The following month was calm. Everyone in the group was busy increasing their skills at a lightning speed. Amelia and Kayley were sitting on the couch with their eyes closed, either they were awakening new nodes or practicing some of their spells.

Rein was sitting on the floor reading the schoolbooks they got from the cottage. Even though they were first-grade books and probably extremely outdated, the previous day Rein decided to go through them anyway, it was always possible there was something interesting in them.

Suddenly, Villin who was sitting five meters away from him working on a new project of his yelled out ecstatic “YES!”

Rein looked over closely followed by Amelia and Kayley who opened their eyes. Villin had been working hard the previous month, spending a crazy amount of time every day working on enchantments and magic arrays yet his projects always ended in failure.

It really wasn’t much of a surprise when you looked at what he was working on. Villin hadn’t been drawing enchantments or magic arrays he had learned. Instead, he had been trying to make his own. This on its own would already be extraordinarily difficult but that wasn’t everything. A little less than a month ago he had visited a store to get a wooden humanoid toy. It stood at about one-and-a-half feet tall and had moving arms and legs. It was a somewhat badly built action figure.

Then he tried to form the enchantments and magic arrays onto this object. Not just one or two but over a dozen, moreover, many of them seemed to be connected in one way or another. Oftentimes Villin wouldn’t fully close the magic arrays but instead, the runes would flow over into an enchantment. Soon most would be completely unable to distinguish what runes were connected and which ones weren’t without carefully studying them as more and more of the surface of the figurine got covered in them.

Even though there had been no successes this month, nobody looked down on his work. The task was very, very far above their grade to the point where attempting something like this at their age would usually be seen as insane.

Villin felt ecstatic, for the last month he had worked extremely hard, directing most of his effort toward drawing runes. He used both pen and chalk but ended up deciding to complete the entire thing with the pen. Each of the methods had their own positives and negatives, overall the pen was better to keep the magic within the runes and the objects they are connected to while chalk was more effective to expel magic and cause effects away from the runes. This must also be the reason why one was used for enchanting and the other magic arrays.

During this period of time, there were a few things that helped him immensely in achieving what most would call near-impossible for someone of his age. For one, the spellbooks they found in Richard’s classroom. Some of the spells were very helpful in using less magic power to empower a rune while another spell helped with putting intent into the runes with less effort.

But his biggest help was something he had all along, the first-grade magic array book.

This book explained every stroke of every rune and their purpose was the real reason he managed to do this. It helped him massively in properly understanding the logic between each rune and how to adapt them to fit the situation best. Compared to this the second-grade magic array book was useless. The second-grade book would’ve actually been more useful to most, it explained how to make a number of the more common magic arrays. It explained the spacing, intent, and magic power. But it was nowhere near as detailed as the first-grade book.

Once he calmed down a bit again Villin looked at the action figure standing on the ground. He has used ‘Mental Technique: Extend’ to connect a few magical wires to the action figure, these were connected to what Villin decided to name the acupoints, just like a human had those.

Villin carefully sent some magic power into one of the wires that were connected to the figure’s lower back and sure enough, it started walking forward. In the next few seconds Amelia, Kayley, and Rein felt flabbergasted. Even though the figure fell a few times at first, soon it was able to run around the room effortlessly. It was even able to climb, jump, and punch.

They all looked at Villin with complicated expressions. How were they supposed to show off if their companion could do something like this? But even this wasn’t everything. Villin still had two acupoints he had yet to touch. Both of these were quite volatile and if a mistake happened it would probably be there.

While the puppet was still running around under his command Villin extended his hand to the floor. A bit later he cast a derivatory wandless cast of Reverto and a light-blue barrier appeared on the ground around the little puppet. This was done to make sure there would be no damage to the area.

“Amelia, could you silence the area please?” Villin asked as he was sweating a little, controlling the puppet wasn’t that easy for him yet, leave alone doing so while casting a derivatory wandless version of one of his spells. Amelia promptly nodded and Villin could feel a faint magic power engulf the area, he allowed it as he looked back toward the action figure, the others were also looking on with anticipation, wondering what this little thing could do.

Villin sent some magic power into the acupoint connected with the top of the figure’s head. Instantly fire started coming out of the figure’s mouth, it shot out of its mouth with a very widespread, if the magical shield wasn’t protecting the area the room would soon be set ablaze.

The sheer amount of flames shocked the three spectators, such an effect would be great even for a decently sized magic array, leave alone such a small figure that had a number of other enchantments. The flame was even more powerful than the one Rein’s array made in the advanced tournament.

The flames stopped after about three seconds. Villin looked at the area around the puppet a bit worriedly. He loosened his control over the puppet causing it to fall to the ground before extending his hand and casting the derivatory reverto spell again. He was afraid the final effect of the puppet would cause damage in a wider area, the flames were about twice as powerful compared to what he had expected so he didn’t want any mishaps.

The others waited patiently for an entire hour until the room was almost completely protected by the spell. Villin felt exhausted, as he cast the regular wandless Reverto once, covering him in the light-blue mist. Amelia, who saw this, also cast the wandless reverto causing a barrier to form around herself. Villin tiredly asked Kayley and Rein to push up to him so they were also protected by the barrier.

Then he extended his last bit of magic toward the puppet having it stand up once more. He was happy the puppet took such a tiny amount of magic power to control, otherwise, he would have to take a rest even with his nodes regenerating his magic power.

This time Villin sent magic power into the thread connected to the figure’s neck. He had to wait for about five seconds and then…

“BOOOOM!!!”

Even though they couldn’t actually hear the sound it was easy to imagine what it would sound like when the dol exploded, fire engulfed half of the room for a moment before receding and eventually disappearing. Villin looked at the area of the explosion with his eyes wide open and mouth agape. The puppet’s explosion had made its way through the derivatory reverto spell and caused a burn to appear on the floor.

The effectiveness of the self-destruct move was a lot higher than expected. The others thought something went wrong at first but soon realized it didn’t, Villin had created a small magical bomb, capable of moving, dodging, and breathing fire.

It took a bit before everyone really came too as they realized what just happened. This puppet was most certainly capable of killing. If Villin could make another one and sneak it close to an unsuspecting enemy, they would probably be killed in, or shortly after, the explosion.

Most of the pieces of the figure were completely gone, but here and there there was still a little piece. When the three spectators looked at each of these pieces they realized something. There was no free place on the puppet whatsoever, there were runes absolutely everywhere, they must’ve been covering it from head to toe.

And they were right, the entire puppet was covered with runes, and even though it would look really messy to a random person, as the creator he understood every part of it.

But now it was gone, a month of effort blown to bits… well not really. The puppet was certainly gone but the effects had given Villin a number of insights. No matter what this puppet was always just supposed to be a prototype, a proof of concept. Now he knew it was possible and effective. He was already thinking of how to improve the minor errors he spotted in movement and everything. But he decided to hold off until they got back to The Academy. He would try to make it with a magical metal then, and until they got back to The Academy, he could practice some other things.

Little did he know was that far in the future, this date would be seen as one that was extremely important. For this day two things were born. A terrifying genius, and a totally new combat style utilizing runes.