Chapter 21

Title: Nene's Path

A few days later in Tuula, their days mostly continued to be the same. Nejime enjoyed teaching more than she expected and she was quite successful with it as well.

But when she wanted to teach some more advanced concepts, she quickly discovered that more advanced Shuriman magic was too forceful. As she was blessed by the land and Phesto quickly attuned himself with the land, she thought that the issue with Shuriman magic did not lie with its aggressiveness, but rather the state of the caster. Seeing the students unable to cast her magic she remembered that Phesto also had a special condition.

She decided to stop teaching for a bit and instead go back to the drawing board about the theories of magic and what Shuriman magic actually was. Not knowing what an undertaking it would be, she spent the next few days locked in a room only coming out to share results with Phesto and put him through the occasional experiment.

She quickly found the issue. Almost all Shuriman magic forced the magical energy around the caster to do their bidding. And without a spirit guarding or rather residing in the land such practices worked. And this was only amplified when one considered what the core tenants of Shuriman magic were and who held them up.

Shurima's leading scholars, strongest warriors and most influential people aside from the emperor, the Ascended. They were former humans reforged by celestial sunlight attaining semi-divinity, practically immortal and almost impossible to kill. With their vast powers and lifespan, they have not only become some of the wisest and powerful people, but also some of the most stubborn people.

Centuries of being the lead scientists has led to them looking down on new ideas. And spending centuries refining their magic, any new magic introduced by mortals could never possibly compare. After all, even if a mortal spent their entire life dedicating themselves toward the creation of new magic it would look much too crude compared to the infinitely refined magic used by the Ascended.

Looking back at it Nejime never really thought of the influence the Ascended held as something negative. But she realized that it wasn't that odd, the Ascended were after all the pride of Shurima and as a princess, the relationship between the Ascended and the royal family was a bit more special. With their unwavering loyalty, they were pretty much an extension to her will. So it was a bit difficult for her to think of the Ascended as a possibly negative influence on Shurima. Especially when it was caused so passively.

She was truly happy that she left Shurima and came to Ionia. But she also felt conflicted, on one hand, she was now able to use magic, in fact, she would only grow more powerful as time passed, but on the other hand, she learned of a possible flaw that could prove fatal to the future development of Shurima. Still, until she became more powerful and introduced a new magic refined enough to shock even the Ascended she would probably be unable to change Shurima.

So until then, she vowed herself not to return home.

Though that was easier said than done. At this point, she still did not have a good idea of what exactly she was looking for. The spirit of a land seemed like the best direction she could. Unlike Shurima, Ionia had a spirit and it was pretty much ever-present. She had also clearly felt the benefits of the spirit and seen what it could bring with her own eyes, but she had also seen what would happen if one goes against the rules of the spirit.

Still, considering the benefits she had experienced any sort of success in studying the Spirit should prove to be useful. And considering that come into contact with any other spirit she also knew that there was a good chance that the capabilities of Spirits are far beyond what Ionia's spirit is capable of. After all, even a simple farmer has things they are more skilled at than an ascended. So why couldn't that be possible for other spirits.

No matter the case for now she first had to find out why Ionia had a spirit and why Shurima had none. She would also then have to find out how Shurima if required could get their own spirit. For now, she just had a wild guess, she came up with together with Phesto, his ideas were often incredibly weird and unheard of, but whenever he explained himself they would suddenly make sense, especially for magic.

The guess they came up with was the connection between humanities history and Ionia's proximity to the spirit realm. Perhaps with spirits nearby it was easier for a spirit to be born in the mortal world. And since both humans and spirits walked these lands together in the beginning there were no strong magic spells and techniques centered around the forceful use of it. In fact there were no skills and techniques whatsoever. So it would make sense that instead of learning magic humans instead worked together with the spirits that came to the mortal realm with them.

Magic skills were probably formed after that, and in this case, the harmony with the spirits would then also be one of the most important aspects of this magic. When humans left Ionia they probably realized that in lands without spirits they would have to change their spells. This might have led to the development of forceful spells.

Though this was still nothing more than a guess she felt this to be fairly reasonable and when she went around to ask about humanities history from the other teachers frequenting the teaching square she only became more and more sure of this guess.

At least sure enough to continue her research with this guess as her basis.

During all this Phesto remembered a type of magic he should probably tell her about. Rune Magic. They first appeared in Ryze's lore, when he was still an apprentice, which should be near the Rune Wars which ended when Noxus was founded. So from now, it should still be around 3000 years until then.

He entered a room and greeted her. After sitting down he wondered a bit. 3000 years was a long time, if runes are man-made then they probably didn't even exist yet. But what do they say? Time waits for no one? So he might as well.

"Say Nene, have you ever encountered magic that is invoked through etchings?"

"Runes? Yeah, I've heard about them, though I'm more surprised you know about them, a professor in Zaun founded that field a few years ago. When I studied there

she first created the first rune.

But yeah, why did you want to know?"

So they weren't actually an artefact from the world. And from what she said they were still early in their development. That was perfect. Or was it? He was currently in Ionia and he had no idea how he would go around to Zaun and stop the research of a single professor who was just curious about a new field. Suddenly stopping the development would cause even more attraction, wouldn't it? And honestly, he didn't even want that. After all, just because a technology had the potential to destroy the world didn't mean that it had to be used that way. Nuclear science was a good example. Potentially world ending, but at the same time offering a new direction of development and also solving a lot of issues they could not yet solve back on earth.

Hmmm… he had been thinking quite a bit now and had not yet answered Nejime's question. Ah, screw it. She can go ahead and save the world he did not want to deal with.

"Because I heard a bit about it before meeting you, but I couldn't really find out what it did. I assume because they are new?"

"Most likely, though we students got a lecture on runes after you don't just stumble onto a new field of magic every day. In fact, even Nasus attended the lecture, though he didn't give a comment on it"

With Nasus having attended it, stopping research will probably be impossible. That guy loves new knowledge after all.

"If Nasus attended it, does it mean it's a promising field? Or rather what do runes even do?"

He knew exactly how promising this field would be, but he was curious how early in its infancy was this field?

Not knowing what Phesto meant she looked lost until he told her.

"Currently not much. The professor, before finding out about runes, tried to create the simplest magic in the world, that anyone could cast and her result was a glowing spell that would only cause a flash of light.

When she studied this she had an accident where she inserted her magical force into the paper while inscribing the spell method resulting in the spell being cast and the paper being destroyed.

When she tried this with more complex spells the paper would end destroyed before the spell would finish casting. She theorizes that this could revolutionize the world of magic, as formations and skilled magicians would not be needed and just a flat amount of mana as well as the corresponding rune would be required."

An admirable goal in his eyes. Thinking about this he could only sigh.

"To let everyone cast magic, as long as magic power was provided. I wonder how this would interact with Ionia's spirit. Here in Ionia, many people use magic by channelling what is in their surroundings and they don't use their own power right? Couldn't a finished rune be used to hurt Ionia's spirit then?"

She widened her eyes in shock before she closed them again thinking about this while frowning. She stayed like this for a minute before she opened her eyes again.

"Most likely, though it's impossible to guess the extent. The magic we channel would be taken out of Ionia's system and be cast as if it was a foreign body. Remember when you first arrived in Ionia and magic was extremely sluggish for you? Magical power that went through a rune would probably need time to readjust itself similar to what you went through."

"Could the damage be permanent?"

Nejime was deep in thought.

"That… shouldn't be the case but it might take really long for the magic to readjust itself. The larger the scale of the rune the larger the scale of the effect probably."

Saying this, Nejime entered deep thought again. If runes were to develop a lot then they might grow to become dangerous, dangerous enough to cause scarring on the entire world. Considering the size of Shurima it wasn't that odd to see city-wide magic.

Though considering the way magic progressed incredibly slowly without Ascended backing it would probably be safe to ignore for now and focus on what she wanted to do.

But with her wanting to change Shurima, she felt like she was at a dilemma. On one hand, she hoped that this magic would not grow to see the light of day for now. But it was also her goal to change the way Shurima handled magic so that new magic had an easier time shining.

Seeing Nejime's conflicted expression, Phesto could already guess what she was thinking about so he walked to her and patted her shoulder.

"Nene, you don't need to overthink this. Didn't you tell me yesterday how long it takes for new magic to improve? Just focus on your own goal for now. Whether or not you want to support or stop the development of this magic, it's not like you can do that as you are now anyways. So think about it when you get there."

He smiled wryly and left the room. It was already quite late and when he looked up at the sky he saw the beautiful starry sky. Nejime had her goal and own worries, so she should know where she wanted to go. But the question was, what did he want?