Rex sat completely still.
Not asleep.
Not distracted.
Thinking.
He needed a support spell.
Something that didn't care what he was fighting, only that he needed to survive it.
Fire was obvious.
Earth was reliable.
But air…
Air was everything else.
Control. Distance. Speed. Redirection. Pressure. Escape.
"The problem," Rex muttered, staring at the ceiling, "is not air."
"It's how."
He opened the Mistica Arcanum again.
The book responded instantly, pages flipping without resistance, landing on the runes he already knew. Familiar symbols greeted him like old friends.
Control.
Stability.
Release.
But that wasn't enough.
Rex leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes unfocused as he began to visualize it.
"I need to control it," he whispered.
"So—control rune."
He scanned.
There.
Then he imagined pulling air toward himself, gathering it.
"I need something that pulls…"
His finger stopped.
"Siphon."
He frowned.
"But if I don't know what's attacking me…" he continued, thinking out loud, "then the siphon will just keep building pressure."
That was bad.
Very bad.
He flipped pages again.
"Hold."
A pause.
"Yes. Hold."
Then he imagined aiming it.
"Direct."
Another page.
Another rune.
Then a thought crept in—dangerous, tempting.
"What if I want it to hit something?"
Explode.
Release.
He stopped.
"…That's already six."
Rex slowly counted them on his fingers.
Control.
Siphon.
Hold.
Direct.
Explode.
Release.
"Plus air makes seven…"
The room was quiet.
Too quiet.
He flipped the page one more time.
And froze.
"…Compress."
His breath caught.
Compression meant density.
Density meant force.
Force meant damage without fire.
He counted again.
Eight.
The maximum.
Rex swallowed.
"I've never done a max-rune focus."
Sage: That's because max-rune rituals are unstable.
Rex smiled nervously.
"Yeah. But think about how cool it'll be."
Sage: That sentence has historically preceded disasters.
Rex stood anyway.
"You'll see."
The Ritual Room
The air felt wrong the moment he entered.
Expectant.
Rex placed a pure blank focus in the center pedestal and rolled his shoulders.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's not die."
He began carving.
Each rune was etched perfectly, copied directly from the Mistica Arcanum.
Control.
Siphon.
Hold.
Direct.
Explode.
Release.
Air.
Sage's voice grew sharper with every symbol.
Sage: Rex.
Compress.
The final rune glowed faintly as it settled.
Sage: You are attempting a max-complexity infusion.
Rex wiped sweat from his brow.
"Yep."
Sage: This ritual has zero safety margin.
Rex swallowed.
"Y—yeah."
He activated the matrix.
The room screamed.
Purple lightning erupted instantly—real lightning, violent and unstable.
The first bolt missed Rex by inches and punched a smoking hole in the wall.
Rex stared at it.
"…Okay. That's new."
Another bolt struck the floor where his foot had been.
Rex yelped and dove.
"This is fine!" he shouted, scrambling across the room. "Totally manageable!"
Noir: I like this one.
Sage: FOCUS.
Rex zigzagged as lightning snapped past him, dodging like his life depended on it.
Because it did.
Slowly—agonizingly—the runes began to dissolve, turning into glowing particles that streamed toward the center focus.
One by one.
Control.
Siphon.
Hold.
Direct.
Explode.
Release.
Air.
The last rune—Compress—hovered for a heartbeat.
Then slammed into the focus.
The lightning stopped.
Silence fell.
Rex collapsed into a chair, panting.
"…I'm alive."
On the pedestal sat a white focus.
It looked almost identical to a pure focus.
Almost.
Something about it felt… heavier. Like it occupied more space than it should.
Rex picked it up.
"…You feel wrong," he said quietly.
Sage: That's because you built a pressure-based air manipulation focus.
Rex grinned.
Cleanup and Improvements
Before testing anything, Rex sat back down and grabbed his old redirect focus.
"This one needs fixing."
He carefully carved new runes:
Absorb.
Direct.
Emit.
Release.
Sage: That will significantly improve stability.
Rex smirked. "I know."
He finished just as—
SLAM.
The front door echoed through the library.
Rex looked up.
Velkohr stood there.
Not calm.
Not amused.
Mad.
Like dangerously mad.
Rex blinked. "Uh… what's up with him?"
Sage: No idea.
Noir: Probably sensed the lightning apocalypse you just caused.
Velkohr's eyes locked onto Rex.
Rex slowly raised a hand.
"…Hi?"b