"Yeah, I just finished advancing."
...Solon stood there, stunned for a long time before he finally snapped out of his shock.
But for a moment, his feelings were impossibly complicated. Thinking back, when this Matthew Merlin first arrived at Sage's Spire, he had barely formed his mana vortex—calling him a first-rank mage was a stretch. Now, in just a few months, the guy was already preparing to inscribe arcane runes, ready at any moment to join the ranks of Grand Mages like himself.
When I advanced to Grand Mage, it took me a full ten years!
Honestly, I was fine before, but now that I compare, I just want to curse...
Standing there, Solon really wanted to ask: Are you even human, or some kind of beast?
In this era, the only one who could identify the issues was Leon.
Leon could count every mistake in the book with his eyes closed—why each error was wrong, and how to fix it. After more than twenty years surviving the apocalypse, he had all of this memorized.
But Leon hadn’t come here today to play 'spot the mistake'...
A few months, from first-rank mage to grand mage—that's just not something a normal person can do...
Today, Leon was here to find a classic arcane rune from 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples,' one that those powerful mages of the peak era would mention over and over.
This rune was called the Mana Array Gear.
Of course, that name wouldn’t exist for millions of years yet. In this era, 'Mana Array Gear' wasn’t a thing—people usually called it a discarded rune, or a useless rune.
The first to use that label was this very book, 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples.' It used Mana Array Gear as a cautionary tale, with the author going on and on about the importance of proper rune construction—mess it up, and you’d end up with a discarded rune, or so the book claimed.
This was the only way Leon could get the construction method for Mana Array Gear...
If you asked them to actually point out the problems, not a single one could do it.
In this era, the only one who could identify the issues was Leon.
It took Leon ages to remember that one book mentioned Mana Array Gear was once called a discarded rune. The first to use 'discarded rune' was this 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples,' written by a mage from the Third Dynasty. No one cared about him back then, but millions of years later, he’d be in the history books for this very work.
But Leon hadn’t come here today to play 'spot the mistake'...
After thanking Solon, Leon took the two books, found a seat, and started flipping through them page by page.
Today, Leon was here to find a classic arcane rune from 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples,' one that those powerful mages of the peak era would mention over and over.
This rune was called the Mana Array Gear.
Of course, that name wouldn’t exist for millions of years yet. In this era, 'Mana Array Gear' wasn’t a thing—people usually called it a discarded rune, or a useless rune.
The first to use that label was this very book, 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples.' It used Mana Array Gear as a cautionary tale, with the author going on and on about the importance of proper rune construction—mess it up, and you’d end up with a discarded rune, or so the book claimed.
This was the only way Leon could get the construction method for Mana Array Gear...
Building a Mana Array Gear wasn’t hard, but getting a complete one was damn near impossible. Even at the height of magical civilization, there were fewer than five mages in all of Northend who had one, and none of them left behind any legacy.
So, when those five mages fell with the rest at the end of the magical civilization, not a single mage in Northend knew how to construct a complete Mana Array Gear. Even that vast, decaying library only had vague descriptions, no real construction method.
It took Leon ages to remember that one book mentioned Mana Array Gear was once called a discarded rune. The first to use 'discarded rune' was this 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples,' written by a mage from the Third Dynasty. No one cared about him back then, but millions of years later, he’d be in the history books for this very work.
Of course, the way he got in the history books was a bit... unusual.
After thanking Solon, Leon took the two books, found a seat, and started flipping through them page by page.
Leon read fast. In just half an hour, he finished 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples.' Sure enough, the book was riddled with errors—just one read-through and he’d already spotted more than twenty. For a magic book, that was almost unheard of.
You had to understand—magic was a precise art. Any slip could lead to wildly different outcomes. A book with over twenty mistakes, unnoticed by everyone else... in all his years, Leon had only seen it happen in 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples.'
Luckily, Leon wasn’t interested in those errors. After reading, he pretty much forgot them. The only thing he wanted was the construction method for Mana Array Gear. Ironically, the only valuable knowledge in the whole book was mocked as a cautionary tale, with the author’s words downright rude—claiming any grand mage who built such a discarded rune would never achieve more in life.
(Irrelevant passage skipped)
Too bad the author never knew: millions of years later, once arcane rune research matured into a full system, his so-called discarded rune would shine as one of the strongest runes, giving grand mages the power to stand against archmages...
But for now, Mana Array Gear really was just a discarded rune.
Because in this era, research on arcane runes was far from mature. Even most archmages, when teaching their disciples, relied on experience alone. The runes they spoke of all existed independently—there were some connections, but never a complete system.
In this situation, Mana Array Gear truly was no different from a discarded rune, because to unleash its power, you needed at least six arcane runes. Only when six were combined into a Mana Array Gear could a grand mage really stand toe-to-toe with an archmage.
No outside force needed—just pure magical power, enough to break the limits of rank and face an archmage head-on.
That’s exactly why Mana Array Gear was considered one of the strongest arcane runes.
What Leon wanted to construct now was exactly this Mana Array Gear system.
He took out his spellbook and carefully copied down the entire construction for Mana Array Gear, word by word. Once finished, he set down his quill, closed 'Arcane Rune Construction Examples,' and began to digest the knowledge. After half an hour, he opened another magic book.
This time, it was 'Detailed Analysis of the Maes Formula'...
'Detailed Analysis of the Maes Formula' came from the late Third Dynasty. Despite the title, it wasn’t written by the famed Flame Tyrant Maes himself, but by one of his disciples. Through a disciple’s eyes, it analyzed Maes’s entire magical system in detail, with plenty of battle examples—pushing the study of fire magic to its limits.
This book was hugely popular in this era. Many grand mages and archmages hoped to glean insights on the Flame Tyrant’s mastery of fire magic from its pages.
Leon was no exception...
For Leon, 'Detailed Analysis of the Maes Formula' was one of the few truly good books of this age. In that vast, decaying library, he’d seen the name on many tomes, but never had the chance to read it himself—until now, when he found it in the Sage’s Spire archive.
Of course, what Leon wanted wasn’t some insight into fire magic...
There were plenty of such insights in that vast, decaying library. Maes might have been called the Flame Tyrant, but he was just an archmage. In that library, many of the authors were sky-tier mages or even above.
What Leon really wanted were the battle examples.
If Lin Yun remembered correctly, Maes hailed from near the City of Ghosts—a place known as a paradise for undead creatures, even more terrifying than the Bone Plane. While the Bone Plane was overrun by undead, its ruler was just a bone dragon. The City of Ghosts, though, was nearly as dreadful as the Undead Plane itself. The centennial Undead Tide was a catastrophe that made all of Northend tremble.
Growing up in such a place meant Maes spent his life fighting undead. That’s probably why he achieved so much in fire magic—aside from holy light, nothing terrified the undead more than fire.
What Leon wanted were battle examples of Maes against undead, especially his fights with bone demons in his youth...
******************
(Irrelevant passage skipped)