"Fortify the paper?" Alex asked.
"Yes, that works," Helen said. "What else?"
"Is there a rune for making something resistant to fire?" he asked.
"There is," Helen said with a smile. "But it's better if you make it resistant to heat itself. What else?"
"Make the heat release outwards faster?" he said.
"Be careful," Helen said. "Too fast and you'll make the talisman explode."
'Oh,' Alex thought in his head. He then thought for a bit longer as he remembered all the talismans he had seen being used.
However, he couldn't think of anything specific aside from those few ways. He was too uneducated about talismans.
Helen saw right through him. "Okay, what if you were to make it so that the heat releases a distance away from the talisman itself?" she asked.
"Oh, you can do that?" he asked.
"Yes," she said. "Have you seen talismans that make barriers? The barriers are never next to the talisman itself. That's because they make it so that the barrier appears some distance away from where the talisman is."
While Alex nodded as he understood the reasoning, Helen drew another rune that looked like 2 runes put together.
"If your talisman has numerical information, you need to use compound runes to give all the numbers," she said. "I will teach you the numbers later, but for now, this number is saying 1 and it's compounded with the distance unit 'Chi', which is about 33 centimeters long."
"So, when I connect this distance with 'Heat'," Helen said as she drew the Rune Bridge.
"This happens."
The moment Helen put Qi into the talisman, Alex felt something warm appear around her hand. There was no high heat like before that could burn the paper.
This time, the heat was mellow.
"Is the heat being distributed?" he asked.
"Yes," Helen said. "There's only so much heat you can produce with such a bad paper and ink."
She stopped it and said, "now, can you think of a way to turn this heat into a fire that burns away from the paper?"
Alex thought for a moment. "The heat is already away from the paper, so we should just concentrate it on one point, instead of letting it spread all around."
"Yes," Helen said with a bright smile and quickly drew a rune before connecting it to 'Heat' rune.
Then when she used the talisman again, this time about 30 centimeters above the talisman, Alex saw a bright point of light which soon turned into a tongue of fire.
"It's great right?" Helen said as she excitedly looked at his son. "Look how hot it got just because we made the heat gather at a certain point."
Alex nodded as he looked at the fire. "1823 Celcius. That's quite hot," he said.
Helen gave a surprised look. "You can tell the temperature so accurately?" she asked.
Alex nodded. "It's one of the requirements of being an alchemist. Being able to tell how hot your fire is. A technique of mine helps me be hyper-specific," he said.
"So you now understand how talismans work, right? Just the basic concept at least," She asked.
"Yes," Alex said.
"Now, let's take the lesson a step further as I will teach you how to immediately improve upon this," she said.
Alex smiled as he waited for his mother to continue.
Helen had started his teaching of talisman at a very weird point in the study. Instead of going with theoretical knowledge first and supplementing that with practical usage, she had decided to only show him the practical stuff first and follow that with some explanation.
Alex guessed that would work in the end, but the start felt very weird nonetheless.
Helen quickly drew the same runes on another talisman and flipped it around to show it to him.
"What's wrong here?" she asked.
Alex looked at the runes and didn't see anything wrong with it really. Except for one glaring problem that he knew wasn't a problem because it had worked before.
"You've only drawn the runes on the left half of the talisman," Alex said. "Why did you leave the right half empty?"
"That's because I'm going to draw the same runes again," she said as she drew the runes right in front of him.
"Wait," Alex said. "You made a mistake, mother."
"Oh, did I?" Helen asked with a hidden chuckle in her voice before completing the talisman.
Alex was confused now. "Those runes are wrong, aren't they?" he asked when he saw the right half of the talisman. Every rune she drew on that half was the exact opposite of the other one like q was to p.
Alex stopped when he saw the bigger picture however and his mind nearly reeled in shock.
"You've created symmetry," he said. The right half of the rune was a mirror image of what was on the left half.
"Yes, and that helps us improve align—"
Helen stopped when she saw Alex move forward suddenly and look at the rune closely.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
"Symmetry… that's something I've learned about a while ago, but it still surprises me how well it can work," he said.
"Yes, making a symmetrical talisman makes the Alignment improve by nearly half," she said. "If a normal talisman did 50%, adding a simple mirror of it can help it reach 75%," she said.
"And how do these reverse runes work?" he asked. "Do they not do more harm than good?" he asked.
"Okay, that is something very special about runes. You can flip it, move it around, or change the location of the runes themselves. If it is there, it will work," she said.
"There's no logic to what the orientation should be?" Alex asked.
"No," Helen said. "As long as you draw it, it works."
"Oh," Alex said and looked a the paper for a bit before asking. "What if instead of making 2, you made 4?"
"Right, that's where I have a few things to teach you," she said and placed the talisman down.
"There are 3 things that determine how good a talisman is," she said.
"First, is the quality of the paper and ink you will use to draw. The paper needs to be very smooth and as few imperfections as possible."
"The ink needs to be smooth as well, with no floating chunks of the ingredients," she said.
"Second, is the uniformness of your drawing. I'm not just talking about the shapes of the runes, but rather the thickness of the ink you leave behind on the paper."
"Having a properly shaped rune is obvious. Having perfect lines through and through is obvious. These are not things I will need to explain to you."
"What most don't realize is that when they focus on making sure they haven't fumbled on the obvious, they fumble at places that are not obvious."
"Finally, the third thing that helps in improving the alignment of the talisman is the size of your runes," she said.
"The number of runes do not matter. What matters is its size. Since symmetry is so important in the talisman, we usually stay at two opposite pairs of runes," Helen finally finished.
"Oh," Alex said as he tried to comprehend what he just learned.
"Oh right, one thing," She said. "While your runes have to be absolutely perfect to make it work, your Rune Bridge however can be however you want."
"You can curve it, twist it, whatever you want to fit it into your design. Of course, straight ones are the best since it does the same thing and there is little place for error, but you have other options too," she said.
"I see," Alex said.
He couldn't help but think of how different talismans were to formations. When he learned that demons had founded runes while humans founded formations, he had half believed that those two things worked just like each other.
However, now he could see how wrong he was.
As he thought that, a question appeared in his mind.
"What determines the rank?" he asked.
In formations, it was the number of base formations used in the overall formations. If he followed that logic, then there should be a number limit for runes that changed it from one grade to another.
However, given how different they already were, Alex didn't trust his logic.
"Oh, it's the quality of the ink," Helen said, half embarrassed that it had taken her this long to tell him that which she should have explained from the beginning.
"Quality of ink?" he asked.
"Yes, depending on the ingredients used for the ink, your talisman can do some tasks better than others. Some ink are better for heat, some are better for keeping records, some are better for sending information, etc," Helen said.
"The inks that are made from common rank ingredients make Common rank Talisman. Inks made from True rank ingredients make True rank talisman, and so on," she said.
"Wait, what about the runes? Is there anything stopping me from making the same design in all ranks?" he asked.
"Nope, nothing is stopping you," she said. "Well, nothing aside from finding ingredients for the ink that is... and maybe your mental strength as higher rank inks use up a lot more mental strength than you can imagine."
'They really are very different,' he thought.
"I think you should read this book to learn a lot more," Helen said as she brought out a book called 'Ink, Paper, and Runes - A special guide to Talisman.
Alex casually flipped through the book and saw a mind-numbing amount of information in there.
He nodded with a smile. "I will learn this later tonight," he said.
"Good," Helen said. "For now, let's see you try your hand at making a talisman."
