Chapter 191: Runes

*BAAANG*The entire village quaked as the ogres jumped down from the sky. The overbridge formed above the gate was about three meters tall. Adding on the ogres' jumping height under the berserk stride, the impact was nothing to scoff at.

“Vyran unth Kyra!” (Surround them!)

A bearded native wearing golden armor shouted at the scrambling guards. The village had a population of close to ten thousand, and each and every one of them was stronger than an ogre. The leader didn’t believe that these rude intruders could do anything except cause a ruckus.

*Trrrrrraaaaaaaaa*

A deep bellow shattered the leader’s judgment, along with an entire wall segment. The mammoth projection smashed through the walls as if they were made up of paper.

Even the spectating Zyrus didn’t expect the mammoth to be so powerful, much less the natives. The bridge created by the trolls was the only thing that remained intact within the radius of a 100 meters.

<Change of plans! Launch an all-out attack with the open walls. Send a detachment at the other gate, but keep them hidden. Send mages there and let them prepare their long chant spells>

“Got it,” Ria replied to Zyrus and conveyed his orders to everyone else. Zyrus could tell them individually as well, but opted for the long route in order to build a habit in them.

The players were excited to engage in their first all-out land war.

But such excitement didn’t even last a minute.

They outnumbered the natives by a lot, but still, their individual strength was nothing compared to them.

“Nyth unth Vylen,” (kill the intruders)

Just a thousand guards held back Zyrus’s entire army. The players' spells and weapons had no effect on their copper-like skin. On the other hand, players’ defenses were non-existent in front of the natives' weapons.

Things would’ve been better if the players had access to system prompts. Due to the unique nature of this event, they couldn’t see the damage numbers they were all too used to.

<Focus on the runes when they attack>

Zyrus spoke to all the players. No one noticed for a while before suddenly, there was a loud clamor on the battlefield.

“Formations!”

“Motherfucker, that’s unfair.”

“Eyes on the front ya bastards.”

Their hard-trained discipline faltered for the first time. But no one could blame them.

Everyone saw that when their attacks landed on the natives or when they themselves were attacked, a metallic rune would flash for a brief moment.

This was hard to notice mid-fight before Zyrus pointed it out. The players understood at this moment why Zyrus had given out the information on talisman making for free.

There was no one who didn’t see the mission. Whether they were interested in the job or not, everyone at least knew which runes were used for what.

“They’re using ‘Harden’ and ‘Sharp’ runes for their defense and offense. It may look effortless, but there’s a way to get around it by chain attacking,” Ria took the initiative and told everyone about her plan. She was second only to Zyrus when it came to her intelligence stat.

“Thir unth Zal?”

This time, everyone could guess what the native leader was screaming about. It was probably something like ‘How’s that possible?’

The rune for ‘Harden’ looked like a mix of H and I. The ‘I’ was twice the size of H with protrusions like the letter Y. The key here was that since everyone knew about the rune and its drawing method beforehand, it was easy for them to destroy it.

This content has been unlawfully taken from NovelFire; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

In but an instant hundreds of natives died against the players' onslaught. However, things got even more peculiar.

The natives that looked similar to humanoids became a mercury-like liquid upon their death. The material was toxic for the players, so they could do nothing but watch as their enemies ‘dissolved’ into the ground.

<Don’t worry about their death. Focus on killing them as soon as possible>

Zyrus spoke to the players and zoomed out on the map to see the overall progress. The players were doing okay by his standards. Since it looked like everything was on the right track, he focused his attention on what was the most important for him: Collecting data on the runes and the effects of talismans.

The rune for attack looked like a mix of inverse triangles with a sword in the middle. The talismans he shared with the players were made from the runes of Harden, Sharp, Conduct, and Bend.

They were related to simple metallic properties which was easy for everyone to understand. What would one think when they saw a metal plate? It's sturdy, sharp, and malleable. To take a step further, metals were good conductors of heat, electricity, and even mana.

The general laws and applications of metal were thus easy to apply. One didn’t have to walk on that path to make use of it.

Zyrus had no plans to learn the laws of metal. It was impossible for one to reach the end of more than one path. No one had told him as such, but he could guess it based on his experiences on the source of existence.

Zyrus muttered to himself as he saw the players use their talismans to break the enemy’s defense. The tablets would shatter when mana was applied, creating a blazing rune. It was flashy in appearance, but Zyrus knew that his creations were in fact inferior. Even this much was only possible due to the combination of Eye of annihilation and Heavenly eyes.

The natives were being slashed in half and their weapons were no longer invincible. The main purpose behind his investment was to collect more information and reduce the number of dead players.

And it worked.

Zyrus took a sip of tea and zoomed in on Strongfist and Kyle. The natives were different from the monsters they had faced thus far. There was a clear command structure between the different villages and the ‘Capital.’ He knew that at this moment, the news of his attack should've spread to every corner of Jindao island.

Without the element of surprise, the players didn’t have the luxury to treat their fights as a learning experience. This would also be the last time when they could outnumber the enemies by 10 to 1.

<Don’t push them too far. Maintain the balance and focus on killing the ones in command> Zyrus issued the final order and started working on the large chart in front of him. Miniature and simple diagrams of countless races were drawn on it, and besides them were the common runes belonging to five elements.

This chart was the core of his grand ambitions.

Zyrus knew about the history of the five islands, but only after his regression did he figure out the true extent of it.

The last five islands of Pisces archipelago were ‘man-made.’ They were the result of a mad arcanist's experiment. Or so it was written in the royal library of Kyros.

Now, Zyrus very much doubted that this was done by a mad arcanist. Five entire islands filled with a total population that numbered in millions, sacrificed just for an experiment. The scale was too big for the work of a lone mad arcanist.

Many past kings and historians guessed what the experiment was for. Some believed the arcanist wanted to create artificial mana attributes while others thought they were creating artificial elementals.

Zyrus had no doubts anymore. The experiment was done for the same reason as his: To understand the workings of laws.

It was obvious what the result was. The experiment was a success considering that the natives were able to instinctively utilize the power of laws. But it was also a failure since the natives were nothing more than a husk of their past. Rather than them assimilating the laws, it were the laws that had assimilated the entire islands and all who lived on them.

The power of will. That was the most crucial factor in handling the laws.

Zyrus was glad that his predecessor had gone above and beyond to assimilate laws with one’s body. Cruel or not, it gave him valuable data. It would be a win-win scenario if he could digest these ‘experiments’ and set their wills free.

Doing so wouldn’t be an easy task, but what if he used thousands of eyes to observe everything? What if different species worked together to achieve a common goal? Even the mightiest task was manageable.

This was the reason why he shared the four basic runes with the players. Neither the runes nor the talismans made from them were the true goal. Their sole purpose was to serve as an example, an example of how one could use the power of laws and concepts.

The runes that flashed on the natives’ bodies and on their attacks weren’t just limited to four. The one who created this experiment didn’t know the full extent of the elemental laws. The first and perhaps the biggest hurdle for that was their inability to interact with the laws.

But now, in front of every player’s eye, the laws of metal were speaking through the runes.

No one understood their language. No one was able to read the meaning behind the runes.

Still, this didn’t prevent them from remembering the runes they saw. They memorized the patterns and came up with their own hypotheses on which runes did what.

They were no scholars who spent days and nights on understanding magic. They were but simple players who knew nothing except how to kill the foe in front of them.

Humans, ogres, trolls, rats, goblins, lions, monkeys…all of them saw a different version of runes and how they worked. Thousands of eyes were looking at the same thing, all with their unique perspectives.