide as he stared at the effects with a slack jaw. ‘It doesn’t do a straight damage amount. Instead, it damages them by a percentage of their current health! That’s insane!’
He silently swallowed as he thought about the effect this spell would have on the other players’ mentality when they found out about it. Not only did it do damage over time, but it burnt away the enemy’s DP reserves as well. If they had no way to purify the curse, their only hope of not dying to it was to have enough HP to outlast their DP burn.
‘Endurance types should have an easier time with this. But they’ll still lose an insane amount of HP before it burns out. Especially if they were at full health when I hit them with it.’ Exile groaned as he silently considered what the other higher elements would have to offer.
‘Amari said he got Plague for mixing air and darkness. That’s probably dot spells too. Or maybe permanent damage to a stat until it’s cured?’ Exile frowned as he considered that. ‘So what would be needed to purify this curse? A mix of water and light maybe? Or would light spells be able to do it on their own?’
Exile hummed as he considered what the mergings of each element could look like. ‘Probably water and earth for something along the lines of nature like those wood golems from the inheritance. Hopefully, Amari’s book will clear some things up once I reach Tier three, and it reveals more of its pages.’
