Not long after, Aria was taken away by Alfred and introduced to the king.
As expected, Martins didn't buy into it at first, not until he saw what the summon could do.
He was even more astonished to know that his son, Sylus, was the one who summoned the beast. A skill known only to the mages of the West.
Though he did ask to speak to his son about it, that was put on hold when Alfred informed him the young prince had latched himself in his room to concentrate.
Martins didn't argue; if his son was able to summon a bird that could grow as big as the castle itself, he couldn't wait to see what he would do regarding the ice blizzard.
That very day, over 1,000 boxes of raw materials from the mining grounds were transported to Margon City with the help of the giant bird and a few soldiers who followed.
The chances of the bird getting to its location without the raw materials expiring were still unknown; then again, for a bird as big as a dragon, far distances should be nothing.
Meanwhile…
Inside his room, Sylus had been studying everything he needed to learn to aid his next plan.
From the former inventions of man to how other materials were made.
Of everything he studied, one thing piqued his interest the most.
Runes, as they were called.
Apparently, there were three types of runes: ancient runes, which were rare and powerful, and then handmade runes, which were made by special mages in the capital.
Since ancient runes were rare and often dealt with research and gateways, their importance played no role in the invention. Only adventurers valued them, for good reason.
Some ancient runes were used to tame beasts, others for summoning, and so on.
Handmade runes, on the other hand, were specific and more in tune with people who needed them for inventions or anything similar.
For example, there were runes for gravity; one would think that when used, they could make objects either super heavy, light, or have no gravity at all. But that wasn't the case.
In order to make a single rune with a function, mages, people who have been trained to use magic pens, would have to draw very specific spells on the brown sheet for it to carry out any command.
Magic pens were made with mana stones, and only a select number of people could control them enough to understand how spell writing worked. To add a single command to runes was extremely difficult; any more and they could risk damaging their magic circuits.
As such, if a magic circuit had the function of gravity, it could only do one of being heavy, lifting, or having no gravity, and not everything at once.
That's not to say there haven't been some skilled mages who were capable of merging two functions, but even then, two seemed to be the max, as everything ended up falling apart right after.
Sylus stared at the book intensely.
'I see, so they are not yet well versed in technology. I guess in this case, I'll call it 'magical technology.'
He flipped the pages, his gaze catching a drawing.
The drawing showed an invention made with runes, a flying wagon, with multiple runes on it to carry out commands from different functions.
And then right under the drawing was a note.
"Too many runes on an object can cause overload."
'Hm…'
Sylus moved to the next page, which explained how spell writing worked.
As expected, it was quite complicated, with a language of its own and craft.
Learning something like this would take over a year at best.
Now, Sylus knew what some students were studying at the academy.
Still, if he could get a notion of what spell writing was, then just maybe he could figure out his way.
It took him almost the whole afternoon to get past the first page, and even then, there was nothing he learned.
With his eyes shut and his head resting on the book's pages, he grunted grumpily as he lay on the ground.
'Studying is officially the worst thing ever. No wonder those school kids were always angry.'
Suddenly, he sensed a gentle pressure on his lips.
Slowly opening his eyes, he noticed Zani was kneeling in front of him, stretching a fork of cake toward his mouth.
"You haven't eaten anything all day; you should eat."
Sylus's eyes bubbled up.
Since he had woken up, he had been focused on working, so much so that he almost forgot Zani was still in the room with him.
The fact she even went to get him food and spoke made everything worth it.
Zani was too reserved, so her doing something like this must have taken a great deal of courage on her part.
"Look at you, being all caring…"
Sylus was about to open his mouth to take the cake when a system notification distracted him.
[Condition has been met for a new title.]
[The Philosopher.] Description: You are wise because you learn, you are bold because you calculate, and your wisdom holds no bounds; as such, people come to you and serve you for it.
Sylus's eyes widened, completely forgetting about the cake dancing before him.
"I got another title… that means—"
He waited…
[A new aspect has been born from the title The Philosopher.]
[Assimilation]: You can learn anything by just studying; you have no limit to what you can learn.
In that moment, everything Sylus had read on the first page of the book was downloaded into his brain.
It was as if he had known about it all his life; even if he was half asleep, he knew for a fact he could answer the questions one hundred percent.
Forget passing the exams; with this aspect, he could become a professor himself.
Although that sounded like a job, Sylus was not interested in that.
He ate the entire cake with a cheerful expression on his face and then looked straight at the book.
'Studying is never fun, but with this, I can make a compromise.'
...
[A/N: I truly hope i'm not info dumping, the story is just starting. Please vote for this book if you like it and leave a comment. Thank you for reading.]