Chapter 74: Scholar

“Derivative Guardian runes …”

Ron pondered.

He didn’t start exploring the derivative runes of the guardian system yet, because it was too difficult to explore such complex runes before reaching 100 points of spiritual powers.

After all, they were ten times larger than the basic element runes, with far more than ten times of complexity.

If the exploration hardship was simply multiplied by a lot, with Ron’s current thinking speed and mental power, he would be able to use the exhaustive search technique to forcibly explore every possible combination and pattern…

However, the size multiplication brought more trouble than expected, it was like a single-digit number, turning it to four digits or even five digits.

With this level of difficulty, the brute force search was not the solution, not try one by one like trying to decipher a phone password, but to gain enough knowledge.

Knowledge about runes.

Ron’s previous understanding of runes was very shallow, but after studying the third-level magic, he acquired more experience, and had deeper comprehension of the runes.

He learned that the runes are nothing but ‘’tools’’ that represent the perfect use of energy.

Yes! Runes are tools, absolutely perfect tools.

It’s like a steam engine, generator, in science.… They all work as energy converters, energy transformer, but the runes were as the most perfect tool! A flawless tool with a 100% utilization rate.

Long ago, Ron accidentally created flawed runes similar to derivative runes. Although they were also effective, they weren’t even close to the perfect runes extracted by the achievement system in terms of loss and roughness.

Using his element affinity, Ron studied the runes and reached a conclusion that the runes possessed a unique mechanism that converts the elements and could be perfected only by the achievement system.

In other words, the achievement system actually allowed Ron to omit the most troublesome step of self-creating magic step, and directly gave him the perfect Rune standing at the end of the magic queue.

Otherwise, he would have to study the use of elements without the use of runes to create magic. That wasn’t something that one person could accomplish on his own. Such a thing needs countless brilliant magicians, with inherited generations of knowledge.

Knowing that runes were tools, Ron also understood why these derived runes have their own meanings, such as decomposition, aggregation, confusion, and so on.

However, he was still far away from completely understanding the essence of runes.

In other words, he could decompose the runes’ different parts, understand how it was formed, and what parts and functions each line and small pattern represented, respectively.

But even so, Ron figured out the meaning of the runes as a whole.

Decomposition, aggregation, chaos, order, generation, destruction, intensification, and reduction.

Regardless of whether it was fire, earth, or wind system, the eight derivative runes represented these eight concepts, which revolved around the core basic element runes.

These eight derivative runes could be divided into opposite pairs…decomposition and aggregation, chaos and order, generation and destruction, intensification, and reduction, a total of four sets of opposing runes.

These opposites, such as decomposition and aggregation, shouldn’t be arranged next to each other even if they appear in the same magic. They need to be separated by other runes, just like in a washing machine where water and electricity are needed but must be separated.

In the process of exploring the third-level wind magic, Ron thoroughly understood the meaning of all eight derived runes, and obtained the fifth characteristic, successfully mastering the 3rd level magic.

And the five characteristics of magic that he understood were exactly these four groups of opposite runes, plus the fact that the basic Rune must be the core of magic.

On the basis of such knowledge, it wouldn’t be difficult for Ron to explore both the third-level fire and the earth magic. It is like having equations to calculate while having all your necessary parameters. It was just a matter of applying his knowledge accordingly.

“Humm, when Nami would be able to help me with the runes exploration, we would be able to accumulate knowledge at a faster rate…”

Ron couldn’t help but mutter.

With Nami’s current level, it was too early for her to delve into magic exploration. She was still in the stage of learning, and there was still a huge gap between her and Ron.

At that time, Ron was roughly aware of the feeling of former generations, the feeling of top scholars who were at the forefront of technology and science, they needed to explore and create everything by themselves. He was at the forefront of this world.

Because of this, magicians were respected.

In a sense, they were the top scholars in the world, playing a vital role in the sustainable development of the world. Any progress made was a step forward for the entire world!

“Unfortunately, this is the world of One Piece.”

Thinking of this, Ron couldn’t help but sigh. If he was in a world where magic hasn’t prospered to its peak, and perfect runes weren’t explored yet, he would just need to take out a perfect rune, and become a great magician respected and admired by countless people.

But in this world, strength is what mattered. Knowledge could only be used as a tool to enhance strength, and there was no other room for invention and innovation…

Ron twitched his mouth, then went back, thinking about the guardian runes.

For Ron, the difficulty of exploring the guardian runes was the fact that they were different from the basic elements. It even had only six derivative runes instead of eight, which didn’t match the five characteristics he found.

“Is there a set of opposite runes, or … all six runes are different.”

Ron pondered. He felt that there should be some resemblance and similarity with the usual eight derivative runes, even if not all six of them, a few should be enough.

If this assumption was correct, Ron could bypass some detours. After all, Ron, who acquired some knowledge of the Rune, should be able to avoid many obvious low-level errors if he knew the corresponding meaning.

And Ron made another assumption.

It was very likely that the eternal derivative runes were missing a pair, and he anticipated that the group should be the ‘chaos’ & ‘order’ pair.

Compared with elemental runes, eternal runes relied only on spiritual power, and didn’t involve the basic elements of the outside world, so there should be no meaning of the existence of the two concepts of ‘chaos’ and ‘order’, because, in a sense, eternity should cast any meaning of order or chaos.