(Present)
Such a strange NPC… I looked ponderingly at the spot where the black haired girl had vanished then got up, wiping absentmindedly the trickle of blood off my cheek.
Alright, enough of that, let's get up and see what this new world has to offer. I walked to the door of the small wooden house I had woken up in, and opened it to the outside world.
Damn…I stopped, momentarily taken aback. Bird song and the buzz of insects filled the air along with the slight rustle of leaves in the wind. I could still feel the cool metal of the doorhandle and the rough grain of the wooden door on my hands. I inhaled deeply and the soft earthy scent of the forest filled my nostrils. Is this really a game?
I blinked, panic suddenly striking my heart. "Everest." The console's overlay ui sprung up over my vision, all options present including the one to log out. "Ok, we're fine." I breathed a sigh of relief. "Damn, though, it's been a long time since I've lost myself in a game like that."
When I first tried full dive a few years back when it came out for the first time I initially had a hard time telling the virtual and the real worlds apart, but gradually you started noticing little things about the game worlds that betrayed their artificiality—a certain hazy shallowness to less developed areas, textures that all felt the same, scents or sounds that repeated too often or didn't match logically with the surroundings.
Maybe it was just that I was still in a well-polished starter area, but without the pain nullification and system ui it was truly hard to tell that I was in a man-made world.
"Ok, enough gawking at the scenery. Let's see what exactly am I supposed to do here."
"System." I called, and the game's UI was brought up
[Starcaller]
[Friends: 0 friends, 0 online]
[Class: Runemaster (Unaffiliated)]
[Affinities (10 AP available)]
[Quests (2)]
[Encyclopedia]
"Truly barebones, like they say…" I sighed, as I clicked the quests button.
[Quests]
[Starter Quest: Register with the Tower of Mages!
Rewards: 5 sp, and the [Map] function]
[Class Quest 1: Follow the enclopedia's 'Intro to Runemaking' course to master basic runemaking and create a moisture collection stone!
Rewards: List of Runemasters seeking apprentices, 'Intermediate Runemaking' course unlocked, 2 Affinity Points]
I looked at the quest list also a little disappointed. Nothing from that NPC? Didn't she tell me to stay put? I closed the window, looking back up at the forest. But where even am I? That girl said something about Greyrock kingdom and a forest, but shouldn't I be in a starter town? Am I close or is this some kind of random start?
I looked around the hut hoping for a path or something that might give a hint to where the nearest town might be located, but the one path that I followed only ended in a nearby stream, and I couldn't make out any other definite footpaths in the area.
Umm, so I'm in a forest, there's a hut, there's water. Is there a satiety system in this game? I don't even know…What else do I have on me? I checked my pockets and found a small pen-sized stick with a crystal affixed to the end of it as well as a handful of copper coins and a small roll of bread.
Well, they've provided me with food so I probably will need it. I went back to the cabin and scrounged around in the cupboards for whatever else I could find.
Alright, let's see. Some jerky, some hard bread, dried herbs, a couple knives and cookware, a few potatoes, and a weird glowy rock. Well, if this were an isekai manga I suppose this is about the time the protagonist goes out and hunts for the first time, but to be honest I really don't want to do that, so for now imma just chill in here and read about runemaking. Best case, that NPC comes back and advances some quest line. Worst case, I start starving and have to wander out into the forest hoping for a town, but for now I have enough food for a few days, and time doesn't pass any more quickly here than in real life, so I'll probably get bored and wander away before then anyways.
With that resolved I packed the stuff back into the cupboards and layed back down onto the bed, to start the runemaking intro course.
[Intro to Runemaking]
[Welcome to Elaria! The world of Magia Online is dominated by magic and magic-users and you're now one of them!
[Magic in Elaria can be broadly divided into two major categories: Affective magic and Inaffective. Affective in this case refers to whether the magic in hand is affected by our emotions. Affective magic includes many of the most popular magic categories like Spirit Sorcery, Natural Sorcery, and Divine Sorcery. These various schools of magic are unified in that they are all based on how beings of power or the world around us responds to our wishes and desires, and as such Affinity is a central concept for making a powerful affective sorcerer.
[Some sorcerers have affinity for spirits, others for the natural forces of the world, and others for the gods. Part of what makes up our affinity is soul-based, which for residents of this world means being assigned at birth, but for players it can be assigned in the system using Affinity Points! However, don't think Affinity points are the end all be all of affinity! Another large part of our affinities are how the sorcerer's actions or character is perceived by the beings they are trying to lean on for power. So it's by no means a fixed attribute.
[If you're interested in learning more about Affective sorcery please check out our other encyclopedia entries or courses on that topic, but for today's course we're focusing on Inaffective magic! The major Inaffective schools of magic include Numerology, Astromancy, Alchemy as well as, of course, Runemaking. Inaffective magic works based on unchanging divine principles, which pose many more restrictions on a would-be mage than ordinary Affective magic, but it also results in far more reliable performance!
[For instance, imbuing an object with affective magic for long periods of time is impossible without continual interference as the magic imbued will gradually ebb away until the original enchantment is rendered useless. With runes on the other hand, we can imbue objects with magical effects that remain as long as the engraved runes remain in place! This alone shows why Inaffective magic is used almost exclusively in magic item creation, but the other schools of Inaffective magic show that there are indeed a great many cases where Inaffective magic can be used to produce results that Affective mages can't even dream of.
[With all that out of the way, now let's dive into some of the basic runes, their uses, as well as the engraving techniques we'll need to get started on our very first rune device!]