Re: Tales of the Rune-Tech Sage

CH66 Detector Project

***

"Phew~"

Alex released a breath of foul air.

He had finally broken through — after nearly two full months of intense cultivation inside a high-grade training chamber.

He’d forsaken almost everything else during that time, following Zora’s advice to the letter, focusing single-mindedly on recovering his rank and pushing for advancement.

Achieving Intermediate Rank just three months before his fifteenth birthday wasn’t ground-breaking, not with his advantages. But it also wasn’t something to dismiss lightly — especially when one considered the other secrets hiding within his body, far beyond what his cultivation rank revealed.

Still, Intermediate Rank or not, it didn’t matter much to Alex.

He took a bath, had a meal, and headed straight into his Rune-Tech lab.

To most, breaking through to Intermediate Rank would be a major milestone, a reason for celebration.

To Alex, it was expected.

Between his talents, his noble heritage, the resources at his disposal, his status as the True Disciple of an Ancient Dragon, and — of course — the subtle suspicion that the universe still viewed him as an MC... his progress felt inevitable.

Even advancing to Elite or Great Mage ranks would likely earn nothing more than a shrug.

Perhaps only achieving Grand Mage Rank would be enough to make him celebrate.

More than the promotion, what truly interested Alex was how the increased rank would affect his projects. His research. His experiments.

And so, he didn’t bother informing anyone about the breakthrough. He simply returned to work.

Today, he was tackling his most ambitious Rune-Tech project yet:

The Detector Rune.

--

Alex began by writing the code — a sequence of Rune Logic aligned with his vision for the Detector Rune.

But things quickly escalated.

What he’d thought would be a simple Runic Circuit evolved into a more complex Runic Circle Array.

He realised that his harrowing experience with the Spatial Formation had tempered his risk tolerance.

And besides, creatures with such a simple and readable Ancestral Marking as the one he was about to use for the experiment were rare, if not one-of-a-kind since they were pretty much extinct in the major space of Pangea. He couldn’t afford another irreversible mistake.

Despite these constraints, Alex pushed through and completed the Rune Array.

The final result wasn’t a single array — it was a pair.

The first was the Detector Rune, designed to be inscribed onto the Spindlecarve Mite.

The second was the Receiver Rune, integrated it into the OmniRune Core, it would capture the data transmitted by the Detector Rune.

Using the simulation function within the Core, Alex ran tests for compressing the Detector Rune into a Greater Rune. Meanwhile, the Receiver Rune was directly compressed and integrated into the Core’s programming, expanding its capabilities.

With the Greater Rune now completed, Alex was ready to bind it onto the Spindlecarve Mite’s carapace.

But this was where the real challenge began.

--

Though large for an insect, the Mite’s back carapace was already mostly taken up by its Ancestral Marking.

And that carapace was the only surface tough enough to handle the rune drawing process — the Rune Pen’s needle could very well puncture the creature’s body if applied anywhere else, no matter how delicately he controlled his strength.

That meant Alex would have to make it work within a very tight space.

To tackle this, he had allocated a large portion of the discretionary fund opened to him by Baldrick Pinchcoin toward upgrading his Rune-Tech lab.

Thanks to that, the lab now boasted an array of specialised tools designed specifically for miniature inscriptions and micro-rune structuring.

He had even used some of the funds to commission custom modular Rune-lab tools and furnishings — optimised for both his main lab and his Pocket Dimension workspace.

Anyway, the only step left in the Detector Rune project was the actual drawing of the rune.

Now that Alex had broken through to Intermediate Mage Rank, his larger mana pool and improved control would be indispensable. The rune’s small size left no room for error.

As usual, Alex prepared all the materials with meticulous care. He picked up a newly-forged Rune Pen, this one specifically designed for miniature inscriptions, its needle tip narrower than a strand of hair.

He double-checked the sedated Spindlecarve Mite to ensure it was still unconscious. Then, he went through the full procedure in his head — again.

Once confident, he loaded the first cartridge into the Rune Pen.

Sliding a precision magnifying lens into position above the Mite’s carapace, Alex began his work.

--

Alex was a picture of pure focus.

Every stroke of the Rune Pen was deliberate, each line etched with purpose. The needle never pierced too deep nor too shallow — just right to draw a Rune Tattoo across the chitinous surface.

His Truth-Seeker Eyes tracked the mite’s internal energy flow, ensuring none of the rune’s strokes intersected with them. Alex wanted the rune to only interact with the Ancestral Markings, not the creature’s internal energies. That distinction was critical.

Six sessions — each lasting nearly three hours — later, Alex added the final stroke to the Rune’s main body.

The result? A set of cryptic lines that blended perfectly with the existing irregular shapes of the carapace. In fact, to an untrained eye, it looked like part of the mite’s natural exoskeleton.

This was intentional.

Unlike Zora’s rune, he couldn’t include a camouflage component — the ingredients for such runes might react poorly with the unique compounds in the mite’s shell. Whether the reaction would be benign or catastrophic, he didn’t care to find out.

So instead of magical concealment, Alex chose physical disguise — a seamless, artistic integration.

He zoomed in again with the magnifying lens and carefully scanned every segment of the rune. Of course, he hadn’t made any mistakes — the OmniRune Core had been monitoring the entire process in real time.

Once satisfied, Alex tested the Rune’s synchronisation with the Receiver Rune already incorporated into the OmniRune Core.

The initial output was just static, but that was expected. The circuits were responding. The connection was functional.

The design was sound.

Now came the final and most delicate part — connecting the Detector Rune to the Ancestral Marking.

Like attaching positive and negative leads of a voltmeter to a circuit, Alex drew two fine, line-like runes from opposite ends of the Rune Tattoo.

These extended carefully to the two prominent tips of the Mite’s Ancestral Marking.

A silvery shimmer spread faintly across the carapace.

Connection complete.

Almost instantly, the OmniRune Core began receiving signals from the Detector Rune — data pertaining to the Mite’s dormant Ancestral Marking.

The embedded AI within the Core processed the data and compiled a detailed readout of the Ancestral Marking’s inactive state.

Alex, mentally drained, stepped into his high-grade cultivation chamber to meditate and recover.

-

An hour later, he returned to the Rune-Tech Lab.

The Mite was awake.

***