Chapter 20: The Shura Field of 'Justice' and 'Forging' (Part 1) (Patreon)

As these thoughts flickered through his mind, Renan picked up a carving knife and a palm-sized slab of hardwood. A slight flex of the wrist, and he finished carving the "Cleaning" rune with ease.

Next he dropped a few magic stones into a mortar and ground them with the pestle into a fine powder with no large grains, then stirred it into heated, melted paraffin.

Last, he scooped up a little of the wax with a slightly warmed metal spoon and carefully poured it, bit by bit, into the grooves of the rune.

Even counting the experience of young Renan from the Harry Potter world, this was Renan's first time making a magic tool by inscription.

Still, perhaps because he had shared the powers of several of his other selves, his control over his body had improved to match.

The whole process went without a single mistake or mishap, and he finished every step easily.

The moment the last gap in the last groove was filled with wax…

—Hmmm!

The face of the board carved with runes suddenly flared with a bright blue glow.

The light wasn't harsh. If anything, it was soft.

It didn't last long, either. Start to finish, it was just over three seconds.

But as Renan watched it, the corners of his mouth curled upward despite himself.

He even pumped his right fist in front of his chest. 'It worked!'

Without hesitating, he picked up the newly finished "Cleaning" board from the desk and fed it enough magic power to activate it.

A light breeze swept quickly through the guest room.

Once the real-world effect of the rune combination faded, the bits of magic stone powder that had spilled onto the floor and the writing desk during the grinding had been blown into a single heap.

He looked down at the "Cleaning" board in his fingers. Unlike the rune scrolls, which burned themselves out after a single use, the wax in these grooves was still there. Only its color seemed to have dulled a little?

Renan narrowed his eyes. A possibility had occurred to him.

To be sure, he decisively cast the spell nearly twenty more times with the board.

Then, on the final infusion of magic power, he heard a faint but unmistakable "crack" reach his ears.

In the next instant, the board in his hand snapped apart out of nowhere into a dozen-odd fragments of various sizes.

Seeing that, Renan fell silent.

Clearly, even with magic stone powder as the conducting medium, what he had made so far still wasn't a true magic tool.

As for the reasons, drawing on the knowledge shared from the Harry Potter world, Renan had some vague guesses.

First, magic stones that hadn't been specially processed were poor-quality material. When magic power ran through them it built up and clogged, heating the spot until it scorched. Put simply, it was the magical equivalent of a short circuit in electronics. That was also why the rune scrolls he made burned out after a single use.

The fix for that was actually simple.

Swap the magic stone powder for powder from better magic gems, or from Dungeon-produced materials that conducted magic power well.

But if he guessed right, that would most likely treat the symptom, not the cause. At best it would raise the usage limit of the rune combination from the current nearly 20 to 30, 50 or 100 uses.

Use it enough, and it would still break and be scrapped.

Second, the rune combinations Renan currently knew were too few and too basic.

To avoid catching the professors' attention, young Renan in the Harry Potter world had only leafed through the very basic supplementary books on rune studies in the library during his first year at Hogwarts.

And those textbooks mostly taught only introductory material anyway.

The truly good stuff was all kept in the Restricted Section.

Renan guessed that a wizarding civilization thousands of years old surely had a way around the usage limit of rune combinations. But as he'd noted before, with the Basilisk guarding the body, he couldn't go to the Harry Potter world for now. And knowledge like that wouldn't be easy to get through proper channels anyway, or it would mean having to deal with Dumbledore.

'Forget it.' In the guest room, the black-haired boy let out a long breath and slapped both cheeks.

'Twenty uses it is. When I'm earning a Feat, that's enough to get me through a whole fight.'

Renan had in fact already planned to rig up a few pseudo-magic tools first and then use them to enter the Dungeon and earn a Feat.

But as the saying from his past life went, plans can't keep up with changes.

…

Time flew by, and soon the day came for the second Falna update he had arranged with Astraea.

Renan still didn't plan to go down to the Dungeon today. After breakfast, he returned to the guest room and went back to preparing rune scrolls.

After several nights and two straight days of practice and repetition, he could now compress the time to write one set of runes down to a minute and a half. Over a whole day, minus lunch and rests, he could easily turn out 350-plus scrolls with different effects.

And then came evening.

The black-haired boy, carrying a pack worth nearly "1 billion Valis," arrived at the Star Hall. Astraea had barely led him into the living room when he spotted a figure on the sofa not far away who had no business being there.

Renan stayed silent for two seconds, then turned to the brown-haired goddess beside him, meaning to ask why Hephaestus was here.

But before the words could leave his mouth, the red-haired goddess across the room heard their footsteps first. She lifted her head from the rune scroll she'd been poring over, a teasing smile on her face. "Well, well, if it isn't young Renan. We meet again."

Renan sighed inwardly, then raised his right hand to his chest and bowed respectfully toward her. "Lady Hephaestus, good evening."

As he spoke, he swept a quick glance around with the corner of his eye. Apart from himself and the two goddesses, not one other member of the Astraea Familia was in the hall.

He reached his conclusion at once.

Sure enough, seeing the black-haired boy say nothing, Hephaestus launched into an explanation on her own:

"This afternoon I paid a visit to the Soma Familia. I meant to spend a little money or resources and poach you away from Soma. Then that fellow gave me a surprising answer: 'Counting Astraea, you're the second god with an eye on Renan.'"

"When I heard that, I froze. I thought, oh no, I'm too late!"

"But then it hit me. Since you haven't left the Soma Familia yet, young Renan, Astraea mustn't have truly made up her mind."

"In other words…" Hephaestus paused here, and her gaze moved from Renan to the face of the brown-haired goddess beside him. Astraea was smiling, but her expression was visibly stiffer than usual. "Astraea and I are still in the fair competition stage~"