Chapter 25: Choosing A Rune!
Ren stepped out of the second-to-last rune shop like a storm wearing pants.
His brows were drawn tight, his mouth a sharp line of frustration, and his steps were brisk enough to punch dents into the ground.
The usually calm and calculated boy genius looked like he'd just been forced to babysit a pack of caffeine-hyped spirit toddlers.
And honestly? That would've been less painful than what he just endured.
"Seventy-two rune shops," he muttered under his breath, voice low and dangerous, like a kettle about to whistle. "Seventy-two, and not one damn Stage 1 rune that isn't a glorified sparkle."
The problem wasn't that there weren't runes. There were tons. Scrolls, carvings, glowing slabs, floating inscriptions, some even sealed in spirit jars and sold like perfume.
The problem was that none of them were right for Ren. Oh, there were some tempting Stage 2 runes—ones that made his analytical mind light up with possibilities.
Runes taken from dimensional leopards that could fold space mid-leap. Others that enhanced the nervous system to the point where dodging a bullet wasn't just possible; it was passive.
But all those runes came from Stage 2 or higher beasts. And that was a hard line Ren couldn't cross. No, scratch that. He refused to cross it.
Carvers had one absolute, unbreakable rule burned into every soul training manual in existence: Your first rune must come from a Stage 1 beast. The weakest, lowest grade possible.
Not because the world wanted to make newbies suffer. But because breaking that rule didn't just fail, it killed you.