Staring at the electric blue snake, Rory squinted, taking a few moments to see what he could make out with nothing but ordinary vision.

  Well, it’s a snake.

  Mentally shrugging off the lack of instant discovery, Rory activated Eyes of the Architect. Now that it had a far reduced strain compared to its prior iteration, Rory went straight to its fully released state, taking the sudden influx of information in stride.

  So, its scales look like interlocked papilla and honeycombs. Interesting.

  It was odd to realize that he could enhance his vision to a degree that you’d need a microscope to compare with on Earth, but it was simply a matter of life now.

  Still inspecting the scales, Rory stumbled upon his first interesting discovery.

  The scales weren’t uniform, nor were they precise. Having practiced as much as he had with Gem crafting and his own magic survey effect of Eyes of the Architect, Rory was shocked that he felt he could fix the scales, making their microstructures more potent than they naturally were.

  Rather than doing that, Rory held off, unsure if it was wise to begin screwing around with the physiology of another living creature.

  Continuing his inspection with the ethics of tweaking the scales aside, Rory focused on the snake’s ‘aura’ as auras only began to grow readily notable and usable somewhere around or past tier five. Being that aura was basically an affinity applied with pneuma and usable without any real intent, what Rory felt within the scales of the snake reminded him of the Empyrean Serpent, except watered down to a mere fraction.

  Like the La Croix of aura... Huh, you know what, I’m surprised I even remembered that drink.

  Brief memories of the ‘flavored’ drink aside—flavored doing a lot of heavy lifting there—Rory considered what it meant for the serpent before inspecting his own affinities quickly.

  Hmm. Yeah, maybe not the same. Still, it’s close enough that I’d feel comfortable lumping them together.

  As for what Rory was referring to, while Rory had ‘three’ affinities, only two were actively usable and manipulatable: Blood and Lattice. His ‘third’ affinity was more like a continuously active buff that colored but did not directly shape things he used Essence Spark on. The affinity in question was none other than his Foundational Affinity, an affinity that, even many years later, Rory still wasn’t knowledgeable about.

  The newborn Aural Snake was operating with something similar from what Rory could make out, a very weak -but innate- energy affinity, a similar but distinct feel to the Khan of Blue Lightning’s heavenly lightning.

  At least, I think that’s what I’d categorize it as. It doesn’t feel like it has anything more distinct to it than whatever you’d call the feel of blanket energy.

  Tapping a finger against his thigh, Rory felt the familiar itch of an idea beginning to form.

  An energy affinity, albeit innate, is a little strange when you consider that pneuma is just magical energy representative of change. So, in a way, it’s just an affinity for the concept of the concept of what it exists as.

  It was all rather academic, in a way Rory knew Apostolos would likely hate, eliciting a smile from himself.

  Part of the reason I never had an issue with him taking a different path is that he was never suited to be a craftsman or Architect, not with how he hated overly 'academic' topics.

  Thoughts of Apostolos put to the side; Rory considered the oddity of an energy affinity. In a way, it was a lot like using a word to describe its own definition, like if a blind person asked what blue was like, and you explained it by saying it was blue like the sky.

  Not incorrect, just missing the point of the question.

  Or perhaps I’m thinking of this too one-to-one. While it’s true that pneuma is energy, not all energy is pneuma. Also, not all affinities have to be straightforward; isn’t that the case with foundational affinity?

  If that was the case, could it feed back into itself? Half of the point of affinities was the ability to utilize a particular concept or element or whatnot without intent. In the same way, runes and inscriptions could guide pneuma to behave a certain way without direct manipulation every single time.

  When you think about it, an affinity is just a natural rune, free of the bindings or constraints generally associated with a low understanding of any given rune.

  All at once, Rory’s mind felt like it was being torn apart by a lightning bolt, searing his mind in half. The pain only intensified as the thoughts of how runes, affinities, and essences all played upon similar concepts, like pieces of separate puzzles turning out to match one another.

  Holding his head in silent agony, the pain began to lessen slowly. A rather impatient notification had appeared, dominating the center of his vision. Clicking on it, Rory was surprised by its content.

  Skill modification possible: Ancestral Inscription and Foundational Essence Spark

  Two or more (hidden) synergistic overlapping skills detected. Skill interplay is possible.

  Proceed? Y/N

  Was it his sudden inspiration and epiphany about Inscription and Affinities that unlocked the possibility of the skill fusion? It seemed like a simple enough concept, yet Rory instinctively knew that it wasn’t enough to ‘know’ there was a shared root concept. You had to truly comprehend it in a way that mere words couldn’t describe.

  Well, I don’t see why not.

  Instantly, Rory felt another surge of splitting pain that settled in only a second this time around as the prior notification was replaced.

  Skill Modification successful:

  Ancestral Inscription and Foundational Essence Spark merged. New skill obtained—minor Rarity boost granted.

  Architect’s Essence Inscription

  Rarity: Extreme+, Skill Level: Low

  Breaking down the barriers between understanding and comprehension is a lofty, albeit rarely mastered, goal. Through years of experience, practice, testing, and inspiration, you have shattered the wall separating independent studies of runes and essence itself. Such knowledge allows one to utilize the standard functions of affinity and essence manipulation or knowledge of inscription and further imbue runes with diverse essences.

  WARNING: Depending on the essence and intent of runes used in conjunction, results may prove EXTREMELY volatile.

  “Holy shit,” Rory whispered as he examined the new skill. He hadn’t lost anything in skill integration; he could sense that instantly, and he even felt like Essence Spark had ‘evolved’ into Essence Projection in the process before being subsumed.

  No, what impressed him so much was the understanding that he could now directly inject his essence and affinities into the runes he inscribed. The warning was alarming, albeit obvious. If you inscribed a rune for water and then tried to instill it with fire affinity, chances were such a rune would explode in a steam explosion, and that was just a single example of what could go wrong.

  Duly noted.

  It was a single change, yet it had shattered his preconceived notions of what might be possible and his plans for the future.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Not to mention…

  Glancing at the aural serpent, Rory reconsidered his earlier thoughts of attempting to do anything to it. The merger between Ancestral Inscription and Foundational Essence Spark felt as if it had lifted a veil of his eyes born from the epiphany that was the genesis of the skill fusion in the first place. He could see the interplay where there was none before, his mind buzzing with possibility.

  Gesturing toward the sleepy serpent, Rory called out.

  “Hey, pstpstpst,” Rory muttered, wondering if he was calling a snake or a cat. “C’mon here, would you?”

  The snake lazily turned to face its head toward him, a look that almost expressed curiosity in its eyes.

  “You want to grow up big and strong, right?”

  He wasn’t sure if the serpent would understand him, but every monster seemed to have an innate drive to grow, something he hoped the snake would sense in his words.

  Whether his theory proved correct or not, at the very least, the snake did decide to draw closer to him, looking as if it might chomp down on his hand again.

  “So, you don’t really need to do anything,” Rory said, feeling a little foolish for talking to a newborn serpent as if it were a person.

  I’m all frazzled after dealing with the Empyrion Serpent, talking to snakes and shit. Call me a Snake Charmer. I just need a flute. I think it’s a flute they play at least… whatever, it's not important.

  “Just, uh, stay, mostly still?” Rory said, as he activated Eyes of the Architect, viewing the serpent with the skill fully released.

  Alright, hmmm, where to start?

  Thinking about it for only a moment, Rory figured it would be best to start from the head down. Without a proper tool for what he was about to do, Rory drew on free-flowing Pneuma instead, tiny threads halfway between real and metaphysical, connecting his fingertips to the snake’s head.

  I may not be the best with Pneuma, but fine work like this doesn’t take much out of me since it’s mostly my crafting skills doing the heavy lifting rather than my raw talent with Pneuma.

  Beginning to work, Rory felt as if what he was doing was somewhere between delicate surgery, knitting, and circuit soldering. Finding the metaphysical composition and formation within the physical scales of the aural snake, Rory slowly twisted, bent, and rewired them, a rather extraneously slow process he quickly realized; being part of an organic and still living creature made it hellish.

  Shaking his head, Rory was assured that his earlier decision not to attempt to mess with the snake pre-skill evolution was correct. The epiphany of the interplay between essence and runic structures was vital in a way he hadn’t understood only a short while ago.

  Slow going as the effort was; hours began to pass as Rory worked his way down the serpent’s long body.

  If its affinity is energy itself, why not integrate its physical body with that? It’s already attuned to aural adaptation, so I’m pushing it along, making its outer scales into a living, growing rune meant for drawing in essence in a way that most low-tier monsters wouldn’t be capable of.

  Eight hours of work later, Rory finally leaned back, hands on his sides as he cracked his back.

  “Not bad, if I say so myself,” Rory said, feeling quite pleased.

  The operation -for that was what Rory had begun to think of it as- had been a success. For now, it was only surface level; trying to inscribe a living being with an organic rune into its deep flesh was far beyond either his skill or raw power to do for the time beginning, but what he had been capable of was still damn impressive. A living rune, the first of its kind. Throughout its body, he’d taken the concept of an elemental energy rune -one of the original runes he’d made- a symbol like several lightning bolts coming together and twisted it. No longer were they ordinary lightning bolts; they’d become an endless twisting and converging serpent, its coils reflective of lightning, the lightning-fast strike of a serpent the bridging convergence idea that allowed for the ‘living’ energy rune.

  It wasn’t a masterpiece in the traditional sense. Yet, Rory still felt like he was looking at something akin to a magnum opus, which was only possible from his understanding of Inscription, Aura and Essence, and even Gem Crafting.

  A living rune.

  Still basking in the glow of his success, Rory was caught off guard by the sudden fatigue. He slumped to his side and struggled to keep his eyes open, his heart pounding and his body shuddering.

  Oh. Oh no.

  Instantly sensing what he’d done, Rory opened his interface, looking at his physique status. What he saw was far from comforting, the overall health percentage dropping in freefall. While there was no such thing as ‘health points,’ you could still die from expending too much of your lifeforce, your vitality.

  Which Rory was quickly hurtling toward.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  It had been years since he’d had any hiccups with rune creation, yet this ‘evolved’ rune, a living rune, was at a level that he couldn’t withstand the creation of.

  “Hey…sssnake,” Rory slurred, words struggling to form. “Need…. Gem… Feels…like…me…. in…. pouch…. where…you…. born…get…please?”

  With his vital life force in freefall, the only thing that could arrest it would be an Ossified Blood Gem, as he wasn’t anywhere near an ascension tier up.

  I hope this snake is brighter than it looks.

  For a moment, the snake did nothing, tilting its head at him before slithering off.

  Please, please tell me I didn’t make a mistake.

  If he died for the sake of some random snake he hadn’t even known until this day, it would be a hit of tragic irony that even Rory’s crappy sense of humor couldn’t laugh at.

  Slumped over, Rory could only watch as his health continued to drop a percent a second, his life measuring another half a minute as things were going.

  C’mon little snake.

  As if answering his prayers, an electric blue, arrow-shaped head popped up to his side, a small pouch hanging from its jaws.

  Not wasting any time, Rory reached out, his trembling hand barely strong enough to hold the pouch as he pulled it open. Finding his hands lacking the dexterity needed to even reach inside the pouch, he turned it upside down over his head as several gems fell out and plopped into his mouth.

  I’m not dying today.

  Inside his body, like reacted to like as his internal energies -which had been moments from bottoming out, stabilized, the toll of the living rune now being siphoned from the influx of vital energy provided by the ossified blood gems.

  Several tense minutes passed as his life force neither fell nor increased, locked into a state of equilibrium with the taxing cost of his newest rune. It was only after ten full minutes that finally, his vitality changed for the better, ticking up half a percent.

  Safe.

  Letting out a sigh, Rory fully slumped over, his exhausted body and soul enjoying the warmth of the miniature sun provided by his forge.

  “You need a name,” Rory said after a moment. Whatever thoughts he’d had on the snake before, nothing but mild curiosity, had changed, recognizing the monster as something of a peer in the same way he would Apostolos or any sapient for that matter.

  It's a good thing Apostolos isn’t here to get on my case about names.

  Thinking for a moment, Rory held out two hands.

  “On one hand, I have no idea if you’re a boy or a girl. So, options. Left hand-” Rory weakly shook his left hand for the snake to see. “If you’re a boy, how about Boros?”

  It was clearly just a rip from Ouroboros, yet there wasn’t anyone here to call him out, so Rory didn’t care.

  “On the other hand-” Rory shook his right hand for the snake. “If you’re a girl, I’m thinkin' either Eia or Chidna,”

  The serpent paused momentarily before resting its head in his right hand.

  “Girl snake, I’ve got it. Chidna on the left hand, Eia on the right.”

  The serpent didn’t move, sealing its name.

  “Eia it is.”

  No one would have to know that all he had done for the girl names had been splitting the letters of Echidna, the mother of monsters from Greek mythology.”

  Actually, Apostolos might have shards of memories of that. He is Greek—he was Greek—after all. However, he was also young as hell, so maybe not.

  Shaking the thought aside, Rory sighed deeply, staring at the star in his forge.

  “Well, Eia, it’s nice to formally meet you, oh, and thanks for saving me.”

  In response, Eia chopped down on his right hand, content to bite him as it twisted around his arm like a living sleeve.

  “Yeah, sure, why not.” Rory sighed.

  With the suns nearing the horizon, Rory waited until he heard the sound of Apostolos returning for the night.

  “Master, I’m back,” The young man called out, searching for Rory until he found him still lying in the forge. “Master? Why are you lying on the ground, and why are you so pale?”

  “Almost died,” Rory said off-handedly, acting as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He was playing it up, but Rory had never stopped getting a kick out of messing with the young man by saying the most absurd or astounding things as if it were natural.

  “From… from the snake?” Apostolos seemed confused, staring between him and the snake. “It’s tier-one, and you’ve got some venom resistance, right?”

  “No, not the snake,” Rory said before shaking his head. “Well, sort of, but not really.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just take a look,” Rory flicked two interfaces toward the young man. Judging by his expression, he read the skill change first.

  “Extreme plus? That’s amazing considering how each rank of rarity higher is exponentially harder, even that half step is like… what, like improving from a mundane or common ranked skill to an aberrant rank skill?”

  “Sure, something like that,” Rory said, dismissing the topic. The exact nature of what qualified a skill as what rank still wasn’t clear to Rory, but what Apostolos had said was their basic assumption.

  Looking at the other interface, Apostolos’s pleased expression turned into a frown. “What am I looking at?”

  “Some details of a new rune I just made. That’s why I almost died.”

  Apostolos shook his head, his frown deepening. “I’d say this is impossible, but given who you are, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  “Breaking expectations, that’s your master for you,” Rory said, still feeling loopy.

  “Sure, but what I don’t get is, what the hell is this? You said it’s a rune, yet even the most advanced runes you’ve made have shown me that I’ve been able to parse at least the semblance of an iota of understanding of the fundamentals behind them. This… it just feels like I’m looking at a headache captured in the shape of squiggly lines,” Apostolos finally swiped his hand, dismissing the interface as he pinched his nose, a look of stinging discomfort worn on his face.

  “Because it’s the first rune of its kind,” Rory said with a loopy grin. “For the sake of not referring to everything as tiers, we’ll call it an evolved rune, and in particular, I’d place it in a subgroup as a ‘living’ rune; it can bind with living things and grow with them.”

  “How is that possible?” Apostolos said, eyes wide before realization hit him. “That’s where the skill change came from?”

  “Bingo,” Rory answered. “And to answer your question, it works because I think it works, and it draws upon the dual principles of essence and inscription, bound together through a metaphysical convergence point like with Gem Crafting,”

  “Hence the headache,” Apostolos said. “I would say everything you’ve taught about runes says you shouldn’t be able to just stuff essence willy-nilly into a rune, but seeing that’s exactly what you did… So, what now? Just a nifty bonus?”

  “Not quite,” Rory said from his spot on the floor, slowly pushing himself up, much to the annoyance of Eia, who’d been dozed off happily wrapped around his warm arm. “They say the best plans aren’t those that have considered everything. The best plans are those which are open to sudden changes.”

  “Meaning?” Apostolos questioned, eyebrows raised.

  “Meaning its time for a change of plans,”

  long while, which is creating a new rune from scratch. And boy, was it a doozy.

  really have an overarching plot, given that it's the story of what would be the big OG badasses of many other LitRPGs. So, the story will often follow a rather ebb-and-flow style of nitty-gritty downtime to lay the foundations of the entire world because that's what Architects do, and the more classical high-action content many are familiar with from LitRPGs or progression novels. We've been building up for a while now, so with only a minor spoiler, I think it's time we wave goodbye to some of the sit-and-wait pacing.