Magic Kingship

Training Begins! Dominate the Dungeon! Part 2

"That… that…" Kay mumbled a few curses for the last thirty minutes or so, while trying to regain his bearings. He soon decided to think about what his master told him. "Knowledge is power… I wonder…" He then begun to try and read the runes that illuminated the wall, with hopes that it could give him some source of directions.

He stared at the shiny letters on the wall for a couple more minutes until…

"Dammit! I can't understand a single word!" He cursed aloud, and as expected of his bad luck, it attracted… something.

Kay begun to hear steps and a couple of shaking noises. The dimly illuminated cavern, whose only source of light was the bluish runes, became even more scary after, a couple of meters ahead of Kay, a Skeleton Soldier appeared.

The Skeleton Soldier is a low level monster, who appears often in the early floors of dungeons. It is made of weak bones, none reinforced by magic, and have as weaponry a cutlass sword and a shield made of copper, with a spike in it's center.

It's eyes shone in a red light, and it  had begun walking towards Kay, who didn't though of encountering a monster so soon.

Turning back towards the blueish runes, Kay tried his best on translating them. But each second that he failed, was another second that the Skeleton was closer. After what seemed like an eternity, he saw, with the corner of his eyes, the soldier raising his sword.

Kay didn't want to die yet, so he forced himself to dodge. To his anger, this thing was really trying to kill him. He didn't had any weapons on him, and worst, he was a very bad fighter. He was corned.

When the soldier raised his sword once more, a fog suddenly appeared. But it wasn't a normal haze… it was black in color with red highlights, and as it moved, it created the illusion that the darkness was engulfing him, as if it swallow the youngster whole.

Kay couldn't see nor heard a thing. He closed his eyes, waiting for the inevitable, but it didn't came. Opening his amethyst orbs once again, the mist was dispelled and in front of him, he was greeted with a rather unusual sight.

A purple skinned woman, with white hair and pointy ears was gazing at him with evident curiosity. She held two daggers, one at each hand, and wore a dark blue battle dress. Her eyes were yellow with black sclera and she had delicate traces on her. In fact, if Kay didn't knew of the treacherous nature of her kin, he would be entranced by her beauty.

She was a dark elf, and like all Elves, she was charming. But a dark elf was a different matter. All of those who made business with her kind, all ended up dead.

"What are you staring at, Human?" The darken elf asked, shaking Kay out of his stupor. He soon noticed that he was mouth agape and cleaned the droll out of the corner of his face. "Moreover, what are you doing here? Are you looking for the treasure?"

Kay knew that, if he spoke the wrong words now, he could very well end up dead… however, it wasn't like he could lie himself out of that. He was in a dungeon, a place with endless treasures… and as such, there wasn't really all that other reasons for him to be here.

"I'm looking for… knowledge." Kay blushed, as he remembered that Zera didn't exactly said what kind of thing held the knowledge he was looking for. If anything, Zera could be considered guilty of murdering him.

She placed someone who didn't had means to protect himself on a dungeon and ordered that same person to go to the bottom of it… and still expected him to get out alive of it.

Honestly, Kay didn't knew if he should feel flattered for so much confidence of angered by the murdered attempt.

"Are you listening?" The elf once again asked, this time however, she placed the dagger on his neck. "What are you here for… give a good answer and I may not kill you."

"I'm telling the truth. I'm here for knowledge." Kay said, exasperated. The woman eyed him cautiously, as if trying to found something that indicated that the youngster was lying. "Look, my crazy master sent me here to found a way to use my Unique Magic, and the only way to do that is to get to the bottom of this dungeon."

"Your unique magic? Why can't you use it? Humans use those magic circles right? Using one of them is as easy as breathing, since one just need to control the Mana output for the spells… something that even a dwarf child can do…" At each word that the dark elf spoke, Kay's self respect and self esteem, that he built with years of hard labor were crumbling to the ground.

"Yes, I know that…" The boy said, too sad to look in the face of that elvish woman.

"And you're still saying that, expecting me to believe… what kind of trash and stupid magic yours could be that you would need to rally a Dungeon just to get a grip of it?" The woman kept speaking, completely shattering Kay's will with her harsh words.

"Runecraft…" Kay whispered, already laying on his back, with a blank look on his face.

"Come again? I thought I heard you said Runecraft." The woman requested, with a shocked look on her face.

"You heard it right…" The depressed man said, still laying depressed on his spot, without even noticing the surprise look on the elvish woman's face.

'That can't be… the last human who could use Runecraft died centuries ago.' The woman thought, and decided to test the young man in front of her. "Get your sorry ass back up… I wanna see that Runecraft."

"Wasn't you listening. I can't use it… I don't know the runic language, so how am I supposed to use it?" Kay said, sitting up and glancing at her. She turned her back on him and begun to wrote something with her daggers on the floor.

The jet-black haired youth, without nothing to lose, glanced at what the woman was doing. He soon recognized the symbol she was writing on the floor. The traces, the strange spelling and the circles within it… it was one of the various runes that were in the cavern.

"Read it and, while reading it, say this: Arafel!" The woman ordered and Kay complied.

"Arafel… Arafel…" He soon looked at the woman, surprised and asked. "Why nothing is happening?"

"Because you're only reading it… let me rephrase it. Don't just read a rune. When using Runecraft, you must know the intent of the spell your trying to make. Use your intent, your desire to change reality to give power to the rune!"

Kay, who knew that the woman wouldn't give him anymore piece of advice, closed his eyes for a moment. Trying to discover what Arafel meant, he kept repeating it over and over, all the while trying to picture the rune on his head.

It took a moment, but it was only when he manage to do both tasks at once that he felt it. The pulsation of Mana within his very core.

With his eyes still closed, he rose his hand and begun to draw the rune that the Elf taught him in the air, with his own Mana and thus he spoke, in a calm but strong voice, the word, while his mind pictured the meaning of it.

"Arafel." As soon as those words left his mouth, the boys calm demeanor had begun to crumble as soon as he felt a cold tickling his nose. Opening his eyes, he was surprise by the sudden mist that erupted in the field. "I… did it?" Kay asked aloud, not believing in his own eyes.

While he was dumbstruck by what he was seeing, the woman's mouth was agape. The silence between both only being interrupted by the cold of the mist and the sound of water drops, falling from the stalagmites on the top of they're heads.