The bear-men began unloading the carts whilst Asclepius took a seat beside Hannibal to have a look at what they were studying.
"I would've been of more use if I still had the solar crux. Right now it kind of feels like I'm just slowing you down," Hannibal commented as Lucius attempted to run energy into one of the more complex runes.
The problem in this was that the paths weren't as intuitive as in the simpler runic circuits, and Lucius had no idea if he was actually guiding the energy in the correct direction.
What's worse is that all the complex runes they had collected were missing their mana stones. He guessed that Asclepius had found these in some sort of dumpsite for warn-out runes.
And the mana stones on the simpler runes were too small to power the more complex ones. So it seemed it was going to be a process of blindly guessing until he somehow got them to work.
"Perhaps, but there's no ruling out the possibility that the radiant crux might have a similar ability," Lucius replied with his eyes closed.
It helped to better visualize the paths he was taking to avoid repeating them later on.
"So why exactly are we running energy into them?" Asclepius asked after staring silently for a bit.
"We're marking out the paths. We think that if we can understand the way energy moves inside them, we can create new runes that do what we want," Hannibal explained, not removing his eyes from the rune that Lucius was working on.
Asclepius watched on for an hour or two, however even as curious as she was, she got bored after a while. After all, her interests lay in herbs and poisons, and without a crux, there wasn't much she could do except listen.
So she left to carry out some of her own studying.
The two spent several more hours in their work, delegating all the other tasks they had to Pagan, who seemed happy enough to be of use to TheLighted One.
And with the other creatures carrying out the materials logistics, Lucius and Hannibal only had to stop to eat.
*
After nearly 22 hours of work, and at least a dozen short naps, they had finally figured out a way to decipher even the most complex runes.
"Wait, I don't understand, can you explain it again," Hannibal asked, a concerned expression on his face.
"Okay, let me start from the bare bottom," Lucius replied with a tired smile.
"We understand that runic circuits are a connection of paths that direct energy towards the active parts of the rune, right?" he began, to which Hannibal nodded his head.
"But why do they do that?" he asked.
"To cause an effect, like with the light or heating," Hannibal replied thoughtfully.
"Exactly, but our problem was that we were unsure of how the effect was caused. Because it seems like such a big jump from merely directing energy to causing an effect, we'd been convinced that the active part of the runes was some infinitely complex structure," Lucius replied, before picking up a stone slab and using his claws to etch a pattern onto it.
"However, it's simpler... or at least relatively simpler than we'd been making it out to be. The active part of the runes are just compressed pathways, but with added functionality," he continued, as he drew a symbol that Hannibal had never seen before onto the stone slab.
"It's something like an integrated circuit, and inside it are even tinier little circuits we're going to call transistors. The more complex runes -or integrated circuits- have millions of these tiny transistors in them," he said, pausing his etching for a moment to look up at Hannibal, who was nodding his head slowly.
"And you said transistors can choose when to stop or allow energy to flow, and also... amplify it?" Hannibal asked, still confused about the concept.
Lucius wasn't at all surprised by Hannibal's confusion, it was going to take a bit of time for him to understand university-level topics as he didn't yet have a stable educational background. However, it would be enough for him to work with circuits for a while to understand them.
"You're right, but perhaps it'd help for you to feel exactly what I mean... though sadly you don't have the solar index," Lucius whispered, before suddenly something came to mind.
He recalled that when he had first created the radiant healing spell during the Shri'killian mission, he had done so by mapping out the pathways in his body. So he was certain the radiant index wasn't lacking in its ability to direct energy flow.
The dead-end came in the fact that it was restricted to the body, however, if what he was thinking could work, then perhaps...
"How proficient are you at using the radiant crux?" he asked after a moment of thoughtful silence had passed.
"Hmm... I'm not exactly sure, probably terrible compared to you," Hannibal replied after a bit of thought. He said this in more of a matter-of-fact way than anything else.
"Here, try this," Lucius said, handing Hannibal the rune that he had created.
"Close your eyes, and act like this rune is a part of your body," he continued.
Hannibal stared at him with a confused look for a second, before realizing what he was trying to do.
He quickly closed his eyes and began focusing.
His body began glowing slightly as 『Radiant Cowl』 cloaked his entire body. After a moment, he began glowing brighter... and brighter... and-
"Stop," Lucius called out, interrupting Hannibal's focus.
"This sort of thing requires a subtle method. If you pump out too much energy, you won't be able to control it, and the only thing you'll manage to do is tire yourself out and blow up the rune," Lucius said, before calling out his solar crux.
"Look," he continued, before casting a very low-powered solar beam. After a few seconds, the constant beam of light slowly decreased in diameter to form a laser-width beam.
After that something strange happened. The beam flickered for a moment, before wiggling like a string and going dim.
This was nothing more than a party trick, he had flashed the beam dozens of times and used Elmando to attempt to redirect the beam, giving the illusion that it had wiggled.
The point of the demonstration, however, was to show Hannibal that Elmando could be used to modify spells, and even more so, that it was more effective when a lower amount of energy was used.
Hannibal caught on to this, having felt the pull from Elmando when Lucius had cast his spell.
He closed his eyes and attempted it once more. This time, his body only glowed slightly and kept a constant energy flux.
~So he really is more of a practical learner,~ Lucius thought to himself, as he felt Hannibal using Elmando.
Lucius watched on patiently, using 『Solar Pit』 to redirect some energy to Hannibal whenever he seemed to be running out.
And after around two hours.
[Processing...]
[New spell acquired... 『Radiant Accession』.]
[Adding 『Radiant Accession』 to 『Radiant Augmentation Index』...]
[Complete. 『Radiant Accession』 has been added.]
"This- this is perfect," Lucius whispered, watching as Hannibal's 『Radiant Cowl』 covered both his own body and the rune.
